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September 5, 2008

John McCain's Speech

Like all but a handful of Americans, Senator John McCain is less of an orator than Barack Obama. He's less of an orator than his running mate, I think, and she's no Barack Obama, either. McCain's acceptance speech last night was not a masterful, artistic performance, but it was a good speech. Some folks told me they thought he sounded authentic, and they seemed to rate that positively.

I heard parts of the speech, but not the whole thing. I later read it from beginning to end, as I did Obama's -- without those time-wasting interruptions for applause I've griped about before, of course. Here are some notes and excerpts, mostly in the order in which they appear in the speech.

Generalities

He promised to change Washington, and to "stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix."

He took this well-deserved shot at his own party:

We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

Then he said:

We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.

Let's make sure we understand that he was talking about Teddy Roosevelt, okay? Not Franklin D.

All the Right Buttons

McCain hit all the right buttons: lower taxes, fiscal restraint, open markets, strong defense, personal responsibility, rule of law, judicial restraint. I don't mean to sound cynical, but that's one of the things you have to do in these speeches: hit all the right buttons.

He advocated school choice, at least where current schools are failing, but his specific plan is not clear to me from what said. Maybe he was just pushing a button?

Sometimes he compared himself in general terms to Barack Obama:

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.

My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them. My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.

Specifics

He promised to double the child tax exemption from $3500 to $7000. He promised to have Democrats and independents in his administration. (Watch for Joe Lieberman as Secretary of State, I'm guessing.) But there wasn't a long laundry list of specific promises. There were more promises than I have listed, but most of them got more discussion than just a line or two, more than just a sound bite.

Happily, he didn't say anything stupid about global warming or saving the planet, things the Democrats -- and sometimes John McCain -- have seemed willing to entrone as our national religion, to the peril of our economy and our science.

Jobs

He portrayed himself as the agent of change where jobs are concerned, and Obama as a throwback:

I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch. My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away.

We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities. For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.

Nice move. Might work.

Energy

As to energy and its geopolitical implications, he promised "the most ambitious national project in decades" (which sounds like about the right thing):

We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.

I confess wondering how he will do this, unless Congress miraculously turns out to be Republican -- or, and here my disillusionment is showing, even if it does turn out Republican.

The World

He mentioned current and future threats from Iran and Russia, then said more generally something Obama could not say:

We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.

Inside the Beltway

I agree with this statement . . .

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.

. . . but I don't know that McCain's sense of the proper destination of this movement is conservative enough for me. Even if it is, I'm not at all sure how we do this, or if it's even possible. But I'm willing to see someone actually try, instead of just talking about it, and I will hope he succeeds at it better than his predecessor, who thought he could change the tone of Washington, but in the end only managed to puzzle the establishment a little by actually doing some of the things he had campaigned on.

His Narrative

As I read through the speech, I was thinking it was pretty good, if a little light on specific promises. He did a good job talking about his running mate, which he did at some length. And he wasn't offputting to me as a conservative, in this speech at least, though in his politics in the past he sometimes has been. Maybe he was just being careful with his base on the one night he most had to be.

At the end would come a series of short applause lines, as always. He doesn't deliver those very well; maybe that's okay. His intonation and timing seem unpolished at such times, and his voice -- meaning his actual, physical voice -- doesn't seem strong enough to do them justice. That's probably okay. Sometimes it's enough to be authentic; I will hope that the next two months are one of those times.

What I was not prepared for as I read the speech was the simple power of his personal narrative. I knew he had to get to it before he was finished, and I already knew the biographical details. If I thought anything about this part of the speech in advance, I thought it might be a little trite and a bit too self-congratulatory. It was neither. I think he told it superbly well, and I was moved.

Here is that entire section of the speech, plus the following paragraph, which extends the thought:

On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.

Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.

I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

This is the narrative John Kerry thought he had in 2004, but didn't. (Neither did George W. Bush.) It is a narrative Barack Obama does not have now -- which McCain wisely did not say overtly, though the thought is clearly there even before the last paragraph, where he talks about anointed saviors (small "s"). It is a purer McCain than the real one, to be sure. But one thing that often gets lost in campaigns and other political battles is the awareness that actual governing is a messy business even in the best of times, even for the best of leaders. No decent person is as pure in practice as he or she wants to be in principle. But what a person really wants to be still counts for something, in politics as in life.

All this may not be enough to attract McCain's entrenched opponents, but, combined with Sarah Palin, it should be enough to energize Republicans, at least the "red state" ones who, at some point in their lives, fell in love with their country for much the same reasons he mentioned. And it will likely attract a lot of independents and a few Democrats.

