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Obama on Al Arabiya

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

My guess is that many in the Jewish world are nervous today. Obama chose to give his first formal television interview as president to Al Arabiya, the Arab language TV channel based in Dubai.

What does it mean? And what does it mean for Israel?

“Obama has tipped his hand with his first call going to [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas, and his first formal interview going to al arabiya [sic],” commented one poster on the satellite channel’s Web site. ”Now America has woken up … and they see they mistalenly [sic] elected a closet muslim/jihad sympathizer, and the party will end soon.”

This may be an extreme view. But I’m sure other, cooler heads in the Jewish community are wondering: What gives?

I’d urge those who are concerned to read the transcript. It really is an extraordinary document. In both content and tone.

First, let’s remember, as the AP pointed out:

Obama’s choice of Al-Arabiya network, which is owned by a Saudi businessman, follows the lead of the Bush administration, which gave several presidential interviews to that news channel.

“The U.S. sees Al-Arabiya as a friendly Arab channel, whereas they see Al-Jazeera as confrontational,” said Lawrence Pintak, director of the journalism training center at the American University in Cairo.

True, Obama spoke about his distant Muslim relatives, and told Muslims “Americans are not your enemy.” But what is striking to me — in part — is that while speaking through an Arab journalist to the Muslim world, Obama made this unsolicited remark:

Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.

He wasn’t asked to comment on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. He offered it. And he spoke of the requirement for “serious partnership” from Palestinians.

(The comment obviously impressed the editors at Al Arabiya, who included this excerpt as a blowup quote on their Web site: Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. )

Later, Obama said this:

I think anybody who has studied the region recognizes that the situation for the ordinary Palestinian in many cases has not improved. And the bottom line in all these talks and all these conversations is, is a child in the Palestinian Territories going to be better off? Do they have a future for themselves?

But he followed it up, again unsolicited, with this:

And is the child in Israel going to feel confident about his or her safety and security?

It’s not even-handedness that I mean to imply. It’s that Obama, speaking to the Arab world, made a point of saying and reiterating that America views Israel’s security as “paramount.” (I just looked it up — it means “supreme”; “above others in rank or authority.”)

To me, this is the Obama who told Palestinians in Ramallah that they would have to give up the right of return, and who criticized the Palestinian Authority for failing to live up to its commitments. It’s the Obama who told the teacher’s union that educators should be held accountable for their performance — and who was booed for it at union appearances, ever after.

Obama went on to say:

What I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith — and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers — regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

Why, though, did he pick Al Arabiya? Why not Haaretz?

The answer is very clear. As the AP notes in its lead: “[it's] part of a concerted effort to repair relations with the Muslim world that were damaged under the previous administration.”

Obama, no doubt, will be criticized for speaking positively of King Abdullah’s peace plan, which offers pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawl from Arab lands captured in 1967, including the Golan Heights. (The poster on the Al Arabiya Web site quoted above commented: “The Saudi Plan is bulls***: It signals another chance for the destruction of Israel in exchange for ’recognition.’”)

But here, from the transcript, is exactly what Obama said:

Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage — to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace.

And we should remember, as Haaretz noted, Israeli President Shimon Peres, speaking to world leaders last year, lauded Abdullah for his plan, calling it “a serious opening for real progress.”

What was striking to me about the interview was not so much the overt overture of friendship to the Muslim world, but the corresponding subtlty of the appeal. Picking up on a question from the journalist, Obama noted that the U.S. was not nor has it ever been a “colonial power.”

My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that.

Obama is not only speaking their language. He’s aligning us with them. In the 19th and 20th centuries, afterall, Muslims were colonized by Russia, Holland, Britain, and France, from West Africa across two continents to Indonesia. Obama, by picking up the questioner’s language, is saying: We were born in the same kind of struggle.

It seems to me that if Obama can shift Muslim perceptions of the United States, even incrementally — then we will have much more soft power, more clout in our dealings with Iran, and more influence on the pan-Arab mindset. And, of course, fewer Muslims will be inclined to sign up for jihad. (The Arab journalist himself noted that with Obama’s election, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden “seem very nervous.”)

All of which ultimately benefits Israel.

Posted in Israel, Jewish Interest, Media, Obama | 3 Comments »

Mitchell Take II: A Jewish Communal Approach

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

There is, of course, much praise of Mitchell from the left and center of the Jewish world (the National Jewish Democratic Council lauded the appointment, noting Mitchell “has a strong record of support for Israel’s security”), as well as a critique of him from the right.

