Right Wing Nut House

This article originally appeared on the Pajamas Media website.

I must confess to a weakness for listening and reading good political speeches. I wrote an article a while back on the top ten American political speeches of all time and never had so much fun writing and researching anything.

What determines a good political speech? Theodore H. White believed there were three elements that made a speech special. First, the moment in history when the words are delivered helps frame the speech and give it the proper context. Second, there must be a suitable backdrop: Gettysburg Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the House of Burgess in 1775 where the focus of American resistance to British tyranny settled. Patrick Henry giving his “Give me Liberty or give me death” speech in a tavern or in a church would not have been as impactful.

Finally, the words themselves must be memorable, crafted so that the man, the moment, and the backdrop all come together to create superior oratory.

For Barack Obama, it might be unfair to saddle him with the expectation that he would make a speech as memorable as the address delivered by John Kennedy when Berlin was the flashpoint for nuclear confrontation with the Soviets and the airlift still fresh in Berliners’ memories. Or that Obama could match an address that was as emotionally satisfying as Reagan’s challenge to the Soviets to “tear down this wall” when hope for change had been stoked to a very high level by Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost. Reagan and Kennedy went to Berlin in order to accomplish something specific. Obama went to Berlin to make a campaign commercial.

Obama is not president. There is no great crisis in Berlin or in Europe that would make Tiergarten Park a place of resonance for his words to echo down through the ages. Instead, he was a political candidate with the gift of oratory who came to Berlin to show the folks back home that he wasn’t a total rookie when it comes to overseas affairs.

The first leg of his trip was designed to underscore the candidate’s knowledge and judgment about Afghanistan, Iraq, and the thorny issues of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Playing to rave reviews in the press and getting a boost from the Iraqis who appeared to embrace his talk of setting a timetable for American withdrawal, the first leg was judged a big success by the punditocracy (could it ever have been anything else?).

But was it really necessary to come to Western Europe? This leg almost appears to be included for the sake of vanity - to show how much the rest of the world wants Obama to be president. Outside of a few American expatriates, there are no votes to be harvested there. Only photo-ops with leaders of countries about which most Americans could care less.

But that didn’t stop the hype from beginning to build days in advance for Obama’s Tiergarten Park speech, moved after the German government gently refused permission for an address at the Brandenberg Gate. Some enthusiasts in Germany predicted a million people would turn out for the party. Last night, the Obama crew sought to tone down expectations considerably, and it’s a good thing they did: somewhere between 100-200,000 turned out for Obama’s attempt to leave his mark on history. Still an enormous throng but not the overwhelming crush of humanity that some were saying would show up.

The speech itself was good, filled with plenty of Obama cliches that somehow sound new when he delivers them. It was well delivered like all Obama addresses, but curiously subdued at times. Whether it was because a sizable segment of the audience did not speak English or some other reason, Obama seemed to struggle in getting reaction from the crowd. Interrupted several times by applause, the speech nevertheless was not greeted with the wild enthusiasm many expected. There was occasional chanting of “O-BA-MA” and “YES-WE-CAN,” but it wasn’t sustained and tailed off rather quickly.

Obama used the seminal event in Berlin’s history - the 1948 airlift - as well as the former presence of the Berlin Wall to talk not as an American but as “a citizen of the world” to the “people of the world.” After a glowing recitation of how Germans and Americans worked together to save Berlin during the Soviet blockade, Obama consciously evoked the memory of John Kennedy, if not in words then in meter and imagery. Where Kennedy challenged the world by telling the doubters “Let them come to Berlin” and see what free men were capable of, Obama called on “people of the world” to come to Berlin and witness what the German-American partnership had accomplished:

People of the world - look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

With “walls” as context, Obama sought to show that new walls that have been erected in place of the east- west divide must also be torn down:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

His call to bring down the walls between “Christians, Muslims, and Jews” received the largest applause of the speech. That, his call to end the Iraq War, and his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons drew the only enthusiastic responses from the throng during the entire speech.

Obama didn’t get much reaction when he called on the people for support of the effort in Afghanistan and against terrorism in general:

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

Calling on the Germans to help with security in Afghanistan is pointless since the German government will not allow their troops to engage in combat operations, just like most other NATO countries. Indeed, Obama’s base here at home is having difficulty with his Afghanistan policy, where he calls for additional troops to be transferred from Iraq.

And this bring us to Obama’s peroration:

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Those are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. Those aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of those aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of those aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of those aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on history.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. Let us build on our common history, and seize our common destiny, and once again engage in that noble struggle to bring justice and peace to our world.

Earlier, Obama alluded to his major campaign theme - that “this is our moment. This is our time.” When placed beside the litany of challenges he issued on Darfur, Iran, the Middle East, nuclear weapons, global warming, and a host of others, his call to action seemed forced and unnatural. Accomplishing anything - especially against the kind of instransigence demonstrated by Darfur or Iran - will take much more than feel-good, cliché-riddled speeches. Since no plan was offered to specifically address these problems, the whole exercise had an air of fantasy about it.

He left the Tiergarten as he had arrived - to thunderous applause. But how will this play in a place like my hometown of Streator, IL - population 15,000 and as close to the middle of Middle America as you can get?

First, I suspect news of the speech will come to most of my fellow Streatorians as a whisper on the wind. Most will not have seen it or read it and will be influenced - if they are influenced at all - by the usual suspects. The media will be talking about the speech for days and a consensus will eventually form. They will also talk to their neighbors about it (Streator is a very neighborly town) and make a judgment of their own.

Will they be impressed that so many turned out to hear an American that they don’t know much about? Will they wonder what the heck the guy was doing in Europe talking to Germans when they would rather have him here talking to Americans, telling them what he’s going to do about gas prices? Will it alter their perception of Obama as a man who doesn’t know as much about foreign affairs as his opponent?

In the end, my fellow townsmen will shrug their shoulders and not think it a big deal anyway. And perhaps, in the larger scheme of things, it isn’t the history-making event it might have been. Obama was hoping for a grand slam home run, a thumping denouement to his overseas trip. Instead, he gave a middling performance in front of a relatively subdued crowd and will come home secure in the knowledge he didn’t strike out - but still finding elusive the time and backdrop that will allow his rhetoric to resonate down through the ages.

Did you hear it yesterday? Even coming through the television couldn’t weaken the magic of The Voice as it worked its weirding way on all within earshot. It wasn’t the words themselves - vapid, cliche ridden, dog earred, 40 year old liberal pablum. And it wasn’t necessarily the way Obama delivered the words - the cadence and rythmn evoking the feeling you were listening to a combination of preacher and carnival huckster.

Obama’s gifts as an orator include his strong, melifulous voice - an instrument he plays beautifully using the full extent of the upper and lower registers, raising and lowering volume quite effectively. His phrasing is usually perfect. He never needs to stop mid sentence to take a breath or find his place on the teleprompter. There is little wasted motion as his body language and movement screams authority and confidence. No awkward hand motions. Everything is smooth as melted butter.

Above all, Obama has an extraordinary sense of his own performance - probably the result of hours and hours spent in front of a mirror. This has given his speeches a sense of the dramatic lacking in most political addresses. The guy could read the menu at a vegan restaurant and hold people spellbound.

