Jeffrey Goldberg writes that he is “agnostic” about whether the Palestinians must acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. He needs three hands to set forth his views: (1) “on the one hand, it seems to be an unnecessary and provocative demand;” (2) but “on the other hand … it would be emotionally satisfying” if the Palestinians acknowledged Jewish ties to the Land; (3) but “on the other other hand, the success of a peace treaty will not hinge on … whether Palestinians acknowledge [a Jewish state] on paper” but on “more practical, concrete, and internationally-safeguarded guarantees.”
If adjectives were analysis, the issue would be clear: between (a) an “emotionally satisfying” paper acknowledgment and (b) “practical, concrete, and internationally-safeguarded guarantees,” one would presumably prefer the latter – at least until one reflected on the meaning of “safeguarded guarantees” (which apparently are “guaranteed guarantees” from that famously reliable guarantor, the international community).
The flurry of adjectives in Goldberg’s post obscures the issue, which is not emotional satisfaction for Israelis but a requirement that Palestinians explain why, exactly, the demand for recognition of a Jewish state is “provocative.” Netanyahu articulated the issue last month while visiting Sderot (and returned to the subject of a Jewish state in extended remarks to the cabinet yesterday):
When the Palestinians refuse to say something so simple, the question is – why? You want to flood the State of Israel about refugees so that it will no longer have a Jewish majority? You want to tear off parts of the Galilee and the Negev into mini-states? In a peace agreement, there will be simplest symmetry: Israel recognizes the Palestinian state – and the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state. This is so simple.
Guaranteed guarantees may be emotionally satisfying to peace processors, but peace will not occur until the Palestinians and their Arab supporters are ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish state within defensible borders.
One possible plus in unvailing new plans a day late (after Obama campaign has beat him to the punch): at least then he merely looks reactive, rather than full-on gimmicky/stunt-y.
At the stage in the game, conventionally reactive may be the most he can hope for…
Makes you long for the days when old Bob Dole was tottering toward the finish line.
Well, this is what happens when you want to be liked by both sides. McCain wants to be both liberal and conservative, yet he doesn’t know how to be both.
He still has fight in him, but boy if he doesn’t fight on Wednesday it is over for him.
Kinda figures doesn’t it. He could handle the mind#@%$^ in the Hilton but not the one from the MSM? Hmm. Well, they were the one who “won” the Vietnam War so I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.
Is it the McCain campaign that’s acting “neurotic,” or the bloggers and pundits seizing on whatever news item they can find looking for an excuse to wail and gnash their teeth? We’ll see how the message develops – or not – it could be just as bad as the Commentariat thinks, or it could be that there’s a bit of unjustified credulousness hereabouts regarding the NYT and THE POLITICO’s reporting. Were either or both Mr Greenwald and Ms Rubin on the conference call that Ambinder references in his item on this subject – linked in the thread at Ms Rubin’s original post?
I believe it is the pundit class who are showing signs of stress and neurosis. The economic woes are massive and complicated and the best minds in the world are having trouble coming to grips with it, though it appears they are now making some positive progress. You seem to think it is simply a matter of campaign finesse, with a lack of it being displayed, to come up with simple sound bite solutions to enormously complicated and to some extent uncharted credit-related problems. Take a deep breath. Give the guy a chance to pull together a plan that’s got some good thinking behind it. I’ve been watching a lot of CNBC lately with a lot of real smart folks talking about all this, and to be honest, they – the supposed experts – are all over the place. Some consensus but not much and it’s subject to change every half hour. It’s not an easy problem and it doesn’t have easy or immediate solutions. Obama seems totally clueless which is sort of what one we have come to expect from him. McCain is going through a process to come up with realistic proposals. We voters will give him a chance to do that. If it takes another day, and another day, so be it. I do hope he has something ready by the next debate. In fact I’d rather McCain’s plan be laid out during the morning and afternoon of debate day giving Obama less time to absorb and counter.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket will win on election Day—in spite of McCain’s politically correct idiocy. The jump in the stock market helps, but also the middle of the road voters are learning more about Barack Obama’s far left-wing history. Also, the ACORN scandal is blowing the minds of many Americans.
