The Left's Favorite Righty

"Ever since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I've gotten confused about all the reasons I'm supposed to dislike Barack Obama. The previous reasons, in rough chronological order, were his lack of experience, his empty rhetoric, his flip-flopping, and his 'celebrity.' But Palin has made each one of those critiques moot. The 'celebrity' attack on Obama has a particularly Dada quality right now as starstruck Republicans bask in the charisma of their adorable veep. (Coldest state, hottest governor, read signs at her rallies.) With her hunky husband, touching family life and plucky personal story, she is the candidate of the People. And by People, I mean People magazine . . .

"The main complaint against Palin has been her lack of experience. That's fortunate for her, since 'experience' -- especially measured in a linear way -- fails to capture exactly what Palin lacks. Yes, two years as governor is less than you'd like, as is four years as senator. The real problem, though, is that Palin has no record of thinking about national or international policy . . .

"In lieu of opening Palin to regular questioning from the press corps, of the sort the other three candidates have all undergone many times before, the McCain campaign is helpfully leaking positive appraisals of her studiousness. 'Despite the worries, [Palin] struck many campaign officials as more calm and cerebral than expected,' reported Newsweek. 'She was quick to ask questions, and to 'engage in a back and forth' with briefers.' See, the McCain campaign says she's on the ball. That settles it, right?

"But, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, this admiring appraisal of the prospective veep's intellect struck a familiar chord. With a quick search, I discovered that, indeed, the same was said of Dan Quayle in 1988. Twenty years ago, The Washington Post reported, 'Bush aides, who were getting their first in-depth exposure to Quayle, were impressed by his attention span, the quality of his questions and the facility with which he moved through the agenda.' "

Kos is proud of his fellow liberal bloggers:

"Bloggers and tradmed reporters took a hard look at Sarah Palin and began raking her over the coals for myriad transgressions. She is a liar with theocratic tendencies, sports an intellect that makes Bush look like a Mensa member, and features an obvious fondness for Cheney-style abuses of power. And that's not even the worst of it.

"But then the worriers began to question, 'Why are we focusing on Palin? McCain is getting a pass! We're tilting at windmills, since she's too popular to damage!' We were told to stop talking altogether about Palin, as if ignoring her would remove the spell she had cast on America. This Andrew Sullivan post must've been emailed to me two dozen times by panicked worrywarts. A few bad polls, and people seemed to be losing their minds and sense.

"But we continued to focus on Palin. Republicans were busy trying to build a positive narrative about Palin -- the 'hockey mom' who was so folksy she could 'field dress a moose' and had 'said no to the Bridge to Nowhere and other government waste' and was overflowing with 'small town values'. McCain had shot up in the polls because of Palin. Common sense dictated it would be hard to knock him back down as long as she consolidated her popularity. So we set out to build the negative narratives about Palin. This is stuff straight out of Taking on the System. I have a whole chapter on it, in fact.

"So we focused heavily on Palin, and make no mistake, it's exactly that intense focus that has taken its toll on her numbers." Her approval/disapproval has dropped from 52-35 positive to 42-46 negative.

"That's a shocking 18 21-point collapse in a single week. She went from being just about the most popular person on the top of the ticket, to the (lipstick wearing?) goat."

The MSM also had a role in examining Palin's record. But the NYT ombudsman says its Palin profile was too much about management style and not enough on management results, and the WP ombudsman says its report on a Palin speech on Iraq was flawed.

Now this is just silly. Ed Morrissey has a great blog at Hot Air, but he's really reaching in suggesting that I sided with the McCain campaign against The Post with this adwatch on a commercial in which ex-Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines was called an Obama adviser:

"His own newspaper has twice reported the relationship between Raines and Obama, and on one of those occasions, Raines was their source . . .

"Howard never mentions these articles. What are we to make of this omission, and of Howard's declaration of the relationship as a 'disputed premise'? It seems that the lesson is that readers shouldn't trust the reporting at The Washington Post. After all, these articles contain no corrections and have not been retracted, and more to the point, never raised an objection from Barack Obama until now."

First, I cited the McCain argument; that's called reporting. Then I noted that Raines himself (in only one Post article, so there was no need to mention others) told reporter Anita Huslin that he had gotten calls from the Obama camp soliciting his views. Now Raines may have been puffing himself up, but even by his own account, he was hardly an Obama "adviser." So the ad was a huge stretch, and so is Morrissey's claim here.