All of these gifts, however, tend to obscure what he is actually saying rather than illuminate his ideas as Reagan’s or JFK’s oratory did. For JFK and his alter ego/wordsmith Teddy Sorenson, words were clay in their hands as they would carefully construct beautiful images while laying their ideas on top like captions to a photograph. Not a natural speaker like Obama and Reagan, Kennedy more than made up for that deficiency by never speaking down to his audience and inspiring people with, what at the time, was the boldness of his vision.

Reagan’s gifts were those of an actor. No modern speaker used the combination of body language and voice so perfectly. His sense of his own performance, like Obama’s, was pitch perfect. Reagan, much more than Obama, had an exact idea of what he looked like coming across on the small screen. He knew how his upper body was framed by the camera almost, it seemed, to the pixel. This allowed for a closer, more intimate look at the speaker. There was no wasted motion, no large moves of the hands or shoulders by Reagan. He and the camera were one which heightened the sense of drama that his words then completed.

Not surprisingly, Obama uses his gifts not to enlighten but to obscure the real ideas that lie beneath his rhetoric. Those ideas date back to the beginnings of the new left in the 1960’s and have not changed much in the intervening years. And there is no better example of this than his speech yesterday in Berlin.

A few examples will suffice:

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

Constant references throughout the speech to the idea of “the brotherhood of man” - Lenin’s “new man” who was, as Obama identified himself, a “citizen of the world” who shared “common values” with all. Except those bullet holes - pot shots taken by East German gaurds at people fleeing tyranny - have nothing to do with “common humanity” and instead are reminders of the brutality of one system of government - communism. Until the left in this country and Europe come to grips with the evils perpetrated by that system, the chances of it happening again are probably better than 50-50.

People of the world — look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

Obama loves rewriting history. Talk about hating America, we heard the same crap from the left about how hated we were all during the 1980’s right up until the time the wall fell. Even then, it was Gorbachev and not America who was responsible for that miracle according to liberals.

The fact is, the “world did not stand as one” against communism. Most of the world was against us. It was Thatcher, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II who freed Eastern Europe and anyone who was alive at the time knows it.

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

As even most responsible pro-global warming scientists will tell you, that is a crock of crap. It is impossible to prove cause and effect for droughts in the midwest being connected to a drought in Kenya. That is silly, stupid, and deliberately misleading. And Obama might want to make a note that there is more ice in the Arctic this summer than there has been in about 50 years.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

More pie in the sky “brotherhood of man” crap especially because Obama fails to mention the reason why many of those walls are standing; if they came down, chances are a lot of those people would be at each other’s throats and no amount of magical speaking or wishful thinking will change that fact.

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

Not surprisingly, this old lefty dream received the most applause from the assembled masses. Like gun control, it is likely that if we take nukes out of the hands of nation states, the only ones who have them will be the terrorists.

And that’s a world I don’t want to live in.

This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century — in this city of all cities — we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.

Would someone please tell me why there has been this fascination, this love affair with Russia on the part of the left for 90 years? I am sure Putin is licking his chops as a wolf looking at a bunch of sheep if Obama becomes president. Putins idea of “partnership” might differ a bit from the messiah’s.

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.

Confiscation anyone? Obama wants to extend this old leftist dream of robbing the rich and giving some of it to the poor (the rest going to government bureaucrats) from American rich to the rich of other countries. Why another nation’s system of wealth distribution should be anyone else’s business - least of all Barack Obama’s - is beyond me.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

More global warming hysteria. Beg to differ with the messiah but the children of today will almost certainly miss the effects of catastrophic global warming - if it happens - since most responsible global warming advocates see a 100-200 year timeframe before the worst occurs (this despite recent “studies” showing differently). And at the moment, the world’s weather just isn’t cooperating as the earth has actually cooled over the last decade. But that won’t stop this gigantic con game from going forward to redistribute the wealth of the world while curbing if not destroying industrialized civilization.

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

Very nice words, Barack. Very pretty. But what are you going to DO about it? As a topper for recycled leftist pap, this is the keeper - the belief that if we all just “stand” with the dissident from Burma, he won’t have his head and hands chopped off. Or the bloger in Iran won’t be thrown in jail if we hold a concert. Or the voter in Zimbabwe won’t have their head bashed in if we all sit around in a circle and think good thoughts.

The utter stupidity and yes, uselessness of these ideas is dressed up in beautiful prose and delivered by a gifted charlatan who, I am coming to suspect, doesn’t have a clue what he will do once in office. End the Iraq war? Not hardly. The man says so himself. National health insurance? Whose plan? How’s he going to get it passed? Taxes up. Some people’s tax bill (like mine) doubling.

When is someone going to ask him what he’s going to do to bring down the price of gasoline? Nothing in his speech to the non-voting Germans made mention of that. The housing crisis? More regulation and bail outs, rewarding bad business practices and stupid consumers both.

Obama’s disguising his far left ideas in pretty language and excellent delivery of his speeches is exactly the opposite of what almost every great political orator in American history has sought to do. Due to his “weirding ways,” he has managed to fool a great number of people into believing he is something he is not; a politician that will transform America into some kind of utopia where we all get along and people are healthy, happy, and content.

Strip aside the rhetoric and the mesmerizing presence on the stump and you are left with a rather ordinary, rather inspid liberal with visions of a planet united and America a slavish partner to the goals and aspirations of the bureaucrats at the United Nations - the US an emasculated presence while our own vital interests take second place to those preaching the gospel of universal brotherhood.

This has been a dream of the new left for 60 years. And Obama, the word made flesh of that dream, is just the man to fulfill that destiny.

As Barack Obama enters the final leg of his “Meet the Messiah” world tour, alighting in Germany and preparing for what promises to be the most spectacular campaign speech evah, we back home are stuck with the usual mundane irrelevancies that have been passing for “debate” this electoral season, trying to make mountains out of molehills while doing our best to apply gravitas to the most hopelessly inane incidents and gaffes.

Frankly, I’m sick of it. Every time McCain opens his mouth it does not “disqualify him from being president.” Other, more basic attributes of the candidate are to blame there. And whenever Obama lies through his teeth, or flip flops, or makes outrageous statements that prove he would rather lose a war and win an election than the opposite, it doesn’t mean he’s some anti-American, ignorant, lying wretch. That simply isn’t possible given how the press is shortstroking his candidacy. All it means is that the Obama is an overly ambitious, arrogant, supremely overconfident politician with something of a god complex, a royal sense of entitlement that would put Henry VIII to shame, and an anti-democratic belief in his own inevitability (and perhaps invincibility).

While McCain should probably be home playing with children (or in the senate doing the same thing), Obama deserves to be cast into the outer darkness. I’ve been trying to decide which past American politician he reminds me of the most but have yet to settle on just one. He appears to have Nixon’s ruthlessness, Huey Long’s megalomania, Aaron Burr’s thin skin, and Edwin Summer’s penchant for wild exaggerations in his oratory.

