Well, THAT’s A Relief…
I will sleep a little easier tonight knowing that, in the extremely likely event of a Barack Obama presidency, at least I won’t have to live with James Webb as the VP:
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., long rumored to be a leading candidate for Sen. Barack Obama’s choice as his vice-presidential running mate, announced Monday that he intends to remain in his Senate post.
“Last week I communicated to Senator Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country,” Webb said in a statement. “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for Vice President.”
Webb’s announcement may be seen by some as a surprise, since as recently as a few weeks ago Webb’s Capitol Hill colleagues were referring to him as “Mr. Vice President”, as Obama’s close friend Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., teasingly did on the Senate floor in June. But Webb said Monday that he believes his skills are best suited to the Senate, not the number two spot.
I have made no secret of my extreme distaste for Webb’s quasi-socialist class-based view of economics…and you know by now that economics is high on my list of priorities.
I note in passing two other stories today: first, Obama’s decision to go full rock-star with a stadium acceptance speech (it will be a spectacle, but will crowd noise ruin the atmosphere? You know some yahoo will be wistling and hollaring at completely inappropriate moments…they do at the regular conventions, too, but with 75,000 people, it will be somewhat of a madhouse):
After coy hints over the long holiday weekend, the Obama campaign officially announced today that Sen. Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination at the 75,000-seat Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver, home of the Denver Broncos.
And how did the campaign break the news to supporters? How else? Through an Internet fund-raising appeal.
The second link, I hate to bring up, because we have covered this ground exhaustively, and I’m in danger of way over-emphasizing what I think is a minor story…but it is relevant to our recent discussion, so here’s Eleanor Clift’s analysis of where Wes Clark went wrong:
Mistake Number One: Clark repeated Schieffer’s words, saying, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” That’s a fair point but only if McCain were claiming it as a credential. He never has…
…Mistake Number Two: Elevating executive responsibility, which sounds like a desk job, over the experience of enduring torture and deprivation…
…Mistake Number Three: Refusing to back down. If Clark had said he didn’t mean what he seemed to imply, it would have been over…
That’s heavily excerpted, and Clift goes into much more detail, of course. I don’t agree with her very often, but that’s probably about right.
Is that the last word on this subject?
God, I hope so…
I’m glad Webb’s out. He will be a far more valuable voice in defense of a sensible, pragmatic, populist politics in the Senate. That body in particular could use more people who seem to genuinely understand working-class anxiety and the depth of our foreign policy foolishness.
Obviously we’ve been over this before, but your branding of Webb as “quasi-socialist” (especially hilarious because so many of his most ardent supporters are paleoconservatives who don’t have a socialist bone in their bodies) is really revealing of how right-wing, extremist, and condescending to the working class the Republican Party has become over the last couple decades.
Please…the best sauce for the working class is free-market economics. I don’t paint Webb as a quasi-socialist to tar him – I paint him thus because reading his statements on economics reveals him to be so.
Here’s a link…it’s full of approximately 9,000 references to ‘class’ in its economic analysis, and its written by – yep…James Webb…you ever notice how I always provide links? You’re welcome…
Here’s another Webb excerpt:
…[W]e know that we need to reinstitute fairness in our economic system. This country has been breaking into three pieces as a result of globalization on the one hand and immigration on the other; our middle class has never been so at risk.
There’s something wrong.
When corporate profits; are the highest percent of our national wealth in history, at the same time that wages and salaries are at the lowest level in recorded history, there’s something’s wrong with that.
There’s something’s wrong when the average CEO, of a fortune 500 company has seen his compensation increase by more than 50 percent during this administration, to more than 8 million dollars a year, while workers salaries have actually decreased. Medical costs have gone up by 73% and gas prices, except for just before this election… have gone up above three dollars.
We need people who are going to find out what’s wrong and who are going to fix it.
“Fairness in our economic systems”, anti-globalism rants…this is the stuff of progressive socialists. Is that not true?…
And Ryan, frankly, ‘populism’ was for the hayseeds even when Huey Long was throwing it around, and it hasn’t improved with age…read any Jim Hightower lately?…
He’s my Senator, God bless him.