McCain’s economic plan http://www.johnmccain.com/downloads/jobsforamerica.pdf
is excellent. It has been enthusiastically endorsed, for damn good reason, by maybe 300 economists, http://www.economistsformccain.com/McCainStatement.html#Signatories
Also, at least 400 economists have signed a position pointing out that Obama’s policies are likely to lead to another great depression. http://www.economistsformccain.com/ObamaStatement.html#Signatories
Considering also that we are largely talking about Academics here, faculties notoriously being almost entirely liberal, and not only that that Obama seems overwhelmingly likely to win (and such economists might like plums in an Obama administration) this seems truly remarkable.
Abe, you have got to be kidding!
Timing:
Why would it be beneficial to announce your economic plan prior to your competition? Obama’s giveaway was pronounced today; McCain will announce his tomorrow. This gives him the advantage of comparing and contrasting his program with what Obama has already announced.
Economists Rule?:
The economists have not been nominated for president, McCain has. Rather than being “spooked” he has the courage of his conviction to flush the herd of economists’ recommendations. I say, Bully.
Channeling Kristol?:
I don’t agree with Jen’s, your’s, or Kristol’s hyperventilated conclusions. The simple and salient point: there are 22 days remaining in this campaign. There will be plenty of time for insightful post postmortems after the election.
Lastly, since when did we start accepting NY Times as a balanced news outlet?
Maybe the sheer number of trolls here are a counter-indicator. Why aren’t they cheerleading over at the Daily Kos if everything is so great for them?
Why isn’t this just media manipulation which wants to demoralize our side?
How many Republicans are so fed up that they are going to stay home?
On a day when there is video out showing Obama talking to a plumber in Ohio sounding exactly like Karl Marx, you would think there would be better things to blog about.
#8′s comment conveys the sense of parallel worlds in this campaign and its coverage.
If McCain doesn’t have an economic plan, what the hell is it that 533 economists, including six from Harvard, endorsed?
Maybe what McCain is saying is, “I already have an economic plan, for better or for worse. If I come up with a new one now, what am I saying about the one I considered good enough to share with Gary Becker? If the new one varies from the old one, they’ll say I’m a flip-flopper. If the new one is the same as the old one, I’ll be a joke. Let’s just talk about the one I’ve got right here. And let’s talk about the very stupid ideas Obama is offering, like trade barriers and raising taxes in a recession.”
You all might be buying into pre-post-mortems of McCain’s lousy campaign team.
To me, this candidate’s only chance is to be steady, plain-spoken and harsh on the Democrats’ ideas for the next three weeks. Ayers plays into it only insofar as the Annenberg Challenge and Woods Foundation can be attacked as examples of Obama’s leadership and philosophy. Don’t try to lose gracefully; try to win with integrity. Don’t be angry, but be resolute and uncompromising.
As of now, McCain does not have my vote because he looks very shaky. He could get it, though, but not by trying to entice me with a new plan, but by acting like a confident candidate for president.
That McCain can’t decide which of the 30 options his advisers offered him for a new economic policy tells you how mindboggling incompetent an executive he is. 30 options? This is how his campaign thinks about economic policy?
Every few days McCain offers up another solution to our economic woes that is unconnected to anything he previously offered. One day the economy is doing fine, another day we’re in crisis. Don’t like McCain’s economic policy? Wait 48 hours and see what he pulls out of his hat.
We could well be on the cusp of another Great Depression and McCain has yet to say anything that is evidence of real leadership on his part. He can’t even say something that shows he’s taking the problem seriously.