Yeah, but don’t say he’s “anti-American.” I wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, Obama is proving himself to be “all-American” in that only American politicians can hold such utter contempt for the voter and find themselves loved for it. Ross Douthat nails it here:

Yes, of course the Hitler comparisons are absurd, but I’d really like to know which genius on the Obama campaign thought it would be a good idea to have their candidate conduct a major campaign rally in Europe with three months to go till the election and their candidate, despite an incredibly favorable climate and a fumbling opponent, still clinging to a 2-4 point lead in the polls? Overall, the overseas tour has been good to Obama, both for the obvious reasons and because making joint appearances with foreign leaders is a solid-enough way to build up his credibility as a potential Commander-in-Chief. But photo ops are one thing, Beatlemania-style rallies are quite another - and having your candidate appear in front of tens of thousands of adoring European fans when your campaign’s biggest problem, as John Judis puts it today, is that “Obama remains the ‘mysterious stranger’ rather than the ‘American Adam’ to too many voters who are put off rather than attracted by his race and exotic background” strikes me as the height of political folly. The Berlin rally probably won’t hurt Obama - voters aren’t really paying attention to anything election-related right about now, and it’ll be forgotten by the time the fall campaign begins in earnest. But it could do some minor damage, and it certainly won’t help him. (If he’s counting on the expat vote to put him over the top, then he’s in more trouble than anyone thinks.) Is it too late to call the whole thing off?

Not so fast with dismissing the Hitler comparison there Matt. I’m not saying that Obama is like Hitler for holding a mass rally, speaking beneath a Nazi icon with a hundred thousand screaming, fainting, frothing at the mouth Germans as a backdrop for campaign propaganda. All I’m saying is that Hitler would have given his hearty approval.

That doesn’t make Obama Hitler. First of all, the whole mustache thing just doesn’t work for Barak. If Obama was going to do the facial hair thing, no doubt he would go the goatee route or perhaps the suave, sophisticated, cat about town Sammy Davis, Jr. look with the sideburns and moustache combination. It used to be we didn’t trust politicians unless they had facial hair. Maybe the messiah could bring those halcyon days back.

So while Obama does not resemble Hitler - either politically or in profile - if one were to be completely honest they would concede that there is no doubt the ex-paper hanger would have admired Obama’s use of huge crowds and flowery (but empty) rhetoric in order to advance his candidacy. Hitler might have gone a little further and recommended the event be held at night and that extensive use be made of torches  along with running off  millions of copies of the Obama “Presidential” Seal and singing a lusty chorus or two of the “Horst Wessel Song.” Probably too late to change.

And allow me to carry the analogy a little further (in for a penny, in for a pound). The entire Obama campaign - it’s clarion call for unity, hope, change, and the unspoken but very real appeals to the brotherhood of man - all of this sounds familiar to students of national socialism. No, the Democrats are not Nazis. But the evil genius of Hitler recognized what people longed for in a political society. The feel good notion of “unity” which basically means that we should stop arguing and just do what the leader says along with “hope and change” that speaks to the need of people to believe in something greater than themselves - the anti-cynicism drug.

And then there’s Obama’s unspoken appeal to the brotherhood of man. Nazis tried to make this a racial appeal and couple it with the notion of unity (”Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”). Obama is not so crude. His very existence as a multi racial candidate is an appeal to unify the country not by highlighting race but by subsuming racial differences and bringing about a transformative episode in American history. A nice trick if he can pull it off. At the moment, his candidacy appears to be having the opposite effect as the black/white divide has never been more pronounced.

So is Ross correct in so cavalierly dismissing the Hitler parallels? Of course he is. And it is a 100% dead certainty that Obama and his people are not consciously following a blueprint for gaining power laid down by Hitler and Goebbels.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore tactics like mass rallies/ campaign commercials featuring fawning, slobbering Obama fans worshiping the ground he walks on and dismiss Obama’s “hopenchange” mantra as juvenile twaddle. None of this takes place in an historical vacuum and recognizing and identifying parallels allows us to understand the psychology of the candidate.

NOTE: I have absolutely no doubt this post will be misinterpreted. Those who are smarter will deliberately do so. Those who are stupid just won’t know any better (and probably won’t be able to read it anyway).

Consider this pre-emptive attack on your honesty and integrity my final word on this post.

As inspiring as a bar of cream cheese, as interesting as a broken clock, John McCain at any age would prove to be bad presidential candidate. At age 72, he is making his own case that he should have been put out to pasture years ago. Even if you don’t believe McCain is too old to serve, there is a growing perception that he is and it is this that may very well doom his candidacy.

A president, he will not be. This is largely beyond his control and has nothing to do with his long life devoted to serving the United States. He suffered and almost died fighting for America - something I readily admit I have no idea whether I would have been able to muster the guts to match - and he has spent the last quarter century in the halls of power fighting to make America safe and strong.

He is a vanishing breed in Washington - an honorable man. Certainly more honorable than his opponent whose shamelessly wild swings toward the center done in order to obscure his wretched judgment on the importance and vital necessity of being able to leave Iraq with some sense of American honor proves Obama’s overweening ambition and shocking lack of principle will not matter in November.

Perhaps because his supporters are too busy gloating they can’t see how their candidate has delivered a body blow to their entire critique of the Iraq War and in the process moved much closer to John McCain’s position than any of them thought might have been possible even a couple of months ago.

Both McCain and Obama say they want “victory” in Iraq and that it is not only achievable but necessary. Both say that Iraq is a front in the War on Terror (McCain agrees with al-Qaeda that Iraq is the “central front” in the War on Terror while Obama says it is an “important” front). Both say the surge has worked although for different reasons (Obama’s reasoning is more solid on this point).

Anyone care to revisit how our lefty friends see the war in Iraq? That it is “unwinnable?” That it is not a front in the War on Terror (a war they believe is made up by Bush in order to have an excuse to grab dictatorial powers)? That the surge didn’t work? Either their judgment is superior to Obama’s or they are wrong and Obama is right. Which is it?

Maybe liberals can make all that disappear down the memory hole but I’m doubting it. Their own candidate has now abandoned them, hung them out to dry. And after he is elected and finds his timetable idea a chimera, then perhaps we can get serious about removing our troops properly and in good order. McCain’s idea of semi-permanent bases will be abandoned but that may be a good thing. In the end, our relationship with the Iraqis is just too complex and leaving a sizable force there for decades will probably cause unnecessary friction. Any residual force, however, will probably be there at least 3 years and perhaps beyond that so get used to it my liberal friends.

None of this will prevent Barack Obama from becoming president. As much as it pains me to contemplate the idea of this fakir sitting in the oval office, it might be even more damaging if John McCain were to somehow manage to pull the upset of the ages and win through to victory.

That’s because I believe McCain is too old to be president. Not in years - 72 is not too old for some. For him, it is. Time has passed him by. Even when not making gaff after gaff he seems unsteady and confused at times. And even If you accept the explanation that McCain speaks off the cuff a lot and one’s tongue is bound to get tied up at times and anyone’s brain can experience a hiccup now and again, his fitness for office - fairly or unfairly - will be a major issue in the campaign.

Frankly, I don’t see how he can defuse it.

The contrast alone with Obama’s relative youth will make anything McCain tries a tough sell. The last time the age issue cropped up was 1984 and Ronald Reagan’s devastating one liner that took age off the table in the campaign permanently. But the Gipper’s opponent was Walter Mondale, no spring chicken himself. McCain is fighting the growing perception of being too old while trying to minimize or dismiss the stark contrast between his own advancing years and Obama’s seeming youthfulness.

