Early in the debate, Obama asked rhetorically: “The question, I think, that we have to ask ourselves is, how did we get into this situation in the first place?” Instead of talking abstractly about greed, McCain might have said: “Senator Obama wants to know how the trouble started. He might ask his close adviser Jim Johnson, who headed Fannie Mae and got an exorbitant pay package.”

Obama promised that we would deliver a tax cut to 95 percent of Americans. McCain could have said: “Senator Obama has made a lot of promises. In 2005, he promised that he wouldn’t run for president. In 2007, he promised that he would work aggressively to ensure public financing of the presidential campaign. In 2008, he promised to fire any staffer who attacked Governor Palin’s family. He broke all those promises. And now he promises to cut your taxes. Right.”

The basic problem is that the financial sector faces systemic risk in a way that no other industry does: By its nature, it is a house of cards that can collapse at a moment’s notice. . . .

First, the vast bulk of the nation’s money supply is in the form of bank deposits, not currency and coin. No bank on earth could pay even a fraction of its depositors if they all demanded all their funds in cash immediately. This is called a run on the bank (and is very familiar to anyone who has ever watched "It’s a Wonderful Life"). . . .

P.S. One question: If Bartlett is correct, does that mean that financial institutions ought to be regulated more heavily than other sectors? (And do we, therefore, seem to have our regulatory regime backward? We need less for regular businesses--far fewer OSHA regulations, ADA regulations, affirmative action requirements, housing restrictions, etc., but perhaps more regulation, or simply wiser regulation, of finance).

2. Among the best analysts is always Mickey Kaus. Mickey reasonably says that McCain achieved limited but significant success in making Obama seem naive and inexperienced. More impressively, he dispelled concerns about his own recklessness with his very prudent remarks on Iran and Pakistan.

3. Obama negated, Mickey adds, his advantages on the economy by not being able to speak compellingly about the pain of the middle class.

4. The "stunt" of going to Washington, maybe not debating etc. turned out to be a net negative for McCain, although not a big one.

5. Maybe McCain’s victory is still "Pyrrhic," as Mickey claims: People want change, McCain’s distancing of himself from Bush wasn’t effective enough, and Obama only has to pass the relatively low credibility test in these debates. Despite his surprisingly weak rhetorical display, he may well have done that.

While the comments below are entirely sensible in their details, yet I must say that I couldn’t help noting during the debate that Obama gives the impression that he hesitates and calculates, and McCain does not. McCain--despite some imperfections, misstatements, etc.--was much more effective in being direct and forthright and sounding as if he would be more comfortable executing, would be at home in the White House. Example: McCain used the noble bracelet story to great advantage while Obama’s imitation (I also have a bracelet) was hesitant and spoke to a different purpose (focusing on the mother rather than the soldier). I think McCain won the debate.

But overall in that debate I thought Bush was miserable. So I was surprised last night at how good a debater McCain was; much much better than Bush. I guess he was this good in the primaries; I skipped all of those. But I agree with everyone else that he was very weak on the economy, and so the next debates may not go as well. Why, oh why, are Republican candidates so incapable of fighting back against the liberals’ class warfare tactics? Is there some kind of deep rope-a-dope on this I don’t get?

Obama was good, too, but not as good as McCain at being persistently aggressive. Neither man made any obvious big mistakes, though both made a few small ones. None likely of any consequence. Obama came close to falling into Kerry’s 2004 trap of a "global test" for U.S. action, but he never used a clear phrase than can be hung around his neck.

There was one small point that I suspect most people missed or didn’t fix on--Obama’s mention at the end of his Kenyan father. What was he trying to do with this? I have a hunch that the Obama campaign has some polling or focus group data that suggests this aspect of Obama’s story needs to be handled or used in a certain way, though I’m not sure he accomplished this last night. Was he trying to say in a very very subtle way that "I’m so unlike other black American politicians like Jesse and Rev. Al that I’m barely even from this country?" It has me scratching my head. Maybe it was nothing.

