don't quit your day job, John

I've learned something about the Republican nominee over the course of this last week: John McCain isn't very good at executive leadership, specifically managing people.

The big news of the last week, of course, is his VP, a painfully obvious gimmick pick that undermines perhaps his most salient argument against Obama. His strategists' choice to respond to the criticisms by arguing that being mayor of a town of 6,000 is better experience than being a United States Senator, and even more absurdly by arguing that living near Russia counts as foreign policy experience, is pretty heinous overreaching and only further highlights her incredible weakness as a candidate. That's not even considering her ties to an Alaskan separatist party which undermines his patriotism card, and her hiring of a lobbyist and support for the "Bridge to Nowhere" which undermines his reformer card.

For that matter, have you ever seen a clearer example of a karmic justice against a social conservative, of a Christian rightwinger getting swatted by reality? Think about it: she guts special education funding in Alaska by 62%, only then to have a baby with Down Syndrome. Then she opposed comprehensive sex education in her state and slashed funding for a state program helping teen mothers... and her 17-year-old daughter comes up pregnant. Her life story is a refutation of conservative beliefs.

In fact, she's such a terrible choice that the press started asking if he even bothered to vet her. Even worse, it appears that he really did cut corners on the vetting process, despite having finished his primary more than two months before Obama. And why did he suddenly find himself with a candidate he hadn't vetted? Because he wanted someone else, but "the party" said no. Apparently the Original Maverick, at this late point in the campaign, still doesn't have a solid enough purchase on his party to make his own decisions about the most important matters of his own campaign. And it has not gone well so far, if we can judge by the reactions of conservative pundits Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy when they thought the mics were turned off:


Then there was this week's convention. First there was the interruption by Gustav, where he directed the party to postpone the convention for a day and take on a mood of sober compassion ("We will be contacting corporations and others to ask them to be respectful of events in the gulf," his campaign manager said), but his admonishments meant little to the party. They went out and partied their asses off, on camera, at lobbyist-funded shindigs while Gustav rattled the levees in New Orleans.

Unfortunately, canceling the first day meant having to find another spot for Rudy 9iu11ani. They chose to put him right in front of their most important speech of the entire convention, that of Sarah Palin, at a critical moment in the timing of the convention events since it was on live network television at that point. Rudy then went off script on live TV, thankfully not making a gaffe, but going so long that they had to cut the introductory bio for Sarah Palin, the VP candidate they were literally introducing to the nation at that point.

And then there was John McCain's own speech. The speech was not terribly good and pretty poorly delivered, and everyone on TV was a little perplexed at seeing yet another "green screen" behind McCain reminiscent of the disastrous speech he gave right as Obama clinched the nomination.

It appears that no one checked to see what part of the backdrop the cameras would pick up:

Oh, but this screw-up gets better! Some of you may be wondering why the McCain campaign would up behind McCain a picture of some anonymous middle school in California that isn't even obviously marked as a school and in a speech that barely mentions schools or education. Well, a little digging by Josh Marshall unearthed exactly what school this is: Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA. It appears that the campaign told some flunky to go get a picture of "Walter Reed" to put behind McCain, never checked what the guy found, and this inexplicable image ended up behind McCain during what was probably the most important speech of his life.

John McCain just isn't any good at managing people. We keep seeing his campaign making rookie mistakes and botching the details (and some big decisions), always scrambling to clean up messes or make up for unforeseen circumstances or react to Obama's last move rather than taking initiative, something that reflects poorly on his leadership. He appears to have trouble judging who to put in high administrative positions and who needs more oversight. Perhaps worst of all, he's no good at discerning his employees' weaknesses and liabilities, so their screw-ups catch him off-guard. After this week, I think we've gotten a pretty good look at which of the candidates would run a more efficient administration, which one would be "ready on day one." It clearly is not John McCain.

Wednesday night: the RNC speeches

The Republican party needs a hug.

Rudy!

Though I stand by my assertion that Fred Thompson was the least prepared candidate I've ever seen, I don't think I've ever seen a campaign implode as spectacularly as Giuliani's. Can you believe this guy was the presumptive frontrunner only a couple of months ago by huge margins?

Rudy Giuliani bowed out after going 0-4 in the early primaries and placing third in his last stand state of Florida with a grand total of 2 delegates. 95 fewer than John McCain at this point. 72 fewer than Mitt Romney. Four fewer than Ron Paul.