Of course, the late night comics are having a field day with McCain’s gaffe prone campaign, portraying the candidate as a confused old man and who can blame them? They have plenty of fodder to feast on. Admittedly, the real impact that Leno et al have on voters may be slight. But the constant belittling and denigration of McCain abilities due to his age are not helping to dispel the notion that McCain couldn’t handle the job of president.

In this respect, the slightest doubt among voters about whether he is up to the job might be enough to sink his candidacy. That’s because, as Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei of Politico point out, almost everyone knows an oldster who is slipping away mentally:

The McCain campaign says Obama has had plenty of flubs of his own, including a reference to “57 states” and a string of misstated place names during the primaries that Republicans gleefully sent around as YouTube links.

McCain aides point out that he spends much more time than Obama talking extemporaneously, taking questions from voters and reporters. “Being human and tripping over your tongue occasionally doesn’t mean a thing,” a top McCain official said.

But McCain’s mistakes raise a serious, if uncomfortable question: Are the gaffes the result of his age? And what could that mean in the Oval Office?

Voters, thinking about their own relatives, can be expected to scrutinize McCain’s debate performances for signs of slippage.

Every voter has a parent, grandparent or a friend whose mental acuity declined as they grew older. It happens at different times for different people — and there is ample evidence many people in their 70s are as sharp and fit as ever.

To McCain supporters who point out quite rightly that Obama is a gaffe machine himself, I would answer that the context is different. Obama gaffes cannot be construed as evidence of failing mental faculties. In other words, it’s not the gaffe itself that is the issue. Obama’s verbal faux pas reveal ignorance and inexperience - troubling for voters but not a deal breaker.

McCain’s flubs raise questions of mental fitness. And with every voter aware of the little red button that, when pushed, launches the missiles, they are bound to be much more concerned about a candidate who exhibits similar symptoms to people in their own lives who they have watched as age has taken them away via dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

McCain’s performance on stage can be quite good at times. At other times, he reminds me of the way my mother was just before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I am not saying McCain has Alzheimer’s. His doctors have given him a clean bill of health just recently when the candidate released his medical records - with a noticeable lack of psychiatric information. McCain was trying to defuse his other health issue - a reoccurring melanoma that the doctors say shouldn’t pose a problem for him.

But diagnosing the diseases of age can be problematic. Ronald Reagan did not have Alzheimer’s his last years in office but sometimes behaved in a similar fashion to McCain. Of course, it was less than six years after he left office that he informed the nation he was suffering from the disease that would eventually claim his life.

McCain could very well make it through 4 or even 8 years of office and not get any worse. Will voters want to take that chance? I think it’s a good bet they won’t. The Obama campaign won’t even have to raise the issue because the press will do it for them. And the judgment of voters about McCain’s abilities, despite the many negatives of Obama and the real gamble people might believe his presidency would be, nevertheless seems certain to derail John McCain’s ambition to be president.

You can pretty much date the end of the occupation of Iraq to July 19th, 2008 when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asserted his nation’s full sovereignty for the first time since Saddam Hussein was in power. His declaration that American forces were leaving “sooner rather than later” and hence Barack Obama’s 16 month timetable reflected “reality” better than someone who believed the American army would stay longer put a period on our troubling and yet ultimately (probably) successful military action in Iraq.

Yes it could all still go south - something our celebrating liberal friends could care less about but something of which Barack Obama cares deeply. That’s because lost in all the chest thumping by the left over how “right” they were about a timetable is the realization that Barack Obama will now be rolling the dice on Iraq. This ain’t Bush’s timetable. This isn’t McCain’s plan. The responsibility to end the war has now landed in the lap of the junior senator from Illinois. And by what I see awaiting him, he may not like the dish being served.

If he is elected, Iraq will be seen as “Obama’s War.” Don’t believe me? Ask Dick Nixon who despite taking office in 1969 with America fully and fatally committed by his Democratic predecessor to the survival of South Viet Nam’s government, he ended up being blamed for circumstances not of his making nor of his choosing. By the time we landed on the moon, columnists and opinionmakers were writing it was “Nixon’s War” and that he was responsible for bringing Viet Nam to a successful conclusion despite the fact he didn’t start it, didn’t prosecute it, had nothing to do with troop deployments that placed more than half a million Americans in Viet Nam, and wasn’t involved in the sham “peace negotiations” in Paris.

Unless one wishes to argue that Obama’s plan exists in a political vacuum and he should get credit for Maliki embracing it but no blame if, when implemented, it is proved less than successful, then the alternative is that on the day he takes the oath, Iraq will become his tar baby and the briar patch will still be a long way away.

Also by the time Obama takes the oath, the withdrawal will be well under way with at least one major redeployment to be announced in September if the situation continues to improve. But here is where the campaign rhetoric rubber meets the realities on the ground in Iraq road.

Consider the facts of a timetable and the potential dangers inherent in leaving too precipitously (or too slowly for that matter). Once begun, there is the probability that the timetable will carry its own momentum, that removing troops on schedule will be seen as success while any delays will threaten failure.

There is a very real possibility that external actors who are now largely responsible for what violence there is in Iraq will do their utmost to upset that timetable, to delay the withdrawal of American troops if they can. It’s all they have left. Throwing a monkey wrench into upsetting the schedule - no matter how “flexible” Obama wants to make it - will place him between the rock of delivering on his timeline and the hard place of the Iraqis still needing significant American forces to handle renewed violence coming from Iranian backed Shia militias and the remnants of al-Qaeda.

This has been the primary argument against the timetable all along - telling your enemies when you are leaving is not a good idea. The White House has not been resisting timetables for a year and a half because the idea is coming from Democrats. They have been opposed to a timetable because it is a stupid military idea, denounced by both General Petreaus and General Odinero.

But the impetus for establishing a timetable is coming from the head of a sovereign nation who, for his own reasons, wishes Americans to leave “sooner rather than later.” And according to this fascinating AP report from behind the scenes of Iraqi government deliberations, those reasons include a desire by Maliki to establish his own nationalistic credentials to protect his right flank against a challenge by anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr but also a bid to get the most favorable terms possible on a status of forces agreement involving basing America’s residual forces and other rules the Iraqis find problematic:

The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.

The goal is not necessarily to push out the Americans quickly, but instead give Iraqis a major voice in how long U.S. troops stay and what they will do while still there.

It also is designed to refurbish the nationalist credentials of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his political survival to the steadfast support of President Bush. Now, an increasingly confident Iraqi government seems to be undermining long-standing White House policies on Iraq.

[snip]

With Obama due to visit Iraq soon, al-Maliki’s spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh was quick to discredit the report, saying the prime minister’s remarks were “not conveyed accurately.” A top al-Maliki adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, insisted the Iraqi government does not intend to be “part of the electoral campaign in the United States.”

But that is precisely what the Iraqis intended to do: exploit Obama’s position on the war to force the Bush administration into accepting concessions considered unthinkable a few months ago.