By the way, the Obama-Keyes senatorial debate back in 2004 shook Obama, even causing him to poke Keyes in the chest once, to make a point. See pp. 248-250 in Audacity of Hope, e.g.: "I found him getting under my skin in a way few people ever have." It was Keyes’ uncompromising (and inappropriately utilized, I would say) Christianity that Obama found unbearable, and which he could answer only by responding with a pluralism demanded by a wall of separation between faith and reason (259). Obama would have to reject theological notions of natural law, even as he wants the many of the results of the Declaration of Independence, our founding, natural law document. Obama’s attempt to find himself a home in American political life gives evidence of his alienation from it, a theme I will take up in a later post.

But that stereotype aside in fact Americans who live in the Southwest view illegal immigration differently from those who live elsewhere. Southerners may have a different view of the Civil War than other fellow citizens. Those in the original thirteen states may have a distinct historical consciousness shaping their view of the country. See How the States Got Their Shapes for the political consequences of States’ boundaries.

In Harvey Mansfield’s edition of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, there is a map (p. xvi) showing the American continent, Amerique Anglaise. Alaska is labeled as Amerique Russe. (Keep in mind the conclusion of vol. I, where America and Russia represent different futures for the world.) Signs of Russian presence—in forts and churches—can be found throughout the State. Japan occupied some of the Aleutian Islands during World War II. And Alaska is home to our only ground-based ballistic missile defense site.

State history shapes the political consciousness of citizens. Does Alaska’s history inform the political awareness of Alaska’s Governor? The campaign will tell. But the statement “I can see Russia from my house” should not be dismissed out of hand, for it may signify great understanding of America’s place in a dangerous world.

Not wanting to end the evening a positive note, let me call your attention to the comments on NRO by K-Lo on our Sarah. She’s one of several conservative columnists who’s faced up to the fact that the cringe factor was pretty darn severe in Palin’s recent interview with Katie Couric. Kathryn wonders whether there might be less to her than we conservatives hoped. It’s more likely the case that she’s being mishandled or being forced to be a student being filled quite inauthentically with sound bites and factoids that she’s having trouble using at the appropriate moments. Sarah needs to be herself in the debate, and we have reason to hope and pray that’ll be enough. (See Julie’s comment below, which I didn’t see before writing this.)

And here’s a commentator who suspects that overcoaching has taken a toll on Sarah’s confidence.

And finally, Carl is correct to comment in Steve H’s thread below that McCain won’t get away next time without decent answers on taxes and health care.

But what’s on everyone’s mind is our economic predicament, and Obama’s answers were more sure-footed and focused, if not necessarily always more persuasive, while McCain stumbled a bit and meandered. He could, for example, have explained more clearly and crisply why cutting business taxes and preserving the Bush Administration’s tax cuts might be necessary, but he wasn’t on his game here. McCain’s finest moment in this part of the debate was his much better response to Jim Lehrer’s question about what he’d have to change as President in order to pay for the bailout. Where Obama wasn’t willing to give anything up (except for spending in Iraq), McCain came out firmly in favor of wide-ranging spending cuts.

My final preliminary verdict: McCain wins on foreign policy, but loses on the economy. That’s not a good result. He has to do better next time.

Update: Two more overnight thoughts. First, Obama’s sputtering lack of self-restraint didn’t come across well. His supporters will cast it as righteous indignation, but it is evidence of his unpreparedness for political life outside the Democratic bubble.

Second, I was disappointed that McCain let Obama get away with blaming our current economic predicament on deregulation. Perhaps in his (Teddy) Rooseveltian heart of hearts, McCain agrees with him. But he might have asked Obama what he would have had regulators do: tell banks not to lend money to all the people in those marginal neighborhoods, the very people Democrats sought to help when they urged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to loosen lending criteria?

Not sure this works for Obama, who rehearsed for foreign policy.

Now this is an interesting and surprising opinion. I like Parker’s work and often agree with her positions. But she has come at Sarah Palin in exactly the opposite direction from which I have come. She started out in love with her and has now soured. In contrast to Parker, I was NOT entirely enthusiastic about the Sarah Palin pick . . . at first. That’s because I thought the the McCain campaign was going for a gimmick and thinking that putting a man woman on the chess board would put Hillary voters in play. And I knew that would a.) never work and b.) never be enough if it did work. We might have picked up a few women here and there who will vote for a woman no matter what her politics, but the hard core Hillary voters would never go for Palin because they are ideologically opposed to her. And, if there were any doubters on that score prior to Palin’s nomination, I think they’ve been persuaded by now. Clearly, the feminists supporting Hillary are not Sarah Palin’s natural constituency.