I hope that's enough for 270 electoral votes.

The convention is over. I think McCain-Palin has a fighting chance.

September 4, 2008

Sarah Barracuda

Sarah Palin did a nice job in last evening's speech. Well, maybe nice is the wrong word. I'm sure the Obama campaign and his groupies are feeling sliced up a little, and doubly grumpy because the knife was wielded by a pretty girl from -- get this -- Alaska. They may be aware that our largest, northernmost state is not a foreign country, but it has to feel somewhat foreign to them. It's on the other side of Canada, for heaven's sake! Women hunt moose there and marry Eskimos!

I'm not making up the foreign country thing. Some decades ago, when my mother was on her way to Europe on a Fulbright scholarship, she ran into some New Yorkers who actually thought her home state, Idaho, was a foreign country. Sarah Palin was born and attended university in Idaho, by the way.

Back to my point. It was an excellent speech, well delivered.

My own frustration with the many interruptions for applause is bipartisan, to be sure: It bugs me no matter who is speaking, Republican or Democrat. You can watch the speech if you want -- I watched it to try to get a sense of who she is -- but reading it is faster.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. . . .

I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people. Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it. No one expects us to agree on everything. But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart. . . .

There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate. This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. . . .

Though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death. . . .

Good Readings

Here's a small selection of good columns I've read lately, some about Sarah Palin and some about other topics related to the election. The Palin pieces are all favorable, for two reasons. First, there's a lot of negative stuff out there about her, too, and you won't have any trouble finding it without my help, if you want to. Second, the essential political question here is not, Will her natural enemies like her? They won't. They have to try to destroy her. The question is, How will her natural friends respond? Will she energize Republicans in particular?

About Palin:

Daniel Henninger, "What's So Special About Sarah?" (why lots of ordinary folks celebrate her, and why the Left has to destroy her)
Fred Barnes, "The Natural" (star quality, he says)
Maggie Gallagher, "Sarah Palin's Pioneering Streak" ("What we need here is a new sexual archetype for female achievement.")
Janet Daley, "Sarah Palin Gets the Spiteful Margaret Thatcher Treatment" (Lady Thatcher was once an unwelcome outsider, much condescended to.)
John Kass, "Palin's Small-Town Ways Will Play Big Across US" (and why the BMA's tender feelings are hurt)

Not about Palin:

Charles Krauthammer, "The Perfect Stranger" (about Obama, the Democrats, and something conspicuously absent from their convention)
Thomas Sowell, "Foreign Policy Experience" (real and imagined)
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, "A Strategic Opening for McCain" (. . . who is not as much like George Bush as the Dems are saying)

Finally, again about Palin, John Dickerson's "A Pit Bull with Lipstick," from which an excerpt:

Drill, baby, drill. Sarah Palin was relentless in her speech Wednesday night. She drilled Barack Obama, elites, San Francisco, the press, and civil libertarians. She even went after Michelle Obama. And she did it all with a smile and a little mischief. Republicans have been flummoxed because Obama seems untouchable, but Palin may have found an effective way to criticize him -- while becoming an elusive target in her own right. Want to call her shrill? Go ahead. There are a lot of women like her who vote and who might be listening.

John McCain has a tough act to follow tonight. He's still not my favorite guy, but he's the best horse left in the race, so I wish him well.

September 3, 2008

Early Thoughts on Sarah Palin, Running Mate

The most interesting presidential election cycle I can remember got a lot more interesting on Friday. I had heard of Sarah Palin, incumbent Governor of Alaska, but never paid any attention before Friday's announcement that she is John McCain's chosen running mate. I assume that this level of ignorance (or more) is typical of Americans generally, except those who live in Alaska.

We'll have to see if she's tough enough to endure the campaign and smart enough to endure it gracefully. If not, the resulting thud won't resound too much more than the thud we'd have heard last week if McCain had chosen Senator Joe Lieberman, as he may have wanted to. For the moment, at least, Governor Palin is a megadose of interest and energy for a campaign that desperately needed both, and the day after Senator Obama's speech was an excellent day for the announcement. Then it spilled into this week in an unexpected way: There we were, watching the Big Media Acronyms' glee at being able to ignore the Republican convention because of Hurricane Gustav, when (a) Gustav proved comparatively wimpy, and (b) Republicans stole the headlines again with the (regrettably) irresistible story that Palin's oldest daughter is (regrettably) pregnant. (Politically speaking, this does not matter to me.)