Already, the Iraqi strategy has succeeded in persuading the White House to agree to a “general time horizon” for removing U.S. troops — long a goal of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

The decision to intervene in the American presidential race was apparently taken last month when the Iraqi Foreign Minister visited Washington:

The visit took place as the U.S. and Iraq were negotiating rules that would govern the American military presence in Iraq once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

The talks had bogged down over U.S. demands for extensive basing rights, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law for U.S. soldiers and private contractors.

In the past, the Iraqis would have bowed to American pressure. This time, they saw an option in Obama, a longtime critic of the war. They could press for a short-term agreement with the administration and take their chances with a new president — Obama or McCain.

Evidently, Maliki sensed the American’s desperation in reaching an accord and decided to “squeeze” them according to AP. This led first to the Prime Minister letting on he was going to insist on timetables in any agreement on status of forces on July 7. And while this statement was quickly withdrawn (sort of) it apparently put pressure on the White House to agree last Friday to “time horizons” for withdrawing our troops. Then came Maliki’s embrace of the Obama Plan - again hastily (sort of) denied (this time with the unmistakable hand of the White House on the “retraction”).

How wise is this sudden move to insist on withdrawal “sooner rather than later?” American military commanders are concerned:

Military commanders are wondering whether all the political bargaining about withdrawal timetables could create its own unstoppable momentum, leaving Iraqi security forces increasingly in charge when they may not be ready for the task.

When asked Sunday about the possibility of removing U.S. combat troops within two years, the Pentagon’s top military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, did not mince words: “I think the consequences could be very dangerous.”

“I’d worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability,” Mullen said on “Fox News Sunday.”

This brings us to whether “Obama’s Plan” actually reflects the thinking of the Iraqi government or whether they had something else in mind.

But the sharp reduction in violence — now at its lowest level in four years — and the routing of Shiite and Sunni extremists from most of their urban strongholds have bolstered the government’s self-confidence.

The decision this weekend by the main Sunni Arab political bloc to end its nearly yearlong boycott of the government has enhanced al-Maliki’s stature as leader with support beyond his fellow Shiites.

With oil now at record prices, Iraq is awash in petrodollars, with estimated revenue this year likely to reach $70 billion.

All that has given many Iraqis the feeling they do not really need the Americans — certainly not on terms they find distasteful.

A much more assertive Prime Minister, a government slowly gaining confidence in its own abilities. It sounds to me as if the Iraqis are set on ushering us out the door.

It also sounds to me as if Maliki would prefer an actual timetable to the nebulous “time horizons” desired by the Bushies. Hence, the embrace of Obama’s plan with the usual caveat that the timetable could be altered if necessary. That is, if things start to go south, Maliki gets to have his cake and eat it too by delaying our withdrawal to assist his barely trained army. In effect, Obama’s plan for withdrawal places the final say so on the strategic decision of how many US troops should remain in Iraq in the hands of the Iraqis. Obama certainly won’t be able to insist on going off the timeline. Only Maliki will be able to do that.

There are traps galore for Obama in his plan which is why he may not be celebrating his embrace by Maliki all that much. As surely as it knocks the chocks from underneath the McCain campaign, it also presents him with problems he may find extremely troubling if he were to take office.

My, what a difference a couple of years make.

It was two summers ago that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington and addressed a joint session of Congress.

Except there were quite a few empty seats in the Chamber when the Prime Minister rose to speak. That’s because Democrats were boycotting Maliki’s historic appearance according to some, because he was an American “puppet” and not the head of an independent country.

That was then, this is now.

Yesterday, Maliki told German news magazine Der Speigel that he supported Barack Obama’s 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops. A corrected statement put out later by the PM’s office delinked Maliki’s statement from Obama’s specific call for a timetable but his meaning was clear. Maliki said that those advocating a withdrawal where Americans come out “sooner rather than later” are being more “realistic.

So, we’re going. But why are the Democrats making such a huge deal out of Maliki’s statements? They are giddy with joy over the fact that Maliki is acting like the independent head of a sovereign country when just two years ago they were saying exactly the opposite.

Which is it? Is Maliki a puppet or is he independent? Obviously, when Maliki isn’t doing what Democrats want he is a puppet. When his ideas reflect their thinking, he isn’t.

Wow, what sophistication. Such nuance.

Hypocrites.

Then let’s remember that the Democrats have been calling for withdrawal even when doing so would have been a catastrophic setback for Iraqi security. They were calling for a withdrawl even when doing so would have meant a humiliating defeat for the US as we would have abandoned the field of battle to the enemy while under fire. They were calling for a withdrawal even when doing so meant that thousands - perhaps tens of thousands of Iraqis would have been butchered in unrestrained sectarian violence. They were calling for a withdrawal even when al-Qaeda was at the heighth of its power in Iraq, controlling wide swaths of the country and was poised - once we left - to make a bid for carving out an independent duchy that would have given them shelter and protection to mount operations worldwide. They were calling for a withdrawal even when Shia militias were roaming the streets murdering innocent Sunnis while the poorly trained and corrupt Iraqi police and army looked on and did nothing.

They were calling for a withdrawal even as President Bush changed our counter-insurgency strategy and put General Petreaus in charge of a surge in US troop numbers - a surge every major Democrat including their nominee for president screamed at the top of their voices would be an utter, total, and complete failure. They were calling for a withdrawal even when the surge began to work and violence was dropping. They called for a withdrawal even when they called Petreaus a liar to his face and that he was “cooking the books” on the falloff in violence in Iraq. They were calling for a withdrawal - and saying the war in Iraq was “lost” or a “failure” - as late as the beginning of this year. They were calling for a withdrawal even as the Iraqi government slowly and painfully began to move toward political reconciliation, denigrating these efforts as “too little too late” while predicting that once the extra troops associated with the surge went home, the violence would pick up again.

They have opposed, obstructed, denigrated, mocked, accused the military of lying, predicted disaster again and again and again, all the while calling Maliki a “puppet” and the Iraqi government a joke.

I guess we should simply forget their previous stupidity and call them geniuses now?

UPDATE

For those who believe the clarification from Maliki’s office. that I mention and link to above,  substantially changes the political dynamic in this country, i.e. Democrats (Obama) are geniuses because they were “ahead of the curve” on withdrawing from Iraq, you are incorrect. Allah from Hot Air:

As if it’s not bad enough that they’re trying to spin this after the fact, the Times reports that the statement was put out by Centcom, just to make the U.S. fingerprints on it extra legible, I guess. In any event, Maliki’s desire to make any timetable contingent upon further security gains was already clear from the Spiegel translation - or more specifically, the first version of the Spiegel translation, before they went and surreptitiously changed it.

The PM’s clarifying statement was released through CENTCOM which means it has the White House’s fingerprints all over it. The only real change from the Der Speigel interview has to do with making withdrawals contingent on further improvements in security - which is what Bush and Maliki agreed upon on Friday.

The fact is, McCain is in an awful tough spot now that Maliki has basically agreed with his opponent. No doubt McCain will try and change the subject and point to Obama’s wretched judgment on the surge as well as his many previous calls for withdrawal when the situation in Iraq was dire.

It may very well be that Iraq is less of a campaign issue for McCain than it is now for Obama. How this plays out will probably be fairly predictable. The media will declare Obama the second coming of Bismark and the inexperience in foreign policy issue will be dead and buried. 