But then McCain’s been on the public payroll since 1958 and to the extent he’s ever needed money for big-ticket purchases, he has Cindy open her checkbook. The man’s never done anything where he had to worry about his next paycheck. Or about his 401(k). Or about affording medical care.
Let’s face it. Deep-down, McCain is indifferent to economic policy and the sort of financial concerns that matter to average Americans.
If Dukakis and Kerry are the Democratic examples for how not to run a presidential campaign, McCain is the Republican example. Total incompetence from start to finish. He deserves to lose.
One positive sign: I just saw Obama running ads in New Mexico touting his own character. McCain’s Ayers attacks must be working, or else Obama wouldn’t bother.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyvqhdllXgU but dim
CK MacLeod,
You are correct that none of us know what McCain is going to say next about the economy. And therein lies the problem. Since the crisis hit, McCain has had numerous reactions: fundamentally sound, suspend campaign, maybe I can’t debate, fire Chris Cox, hire Andrew Cuomo, vote for a porked-up Paulson Plan, propose mortgage buyout idea, suggest Meg Whitman for Treasury Secretary, propose emergengy withdrawals from retirement accounts, and now, well, who knows or cares?
The market is sorting out the crisis. Paulson seems to have learned a bit from what the Brits did, and it looks like he has finally decided to do with his $700 billion. Tomorrow is probably Paulson Day.
Anything McCain says tomorrow is almost certain to be too little and too late and overshadowed by Paulson.
The McCain version 2.0 reboot is a very smart strategy. I think that there are a lot of parallels in the polling to the election in 2000 which saw Gore gaining a very large lead in October. After the election pundits and commentators suggested that Gore was not passionate enough about what he believed in (in Gore’s case, environmentalism). For better or for worse this election in McCain’s eyes is a crusade against earmarks and he needs to embrace his passion. McCain and Palin should take a page out of GWH Bush’s dramatic boat ride through Boston Harbor in 88 and they should go on a dramatic “Earmark Tour” across the country, focusing on the largess and waste of earmark spending.
Well, Inagua, we’re dealing on several different levels at the same time. My comments on this thread were directed not at what McCain policy is, has been, or should be, or how it should be made and communicated even, but at what I find to be peculiar readings by Ms Rubin and Mr Greenwald of, or, possibly, imposed upon reports on the McCain campaign’s policy meeting or meetings. I pointed to one report that appears to contradict the ones that Rubin and Greenwald are relying upon and getting so agitated about. I don’t know whose conclusions are more accurate, and I’m not at all convinced by what I’ve read on this blog that I should care.
Some of the GOP punditocracy are urging McCain to “take the gloves off” while others claim that he’s gone too negative and is turning off undecided voters. Some want him to roll out more specific policies while others fear that this would appear “gimmicky”. Some want the guilt by association argument to focus on Obama’s Washington connections (Raines, Johnson, Pelosi, Reid) while others want McCain to strike harder on his Chicago connections.
Bill Kristol wants a return to the freewheeling McCain while others say his messaging isn’t disciplined enough.
A trailing campaign inevitably gives birth to thousands of arm chair strategists. I’m not convinced any of them would handle this dreadful political environment better than Steve Schmidt.
I do think that we Conservatives need to stop panicking. There’s nothing we can do to help the Good Senator. After much to-ing and fro-ing of my own trying to second guess McCain I’ve come to the conclusion that we shouldn’t help feed this negative loop. Real or not. It serves no purpose. There will be all the time in the world for a good comination of flagellation (to other and self) and castigation following defeat, should that befall us.
I also think it’s a mistake to take a gloom and doom view of McCain’s chance of pulling this out. The circumstances surrounding this election are unlike any other of recent memory. The polling may be very accurate, but November 4th isn’t tomorrow. And speaking of gloom and doom, it would help the Good Senator to sound a note of confidence and resilience to all within the sound of his voice.
