2. On the Senate, the result could be pretty bad or really bad. Right now there are five races in the South that could go either way--NC, KY, GA, TX, and MS. They all go R, and no way the Ds get to 60. They all go D, and my prediction is they get 62. NC is enouraging insofar as Dole is hanging in there, but there’s a general consensus she’s unlikely to be reelected. Texas shouldn’t be as close at it is, but probably still R. Texas is one state where McCain really will be a help. Wicker holds a statistically insignificant lead in MS and is a lame candidate for a variety of reasons. Those in the know say a huge African-American turnout in MS will make the prez race closer than the polls show. If that’s true, Wicker loses. Chambliss is now targeted by Sam Nunn and friends in a big, big way, and a likely big, big African-American turnout in Georgia puts the odds against him at this point. I’ve haven’t seen any very recent polls on McConnell, but the few things I’ve heard don’t sound all that promising for him. The WSJ reminds us of the importance of the filibuster as a weapon in 1993-94.

3. I for one cringed some at McCain’s repeated use of Joe the Plumber. But surely the MSM/D fake outrage about his various human failings--and their intensive investigation of every nook and cranny of his existence--is something worse than negative campaigning.

We now hear almost every day that banks will not lend to each other, or will do so only at punitive interest rates. Credit spreads -- the difference between what it costs the government to borrow and what private-sector borrowers must pay -- are at historic highs.

This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. "The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."

But back to Sen. Chambliss. He spoke very impressively on energy policy and quite lucidly on our current economic woes, winning over colleagues who aren’t exactly your typical Republican voters. (I won’t swear that they’ll vote for him, but they surely won’t slit their wrists if he wins reelection.) Chambliss has a style that isn’t exactly post-partisan, but his partisanship is subtle and understated, a model for what might work and win in this very bad Republican year.

In response to a question about the partisan climate in Washington, D.C., he made two interesting points, one institutional and one cultural. The institutional one is familiar: generally speaking the Senate is less bitterly partisan than the House (a function of statewide races, often with relatively evenly divided electorates). The other built upon his experience attending a weekly prayer breakfast, for Senators only. When you hold hands and pray with someone, he said, you don’t care whether they’re Republican or Democrat. I think he’s right. I seem to recall that Hillary Clinton has attended those breakfasts. Has Barack Obama? Or has he been too busy running a post-partisan campaign?

I’d go further, actually, and end the tax deduction for anything that is not directly helping poor people--helping them get health care, food, education, etc. I’m not quite sure where religious institutions would fit in.

Update: A few more points. Wealthy people sometimes give significant donations to Harvard to get their sons into the college. Why should they get to write off the bribe? Second point. It can’t be good that foundations can buy and sell stock without paying capital gains, but everyone else has to. That has to bias the market somehow. And one final point for now. The commentator below has a good point. Charities are perpetuties. In that sense, they are like the aristocratic institutions of the medieval era. America was founded upon prnciples opposed to such things.

Today I received my first e-mail solicitation from the AARP. Figures. (Of course, if we had truth in labeling laws for interest groups, AARP would stand for Angry Advocates for Rapacious Pensioners. I’m not joining.)

Hat tip: Roger Ream

P.S. I believe Jimmy and Warren are distant cousins, which accounts for the headline.

Better a principled, coherent liberal whose liberal choices will, if they don’t go well, be blamed on liberals than an erratic, incoherent liberal whose liberal choices will be blamed on the party that ought to get its conservative act together.

On the other hand, I won’t second the counsel Crittenden offers to Joe. Crittenden thinks he should just hold his tongue now and go back to plumbing before he gets caught in a "gotcha." I think I’m more inclined to trust Joe to make that call for himself.

Of course, all Obama has to do is try to run out the clock, and he will likely be able to do that, as he did with Hillary Clinton.

I have to write 150 words about the debate and the way forward for the campaigns for the Atlanta paper, to appear on Sunday. Any suggestions?

I will say that this was the best of the three debates, because it approached most closely what we actually mean by a debate, with give and take. Bob Schieffer did a pretty good job of asking good and difficult questions, and the candidates responded less frequently than usual with canned answers.

My only disappointment with McCain was his judicial answer, which I found lacking in coherence. He’s right to argue that "elections have consequences," but that doesn’t square well with his claim to focus only on qualifications. He could have stressed constitutionalism much more than he did and he could have pounced on Obama’s blather about judges who stress fairness and looking out for the little guy, which perhaps ought to be the job of our representatives, not our judges. McCain’s wisecrack about the statute of limitations was on point, but insufficiently well-developed, frightfully close to the kind of Dole Senate-speak that we saw in 1996.