Shmuel Rosner, writing in the New Republic, said that Obama “made the fairly safe, cautious choice” in appointing Mitchell. (“Buying Time; Why George Mitchell is the perfect envoy not to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”)

Of Mitchell’s 2000 Middle East fact-finding commission, Rosner writes:

His report was adopted, but not wholeheartedly adapted, by both parties. It had something for everyone: The Palestinians got their demand (rejected by Israel) for a freeze of settlements, while Israelis got their unequivocal demand for “ending the violence” launched by Palestinians in 2000.

Rosner’s main critique seems to be that Mitchell’s report let Arafat off the hook:

The Mitchell Report finding that seems much more problematic today is the conclusion that Palestinian violence was not planned by the Palestinian leadership (namely, Yasser Arafat). The report says that “we were provided with no persuasive evidence that the [Ariel] Sharon visit [to Temple Mount in 2000] was anything other than an internal political act; neither were we provided with persuasive evidence that the PA planned the uprising.” This was, arguably, the most devastating rebuke of Israel’s claims–what most Israelis believe today, and what the Bush administration eventually came to believe –that Arafat wanted, initiated, planned, and executed this terror campaign.

And perhaps also that Mitchell was, if anything, too even-handed:

This was typical Mitchell. Rejecting the narrative of both sides–Mitchell did not accept Palestinians’ claims that Sharon’s “provocation” was the cause for violence either–in the hope that a third, “balanced” version, can be swallowed, if not enthusiastically, by the parties. There’s reason to assume that in style, if not in substance, Mitchell will not change this approach and will try to find a middle ground, earning some praise and some rebuke for his actions.

I don’t know. To my mind, promulgating a balanced “third” version that both sides can swallow will in fact be an important part of the key to any solution. This is a centuries long, utterly intractable dispute. The narrative, ultimately, will have to shift for opposing sides to once again shake hands.

Rosner made one point that I think is hard to dispute:

His achievement or failure will not be determined by new road maps or modified Obama parameters. Mitchell’s success will be determined by the ability of the Obama administration to engage Iran effectively, and by its ability to turn the regional tide. As long as those forces working to destabilize the Middle East–Hezbollah, Hamas, and their enablers–control the pace of events and inspire the Arab masses, it is very hard to envision a “road map” that will take this track to its final destination.

Thus, the appointment of the patient, distinguished Mitchell is playing for time: As he works to create the conditions for peace, his other colleagues will be tasked with the more daunting mission. This is the “linkage theory” turned upside-down: The real difference between the original linkage (that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to the region) and the second (that the region is the key to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is that the latter has a much better chance of actually leading to peace in the Middle East. Iran, after all, is a source of instability across the region, funding terrorist groups in Gaza, Iraq, and Lebanon, and propping up the Syrian regime. Mitchell’s portfolio does not include negotiations with Iran; but the outcome of those talks will be the most significant factor in accomplishing his mission.

In other words, solving the Israel-Palestinian dispute isn’t going to lead to a regional solution: Iran is the lynchpin.

I was speaking about this today with a high up lay-leader in the Jewish community. He called Rosner’s take, astutely, ”a criticism of the description of the problem,” and agreed that a “whole system” approach is necessary in the Middle East.

Yes, have “sub-teams” working on their specific areas, but ultimately have somebody — perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — focusing on the region as a whole, bringing all the strands together.

“That’s what the Jewish community should push for,” he said.

To which I say: Amen.

POSTSCRIPT: Apparently, Obama agrees.

He said this yesterday on Al Arabiya, Arab television:

It is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what’s happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These things are interrelated. And what I’ve said, and I think Hillary Clinton has expressed this in her confirmation, is that if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.

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Posted in Israel, Jewish Interest, Media | 1 Comment »

What’s Next?

Monday, November 10th, 2008

If you’re like me, you’ve found yourself moved all week long, sometimes without much warning.

Like this morning, reading the story of reporter Michael Sokolove’s Election Day return to Levittown, Pa.:

I grew up in Levittown, and in the spring had returned there before the Democratic primary to write about how Mr. Obama’s message of hope and change was connecting with its blue-collar population. It wasn’t. My article in The New York Times Magazine reported that his words were coming across as lofty and abstract to people more attuned to concrete concerns like the hourly wage and the monthly car payment. The article was published on the morning before Mr. Obama made his one big gaffe of the campaign, telling attendees at a San Francisco fund-raiser that some blue-collar voters have been so beaten down that “it’s not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion… .” …

I traveled again to Levittown on Election Day to see how people would vote and how they would respond to what looked like an imminent Obama victory. The contrast from the spring — and, in fact, this new vision of Levittown compared with what I had known in my childhood — was almost breathtaking.