This post originally appeared in The American Thinker

It should be obvious by now that our liberal friends in Hollywood responsible for writing jokes for late night hosts, talk shows, and especially the Comedy Central icons John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having a tremendous amount of difficulty coming up with nasty, belittling, supercilious bon mots to direct at Barack Obama - the same kind of material they routinely create to lampoon conservatives and Republicans.

Quite simply, they are stuck. They have writers block. They are caught between the rock of political correctness and the hard place of partisan hackery and don’t have a clue how to escape.

Joe Harwood of the New York Times defined their dilemma on Joe Scarborough’s show the other day after the host skewered the comedy writers for being wusses when it came to criticizing Democrats and Obama:

SCARBOROUGH: I just– I never want to hear anybody from ‘The Daily Show’ or any of these other shows ever saying again, ‘We speak truth to power.’ ‘Cause you know what they do? They speak truth to Republicans. Republicans are funny. They have been idiots and jackasses over the past seven years. But, please, don’t be subversive, because you’re not. Because you’re a hack. You’re a hack for the Democratic Party and you only tell jokes about one side. BRZEZINSKI: Joe– No, this is not about being in the tank.

Harwood is an idiot. I have absolutely no trouble lampooning conservatives or Republicans for that matter. What it takes is something that most liberals in Hollywood simply don’t have.

One single independent brain cell in working order.

Beyond Harwood’s idiocy, how about Scarborough’s liberal co-host saying that the reason we don’t hear Obama jokes is because, well, there’s nothing funny about him:

BRZEZINSKI: But I really think you are missing a bigger problem here or challenge, however you want to put it, for comedy writers or for satirists, I hope I’m using the right word there. But my point is that there are layers of what’s politically correct and layers of what potentially could incite the wrong things. When have you a candidate who is black and who has a name people have made fun of and have bad information on the internet on, I think there are layers here that present really great challenges.

“Great challenges?” Are you fricking kidding me? Obama is a walking talking joke book waiting to happen. You could compile an encyclopedia of humor just about the size of his ears. His stick like frame should be made fun of early and often.

And oh my God what some classic comedians would have done with “Obama-worship.” Saturday Night Live’s skits only scratched the surface. There’s comedy gold in them thar worshipful minions that we have yet to see realized in any comedy format.

Plus, it should be obvious to anyone by now simply noting Obama’s reaction to The New Yorker cover that the man possesses the sense of humor of a Tapir. And the creepy way he talks about himself and his movement along with incidents like the “Obama Almost Presidential Seal” all should be supplying plenty of fodder for comedy writers without coming anywhere near any kind of line that would even hint at his race, or his name, or anything else.

Q.What’s the difference between Obama and Dumbo?A. Dumbo hasn’t flip flopped on FISA reform.

Or

Q. What’s the difference between Obama and a string bean?

A. A string bean isn’t a dangerous far left liberal who hangs around with radicals, crooks, and terrorists.

I know readers of this site can do better than that. And I’m prepared to put my money where my mouth is to prove it.

ANNOUNCING THE RIGHT WING NUTHOUSE OBAMA JOKEFEST!

That’s right. You can assist our liberal friends in Hollywood while breaking new ground in comedy history by coming up with jokes, humorous anecdotes, limericks, or one liners all directed towards the Democratic nominee for president Barack Obama.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions can be in the form of written comments to this post as well as the official contest post I will be putting up later today. Or, I would actually prefer recorded jokes submitted as an attachment to an email. That’s because the best of the lot will be read or played on a special edition of The Rick Moran Show on Blog Talk Radio this coming Sunday at 6:00 PM Central Time.

PRIZES

First Prize - $25.00 Gift Card

Second Prize - $10.00 Gift Card

Third Place - $5 gift Card

DEADLINE

Deadline for entry is noon central time on Sunday.

Send sound files in MP3 or Windows Media audio format only. Attach to email sent to this address.

elvenstar522-at-AOL-dot-com.

It wasn’t exactly a highlight of Barack Obama’s rather uninspiring speech on national security the candidate gave in Washington on Tuesday. But buried under the interminable rhetoric on how the candidate, once president, will be able to wave his magic wand (or perhaps wiggle his nose like Jeannie) and conjure up coalitions of allies to deal with this problem or that (even getting Iran and Syria to cooperate on Iraqi security which would be a magic trick worthy of Merlin), there was a shocking admission by Mr. Obama that he and his Democratic colleagues had been wrong about Iraq for years.

For the first time since the Iraq war began, a Democratic leader uttered the “V” word and “Iraq” in the same sentence. That’s right; Obama called for “victory” in Iraq:

At some point, a judgment must be made. Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we don’t have unlimited resources to try to make it one. We are not going to kill every al Qaeda sympathizer, eliminate every trace of Iranian influence, or stand up a flawless democracy before we leave – General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker acknowledged this to me when they testified last April. That is why the accusation of surrender is false rhetoric used to justify a failed policy. In fact, true success in Iraq – victory in Iraq – will not take place in a surrender ceremony where an enemy lays down their arms. True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future – a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge. That is an achievable goal if we pursue a comprehensive plan to press the Iraqis stand up.

The candidate actually defines the terms of “success” and “victory.” Why is this significant.

Because last year, Barack Obama declared the war a failure and unwinnable:

Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that even if the military escalation in Iraq was showing limited signs of progress, efforts to stabilize the country had been a “complete failure” and American troops should not be entangled in the sectarian strife.

“No military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region,” Mr. Obama said. “Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks.”

This is at the time Obama was calling for “an immediate withdrawal” of all American troops without consulting the Iraqis, the generals on the ground, or anyone else he says today that he “has always said” he would consult:

“Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was,” Obama said in excerpts of the speech provided to the Associated Press.

“The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year — now,” the Illinois senator says.

A strange part of his definition of “victory” that he stated in his Tuesday speech sounds a lot like retreat before complete victory is achieved:”

To achieve that success, I will give our military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war. Let me be clear: we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — one year after Iraqi Security Forces will be prepared to stand up; two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, we’ll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of Al-Qaeda; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress.

We will make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy — that is what any responsible commander-in-chief must do. As I have consistently said, I will consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government. We will redeploy from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We will commit $2 billion to a meaningful international effort to support the more than 4 million displaced Iraqis. We will forge a new coalition to support Iraq’s future — one that includes all of Iraq’s neighbors, and also the United Nations, the World Bank, and the European Union — because we all have a stake in stability. And we will make it clear that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq.

“Achieve success” by “ending this war?” This kind of disconnect from reality reminds me of the new Soviet government in 1917 simply declaring the war was over and marching off the battlefield. They did this because their negotiations with the Germans were becoming all to real with the Kaiser demanding huge chunks of Soviet territory and crippling war reparations.

The Germans watched in amazement as more than 3 million Russian troops abandoned their positions and started the long trek home. Not quite believing their good fortune, the Germans were, at first, rather cautious. But once they realized the Soviets were retreating, they quickly advanced and turned the retreat into a rout. After pushing hundreds of miles into Russia bagging huge numbers of Russian soldiers as prisoners in the process, the Soviets realized their mistake and meekly returned to the bargaining table, giving the Kaiser virtually everything he wanted.