The trolls instead of being happy are as rabid as a racoon at high noon. And that’s because for all of Obama’s luck, it could turn a dime. Obama’s opague thang is not a joke and because there’s been so very liitle substance relative to his plans for the Country’s future, this crisis has been a boon for him in that it’s taken the spotlight off of him while we all wait for the other shoe to drop. Today was a great day.
Dick Morris made a couple of good points, the first being that Obama may have peaked too soon and the second being that now that McCain “has lost” the focus is going to be more on Obama than it has been up until now. And even without McCain’s “loss” that close scrutiny eventually has to happen. People have been putting it off because there’s too much there to have to cull, consider and assess. His plans are the Nebula.
Lastly, I don’t know how much, if any, of a silent minority is out there who are answering no polls, who are not very political at all, and who see the subhuman nature of Palin’s haters and will make it to the polls just for that reason.
We can’t give up and we can’t be maudlin during these next couple of weeks. You can’t win if 2.5 weeks before the election if everyone’s pretty much thrown in the towel.
And even after the election, let’s no open up a vein and give our opponents a reason to smile. The opponents’ reps, as they portray themselves here, will not smile of their own accord. They are here to see Conservatives become the Donner Party.
Just remember what Miss Pross said to Madame DuFarge as they wrangled for the blunderbuss: “I am an Englishwoman!” And so we all are!
Please pardon the errors in my comment. Wish I could edit!
This is how McCain can fight Obama coming from the horses mouth. Redistribution of wealth.
Plumber to Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more. Isn’t it?”
Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
From the optimistic Larry Kudlow:
Scrutiny time, my friends. Time for Senator McCain to comprehend the temperate zone! Steady on, like the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
By the way, if my biography of Christopher Columbus is accurate, money had to be borrowed to bury him. Can you believe that?
Christopher and John: tenere duro, padri!
I saw a good point – I think on the Corner – that Obama does not want equal opportunity for all, he wants equal result i.e. he does not think it is fair that you and I have the opportunity to go to law school, rather, fairness to him is only when both of us are lawyers making the same amount of money. Thus he equates the wall street trader with the secretary.
Thus in Obama’s world we all must make what the lowest earner makes or else we are not being fair. He will tax us until the secretary’s salary matches the lawyer’s takehome salary after taxes. Its not about revenue, its about everyone having the same amount of money at the end of the day. In short, he is Messiah Hood. Steal from us all until we are as poor as the poorest of the poor – afterall that is what is fair.
He simply does not understand (or worse, does not care) that businesses cannot hire secretaries if they have no money to do so because it has all been taken away by the government.
We are in for some tough economic times under Emperor Caesar Obama. Rather than to God what is his and to Caesar what is Caesar’s it will be to the government what is yours, and to the secretary what is yours.
Republicans should be focused on saving the incumbent senators who are in tough fights. McCain is a lost cause. He seems to have no control over his campaign. How will he control the entire govt? Start preparing for 2012 (and 2012). That’s the best hope.
Shoulda distanced yourselves from McCain earlier.. but better late then never.
Mary,
Dick Morris is an absolute tool and clear moron. But I respect your own opinions as your own.
Hi Hank -
Don’t be daft.
Dick Morris is wrong on a lot of things. But he’s not an absolute tool or a moron.
It ain’t over baby, but I encourage and applaud your confidence. It’s good to be confident.
Best, you hear?
A second report that appears to confirm Ambinder, and appears to contradict the NYT as re-constructed by Greenwald and THE POLITICO as interpreted by Rubin:
http://thepage.time.com/2008/10/13/press-reset-if-campaign-freezes-and-seems-brokenpart-ii/
And as I re-read the top post, I really have to wonder what motivated it. Greenwald simply assumes that the economic proposals supposedly rejected weren’t too gimmicky, and, further, that rejecting them can only mean that the campaign is “spooked.” What does Obama’s adoption of $3,000 per job 1-year business tax credit proposal look like to him? A courageous gimmick? Looks to me like recognition that the criticism of his tax rate hikes has been sensible, and given McCain an as yet unanswered argument (one that polls show people understand and agree with). As for the Wall St-friendly proposals for McCain that were being bandied about on Sunday, they might have looked particularly gimmicky in the face of the historic snapback rally today.