“Obama,” said the ironworker, when I asked how he’d be voting.

“Obama,” said the plumber.

“Obama,” said the chef.

And on and on. Military moms. Vietnam veterans. Abortion opponents. College students and retirees. Bank tellers, pipe fitters, officer workers, machinists, meat cutters, boilermakers and carpenters.

I’ve had moments this week when I’ve been sort of daydreaming, and then I’ll think of something I hadn’t thought of yet: Ruth Bader Ginsberg can retire; poor women in overseas health clinics will have access to contraception; the Iraq war will soon be over.

I thought: My kids will see a Democratic administration in Washington, DC, for the first time.

I have also been thinking a lot about the future of neuroticdemocrat.com.

Which brings me again to Noah, the Torah portion that we read two weeks ago. Near the end of the parsha, we read:

Tera took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there.

What on Earth, you ask, does Ur of the Chaldeans have to do with this neurotic blogger?

Answer: The Midrash focuses on the phrase “they settled there,” writing: “So often in life, we set out with the best of intentions, only to give up half-way to our goal.” 

Getting Obama elected was never the goal. It was in the broadest sense a strategy, to achieve other goals: ending the Iraq war; turning our economy around; investing in alternative energy as a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Addressing global warming. Reclaiming our government as an honest force for good in the lives of everyday people, here and around the world.

With that in mind — and with the encouragement of so many of you — I plan to keep blogging for awhile.

(Though probably not much this week. My mom’s going in for surgery — I’ll be spending much of the week in the hospital with her and dad.)

So for now, I’ll leave it with Sokolove:

The people I met in Levittown were not on Mr. Obama’s e-mail list or among his donors, but they may be more likely than his younger supporters and more affluent ones to give him what he most desperately needs: time and patience. Like characters from the songs of one of Mr. Obama’s celebrity endorsers, Bruce Springsteen, many Levittowners have been weathered by life. They haven’t benefited from a lot of quick fixes. Others of his supporters say they’ll be patient, but I sensed these people really mean it. They were harder to sell, but they could end up being pretty loyal.

“How long did it take Bush to get us into this mess?” Mr. Carr, the Vietnam veteran, asked. “It’s a lot easier to screw things up than to make them better.”

We won an election. We earned our country back. Our hopes have never been higher.

Which is to say: Mission definitely not accomplished.

Posted in Jewish Interest, Media, Obama, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

What? Me Worry?

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

I’m not sure about this Obama infomercial last night.

I liked the idea going in — staying on the offensive, presenting your vision, uninterrupted.

Of course, it’s given McCain a perfect opportunity to remind people that Obama went back on his pledge to accept public financing. The front page headline in the Akron Beacon Journal this morning was “Obama Floods Airwaves; McCain mocks half-hour ad he says was paid for with ‘broken promises.’”

I liked the idea of cutting away to the live event at the end of the ad. It injected some excitement. Some sense of the real. And it happened in South Florida. But, as Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post’s Media Notes:

The idea of moving from the safety of a videotape to a live event was inspired. But doing it in a cheering Florida stadium with Obama going to the overblown rhetoric and vowing to “change the world,” not so much. The whole idea of the show was to bring Obama down from the clouds and into the street. The big rally came close to canceling out the man-of-the-people image so carefully constructed in the previous 27 minutes.

Moreover, log on to your Yahoo! email account today, and you are greeted with this AP headline: “What Obama’s ad left out.” The AP article begins:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.

Obama’s assertion that “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond” the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by “eliminating programs that don’t work” masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are — beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

And the thing is — unlike so much of what McCain-Palin has launched at Obama this cycle — in my view, all of this is fair game. Obama invited this critical look at his policies. For 24 hours, he’s turned himself into a bull’s eye. The press would be remiss for not writing articles like the one above.

You know how sometimes, a running back tries to get a few extra yards, late in the game, and, instead of going down on the first hit, pushes forward, grinding, trying to slough off a tackler … only to fumble, and fumble the game away?

I have a sinking feeling this morning. Now, it’s true, I always have a sinking feeling. So it’s nothing new.