Now I get it – and I’m embarrassed it took me so long. A house lefty who writes an article on “My Friend Bill Ayers” does more to remind conservatives why they’re conservatives than a Fox News marathon. What’s hard to understand is why Frank, in every other instance hypersensitive to the way conservatives and capitalists exploit the worker, would be complicit in advancing the WSJ editorial agenda by turning in copy indistinguishable from a right-wing parody of left-wing obtuseness.

Frank could have titled his piece, “My Hero Bill Ayers.” Ayers is not only “a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself” and “unfailingly generous to people who ask for his help.” He is a “kind and affable and even humble” man, who “has been involved with countless foundation efforts and has received various awards. He volunteers for everything.” Saint Francis has no right to polish this guy’s halo.

There was, of course, some vaguely unpleasant business involving Ayers a very, very long time ago. Frank skips past the Weathermen trivia quickly, describing it as a group that “planted bombs and issued preposterous statements in the Vietnam era.” How does Frank feel about all that? “I do not defend the things Mr. Ayers did in his Weatherman days.” (But neither does he criticize them.) “Nor will I quibble with those who find Mr. Ayers wanting in contrition.” Those who make this accusation might be right, but the point is too insignificant to argue about.

Frank, however, immediately does go on to quibble, saying that Ayers’ critics have it wrong, and their criticism reveals their own shortcomings, not his: “His 2001 memoir is shot through with regret, but it lacks the abject style our culture prefers.” As several critics have shown, the “shot through with regret” summary is a howler.

Contrast these mild and carefully measured criticisms with how Frank assesses Republicans’ attacks on Barack Obama for associating with Ayers. “This is their vilest hour,” he says evenly. “The McCain campaign . . . has chosen to mount its greatest attack against a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year’s issues, and who cannot or will not defend himself.” (Really? Why can’t he, or won’t he?) The Republican efforts to criticize Ayers, and criticize Obama for associating with him, are “desperate and grotesque.”

So. Denouncing a guy who tried to set off bombs in police stations and military bases? A crime against humanity. Being a guy who tried to set off bombs in police stations and military bases? The moral equivalent of jaywalking.

There’s an interesting ambivalence/hypocrisy/dishonesty about the attitude of the American Left in 2008 to the American Left of 1968. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing anymore,” the modern leftist insists, but can’t refrain from adding, “When you think about it, though, the ‘excesses’ committed in those days were understandable, defensible and really quite noble.”

The voting is less than three weeks away, and Obama is ahead in all the polls. The one thing that might yet turn the election in the Republicans’ favor would be for Thomas Frank to write a Journal article every day until November 4th.

Given OSHA regulations, zoning restrictions, ADA regulations, affirmative action, environmental regulations, minimum wage requirements, union-friendly laws (particularly in some states), and a host of other regulations, industrial businesses have less freedom of action. We have a heavily service economy, I suspect, partly because the regulatory burden on services is lower than that on industry. That truth applies, even moreso to financial services.

Two further comments on the financial sector. The S&L mess of the 1980s was, to a great degree, the result of two main factors. The high inflation, and interest rates, of the late 1970s made the S&L business model of charging 6% interest on mortgages and giving 3% interest on money in the bank untenable. Rather than admit that the game was up, Washington tried to free the S&Ls to be more like regular banks. The result was excess and corruption. The new model worked for a few years, but ultimately was doomed. Might that be part of the problem now? The old regulations of banks, drawn largely from the 1930s were dead. No one quite knew what to replace them with. Hence our financial sector was allowed to get over-leveraged. There is also the rise of private equity. That provided competition and a rival to emulate.

A further question: Was the financial sector given more freedom precisely because it’s a white collar business? The argument makes some sense: the folks on Wall Street are big boys, and, for that reason, don’t need the kind of big brother watching them that, the argument goes, is necessary to keep the auto makers from exploiting their workers. We have deregulated trucking and airlines and have had some success with that. But the deregulation was only partial. These businesses gained more liberty to pursue or not to pursue certain lines of action. They did not, however, get anything like at-will hiring and firing, nor did they get relief from a host of other regulations. Finance, precisely because it does not pollute, does not need large parcels of land, or any raw materials (with the partial exception of precious metals) was easy to deregulate. Liberating other industries from the grip of regulatory bureaucracy would require more work.