What an idiot.
So who would you prefer to be Obama’s VP? Recognizing that you’ll vote Republican — yet there is a good chance that Obama will win, so presumably you want him to get the best person for the job — who would that be?
As for me: I would hope he picks Chris Dodd or possibly Bill Richardson.
Dodd would be a good pick – Richardson strikes me as being very self-centered – just rubs me the wrong way.
But Dodd would add little ‘spark’, so I don’t really see him as a viable choice.
Hmmm…I’ll have to think on that one…
Oh, one more Webb quote – because in this one, he makes an explicit “fair trade” reference:
Okay, got it: Sam Nunn for VP!…
He’s got solid national security credentials, he’s well-respected on both sides of the aisle, he’s got loads of ‘experience’, and his pet issue is also one of mine – the growing threat of nuclear proliferation…
I don’t see it. Tax/trade fairness just isn’t socialism. Ask the guys at The American Conservative if they’re socialists and see how fast you get laughed out of the room. My point about the Republican Party’s extremism refers to directly to the fact that it’s a party that seems completely unable to recognize that its tax and trade policies explicitly favor the mega-rich over the working class. It’s not even really a controversial point, I would imagine. It’s just that you believe explicitly directing government aid to the mega-rich will also indirectly help everyone else, while Jim Webb (and Ryan) thinks that doesn’t actually make any sense. He may be wrong about that (although he’s clearly not), but he’s not a socialist for pointing it out. And the majority of American citizens aren’t socialists for agreeing with him.
Mark, what about McCain’s faux-populist gas tax holiday? What about his promise to enact over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, keep the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq going, and then have them won and the budget balanced by the end of his first term? Surely outright lying (or lunacy) is at least as dangerous as someone you don’t agree with. Unless, that is, you posit that McCain’s just saying what he needs to get elected.
But seriously, would a media that isn’t in the tank for McCain let his claims about victory in the wars and a balanced budget by 2013 pass without critical analysis?
Mark: I agree that Dodd comes off as dull, and I doubt he would be picked, but I think he would be a great VP. Re Nunn: I agree that he is wise and experienced, but at 70 I think he is too old for the President’s job, should that happen. The demands of the job are simply too great for someone entering their eighth decade. It must be like running a marathon every day. Hey, I’m 53 and I have to think twice to remember where I parked my car at the mall. When you’re exhausted, you make mistakes. Other things being equal, much better to pick someone considerably younger than Nunn.
Fargus: There are a lot of other examples of the media being in the tank for McCain (for instance, you rarely hear the Keating Five mentioned). Frank Rich brought this up: apparently McCain never used a computer. Being a POW may or may not be a qualification to be President, but having at least a passing familiarity with a computer is. The image of John McCain being flustered at a keyboard would be as indelible as Bush I going to the store (for a photo op about stimulating the economy) and not knowing what a scanner is when he bought some socks. Outside of Rich’s column, I don’t think this has gotten any play at all in the media.
Being able to use a computer is far more relevant to the job he’s applying for than is familiarity with a barcode scanner. And so is having the intellectual curiosity to wish to learn to use one. In 2008, never having used a computer is roughly equivalent to never having read a book. Do we really want such a person anywhere near the Oval Office?
A computer is a tool, period. Use or non use is not a qualification for being president.
Name one thing that a president does that would be better done with a computer.
Ryan, please define “mega-rich”. What income or wealth level is the boundary line?
Computers are arguably has changed the world more than any other invention since Gutenberg invented movable type in 1439. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the President to have at least a passing familiarity with it.