But this, quoted in Kurtz’s column, makes me utterly queasy:

Is the race tightening? Well, maybe, says the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber:

“Obama’s lead in the national tracking polls looks to be around five points (I get 5.5 when I average all six of the trackers I mentioned, along with the Hotline and Battleground trackers, which haven’t changed much in the last few days). If that drops two-to-three points, as it easily could in a week, I don’t think it’s crazy to think McCain will have a shot at winning Pennsylvania, Virginia, and/or Colorado. Unlikely, yes, but not crazy. According to sites like Real Clear and Pollster.com, Obama’s lead in those states is currently larger than his 5.5 point national lead (significantly so in Pennsylvania). But, as I argued last week, the relationship between battleground-state numbers and national numbers can change significantly as we approach the finish, and those state averages you see could easily be a week out of date.

“My immediate concern is twofold: That McCain is getting some traction with his liberal/socialist/redistributionist charge–the WaPo tracker shows McCain narrowing the gap on the economy over the last week–and, in light of this, that Obama is striking his high-note a few days too early.”

I take comfort in knowing I’m far from the only neurotic Dem out there. But, with five days to go, it’s cold comfort, indeed.

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Posted in Media, Obama | 8 Comments »

The New Yorker Endorsement

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

I don’t usually blog about a single endorsement. But when I finished reading this one, sitting at my desk in Akron, Ohio, I literally just started crying. I put my head in my hands, pulled it together, sucked in a hard breath.

So much at stake. So, so, so, so much.

I’m not going to include a nut graf, because you should read the whole thing. Then, you should send it to everyone you know.

“The Choice.”

Posted in Media, Obama | 2 Comments »

‘Why Elect John McCain?’

Monday, October 27th, 2008

I’ve been hearing about it for four days — the NY Times magazine cover story, which deconstructs the woeful campaign of John McCain.

I think we can all agree that no matter what happens in these last eight days, McCain’s presidential campaigns has been god-awful. The magazine article (“The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate”) explains why.

Centrally, the article makes the case that while Obama settled on and stuck to one narrative (“Bush is the problem. I’m not going to be Bush, and McCain will be”), McCain shifted with the wind, never deciding on a single story-line.

It’s a long, powerful article, but here’s the nut:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

Draper identifies six narratives that McCain used over the course of the campaign, storylines for the public that were often in flux, and almost always reactive.

1. The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitter. (McCain, through the Surge, was going to deliver victory in Iraq; Obama was waving the white flag of surrender.)

2. Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender. (McCain’s taken on his own party; Obama has no record doing same.)

3. Leader vs. Celebrity. (McCain came out with a hardline when Russia invaded Georgia, and launched the Paris Hilton ad — implicitly mocking Obama’s European trip.)

4. Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington. (McCain taps Palin as VP. There are some incredible new details here, about just how little McCain knew Palin when he picked her. Also, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among the finalists that McCain opted against. Just imagine how this election would have played out with Bloomberg, an economic guru, at McCain’s side during the economic meltdown.)

5. John McCain vs. John McCain. (McCain, in launching the attack ads, was running against an earlier version of himself, who had pledged — in 2000 — to unilaterally take down attack ads.)

6. The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal. (After the last debate: all Joe the plumber, all the time.)

It’s a terrific article, in part, I think, because Draper seems empathetic toward McCain. You sort of sense, reading between the lines, a kind of respect he has for the candidate. I do think, however, that in a few important places, Draper leads us to the wrong conclusions.

For example, Draper writes:

The McCain campaign maintained that in contrast to Obama, their candidate had taken on his own party while working with Democrats on such issues as immigration and campaign-finance reform. “Obama pays no price from his party — never has,” Salter told me. “My guy has made a career out of it. So, how can you get people to believe that if you can’t get the press to make an honest assessment of it?

Reading that, I think, you might be tempted to cede the point. McCain has taken considerable heat for standing up to his own party — on campaign finance reform, immigration, and tax cuts during time of war, for example.

What Draper doesn’t say is that part of the reason the press didn’t “make an honest assessment,” as he puts it, is precisely because, as a presidential candidate, McCain has embraced his party on so many of the issues where he once stood apart. He once favored immigration reform; now he wants to build a wall along the Texas border first. (I can’t imagine John McCain 2000 advocating that the solution to the problem of illegal immigration begins with the U.S. spending millions to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans.) He once decried tax cuts in war time as irresponsible, he now wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. The man who supposedly stood up to his party on global warming picks a running mate who is completely in bed with the oil and gas industries, and doesn’t believe global warming is caused by humans.