Not long ago, I was speaking with a colleague who teaches the history of the late Roman Empire. He noted that it was less expensive to grow food in Egypt and ship it to Byzantium than to grow it closer to home. He suggested that we are, to a degree, in a similar situation. To him, however, the new plutocrats and the Republicans are at fault. There is certainly some truth to that. (Even Reagan did not turn back the Administrative state that the Progressives built upon the original American constitutional order). On the other hand, the reason why basic goods are so much more expensive to produce in American than abroad is the high cost of labor, regulations, and taxes. Were we to drop the regulations noted above, and perhaps scale back the hand-outs (ie: “entitlements”) that we now give to poor, middle class, and even wealthy Americans, we could change that situation.

I can’t help thinking that Senator Obama will win this year because he represents the hope that there is another answer.

Yes, I’m suffering from some kind of plague, so my voice is scratchy and weak, no doubt bringing great joy to much of Washington. (But hey--you can still annoy people through blogging!--Ed. Indeed.)

Goldman expects crude to average USD 75 in the fourth quarter and USD 70 at the end of the year, but added: "Should the financial and economic crisis cut deeper into demand, the market could fall as low as USD 50 a barrel."

MID-MORNING UPDATE: Oil at 13-month low this morning, just barely above $75 a barrel. Pat--better get your favorite maitre’d on speed-dial.

Thomas saved his soul by rejecting the flotsam of American higher education, in favor of his grandfather’s character lessons, which eventually brought him to appreciate one of the finest achievements of western civilization, natural law. Obama lost whatever bearings he had by absorbing the post-modernism and faddish sophistry of the contemporary university, rising to high status in the legal community even before graduating from Harvard Law School. “I was a heretic,” he declares, as he denounces the certainty that plagues politics and religion—“one man’s certainty always threatened another’s.” And a heretic will believe in “the truth of his own doubt.”

He bears the stamp moreover of his Kansas-born mother, who died of cancer in her early fifties She was a leftist intellectual, so devoted to her anthropological field work in Indonesia that she sent her son to live with her parents, in Hawaii. He did not grow up poor (as he portrays himself, on the stump); he had a zealous graduate student for a mother. Those are two very different things, as anyone who has been in graduate school knows. His Kenyan father abandoned his wife and Obama when he was two.

The Obama we find at the end of his quest to discover himself is not anti-American, but he is a-American. He is not a Muslim, because he lacks the certainty that faith requires. Just as he rose above certain otherwise confining situations, Obama rises above his American birth. That is what the Declaration of Independence comes to mean for him: becoming independent, tearing up one’s roots, even flinging the dead dendra in the faces of other, less sophisticated types. That explains his foreign policy of moral equivalence, his deflating of American privilege, his recent insistence on “sharing the wealth.” One telling example of his approach: He tops off a list of Hawaiian injustices with “the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war.” But ethnic Japanese in Hawaii were not relocated en masse as they were on the mainland. Obama does not know his State history and is only too quick to issue condemnations.

He knew his Kenyan graduate student father only from one brief visit and some letters, and then later, upon his death, from the tales of his African relatives. Obama is fascinated and appalled at the father and grandfather he discovers. He loves his African relatives, but he sees his distance. He declares himself “too busy” to learn the native Luo of his relatives, while a relative chides him for being “too busy to know his own people.” An aunt explains how Kenyan ways have been multicultural for centuries. What then is the meaning of being rooted in Africa? Isn’t there a better way to view relationships across the globe?

He found one link in Chicago. As a community organizer, he needs acceptance by the local ministers. He feels a distance from the Christian church, but he becomes a Christian through the preaching of Reverend Wright, in particular a sermon entitled “The Audacity of Hope.” Despite the emotion with which he describes his conversion, this has all the appearance of a political choice. (For a magnificent interpretation of Obama’s Audacity of Hope, see Charles Kesler’s essay in the Fall Claremont Review of Books [subscriber only, so do subscribe!].)

It is fascinating to think that in 2009 the two leading public voices of the left and the right in this country will likely be two black men who needed roots and fathers—Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas. This is an invitation for all Americans to rediscover their roots, as descendants of immigrants and as native-born. It is a struggle between Christian faith and nihilism, between a rooted American and a cosmopolitan.

The first part of these reflections on Dreams from My Father was here.

In response, Obama offered the following: "It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

Not so fast. Does Barack Obama really care about the people who are behind this plumber or does he, instead, want to make sure that the plumber stays behind his ultra-rich constituency? Robert Frank offers some insights into the factors driving the support of the ultra-mega rich toward positions that seem, on their face, to go against their interests. We know that the ultra-rich increasingly favor higher taxes on the wealthy and tend to spend their time talking about idealistic ways that the government can and should spend tax dollars.

But is it really altruism that drives these patrons of society? It looks to me more like a kind of expensive taste; a "Gucci Liberalism," as they used to say.