Cars are also tools. Wouldn’t you think it a little bizarre to have a President who doesn’t know how to drive?
sorry for the wretched syntax, but you get what I mean
peter: You’ve stumbled upon a theory of mine. The Gutenberg press allowed a transformation from books transcribed by hand or by a much more costly press into something that could be done far more cheaply and thus more people had access to all the important literature of the day. Libraries could more easily share materials quicker and more cost effectively. What that invention did for knowledge, so, too, did the computer coupled with the internet. Instant “publishing” is a much bigger deal than anything people back then could possibly imagine. And to be accessible from pretty much any corner of the world.
I don’t find it coincidental that human rights and what many would consider other “progressive” values coincided with the distribution of knowledge. I, for one, think that trend will continue for quite some time. I can’t imagine life in 500 years, but I’m sure it will be pretty sweet.
So, driving is now a qualification for president?
Mike:
1) There is a principle in economics called the network effect, which is when the value of something increases as more people use it (telephones, email, eBay, etc.). I think this is what you’ve described.
2) You could make the case that the most important invention known to man — moveable type — became obsolete (because of the computer) and nobody seemed to notice. When is the last time you saw a typewriter?
Aaron:
I think that the President ought to know what it is like to live in America in 2008. This is not to say that he has to drink Budweiser, be proficient in Excel, or know who the last winner is on America’s Next Top Model. But it does mean that he should not be so removed from what it’s like to be an American, which includes the things which 99% of us do: drive cars, use computers, and know what a barcode scanner is.
As a source of information, the Web easily dwarfs the Library of Congress.
I would think that someone who aspires to be leader the free world would be interested in tapping into that.
Aside from being out of touch with the way the rest of the country lives (Peter’s point), McCain’s inability to use a computer, and his lack of interest in gaining said ability, bespeaks of an intellectual incuriosity that I find positively scary.
If this were the only indication of McCain’s incurious nature, I might let it slide. But it’s not.
The Press has, similarly, largely ignored the persistent inability of this so-called foreign policy expert to tell the difference between Shia and Sunnis. And his repeated admissions that he doesn’t know beans about economics have also merited nary a mention.
But, hey, I hear he serves a mean barbecue.
Well, now you have the best qualification to be President right there. Knowing how to cook ribs forgives lots of sins.
(And let’s not forget the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln: “honey, these are great seats!”)
Look, John McCain has lived in the rarified world of the Senate for a long, long time. When you are at that level of power, right or wrong, you don’t type your own memos, you don’t answer your own e-mails, you don’t drive cars, and you don’t do you own shopping. What you do is go to photo-ops, committee meetings, fundraisers, etc…and it’s very demanding of your time.
It’s not surprising to me that John McCain, at his age, is not familiar with computers. Neither is my own father, and he’s a very intelligent man who has lived a far better and richer (in more than one sense of the word) life than I have, with all my computer savvy.
To say that familiarity with computers, or any accoutrement of modern life, is related to executive performance is absurd. What matters are more intangible things that are hard to put a finger on.
Ronald Reagan was, by all accounts, not exactly the most intellectually curious man in the word. But he was a damn good president, according to most Americans, who generally grieved at his death in a way they had not since Kennedy. Bill Clinton is a very smart man, and I grudgingly admit, also a good president, though, like most Republicans, I fairly well despised him at the time (as liberals did Reagan).
The point? You can’t point to one single trait and say “this man will be a good president”…and you certainly can’t base it on ‘intellectual curiousity’ or familiarity with a device, no matter how useful and ubiquitous.,,
Fargus, I’ve said this before, but in case anyone missed it – yes, McCain’s gas tax holiday is a cheap populist gimmick.
You’ve never seen me defend that – and you never will.
But the notion that McCain is getting a pass is absurd…there have been many, many press accounts of skepticism, that appeared in major national outlets, about McCain’s promise to balance the budget (I’m pretty darn skeptical myself, but we’ll maybe address that at another time in a post). Similarly, it’s no secret that he confused Sunni and Shia and has committed a number of other gaffes.