So when I saw Sarah speak at the convention, it suddenly hit me that this was all irrelevant, and I softened. Her appeal is not to women so much as it is to what we now commonly refer to as "fly-over" country, middle America, regular Americans or whatever appellation you want to give those who do not believe that their superior wisdom and cosmopolitanism gives them a natural right to preside over the actions of their fellow Americans but think, instead (and quite rightly), that their own life experience and common sense gives them just as much a right to influence and take part in the self-government of this nation as do the biographies of their supposed "betters." They believe that they are every bit as competent (and sometimes, frankly, more competent) in judgment and capacity as are the sorts normally unleashed in Washington and that someone "like them" is just as likely to do a good job as someone with an Ivy League degree, a pedigreed background, the seal of approval from the New York Times or a donor base with a 90210 zip code. I saw that Palin was nothing so simple as a Right Wing version of a feminist--as I feared. She is, if anything, post-feminist in that the bulk of her appeal had almost nothing to do with her sex. True, her sex--and, yes, her looks--did plenty to focus attention on her timely message. But instead of getting uptight or indignant about it, she embraced it and put it to work for her.

After a week of blistering attack that was of an intensely personal nature, Palin emerged at the convention ready to use all the weapons in her arsenal (including lipstick) to full effect. She did it with humor and delight--something sorely missing in the GOP of recent years. Comparisons between her and Reagan may have been premature in many respects, but in this plucky good cheer she was a dead ringer. She was THE highlight of the convention and no one can ever suggest otherwise. She turned around the depleted enthusiasm of the GOP base. She continues, despite continued assaults, to turn out 60K plus crowds in battleground states. All the while she endured a media newscycle that was--up until the markets started melting--singularly devoted to her personal and political destruction.

And Kathleen Parker thinks Sarah Palin should bail because of a few botched answers in some TV interviews? These are all she needs to hear to conclude that Palin is "Out of Her League"? Are you kidding?

May I gently suggest that Ms. Parker not only stop and reconsider but, also consider this: You should stop cringing. It’s not personal. If Sarah Palin fails (either as a candidate or as Vice President) it won’t be any reflection on Kathleen Parker or on conservative women in general. Neither will it be a discrediting of the notion that small town mayors turned governors may be every bit as competent to hold high office as are the likes of Barack Obama. Parker worries that we’re giving Palin preferential treatment and that a man in her position would have been condemned for his poor performance in these interviews. I’m not sure Dan Quayle (another brutally attacked and terribly underestimated GOP VP pick) would agree. Parker’s premature Palin plank-walking prescription would be the height of ingratitude.

More important, keep in mind some political history, especially when you see a poll showing Obama above 50% nationally: no Democrat has won a majority of the popular vote since LBJ in 1964 and FDR in his triumphs. Before that there is quite a long stretch of history--back to Franklin Pierce. Dems have typically been a sectional party, not a national majority party, neither by popular vote nor by electoral vote. BHO is no LBJ or FDR.

Except for what he says about baseball "not mattering all that much" (thus explaining why we don’t suspend campaigns for the World Series anymore) I think he’s dead right.

Meanwhile, another Clinton emerges . . . I guess to help Obama?

Everything hinges on whether McCain’s attention can plausibly be connected with a result worth applauding. It can’t be calculating to bet your political future on the cooperation of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, among others.

Some would treat the Constitution as a legalistic document and employ narrow legalistic arguments to circumvent its strictures and protections. The substance of this debate, however, should not turn on what provisions might or might not pass muster with the courts under a pinched conception of our fundamental law. Rather, it is the principles the Constitution embodies, which have served us well through so many crises, that should be the focus of debate. In short, Americans should take little comfort that legislation might barely pass muster in the courts if the legislation does serious damage to the underlying constitutional principles that were designed to protect our individual rights against governmental usurpations.

Read it all, with a cup of good, free-market coffee.  

The downside of this clever (and prudent) move is that it reinforces the impression that a presidential campaign is like a European parliamentary-style election campaign. McCain acts like he would accept a Grand Coalition government. But that’s not the Founders’ Constitution.