McCain advisor Mark Salter misses the forest for the trees here. McCain made a career of bucking his party, yes, but he then abandoned the most significant of those stances as a presidential candidate. To the degree that the media has held McCain accountable (see, for example, The Daily Show), it has in fact been making a brutally honest assessment.

Obama may not have made a career of bucking his own party, but neither did he embrace its most radical elements the minute he launched his presidential bid. (You could argue he did the opposite. See, for example, his embrace of immunity for telecommunications companies, and his support of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down DC’s ban on handguns.)

There’s a terrific anecdote, toward the end of Draper’s piece, intended, I think, to explain why McCain feels animosity toward Obama:

Authenticity means everything to a man like McCain who, says Salter, “has an affinity for heroes, for men of honor.” Conversely, he reserves special contempt for those he regards as arrogant phonies. A year after Barack Obama was sworn into the Senate, Salter recalls McCain saying, “He’s got a future, I’ll reach out to him” — as McCain had to Russ Feingold and John Edwards, and as the liberal Arizona congressman Mo Udall had reached out to McCain as a freshman. McCain invited Obama to attend a bipartisan meeting on ethics reform. Obama gratefully accepted —but then wrote McCain a letter urging him to instead follow a legislative path recommended by Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate. Feeling double-crossed, McCain ordered Salter to “send him a letter, brush him back a little.” Since that experience, says a Republican who has known McCain for a long time, “there was certainly disdain and dislike of Obama.”

Leave aside, for the moment, the fact that McCain is running one of the least “authentic” campaigns I can remember. (The man who was sunk by nefarious robocalls in 2000 is now sending them out in waves; the guy who said, before tens of millions, that he doesn’t care about a “washed up terrorist” has made that terrorist the center of his campaign.) When you read this paragraph, you feel some measure of understanding — even empathy – toward McCain. He reached out, and was spurned by the cocky newcomer.

That is, until you take a step back and think about it. Who knows why Obama adopted Harry Reid’s approach. Maybe — horror of horrors — the young cocky senator wanted to show some respect to the leadership in his own party, first. Maybe he legitimately liked Reid’s approach better, and his letter back to McCain was a principled stand. There’s a lot left out here.

But one point is clear. Even if you felt spurned, there are a number of ways you could respond. You could, for example — if you wanted to give the benefit of the doubt — take the high road, and leave the invitation open for the future. In the spirit of bipartisanship, you could chose to look beyond the petty and the personal, and decide not to hold a grudge.

McCain, though, felt double-crossed, and he made a different choice. He took it personally: me vs. him. Note the military, tactical overtones in his response: “Send him a letter, brush him back a little.”

Would Lincoln have responded that way? Would Truman, or Kennedy, or Reagan?

I am reminded of an anecdote in Doris Kearns Goodwins’ history, “Team of Rivals.” In it, she recounts how Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois lawyer, was retained on a patent-infringement case in Chicago. The case was moved to Cincinnati, though, and the defense retained Edwin Stanton instead – without bothering to tell Lincoln.

“When [Lincoln] arrived in Cincinnati after careful preparation,” notes the NY Times review of the book:

Stanton and his colleagues ignored him; Stanton was even heard to speak contemptuously of Lincoln as a backwoods bumpkin. Lincoln was hurt by the snub but stayed to watch the trial and was impressed by Stanton’s courtroom brilliance. Six years later Stanton, a Democrat, was practicing in Washington during the [civil] war’s first year and referred disdainfully to Lincoln in conversations with friends. Lincoln was aware of Stanton’s opinions, but when he decided to get rid of the incompetent Cameron, who had made a hash of military mobilization, he appointed none other than Stanton as secretary of war.

Stanton soon justified the appointment. He worked 15-hour days at his stand-up desk and proved to be one of the best war secretaries the country has ever had. 

Point is, Draper’s anecdote wants to suggest that McCain has valid reasons for feeling and acting disdainful toward Obama.

In fact, it highlights — in just a few, short sentences — why John McCain is thoroughly ill-suited to serve as commander in chief.

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Posted in McCain, Media, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

The Incredible Sunday Roundup

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

Reading the expanisve opinion roundup in Sunday’s New York Times gives you the distinct impression that John McCain’s campaign is cooked. No one is coming right out and saying it. But neither do you have to read between the lines. The tone of the verdict is impossible to miss.