Drawing an historical parallel with Iraq using the Soviet-German history during World War I is probably not fair since al-Qaeda and the Shia militias can no way be compared to the German army on the Eastern front in 1917.

But where I think the analogy is apt is in positing that both the terrorists and the militias will be strengthened considerably by a withdrawal more beholden to some timeline than events on the ground. Since the candidate can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to pander to his base by eschewing consultation or whether he wants to pander to rational voters by including such caveats with his timeline, we just don’t know. On Tuesday at least, he was for consultation and for making “tactical adjustments” if necessary.

What if Obama had talked of “victory” and “tactical adjustments” and “consulting generals” during the primary campaign? Sure is a far cry from “immediate withdrawal,” although perhaps he meant he would withdraw the troops immediately after we felt we had achieved victory? I daresay if he had breathed the word “victory” during his contest with Hillary Clinton, he would have been hooted off the stage.

That’s because both legislative leaders of the Democratic party declared the war “lost” more than a year ago. First, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on 4/20/07:

“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.

And here’s Nancy Pelosi on 2/10/08:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

So has Obama in effect, repudiated the two most powerful leaders in the legislative branch of his own party?

You bet he has. Since neither Reid nor Pelosi have seen fit to come forward and admit that they were spectacularly wrong in their assessment of Iraq, Obama has hung them - and most of the rest of his own party - out to dry. He has redefined the goals in Iraq - albeit incoherently - by stipulating that “success” and “victory” were now the aims of American policy and not withdrawal and defeat which is still the de facto position of the netroots and the far left Moveon crowd.

Why no one has noticed this in the media is probably due to the fact that now we are enjoying a modicum of success in Iraq on all fronts, the political fruits of victory will be spread around to somehow include Democrats. It is impossible to give George Bush and his mostly conservative war supporters all the credit despite the defeatist and obstructionist policies carried on for most of the war by their political opponents. It would be inconsistent with their past reporting of Bush as a boob and incompetent. Room must be found for the Democrats to share in whatever success we achieve in Iraq.

So congratulations to Barack Obama who has now hopped on to the victory train - now that it’s almost at the station and preparing to unload.

UPDATE: CORRECTION URGENTLY NEEDED

How could I be so stupid? Yes I was dropped on my head as an infant but that doesn’t explain how I could have possibly mixed up Samantha from Bewitched with Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie.

Both my good friend Jim from the site bRright and Early and reader Mike S. were kind enough to point out my error in ascribing Samantha’s magic gesture of the nose wiggle to Jeanie. Of course, Jeanie would cross her arms and bob her head to initiate her magic spells. I apologize for the confusion.

As to which one is sexier, from the vantage point of age, no doubt Samantha is cuter but Jeanie’s costume…ooh la la. Did you know that the network censor refused to allow Barbara Eden’s navel to show?

We’ve come a long way, baby…

Way up on top of the mountain where our messiah-in-waiting is hurling his thunderbolts at John McCain and dispensing manna in the form of soothing bromides and empty platitudes, a distant, ominous rumbling can be heard far below the summit that portends some possible trouble for our hero when his coronation takes place in Denver late in August.

It is an unconfirmed story and indeed, sounds like one of those rumors that are circulated during the dog days of summer in the interregnum between the time a candidate clinches the nomination and the convention. There may be more wishful thinking than truth here but it nevertheless presents an interesting scenario.

Are some Superdelegates having second thoughts about Obama as the nominee?

Big news folks - it looks like our efforts in contacting those Superdelegates are starting to pay off, so keep on writing to them (ok, maybe Donna B’s a waste of time). There are unconfirmed reports, based on phone banking efforts to reach out to Super Ds, that eight previously Obama SDs expressed that, given the opportunity, they would vote for Hillary at the convention.

I heard about an interview Will Bower of PUMA did recently, where he said delegates are starting to say they’ll vote for Hillary in Denver if the DNC did the right thing and ran an open and fair convention. That means a roll call vote with Hillary’s name put into nomination, and on the ballot.

So I shot an email to Bower to ask him where he got that info from, and here’s what he sent me regarding the efforts of a friend of his

“A large phone banking effort to the super d’s combined with Obama’s flips and poor presumptive nominee performance, etc have yielded doubts within the super delegates, enough that 3 elected and 5 DNC members have confided that should they have the opportunity to do so, they will vote for Hillary.”

Maybe this is why BHO and the Toxic Trio are pushing so hard to keep Hillary off the roll call ballot eh? I’ve been wondering what they’re so afraid of now it looks like we have part of the answer.

First of all, even in the unlikely event that this is true, Hillary is going to need at least 100 of those switches to claim the nomination so 8 flippers is hardly anything to get excited about.

Secondly, I can’t believe this is true because there has been no sudden shift in the polls, no big controversy involving Obama, and no calls at all from anywhere in the party that I have heard for a change at the top.

And the number one reason Hillary will not be on the ballot is to prevent an extended demonstration of support for her thus deflecting attention that should be paid to Obama. The messiah will not want to share the limelight with anyone given the extremely limited exposure over the air TV is going to be giving the convention. The “Big Three” can still gather 18-20 million eyeballs in front of the TV compared with cable’s 8-10 million. This means that every prime time minute will be scripted for maximum impact.

I doubt whether the Obama crew is worried that Hillary will stampede the convention and wrest the nomination from Mr. Lightwalker. Instead, the whole roll call of the states thing is extremely time consuming and while a quaint relic of an era when conventions were important, it doesn’t fit in to the modern “production” of what the handlers want the convention to be. Better to have speeches from well known Democrats with Obama surrogates making the rounds of the anchor booths upstairs, hammering home whatever themes and issues are on tap for that day.

This is a pity because the highlight of any political convention for me was to hear each state’s name called and some poor schmuck who had been years toiling in obscurity for the party would get their 15 seconds of national TV exposure.

“Mr. Chairman….Mr. Chairman…The great state of Illinois - Land of Lincoln - Hog Butcher to the World -#1 in production of soybeans - Birthplace of Adlai Stevenson, Paul Simon, and the great Mayor of the great city of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley - Home of Senator Richard Durbin - location of the largest ball of twine in the world - proudly casts all 184 of its votes for its favorite son, the next president of the United States, Barrack Hussein Obama!

And with each state, the bragging would get bigger and more outrageous. Some state leads in the production of potato chips. Another in horseradish. Still another in port-o-potties.

And the hats. Oh, those convention hats. Humongous donkeys or elephants sitting on top of straw hats. Hats with a message. Hats that light up with the candidate’s name. The TV back then loved the hats, couldn’t get enough of them.

Not now. Conventions are rather soulless affairs today with the delegates probably a lot more sober than they were 40 years ago when I first began to watch them. And both sides feature more of their gimlet eyed radicals who somehow manage to make it on screen - no doubt because the networks always love controversy at a convention and the radicals usually disagree with the mainstream.

The convention in Denver will be no different. The networks will seek out Hillary delegates, asking them if they are pleased with the efforts at unity by the Obama campaign. The Obama camp will try their best to put forward satisfied Clintonites but I guarantee you the networks will find several disgruntled Hillary delegates and try and gin up controversy.