Hence the misguided attacks on Gov. Palin as unready to be President. Those largely miss the constitutional significance of the inauguration occurring over two months after the election, and almost three weeks after the new Congress. (Before the 20th amendment it was even longer, with the president being inaugurated in March.)

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers’ money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.

The longer it takes Congress to pass the bailout bill, the more of those goodies are going to find their way into the legislation. Speed is important, not just to protect the financial markets but to protect the taxpayers from having more of their hard-earned money squandered by politicians.

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts.

The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

We do not need a replay of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the failure of thousands of banks meant a drastic reduction of credit-- and therefore a drastic reduction of the demand needed to keep production going and millions of people employed.

But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

For my part, I propose that our own Steve Hayward fire up the grill (Ohio weather permitting, of course) and, in our down time from this event, we can all uncork a few bottles of Palin Syrah to see if she lives up to her fine reputation.

The only thing that is clear to me from this action is that the Democrats mean to play hardball. It is time for McCain to get tough and come out swinging. He needs to say hard (perhaps even controversial things that seem to attack Obama’s character and the character of Democrats) and thereby call their bluff exactly what it is. The only good news I see in this is that McCain tends to play best and hardest as an underdog. In any case, he’s in for the game of his life.

As i say at the end of the piece, if Woodward’s account is true, we may be facing "the most serious crisis in civil-military relations since the Civil War. According to Mr. Woodward’s account, the uniformed military not only opposed the surge, insisting that their advice be followed; it then subsequently worked to undermine the president once he decided on another strategy.

"In one respect, the actions taken by military opponents of the surge, e.g. "foot-dragging," "slow-rolling" and selective leaking are, unfortunately, all-too-characteristic of U.S. civil-military relations during the last decade and a half. But the picture Mr. Woodward draws is far more troubling. Even after the policy had been laid down, the bulk of the senior U.S. military leadership -- the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, the rest of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. Abizaid’s successor, Adm. William Fallon, actively worked against the implementation of the president’s policy.

"If Mr. Woodward’s account is true, it means that not since Gen. McClellan attempted to sabotage Lincoln’s war policy in 1862 has the leadership of the U.S. military so blatantly attempted to undermine a president in the pursuit of his constitutional authority. It should be obvious that such active opposition to a president’s policy poses a threat to the health of the civil-military balance in a republic."

Of course, everything depends on the veracity of Woodward’s account.

The reason for these changes is the economy and the natural tendency of people to look for paternalistic competence in a very uncertain and threatening environment. Republicans can shout that this ain’t like the Great Depression, and in any case the New Deal policies did nothing but prolong that economic crisis. But more and more people do fear that something like a depression is just around the corner, and their fears seem to be confirmed by the experts who say there’s no time to waste when it comes to the big, big, big bailout and unprecedented empowerment of the executive branch.

So when people see Obama they think FDR. Meanwhile, McCain seems to be doing is best to imitate TR’s angry demands that the evildoers be punshed and the trusts be busted etc. FDR will always be more popular than TR, and I fear people don’t think that they need a warrior to make them safe in a crisis of this kind. The challenge to McCain right now is huge.

Meanwhile, our friends at the Corner are also having a back-and-forth about whether Palin should get out more this week. Good arguments on both sides, but I have a hunch there is a rope-a-dope dynamic in play. Once again the MSM is rising in chorus that she’s being hidden, kept from view, etc, even as she racks up record crowds on the stump. Remember what happened last time the MSM went with this theme? The big convention speech that blew everyone away.

There has been some chatter that the McCain people want a short-answer format for the VP debate, and some think this is a mistake as the longer you let Biden talk, the worse he gets. To the contrary, if you look back at Palin’s TV debates in Alaska, she tended to give crisp, concise answers. Crisp, concise answers are not Biden’s specialty. He’ll have problems. I have a hunch she’s going to cause some big problems for Biden (like, "Why have you voted for 25 years against developing missile defense to protect Alaska from North Korean missiles that can reach our cities right now?") I predict a fresh round of Palin-mania as a result of the debate.

That should go over well in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, etc, etc.

Forget Biden having a "Macaca" moment. He’s just fine with "caca" moments.