The press, as usual, is, for the most part, despite their constant demonization by partisans on both sides, trying to be fair to both sides…and they are hardly ‘in the tank’ for either canddiate…to point out gaffes and move on is one thing…to dwell on them endlessly, in the manner of obsessed bloggers, is quite another…
Ryan, I guess different people have different ideas of what constitutes ‘socialism’. Indeed, there are many types and degrees of socialists. To me, though, a solid indicator of socialist leanings is to constantly harp on ‘class’ and try to stoke resentment towards the wealthy…and it’s dead wrong to think that a free-market capitalist prefers directing government aid to the rich. A proper free-market capitalist just wants government to get the hell out the way, for the most part…if we must have taxes (and alas, in a nation this large, we must), then a proper free-market response, I would think, would be to advocate for a flat tax, with no exemptions, period, except a floor to exempt the truly poor…
Mark, I don’t claim that Obama gets uniformly negative coverage. Far from it. The media appears to be quite intrigued by him a lot of the time. But the day after McCain released an “economic plan” with no numbers at all, the LA Times, of all papers, ran a front page story about how Obama’s numbers don’t add up. McCain merited neither scrutiny nor the belly laughs that were due him.
[...] I blogged about my relief that James Webb was out of the Obama veepstakes…but my relief is short-lived. If there is one person in the entire world that would perhaps [...]
Well, I just don’t believe that’s the case. You’re drawing a very broad and unwarranted conclusion. The L.A. Times is one paper, a big one, but an even bigger one, the New York Times, ran a very prominent story today regarding McCain’s plan and the skepticism that has greeted it…
Skepticism implies that he’s proposed something other than magic and ponies to fix the deficit. He hasn’t. You’re skeptical of a plan with details. You laugh at one without them. Or at least, if it weren’t John McCain, you would.
Oh, come now…bloggers and opinion writers can openly scoff, but a news reporter can’t…
So they have to treat any claims made by candidates, whether or not they provide any evidence, or whether or not the claims are nonsensical on their face, as completely plausible in order to be balanced?
I’m sure you could find a hell of a lot of coverage from 2000 where reporters took a scoffing tone when writing about Al Gore, Love Canal, Love Story, the Internet, etc.
Skeptical=completely plausible?
You know as well as I do that there are newsroom standards. The Times is not going to allow a press reporter to call McCain a liar in a straight news article. You know that…Helen Thomas can get away with that stuff, because she’s 193 years old and doesn’t give a damn, but she’s kind of the laughingstock of the press corp.
There is still supposed to be, in this day and age, a dividing line between opinion and straight news. I’m sure plenty of editorial writers and op-ed boards are openly scoffing at any number of things…but that’s not reporting, it’s pontificating…
Here’s the distinction – as an editorial writer for the New York Times, I can say, “John McCain must think the American voters are as dumb as mules, as he forgot one thing in his balanced budget plan – the plan itself”.
But if I’m a New York Times reporter, I have to stick to the facts. Thus, I might say: “John McCain presented his blueprint for a balanced budget, but critics say it was long on wishes and short on facts.”
You can still work in criticism in straight reporting – the (very old) trick is to attribute it to others…
But that’s mushmouthed. Easily dismissed by someone inclined to support McCain with a simple, “Oh, of course his critics are going to say that.” Reporting can go further than what critics say and into actual numbers and projections from respected nonpartisan outfits, for instance. Projected deficit, projected cost of McCain’s tax cuts, projected savings from cutting wasteful spending (they’d have to guess here, but they could be generous and go with the maximum possible), some simple arithmetic, and you’re ready. At no point would such an analysis depart from the facts, and at no point would it leave the impression that the only people disbelieving McCain’s claims are his “critics.”
And you didn’t address the point that the whole press corps had a field day in 2000 making stuff up about Al Gore and ridiculing him.
Barack Obama must make the important decision of choosing a running mate. The power structure in America has always been set up so that a white man would choose another white man to be the Vice President. But Barack Obama has changed that forever.
Sadly, Obama will have to consider choosing a white person for the role. Naturally, this presents a number risks. Is there a white person out there that Obama can trust? Someone who won’t try to assassinate Obama to gain power? (We saw this happen in 1963 with the Kennedy killing).