Another sure fire way to create a bogus meme will be for the networks to find Democrats who are dissatisfied with the way the campaign is being run. Apparently, that might be easier than one would think:

After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

“They think they know what’s right and everyone else is wrong on everything,” groused one senior Senate Democratic aide. “They are kind of insufferable at this point.”

Among the grievances described by Democratic leadership insiders:

• Until a mailing that went out in the past few days, Obama had done little fundraising for Democratic candidates since signing off on e-mailed fundraising appeals for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately after securing the Democratic nomination.

• Obama has sometimes appeared in members’ districts with no advance notice to lawmakers, resulting in lost opportunities for those Democrats to score points by appearing alongside their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

• The Obama campaign has not, until very recently, coordinated a daily message with congressional Democrats, leaving Democratic members in the lurch when they’re asked to comment on the constant back and forth between Obama and John McCain — as they were when Obama said earlier this month that he would “continue to refine” his Iraq policies after meeting with commanders on the ground there.

Apparently, the Obama camp wants to arrive in Washington next January not beholden to anyone in the party for their victory. This is all well and good except they might remember the example of Jimmy Carter.

Carter also arrived in Washington as an outsider. And while it is true he owed nothing to nobody, the opposite was true as well; nobody owed Carter a damn thing. Soon, it became apparent that simply being the head of the party meant little if there was nothing tangible to cement the loyalty of those under you. The normal log rolling that any president is forced to employ on legislation in order to get it passed is interrupted and in the end, it was everyone for themselves with nothing much getting done.

If Obama believes he will ride into Washington on a white horse and clean up the cesspool there without the help of his own party - help bought and paid for during the election by assisting the party in electing House and Senate members - then he is tragically mistaken. He could very well turn into a one term wonder like Carter.

Let’s hope he makes a better ex-president than the peanut farmer from Georgia.

There is no doubt that the number one reason Barack Obama was able to defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president was his opposition to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” Even as events in Iraq faded into the background - thanks to the success of the new counterinsurgency strategy and the addition of 30,000 soldiers starting in January, 2007 - Obama kept up his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize the war while proclaiming to one and all that the “surge” had failed and that a withdrawal of the American military from Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground was our only option.

At the time, it seemed a winning strategy. Polls were overwhelmingly in favor of a withdrawal of American forces while the base of the Democratic party rallied to his anti-war, pro-American humiliation message. In fact, it could be said that Obama’s anti-war position was the cornerstone of his campaign for president.

The only possible risk for the candidate would be if things actually turned around in Iraq and the American people had a change of heart on the willy nilly withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Both eventualities seemed remote as late as the beginning of this year.

As it turns out, Obama was whistling past the graveyard with his Iraq policy. With the dramatic military success of the surge and the equally surprising strength shown by the Iraqi government and army in fighting both al-Qaeda and the rogue Shia militias who were responsible for most of the sectarian violence in the country as well as some timid but definitive steps toward political reconciliation, Obama suddenly finds that he has no place to hide and his Iraq policy as relevant as a week old newspaper.

What do you do when the cornerstone of your campaign collapses and you are exposed as being dead wrong about the number one foreign policy issue of the campaign? If you’re Barack Obama, you write an op-ed in the New York Times and lie through your teeth.

Powerline nails Obama to the wall, calling attention to his blatant fibbing about his position on Iraq by quoting the candidate’s own words in the past and comparing them to the lies he wrote in yesterday’s op-ed:

Obama admits that he opposed the surge, and the attendant change in strategy and tactics, that have brought us close to victory. But he somehow manages to twist his being wrong about the surge–the major foreign policy issue that has arisen during his time in Congress–into vindication:

The op-ed lists Obama’s reasons for opposing the surge - and not surprisingly, they are not the reasons he has been touting for more than a year:

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

Oh really? If Obama keeps this up, pretty soon his nose is going to be as big as his ears. John Hinderaker explains:

Actually, however, Obama opposed the surge not because of those “factors” but because he thought it would fail. He said, on January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.

On January 14, 2007, on Face the Nation, he said:

We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

On March 19, 2007, on the Larry King show, he said:

[E]ven those who are supporting — but here’s the thing, Larry — even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.

On May 25, 2007, in a speech to the Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Obama said:

And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we’re on in Iraq is working, I do not.

The fact is, Obama simply has no place to hide when it comes to explaining his position on Iraq. His analysis of the situation is no longer valid - if it ever really was. His policies based on that analysis are no longer operative. He has been exposed as a rank opportunist - an anti-war candidate who claimed to be the only candidate who could bring an end to the war.

Except now the war is ending and there is precious little he can say that would obscure the fact that he was as “spectacularly wrong as John McCain was spectacularly right” as Hinderacker points out.

He had two choices; he could go for door #1 and come clean, say he was wrong, and develop a new policy that would refelct the realities on the ground. Or, he could opt for door #2 and lie, obfuscate, and muddy the waters, trying to hide his original positions.

Monty Hall never gave a contestant such an easy choice.

But Obama’s shameless cover-up didn’t stop there. According to The New York Daily News, Obama has actually scrubbed his website of any criticism of the surge!

Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”

Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is “not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events.”

Oh for God’s sake Wendy, do you think we’re as stupid as liberals? Do you “regularly update the Web site” to cover up your candidate’s most spectacular errors in judgement?

Part of Obama’s furious backtracking on Iraq might be the result of something even I didn’t think was possible. A significant shift in the American people’s perception of the situation in Iraq and what our strategy should be:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the country split down the middle between those backing Sen. Barack Obama’s 16-month timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and those agreeing with Sen. John McCain’s position that events, not timetables, should dictate when forces come home.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will deliver what his campaign is billing as a “major address” on Iraq today in Washington, part of an effort to convince voters that he could serve effectively as commander in chief. The public is also evenly divided on that question, with 48 percent saying he would be an effective leader of the military and 48 percent saying he would not.

On Iraq policy in general, Americans continue to side with Obama and McCain, his Republican rival, in roughly equal numbers, with 47 percent of those polled saying they trust McCain more to handle the war, and 45 percent having more faith in Obama.

The poll results suggest that months of Democratic attacks on McCain’s Iraq position have not dented voters’ basic trust in his ability to lead the country’s armed forces: Seventy-two percent said McCain would make a good commander in chief.

“The most important number by Election Day is whether a majority of the electorate has achieved a comfort level with Obama as commander in chief,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster who was a strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, and who considers Obama’s 48 percent a strong starting position. “I think this is the one dimension on which he will be tested and where Republicans will try hard to raise big doubts about Obama.”

Obama will be forced to alter his position, moving closer to McCain on Iraq while moving farther and farther away from the netroots who can do nothing but throw tantrums at how they have been betrayed.

Where will all this dizzying manuevering get Obama? Because the press will not call him out for this monumental flip flop - this Mother of All Campaign Backfills - it is not likely he will be hurt very much at all. More likely, the disillusioned left will grumble a bit and still turn out for him in November. Those on the far left always have Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. For the center, there is only the here and now in politics which is what Obama is counting on with this incredibly cynical move.

Exposing Obama for the lightweight he is will be the challenge for McCain. Hopefully, Obama will continue to lead with his chin on issues like Iraq and make the Republican’s job easier.