UPDATE: Jay Cost asks, Is Biden Trying to Lose Pennsylvania? (Comes with a neat map: Quantitative political science at its best.)

I’m starting to believe those internet rumors that Biden will suddenly discover a "health problem" (hair plugs falling out??) and will withdraw in favor of Hillary.

Dinesh D’Souza has written about this here and here.

I have a couple of additional thoughts, beyond the obvious one that Barack Obama should be at least a little embarrassed by this. First, there is the big issue of whether assistance of this sort should come from government or private individuals. The biblical injunction Barack Obama is so fond of citing suggests that it’s an individual responsibility. Love isn’t a matter of paying taxes (which after all, isn’t voluntary or personal), but of giving willingly to those in need and entering into a relationship with them. George W. Bush got that. I’m not sure that the current Democratic ticket does (see Joe Biden’s comments about tax-paying and his own rather minuscule charitable deductions [sorry, I’m too lazy to link]).

Second, if we take George Obama’s more recent comments at face value, there is the question of the dignity of those in need. How do we manage to be "compassionate" while respecting the self-reliance of those we wish to help? Again, it seems to me that a genuine relationship would help that. A relationship isn’t likely to flow out of a job. It can flow out of contact that begins with a faith-based encounter. And, obviously, it ought to flow out of common paternity. Is there any evidence that Barack Obama has made that effort? Or is all his talk about being his brother’s keeper just that? Talk, I mean.

Meanwhile, over at The View, Former President Bubba predicts an Obama victory, but then goes on for nearly two minutes with fulsome praise for McCain, leaving more than a little doubt about whom he may vote for behind the curtain.

All of which presents a conundrum for fans of Saint Sarah. Does Palin really want to be John McCain’s Vice President? One sage friend put it to me this last week: "She’d have to be prepared to resign in protest of McCain’s derelictions." But that’s not really practical in the real world of party politics.

Discuss.

If my federal taxes are any indication then the middle class is almost certainly not paying its "Fair Share" of federal taxes. My tax position is utterly ordinary. Married with three kids, gross annual income of approx $68K. I take only the standard deductions (no Schedule A) and received the Child Tax Credit for all three children. My total tax bite for each of the last three years was approximately $900/year, or barely over 1%.

In my crankiest moments, I agree. Universal adult franchise, pah! Only we political science Ph.D.’s should be permitted to vote.

When I’m in an Aristotelian mood, I’d extend the franchise to all those who are genuinely liberally educated. The tone and tenor of Harris’s writing suggest that he doesn’t fall into that category. He’s more like a Weberian "specialist without spirit."

Then there is this bit of comedy writing in the piece:

“Were they guilty of some sort of conspiracy to commit some sort of espionage?” asked [Leonard J. Lehrman, co-director of the half-century-old National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case]. “That’s a purely subjective judgment."

About ten years ago I was invited to make a presentation to the board of directors of Fannie Mae, and I was startled to notice that the board was composed almost wholly of Democratic party luminaries such as then chairman Jim Johnston (who struck me as a complete dolt), Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick (she of FISA "firewall" fame). This was crony capitalism at its worst--a sinecure for Clintonistas to get rich without much heavy lifting.

It is pathetic to see McCain jump on the general "Wall Street corruption" bandwagon rather than use the opportunity to slam the Democrats for their economic ignorance and complicity in the disaster.

On the bright side, the cost of this bailout likely puts the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress out of business in terms of major new spending programs. You’d almost think it was a bankers’ conspiracy, like the Reagan deficits of the 1980s. Any takers?

UPDATE: I walked down the hall to give an "attaboy" to Kevin (since he’s on my floor here at Neocon World HQ at 1150 17th Street), and he tells me that since Drudge linked to his article his phone and e-mail are going crazy. mostly with rants and death threats from liberals. I watched his screen as e-mails rolled in about three a minute. Looks like he hit a raw nerve.

UPDATE #2: The Village Voice (!!!) argues that the seeds of the mortgage meltdown should be laid at the feet of Andrew Cuomo, HUD Secretary for Bill Clinton. Isn’t Cuomo the person McCain wants to appoint to the SEC to fix this mess? Now I’m really baffled.