Here’s Conservative McCain supporter David Brooks:

Some of us hoped McCain would take sides in the debate now dividing the G.O.P. Some Republicans believe the G.O.P. went astray by abandoning its tax-cutting, anti-government principles. They want a return to Reagan (or at least the Reagan of their imaginations). But others want to modernize and widen the party and adapt it to new challenges. Some of us hoped that by reforming his party, which has grown so unpopular, McCain could prove that he could reform the country.

But McCain never took sides in this debate and never articulated a governing philosophy, Hamiltonian or any other. In Sunday’s issue of The Times Magazine, Robert Draper describes the shifts in tactics that consumed the McCain campaign. The tactics varied promiscuously, but they were all about how to present McCain, not about how to describe the state of country or the needs of the voter. It was all biography, which was necessary, but it did not clearly point to a new direction for the party or the country …

McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straitjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times. And that’s what makes the final weeks of this campaign so unspeakably sad.

Here’s moderate Nicholas Kristof, writing about al-Qaeda’s official endorsement of John McCain:

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated …

The core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.

Frank Rich, never one to celebrate early, writes:

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

Timoth Egan notes:

Republicans have been insinuating for years now that some of the brightest, most productive communities in the United States are fake American — a tactic that dates to Newt Gingrich’s reign in the capitol.

Brainy cities have low divorce rates, low crime, high job creation, ethnic diversity and creative capitalism. They’re places like Pittsburgh, with its top-notch universities; Albuquerque, with its surging Latino middle class; and Denver, with its outdoor-loving young people. They grow good people in the smart cities.

But in the politically suicidal greenhouse that Republicans have constructed for themselves, these cities are not welcome. They are disparaged as nests of latte-sipping weenies, alt-lifestyle types and “other” Americans, somehow inauthentic.

If that’s what Republicans want, they are doomed to be the party of yesterday …

Spurning the Reagan lesson, John McCain made a fatal error in turning his campaign over to the audience of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In so doing, he chose the unbearable lightness of being Sarah Palin, trotted out Paris Hilton and labeled Obama a socialist who associates with terrorists.

Not to be left out, Marueen Dowd piles on:

With the economy cratering and the McCain campaign running on an “average Joe” theme, dunderheaded aides, led by the former Bushies Nicolle Wallace and Tracey Schmitt, costumed their Eliza Doolittle for a ball when she should have been dressing for a bailout.

The Republicans’ attempt to make the case that Barack Obama is hoity-toity and they’re hoi polloi has fallen under the sheer weight of the stunning numbers:

The McCains own 13 cars, eight homes and access to a corporate jet, and Cindy had her Marie Antoinette moment at the convention. Vanity Fair calculated that her outfit cost $300,000, with three-carat diamond earrings worth $280,000, an Oscar de la Renta dress valued at $3,000, a Chanel white ceramic watch clocking in at $4,500 and a four-strand pearl necklace worth between $11,000 and $25,000. While presenting herself as an I’m-just-like-you hockey mom frugal enough to put the Alaska state plane up for sale on eBay, Palin made her big speech at the convention wearing a $2,500 cream silk Valentino jacket that the McCain staff had gotten her at Saks.

Nobel Economics Luareate Paul Krugman adds:

Mr. McCain seems spectacularly unable to talk about economics as if it matters. He has attempted to pin the blame for the crisis on his pet grievance, Congressional budget earmarks — which leaves economists scratching their heads in puzzlement. In the immediate aftermath of the Lehman failure, he declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” seemingly unaware that he was closely echoing what Herbert Hoover said after the 1929 crash.

But I suspect that the main reason for the dramatic swing in the polls is something less concrete and more meta than the fact that events have discredited free-market fundamentalism. As the economic scene has darkened, I’d argue, Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness. And this has worked to Mr. Obama’s advantage, because his opponent has run a deeply unserious campaign.

These columnits are all serious, sober people from across the political spectrum, not prone to the kind of hyperbole for the sake of ratings we’re used to seeing on CNN. As I say, none of them even came right out and so much as predicted an Obama win.

Rich, for example, in closing, would only go so far as to say, “this seems to be the election year” when voters are rejecting divisive, Rovian, GOP politics.

Krugman opened with: “Maybe the polls and the conventional wisdom are all wrong, and John McCain will pull off a stunning upset.”

Brooks leaves open the possibility of a McCain win, noting that he “would be an outstanding president.”

But, I have to say, reading these columns one after the other, shot-gun style, stacked four to a page and separated by artist-rendered bunting — it had the feel of a post-mortem, nine days early.

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