My request would be for more thinking and reporting, less second-guessing and panicking.
You’ve got to give CNN’s Drew Griffin a lot of credit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRhrT22BsIY
Hey Mary, to be fair, we also should give Michelle Malkin lots of credit for reporting today on John McCain’s own links to ACORN
.
Here’s here’s the story:
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/13/sigh-mccain-and-his-friends-atacorn/
And here’s Marc Ambinder reporting on same (including video of McCain speaking in 2006 at ACORN co-sponsored event!):
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/a_lifetime_ago_sen_john.php
Cheers.
“John McCain’s own links to ACORN”
Hogb McCain is politically correct. He perceived ACORN as an unbiased organization—and essentially knows little about its radical ideology. Barack Obama was once one its leaders. He knows dams well what they truly represent! Never forget that the “Messiah” is something of a disciple of Saul Alinsky.
Now, David, if ACORN is so scary and radical and mysterious, why have McCain and President Bush and House Republicans backed billions in spending for projects contracting with ACORN to provide housing for Katrina refugees?
As Ambinder notes, identical partisan accusations of ACORN have been made at least since 2004 (like the most recent charges, all relating to alleged REGISTRATION irregularities, rather than even a single alleged instance of VOTING misconduct — but, hey, you throw the mud you got, right?) — so ignorance sure is no excuse come Katrina time and during McCain’s subsequent dealings with them.
SO, WHO IS THE REAL JOHN MCCAIN? Cue ominous music.
Hahahaha.
Where is the guy who kept making the analogy of McCain as the vet ace fighter pilot putting Obama in his sights?
That sh#t was hilarious.
“Now, David, if ACORN is so scary and radical and mysterious, why have McCain and President Bush and House Republicans backed billions in spending for projects contracting with ACORN to provide housing for Katrina refugees?”
These Republicans are terrified of being charged with racism. Political correctness underpins their decision making. It’s as simple as that.
I agree with CK MacLeod:
You are a jittery sort, Mr. Greenwald, often jumping to unfounded conclusions merely, it seems, because those conclusions suit or soothe your preexisting biases, or–worse yet–preexisting fears. That you would proceed to do so on a report from the NYT is beyond belief, and beyond my understanding (you seem to suffer from the journalistic equivalent of battered wife syndrome–as does Ms. Rubin). I surely would not want you in my company assigned to cover my flank during battle. Try having your panic attacks in private. It would at the least be more seemly.
#5 CK MacLeod. Is it the McCain campaign that’s acting “neurotic,” or the bloggers and pundits seizing on whatever news item they can find looking for an excuse to wail and gnash their teeth?
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…” (If, by Kipling)
McCain, alone among modern politicians, has consistently reminded me of these and other lines of that poem.
If McCain does not employ this or that stratagem that his
well-wishers insist upon, his reasons may be valid or invalid,
smart or stupid; but neurotic funk is not one of them.
… Leaving psychoanalysis aside:
As I heard McCain’s Virginia speech, it had most of the needed
elements to become his staple from now to November: it had
substance; specifics; an “I feel your pain” populist appeal;
rousing patriotic rhetoric; full realization of the gravity
of the country’s problems (and his own, too); the impression
of a coherent plan for action, and of his personal certainty of success.
It had everything important except the unmasking of Obama,
which would not mix well with the rest of it, and might best
be left to ads and to proxies.
It appears that he may have found the right tone and the right
sequence of keys to play. If this line does not succeed, then
maybe nothing else would.
The basic fact remains: If McCain doesn’t go after Obama’s leftism/questionable associations in the last debate, he’s done.