Right now, I like Palin as McCain's running mate, and I'll keep liking her if -- in my judgment, not the media's -- she proves to have the necessary toughness, smarts, and grace over the next few months. Here are nine reasons for my enthusiasm:

First, instead of taking the experience argument off the table, as the Obama campaign claimed on Friday, she reinforces it. She, a relatively unknown governor of a small state, the former mayor of a small town -- there are a lot more of those than large cities, by the way -- has a great deal more executive experience than the top of the Democratic ticket. Can you list all the cities and states in which Barack Obama has played an executive, governing role? So can I. I just did. Oops, you missed it. I'll do it again.

That's right. None. For that matter, she's been a governor as long as he's been a US senator, and I'll wager she has spent a lot more days actually on her job these past two years than he has on his.

Second, she has genuine conservative credentials, to complement McCain's, which are seriously in doubt.

Third, I doubt that Palin energizes very many Hillary Clinton supporters -- in her favor, I mean. But she certainly energizes Republican women, and she's a poster child for the pro-life movement, which has justifiably regarded the current campaign with great suspicion right up until Friday. The Second Amendment crowd likes her, too, not to mention all those guys out there who are lonely for a pretty face. (Okay, you're right. Let's not mention them.)

Fourth, her specific experience really is relevant. She has enjoyed some success in fighting well-entrenched political corruption, and she seems to know more about the oil industry than the average talking suit (or pant suit) on Capitol Hill. But don't get the idea that the Democrats (including the BMA) will have to admit the value of her experience with the oil industry in Alaska. That's not how they think. In their book, anyone with actual knowledge and experience in an industry is suspect, even unqualified. They would never trust anyone who really knows the oil industry to regulate it.

Fifth, the Democrats and the media are already abusing her and her family rather badly, and it's going to get worse. This is entirely predictable, and the backlash will be worth at least five percent in the Republican direction on Election Day, as long as she doesn't let them destroy her. This is only partly because she's a woman. It's also because she and her family seem a lot more real -- as in "people like us" -- than any of those ambitious Senators on the ballot. In this same vein, I'm wondering if any handlers alive will be able to rein in Senator Biden when he has to debate her. If not, if Biden is Biden that night, there's another five point bump for McCain-Palin.

Sixth, she's the only name on either ticket who is not a US senator. Senators are not known for their electability as presidents. Governors usually fare better.

Seventh, assuming John McCain can gracefully handle the fact that a lot of focus is on her instead of him, and not be bitter about it -- he has long been a bit of a camera seeker -- well, more than a bit -- people are going to enjoy looking at his campaign imagery more than at Obama's. She's prettier than Hillary Clinton, too. (Did you hear the joke about how Mrs. McCain took one look at her husband's running mate and promptly scheduled plastic surgery?) Who wants to vote against a former beauty queen with brains and backbone, who worked on a fishing boat and shoots things and eats them?

Eighth, she was an excellent basketball player. As a former (not excellent) post player, I appreciate the value of a good point guard, a leader who makes the offense run well and gets the ball to people who are in a position to do something with it. I will spare you any metaphoric exploration of this item.

Ninth, Barack Obama is from a large city in a large state. John McCain is from, let's face it, a large city, Washington, DC, as is Joe Biden. (I know they claim to be from Arizona and Delaware, respectively.) Surely most people in America understand, at least intuitively, that small-staters have more value in our politics than as mere targets for large-state condescension. Most of the towns in America are small towns. Most of the United States are small states, in terms of population. In this sense Sarah Palin, who was born in Idaho and now lives in Alaska, represents a lot of people in a way that no one else on the ballot can.

I am mostly a small-stater, with roots in Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and (ahem) New York. In many ways, I actually prefer the large metropolitan areas to anywhere else I've been in the country, including the less populous states. I'm very fond of the Northeast generally. But I have been around enough to see that the best people small states produce are as good as the best people large states produce. They are no less intelligent and no more provincial or naive than their large-state counterparts. They are as well-suited to govern a large nation. I am not at all inclined to condescend to a smart lady from Alaska, because she's from Alaska instead of New York, Illinois, or California.

Maybe Sarah Palin will work out as a running mate, and maybe she won't. I hope she does. I think she might. We'll know more after tonight's speech. In the meantime, Peggy Noonan appears to have some of the same thoughts about her as I do, plus a few more, and she's always a good read.

September 2, 2008

Barack Obama's Convention Speech

Senator Obama's Convention Speech

I finally gave up on having time to watch Barack Obama's convention speech from last Thursday and just read it -- specifically, the prepared text. That's a lot faster. Presumably, he didn't depart from his text in any crucial ways when he spoke.