I think in Giuliani's case the problem was partly that he's just an a$$hole and partly that he had the worst advisors I've ever seen. I mean, who'd'a thunk voters would increasingly abandon an otherwise popular, well-known mayor the more they saw of him, if he spent 6 months nakedly exhuming the corpses from the World Trade Center wreckage and dangling them in front of the camera every time anyone asked him a question about anything? And certainly nobody could have predicted that ceding the early states (only after blowing a ton of cash in them) and not making a stand until frakin' Florida, the 5th primary, might be a bad idea. Ya know, just because praying for all the frontrunners to die in a horrible accident, henceforth known as "the Battlestar Galactica gambit," hasn't met with much success in the past.

Then again, I guess Rudy got this far by being well-positioned to exploit a tragedy...

yeah, I like pancakes, ya know I had pancakes the morning of September 11th...

From Tim Grieve at Salon:

Rudy Giuliani on Hillary Clinton's emotional moment: "This is not something I would judge anybody on one way or the other. And the reality is, if you look at me -- Sept. 11, the funerals, the memorial services, there were times in which it was just impossible not to feel ... the emotion."

NASCAR strategy

I know it's mean, and I'm sure there's more to NASCAR than what we uninitiated see, but this is pretty funny.



Also, the same news service has provided your annual horoscope prediction, and here is the funniest mock-up photo of the 2008 election.

Hey media: Giuliani ain't the frontrunner

From TPM:

On the heels of polls showing Rudy dropping fast in New Hampshire and out of contention in Iowa, a a new poll finds him sinking fast in a third key state: South Carolina. The Clemson University poll finds Mitt Romney now taking the lead with 17%, followed by Fred Thompson at 15%, Mike Huckabee with 13%, John McCain at 11% — and Rudy at only 9%.
...
Rudy's advisors have been pushing a February 5 strategy, positing the idea that his national celebrity and post-9/11 prestige mean he can lose all the early contests but still win big on the national primary day. Romney, on the other hand, has focused heavily on those early states, following the traditionally accepted ideas of how to win the nomination.

Giuliani's advisors should be fired. Like, yesterday. Ru9/11dy isn't even a viable candidate anymore in Iowa or South Carolina, and is looking to get waterboarded by Romney in New Hampshire as well.

And about half of Giuliani's support is gonna bail like rats from a sinking ship, opting for the greener pastures of Romney-ville, while the current Thompsonites are gonna look at the broken, bloody remains of their candidate after he gets splattered all over the pavement in South Carolina and make a b-line for Huckabee (who, by the way, is today for the first time leading in Iowa). And by the end of February, we're going to be talking about the battle between the electoral giants Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, while no one's even gonna remember that Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson ever made a run at the Republican nomination.

Big news on the blue side, too: Hillary's lead in South Carolina has dissipated, and she's now statistically tied with Obama. Last time I checked she's hanging tough in New Hampshire, but there are now 2 openings for Obama (or, perhaps, Edwards) to knock off the presumptive frontrunner, as Obama pulled into the lead in Iowa last week. It looks like we're seeing a nationwide drift away from Clinton as the narrative hardens of Clinton as talking out of both sides of her mouth. My suspicion (and hope) is that it continues and one of the other two becomes a giantkiller this February, and again in November.

Ru9/11dy!

Rudy Giuliani: "We really don't mention September 11 as much as people think."

What a disgusting little authoritarian.

Judi Giuliani: worst. candidate's wife. ever.

Oh my God! From a Salon breakdown of the candidates' spouses:

Judi Giuliani, wife of Rudy Giuliani: Judi is Giuliani's third wife, the woman he left second wife Donna Hanover for in a televised news conference. She sits at the front row of fashion shows, had a secret marriage she only came forward with when her husband announced his nomination, which was around the same time the couple announced that she would sit in on cabinet meetings were he elected. It has been reported that while her husband was still mayor of New York, if aides referred to her as "Judi" instead of "Judith," she would bawl them out. She buys extra seats on planes for her Louis Vuitton handbag. She has inspired an open rift between the candidate and his children: Andrew, who helpfully explained to reporters that he is estranged from his dad because "a problem exists between me and his wife," and Caroline, a Harvard student who demonstrated the froideur earlier this year by admitting on her MySpace page that she was supporting Barack Obama. But it is the fact that Judi Giuliani once held a job in which she demonstrated medical equipment on puppy dogs who often died after or during the demonstrations that really kicks her up a notch and puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.