By selecting a white person Obama may gain more votes but he could lose much in the way of his own security. I will do my best to advise Obama in the coming weeks on this matter.
http://truthfirstnow.blogspot.com
My brother-in-law is a Senior Vice President for a Fortune 100 company. He doesn’t answer his own emails, or type his own memos, and I can assure you that the demands on his time are as great or greater than those of a US Senator.
I categorically reject the notion that US Senators (much less aspirants to the job of the Presidency) live in a cocoon, completely isolated from the real world, with neither access to, nor need for, information that has not been predigested for them by their aides.
Maybe that’s the way John McCain lives (it certainly seems to be the way George W Bush lives). But, if so, that’s reason enough to keep him as far away as possible from the Oval Office.
With all due respect, it matters not a whit whether your father can distinguish between Shia and Sunni, or perform any of a large number of other tasks expected of a US Senator or aspirant to the job of President.
And, given a suitable incentive (in my experience, pictures of grandchildren, posted to the web, work marvelously), he would pick up computer-use very quickly.
Mark, your “free market capitalists” are “getting government out of the way” by explicitly pursuing policies that are designed to help the rich and not the working class. Free trade policies that retain all sorts of rules and restrictions to protect white-collar workers, a glut of low-wage immigrants, massive tax cuts for the top income bracket, and on and on. This is not getting government out of the way; it’s expressly forming a partnership between big government and big business. What paleoconservatives, progressives, and Jim Webb all intuitively understand is that the libertarian plan can have one of two outcomes: replacing one tyrant with another or simply fusing the two together. Standing firmly against government control of our lives is admirable, but simply replacing it with megalithical corporate control of our lives doesn’t obviously make most of us better off. If you want to agree that that’s a *liberal* insight, I will offer no argument. To call it socialism, though, is unfair to both liberals and socialists.
I disagree. If we want foreigners to buy products from Disney, Cisco, Pfizer, GE, Citibank, and all of the other companies which sell a lot (sometimes most) of their products overseas, then we have to buy their stuff, even if it displaces workers in industries where we are not as competitive. Simple as that. When a UAW worker loses his job because Detroit doesn’t make a hybrid car as good as the Prius, it’s on television. When Apple hires workers because people in China are buying iPods, it doesn’t show up on TV. Mercantilism never worked and never will work.
Then explain to me, Peter, why we need to keep the restrictions for doctors and the like. Explain why their jobs shouldn’t be actively competed for on an open market. I don’t oppose free trade; I oppose the hypocrisy of Republicans who claim to be for free trade, but really only mean it insofar as poor people are concerned. And I oppose the clearly false notion that every American benefits from our trade policies.
And mercantilism? Please. Mark’s screaming “socialism”, you’re screaming “mercantilism”. It’s like words don’t even have definitions any more and all of human history started in 1992.
Doctors’ jobs should be competed for. If a foreign doctor is board certified to practice here, then he should practice here. That may be one reason why wages for health care professionals are much higher here than in Europe.
Jacques, what you fail to address in your criticism of my comments is how exactly familiarity with computers would prevent someone from confusing Sunni and Shia or any of the other tasks associated with being a president. If McCain’s an idiot, he’s an idiot, but it has nothing to do with whether he checks his facts on Wikipedia or not. God knows, the Web is a wonderful resource, but there is plenty of misinformation, intentional and otherwise, on the Internet.
And though I would prefer Senators not live in a cocoon, I would be very, very surprised if that is not the norm. I’ll bet it’s been a long, long time since Barack Obama has filled up his car, too, and I bet Hillary hasn’t been to the grocery store in 20 years…
I’m unaware of Hillary’s grocery habits, but I have no doubt that Hillary, Obama, and lots of other Senators are never more than a few feet from their Blackberries. Coccon or not, being in the Senate is no bar to using computers. The world is changing, and it’s a legitimate question to ask whether a 72 year old man who has lived apart from these changes is the right person to be President.