The Filter: Sept. 23, 2008

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THE DEATH OF POLICY
(Michael Gerson, via Politico Playbook)
[I]t is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt's more timid, forgotten foils, ‘Martin, Barton and Fish.’ Having last week criticized the role of the Federal Reserve in bailouts -- demonstrating a tin ear of elephantine proportions -- McCain now calls for a bipartisan oversight board to review the government's rescue attempt. Mankind perishes. The world grows dark. McCain calls for a review board. Obama has been no better, responding with his usual mix of caution and blame. … The 2008 presidential campaign has become notable for its vacuity … It did not begin this way. Early in the campaign, McCain talked about his un-Republican environmental views and undertook a national poverty tour that brought him to places such as Gee's Bend, Ala., and Inez, Ky. Obama endorsed the outlines of Bush's faith-based agenda and stated in a Father's Day speech at an African-American church: "We need (fathers) to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- it's the courage to raise one." But those sparks of originality and outreach have been doused.

OBAMA'S OPENING
(John Heilemann, New York)
The financial crisis is almost certainly not over, and its fallout will be with us for years to come. But the story line of the campaign is about to pivot to foreign policy and national security. Why? Because those are the topics on the agenda at the first Obama-McCain debate this coming Friday at Ole Miss. A lucky break for McCain, I hear you saying, a chance to move the debate to ground that favors him. And you may be right... Whatever happens, Obama will be in no position to complain, for the impending alteration in the substantive terrain was of his own making. Last November, the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates decreed that the first of this year’s three nationally televised mano-a-manos... would be on domestic policy. But when the Obama and McCain high commands hammered out the details this summer, the Obama campaign plumped for switching the topics of the first and third debates... Given McCain’s perceived advantage on national security, the most obvious interpretation of the Obama team’s motives was a desire to get past their toughest challenge first, play for a tie, and then move on to progressively firmer soil. But from what I can glean from people in Obama’s orbit, this was not their thinking. “Obama is really confident on foreign policy, doesn’t see it as a weakness at all,” says one friend of his. “He wants this debate, and thinks he can win it big.”

A SCRAPPY FIGHTER, MCCAIN HONED HIS DEBATING STYLE IN AND OUT OF POLITICS
(Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times)
Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, heads into the first debate on Friday with a track record as a scrappy combatant and the instincts of a fighter pilot, prepared to take out his opponent and willing to take risks to do so.  He has used fairly consistent techniques during his roughly 30 debates on the national stage: he is an aggressive competitor who scolds his opponents, grins when he scores and is handy with the rhetorical shiv. Just ask Mitt Romney, whom Mr. McCain filleted on several occasions in debates during the primaries, perhaps most infuriatingly for Mr. Romney when Mr. McCain misleadingly asserted that Mr. Romney favored a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. A review of several of Mr. McCain’s debates shows that he is most comfortable and authentic when the subject is foreign policy. And in a stroke of good fortune, foreign policy is the topic for Friday, the first of three 90-minute debates with Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee. Voters give higher marks to Mr. McCain as a potential commander in chief, and Mr. Obama should expect Mr. McCain to question his credentials for the job at every turn — and to distort his views, as Mr. Romney insisted he did. Mr. McCain is likely to steer the conversation, as he has in past debates, to his captivity in Vietnam. It was the bedrock experience of his life and is the organizing principle of his political identity.

PRISONER OF WAR
(Rob Draper, GQ)
Though the election in November may ultimately turn on the economy or voters’ doubts about Obama, John McCain and his campaign have expended considerable effort in encouraging voters to see McCain as the Warrior Who Got Things Right—the candidate who understood the realities on the ground in Iraq and had the guts to describe them as they were. And indeed, in revisiting McCain’s trips to the country, a portrait emerges of an intellectually curious, incisive, energetic, and courageous politician whose leadership style would depart significantly from that of the highly unpopular George W. Bush. But McCain’s Iraq narrative also reveals less flattering traits. If it’s fair to credit McCain with sounding the alarm about Iraq’s security crisis and the need for more troops, it’s equally legitimate to question why he relentlessly agitated for war with so little thought given to the postwar challenges. It’s also worthwhile to wonder why he paid so little heed to respected Senate colleagues like fellow Republican Chuck Hagel and Democrats Jack Reed and Joe Biden... Senators on both sides of the aisle had for months been saying precisely what McCain apparently heard for the first time from the British lieutenant colonel in Basra. Why hadn’t he listened to them? The answer seems to be that for better or for worse, the prideful nature of the man is such that McCain trusts no one’s experience as much as his own.

MCCAIN'S QUEEN OF HEARTS INTERVENTION
(George Will, Washington Post)
Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either. It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

THE ESTABLISHMENT LIVES!
(David Brooks, New York Times)
Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders. Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks... The government will be much more active in economic management (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Democrat). Government activism will provide support to corporations, banks and business and will be used to shore up the stable conditions they need to thrive (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Republican). Tax revenues from business activities will pay for progressive but business-friendly causes — investments in green technology, health care reform, infrastructure spending, education reform and scientific research. If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor. After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next.