A lot of the speech is the usual liberal sentiment, mixed with familiar leftist critique of the current administration and the Republican candidate. In general it is neither wholly accurate nor completely logical, but this is politics. The liberalism is (quite necessarily) dressed up with the usual sops to ordinary people about personal responsibility, the dignity of work, government not solving all our problems, and so forth. We'll hear some of the same in John McCain's speech this week, just from the other side. In any case, you can read the same Obama speech I read if you want the details. (You can watch it there, too.)

The speech is more gracefully written (and presumably more eloquently spoken) than usual, but that's hardly a surprise: It's Barack Obama. It's easy to hear him in my mind's ear, so to speak, scoring with these lines in a way that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, or Hillary Clinton never could:

For over two decades, [John McCain has] subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

For full effect, you need an excellent speech writer and an excellent speaker; here we have both. Obama is the latter; someone else -- probably a team of someone elses -- is the former.

The Promises

Here are Obama's specific promises. They're not all very specific, but let's face it, he's not a policy wonk. Some of my comments follow in italics and (parenthesis).

"Stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas. . . . start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America." (Believe this when it happens.)
"Eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow." (Why do small companies deserve this more than large ones? A man or woman is just as much employed when the employer is a large corporation as when the employer is a small business.)
"Cut taxes for 95% of all working families." (I'm fairly certain that the number of "working families" who pay no federal income tax far exceeds five percent, so this is impossible. You can't cut someone's taxes who already doesn't pay anything.)
"In ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." (Impossible in ten years no matter how you try it, short of absolute economic catastrophe; doubly so if we refuse to exploit our own oil reserves, as Obama does.)
"Invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." ($150 billion over ten years is trivial, not nearly enough to achieve what he promises, even if it is possible.)
"I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education." (But he will avoid real solutions, such as tuition tax credits, or real accountability, because the NEA and the rest of the education establishment will be his puppet masters, as usual.)
"Affordable, accessible health care for every single American." (When did putting the government in charge ever make anything affordable -- or make it efficient, or encourage real progress, etc.?)
"Paid sick days and better family leave." (This will undo any positive effects on small business of those capital gains tax cuts he promised earlier.)
"Change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses." (Not a bad idea, perhaps, but even Barack Obama can't leap this many lobbyists in a single bound.)

Paying for It

Here's how Obama will pay for all his liberal largess:

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime - by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

These things need to be done, but they will never produce the necessary revenues. Besides that, never in a million years -- or at least the next eight years -- will a Democrat-controlled Congress let even a Democrat president really do this. Even if Obama really wants it, of which I am skeptical, . . . they don't want it.

Foreign Policy

Quoth Obama:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

Maybe if I had Obama's faith in the implacable power of American diplomacy I wouldn't want to scoff at this. Maybe if I hadn't witnessed studied the last few decades of history, I would have his faith in diplomacy.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I would rather listen to Barack Obama give a speech than John McCain, just for the art of it. And this is not a bad speech. But the ideas in it are mostly conventional liberalism, dressed up for the early twenty-first century. Maybe, just maybe, 50.1 percent of the voters are too ignorant or inattentive to realize that we already know most of them won't work.

Here's one more example of some lines that really do sound good:

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

Of course we generally agree on these ends. But even when conservatives and liberals agree on such ends, there are fundamental differences in their means for achieving these ends. We do not agree on what will work and what won't, on what has worked or hasn't, or on what we should or should not do for moral or economic or other reasons.

And did you notice a problem in the penultimate sentence of that paragraph? If a presidential candidate can't think of anyone who benefits when a business employs an illegal alien at a lower wage instead of a legal worker at a higher wage, he doesn't know enough about immigration or economics to have a major policy role in either area. Here are the first three who come to my mind: The illegal alien benefits because he has a job. The employer benefits because of the lower cost of labor. The consumer benefits because lower costs can be passed on as lower prices.

That said, there's a much larger problem with both this paragraph and the entire speech. If Barack Obama were the leader he claims and aspires to be, wouldn't he have shown some discernible leadership in the US Senate on at least some of the issues he listed in this speech?

Where's the beef?

September 1, 2008

Blackmail Photos

I'm ready now for that item I mentioned in Thursday's post. Are you?

Bret Dalton, a.k.a. DaltonBoy, has posted his many photos from the American Fork History and Heritage Pageant at his Web site. (Follow the link.) You can see and even purchase them there. (A point of personal privilege: The Rodebacks have some experience with Bret Dalton as photographer; he did our oldest son's senior portraits, including this one and this one.)

It's even more important to note, as previously mentioned here at the blog, that I'm the one in the badge. Brent Miller is the one in the dress. (I'm pretty sure he wouldn't put on a dress for any man. But he would for his mom. She did the casting.)

If you feel the need for therapy after viewing these photos, you're on your own. I officially disclaim all responsibility.