Revealing as it is, Frank’s piece doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. He is content to believe that neither candidate will want to tout the results of a survey that shows support for one candidate coming from the "rich" and support for the other candidate coming from the "ultra-rich" in an age where populism rules the day. After all, the "richies" have already decided so the candidates are only competing for the votes of the rest of us. Who among us will consider that our interests are aligned with either category of rich people?

McCain should reconsider that counsel if he reads Mr. Frank’s report. Obama told the plumber that he’s concerned about the people behind the plumber. So Obama wants to tax the plumber (and his richer friends who can afford it) and spread their wealth to those behind and, somehow, this is supposed to improve the economy for everybody. Well, that’s poppycock and we know it. The truth is that he’s protecting his buddies above the plumber from the competition of folks like the plumber. This plumber and other small businessmen like him need to learn their place, pay their taxes happily, and keep their mouths shut about issues that are (obviously) beyond them. They can’t understand things noble causes like caring for the environment or health care justice. They only know things like plumbing and how to grub out a living. If these guys are not taxed heavily, then they might grow their businesses and then expand into real estate or other sectors of the economy. Their children may become lawyers, professors, or politicians. Their families might become very wealthy and then (gasp!) they might begin to expect that they can associate with the likes of Barack’s patrons!

Like Jed Clampetts (only of a more hard-working than lucky variety), these rubes might tote their guns and their God into Martha’s Vineyard or Beverly Hills and upset the whole social order with their small-minded politics. The plumber’s kids, if they don’t just stay put in the plumbing business, should take Michelle’s advice, go to college (on government grants, of course), learn from the faculty there how to become Democrats enlightened, and then work in the non-profit sector so that they don’t interfere with the high-minded efforts of their betters in the classes patronizing Barack Obama. If they’re lucky, maybe they can write a couple of best-selling auto-biographies.

A populism, rightly understood, would explain to the American people why there are those who want to see their hard work and success punished and who, exactly, they are. And it would also encourage those behind the plumbers to understand that their real friends are not those who want to patronize them with favors from the government, but those who are happy to have them come along--as employees or as competition--in a truly free economy.

Gerard Alexander remarked to me last night that, if four or five years ago, you had predicted that we’d soon see a presidential campaign suffused with self-conscious messianic fervor, you’d be certain that it would come from the religion-soaked Republican Party.

“When classmates in college asked me just what it was a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White house, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

“That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.”

In this self-deprecating account of how he came to his calling, Barack Obama now identifies this choice as “part of that larger narrative,” more an “impulse, like a salmon swimming blindly upstream toward the site of his own conception.” But now his whimsy, written when he was 33, has become his signature theme! (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance [1995, 2004], 133-134). Who’s he snickering at now?

As a politician Barack Obama has been creative and resourceful. But his mind has been predictable in the sense that we have had laid out for us his intelligence and insight, as well as his blindness and hubris-—by himself. Indeed, early in 2008 in A Bound Man: Why We are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, Shelby Steele saw a tragedy in the making, a Zelig, a protean character who tries to live in too many worlds at once--“an iconic figure who neglected to become himself.” (And of course Sarah Palin accused him of running for president in order to discover who he is.)

But Dreams from My Father is of greater significance than the Palin riff on it; if that were all to it, Obama’s excellent Socratic adventure would not have carried him this far. This elegant, compelling work is a fountain of insight into his mind. (These recently raised authorship issues, while worth pursuing, are not relevant to my analysis.) Since he may well be our next President, we are obliged to ask: What did he know about himself, and when did he know it? The fact that he admits he makes some things up (xvii) does not compromise the book’s importance as his narrative, his love-song to his bi-racial, far-flung family, “an honest account of a particular province of my life.” And in fact Dreams from My Father is an insightful book on race and American life.

In the course of several postings on his book, I’ll compare it with other notable autobiographies, including the recent one by Clarence Thomas. I’ll note the significance of both the Declaration of Independence and of the now-notorious Reverend Wright (his declaration of dependence). I will bring forth the book’s (and its author’s) underlying theme, its post-modern pathos. This intellectual radicalism, not his connections with William Ayers, etc., is the fundamental problem with Obama. His conception of himself and the country he would lead make him misunderstand it. More an Oedipous than a Socrates, he is crippled in his capacity to protect and defend his country.

The most recent polls show Obama ahead everywhere that was studied--including North Dakota--with the exception of Georgia. But the truth is he isn’t that far ahead. Maybe the Stock Market surge will create space for a McCain surge in the mode of Truman or Humphrey or Ford. Even McGovern closed fast and avoided a record lost. Even the MSM gets bored with any guy who’s ahead too easily for too long.