A NEW LANDSCAPE, THE SAME PROPOSALS
(Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain indicated they will not stand in the way of the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue of U.S. financial markets, and each offered his own proposals for making it more palatable to voters: Obama laid out a plan to overhaul federal contracting and save an estimated $40 billion a year, while McCain proposed an oversight board to monitor the bailout. But advisers in both campaigns said they are not about to shelve their own plans to get the economy back on track -- or embrace more aggressive budget-cutting measures -- in the face of a short-term surge in the federal deficit. Given the drama on Wall Street, economists of all economic stripes say the candidates' reluctance to adjust to the new landscape, as well as their focus on such peripheral issues as lobbying ties to mortgage giant Fannie Mae, are turning the campaigns into a sideshow. The sheer size of the bailout could give the next president political cover to address long-festering fiscal problems, such as the burgeoning costs of Medicare and Medicaid, yet neither of the men vying for the job has shown an interest in taking advantage of it, they say.

CANDIDATES KEEP THEIR BAILOUT STANCES TO THEMSELVES
(Laura Meckler, Elizabeth Holmes and Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal)
Presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain are carefully calibrating the rapidly changing politics -- and policies -- of the mammoth Treasury bailout plan, embracing the general concept but weighing in with a list of criticisms and demands for change.In an unusual twist in a presidential campaign, both the Democratic and Republican nominees are sitting senators and likely will be forced to take a firm stance six weeks before Election Day on legislation that could become one of the most significant issues for voters. Both have left their options open about whether they would support or oppose the $700 billion bailout if and when it reaches the Senate floor. Either choice involves political risk. Opposing the plan could look irresponsible in the face of financial meltdown. But supporting a bailout for Wall Street firms while voters are suffering their own economic hardships could be hazardous, too.

IS OBAMA ANOTHER DUKAKIS?
(Christopher Hitchens, Slate)
Why is Obama so vapid and hesitant and gutless? Why, to put it another way, does he risk going into political history as a dusky Dukakis? Well, after the self-imposed Jeremiah Wright nightmare, he can't afford any more militancy, or militant-sounding stuff, even if it might be justified. His other problems are self-inflicted or party-inflicted as well. He couldn't have picked a gifted Democratic woman as his running mate, because he couldn't have chosen a female who wasn't the ever-present Sen. Clinton, and so he handed the free gift of doing so to his Republican opponent (whose own choice has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas). So the unquantifiable yet important "atmospherics" of politics, with all their little X factors, belong at present to the other team... What I suspect in his case is that he had no idea of winning this time around. He was running in Iowa and New Hampshire to seed the ground for 2012, not 2008, and then the enthusiasm of his supporters (and the weird coincidence of a strong John Edwards showing in Iowa) put him at the front of the pack. Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it. Look at the record, and at Obama's replies to essential and pressing questions. The surge in Iraq? I'll answer that only if you insist. The credit crunch? Please may I be photographed with Bill Clinton's economic team? Georgia? After you, please, Sen. McCain.

PALIN SKIPS FUNDRAISERS; FOCUSES ON PREP, CROWDS
(Jonathan Martin, Politico)
The McCain campaign is scrapping, rescheduling or offering surrogates for nearly every one of the fundraisers Sarah Palin was to hold this month, instead having her campaign jointly with McCain, prepare for her sole debate next month and get some foreign policy exposure. According to an internal fundraising calendar put together in late-August just before McCain’s vice presidential selection, Palin was to have headlined nine fundraisers across five states by now. She’s attended just one to date... Indeed, the tearing up of the planned schedule for the then-unknown number two is yet another reminder of the outsized role Palin is playing in the race and what an untraditional vice presidential candidate she is. Most running mates are designated attack dogs, dispatched to toss out hunks of red meat in B-markets and squeeze in fundraising receptions as often as possible. The idea is to divide and conquer, ensuring local coverage in separate media markets each day. And that was originally the plan for Palin as late as the week of the GOP convention, according to McCain aides.  But almost immediately after St. Paul, it became clear to the campaign that she was essential to the Republican ticket’s buzz quotient and thus needed at McCain’s side to ensure large crowds and enthusiasm for the GOP ticket.

THE BATTLE FOR VOTES IN PENNSYLVANIA'S CLINTON COUNTRY
(Walter Shapiro, Salon)
Murray, like other voters I interviewed in Scranton, remains surprisingly hazy about Obama: "I haven't heard much about him." But even if Murray cannot get a handle on the Democratic nominee, he has absorbed some of the candidate's underlying message. "There definitely have to be some changes made in Washington," Murray said, sounding like the man in the street in an Obama TV commercial. Despite his GOP registration, Murray may make that leap of faith. His last words, delivered from on high to the Obama canvasser, were: "It may sound like I'm leaning more toward McCain. But that isn't the case." Lackawanna County (Scranton) and neighboring Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) are traditionally blue-collar Democratic areas where the party's margin has narrowed in recent presidential elections. (Bill Clinton's margin in the two counties was 36,000 votes in 1996; it was 32,000 votes for Al Gore in 2000; and it slipped to less than 20,000 for John Kerry last time out.) Small wonder that Monday morning John McCain will be participating in an Irish-American forum and holding a town meeting here in Joe Biden's birthplace. As Terry Madonna, a pollster and political historian at Franklin and Marshall College, put it, "If the Republicans take 3 points from the Democrats in northeastern Pennsylvania and 3 points in the southwest, it gets very, very close here in Pennsylvania." A weekend in Scranton (more appealing than its inclusion on Forbes magazine's recent list of "America's Fastest-Dying Cities" might suggest) provides anecdotal evidence that voters have yet to fully grasp the implications of the incredible shrinking financial sector.