Bob Dienhart
Ike May
Annette Tyson
David Cooper
Clark Irwin

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UPDATE: Michael Medved has been talking about the notion that McCain should stop his attack on Obama for Ayers/Wright (though Mac hasn’t really mentioned Wright) and other questionable associates and suggesting that this idea is only half-baked. It’s true, he says, that focusing on this exclusively or primarily and sectioning it off from the broader campaign--as though it were not related to the big issues in the race (and right now, the only real issue is the economy)--is stupid. It’s not just a question of who Obama likes to hang out with or have tea with or go to fundraisers with or serve on boards with. It’s a question of what other things they share--like ideas. Noting the similarities between Obama and these questionable people in terms of thinking on the issues is not only fair, it could be effective. Is it not, for example, interesting to note that Bill Ayers’s daughter works for Hugo Chavez and that Hugo Chavez is, as most Americans know, a violent and vocal critic of America and of democratic capitalism in general. Doesn’t that have something to do with the economy? To what extent do the people surrounding Barack Obama agree with this sort of critique of our economic system? To what extent does he agree with it? That said, Medved also very much liked Kristol’s article--especially the part that advises McCain and Palin to open up and get back to that looser McCain style of letting reporters--even when they are in the tank for the other guy--have free access to you and your ideas untethered by a manuscript. He needs to look like he’s having fun again.

NOT ONLY THAT, Yuval explains how Obama’s plan would be a magnet pulling people away from employer-based health care into a system run by the government.

Let’s hope that McCain goes on the offensive by laying out these specifics and aggressively accusing Obama and Bidening of being extremely misleading the public when it comes to comparing the two plans.

2. The election today would be a landslide. And a lot of the election IS today (and yesterday); a huge amount of early voting is going on.

3. It’s very possible--almost likely--that the early voting will carry Obama to victory in Georgia. He’s within the margin of error in the most recent poll. Senator Chambliss, the most recent studies show, has even less chance of holding on.

4. The Republican blame game today is mainly on how McCain isn’t a true conservative. That’s true, of course, in this sense: He doesn’t really "get" the characteristic conservative take on domestic issues. Mac didn’t make a secret of that, and he won the nomination as a "warrior" opposed to the waffling Romney who could do nothing more than articulate our "interests."

5. But, truth to tell, Mac’s hyper-patriotic convention speech doesn’t speak at all to the anxious concerns ordinary Americans have today. WELL, maybe it could in this way: I want to a lead Americans in the direction of honorable self-discipline. I’m phasing out Fannie Mae etc. I want us to return to the time of 20% down on home mortages, based on an honest appraisal. I’m not against the "rescue" etc. to ease the pain in the short-term, but over the long-term we don’t want overly politicized and insufficiently risk-averse institutions such as Fannie Mae to keep tempting Amreicans to lose all sense of prudence in their personal finances.

6. The average American is complaining that he didn’t really know how risky investing in stocks is. He knew that the market would have its ups and downs. But not like this. The whole 401(k) retirement strategy seems discredited, and people really do want government to do something to make retirement planning less risky.

7. There are lots of articles, including one by a professor in the local paper, that say that the era of neo-liberalism is over. That means that the rough consensus on behalf of market-based globalization that included Clinton, Bushes, Thatcher, and Blair is collapsing. That consensus, of course, is one reason I always preferred Hillary to Obama. But it’s not so clear how Obama stands on "neo-liberalism." Rubin, who really and truly does excel at "trickle-down economics," is an Obama advisor. The leaders in the Democratic Congress are another mattter.

8. The likely result of this election is an extension of 2006. The landslide two years ago was based on the perception of incompetence, cluelessness, and corruption among the Republicans. Well, that perception is back. McCain and our Sarah have responded to the crisis in a way that’s spun by the MSM and actuallly seems, I’m sad to say, clueless, and they’re not exuding competence. The corruption should point to Fannie and Democratic Congressional leders, but the Wall-Street (allegedly Republican) greed "narrative" is carrying the day, because nobody very visible is opposing it effectivley.

9. I was on a great panel discussion on Saturday morning at Georgetown with Gil Meilaender and William Saletan. Saletan really knows his stuff and is a pleasure to hang out with. His take on the election: Don’t worry, Obama is boring. Saletan really is a maverick when it comes to his unusual--yet quite defensible--combination of opinions and insights, which I’ll talk about later. (Nobody inside the Beltway thinks McCain has a chance, and everyone agree that this Ayers stuff ain’t working.) Gil, of course, is great too, although not so obviously political. The event was sponsored by our Dr. Pat Deneen, who will admit over lunch that some of our present woes might have their source in evildoers in the Democratic Congress