And to think, Republicans used to bitch about how disagreeable first lady Hillary Clinton was!

"a different experience"

From TPM:

Do you know more about torture than John McCain?

RUDY GIULIANI: ...I have had a different experience than John. John has never been -- he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.

Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is.

Have you ever heard an answer so crammed to the top with bullshit? Rudy was responsible for the safety and security of millions? As the mayor? Are you kidding me? Rudy personally waterboarded mafiosos, chained them naked to the floor while lowering the temperature to 40 degrees, and made them sit in stress positions for 12 hours, pistol-whipping them every time they moved? Does anyone really believe this wanker?

Greg Sargent notes:

"A "different experience" than McCain? Hmmm -- that strikes us as kind of a casual, offhand way for Rudy to be describing what McCain went through. After all, McCain was tortured regularly for five years in Vietnam, while Rudy secured five draft deferments, according to preeminent Rudy biographer Wayne Barrett. Indeed, as Barrett wrote in Grand Illusions, his book about Rudy and 9/11, Rudy got one deferment for every year that McCain was tortured."

That Rudy, he's a real hero.

you ran as a WHAT?

The GOP is on the verge of nominating for president a guy who self-identified as liberal only 10 years ago. 1996.

That's how badly W torched the brand.

Are you starting to get a sense of why Giuliani hasn't been too enthused about a Youtube debate?

John McCain's health care plan

A strong dose of finger-wagging at patients for not buying insurance, getting too much care, eating too much, and always suing their doctors, combined with a solid regimen of cutting the number of procedures Medicare covers and using that money to subsidize HMO profits.

If that's not a winning combination, I don't know what is!

Oh, and a message for the Mitthead and Ru9/11dy: ya know what's the most "portable" insurer of health care? Medicare.

Seth Myers, quoting Rudy Giuliani as he puts down his cellphone:

"That was my wife reminding me to pick up some milk at the nine-eleven."

Yes, he can be that bad. And you know why he's that bad about constantly tossing 9/11 in there? Because he has no f**king idea what he's talking about on most major issues; for a presidential candidate, his knowledge base on economics, health care, and foreign are at times shockingly shallow. See this, for example, during last night's debate:

As the Republicans' latest presidential debate began in Michigan this afternoon, Chris Matthews asked Rudy Giuliani to explain how private equity firms make "billions of dollars" and whether there's "any downside to this amazing bonanza."
...
Here's the entirety of what Giuliani said as he ran out the clock on Matthews' question:

"Well, I mean the market is a wonderful thing. I mean, the free market is our -- one of our greatest assets. And the leading Democratic candidate once said that the unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America. I mean, just get an idea of where the philosophy comes from.

"The free market is the asset that has allowed us to -- the sky's the limit. The reality is that what we have to do is look at the fundamentals. A president can't be an economic forecaster. A president's not going to be any better an economic forecaster than you are a baseball forecaster -- and I'm not a particularly [good] baseball forecaster this afternoon.

"So the reality is, a president has to work on the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals? Keep taxes low. Keep regulations moderate. Keep spending under control. That's an area where we need a lot of help. And make sure you do something about legal reform so that our legal system doesn't -- it's 2.2 percent of our GDP now, is spent on all these frivolous lawsuits. It's double any other industrialized nation. If we don't get control of that, that's another way in which we're going to eat up our future.

"So we got a prospect on the Democratic side of overspending, overtaxing, overregulating, and oversuing, and I think you need a Republican alternative to that, which is an emphasis on the pillars of growth that I mentioned."

What Rudy had nothing to say about, presumably because he knows nothing about them: hedge funds and private equity firms, which was the subject of the question.

And of course, I wonder if anyone ever explained to Rudnine Eleviani that "an unfettered free market" is sort of what you have when you don't "keep regulations moderate."

Seriously, I've watched a fair number of debates in my lifetime, but this answer is one of the silliest, most jingoistic, least informed answers I've ever heard. "The sky's the limit?" What the hell is he even talking about?

"Massachusetts values"

Hysterical. The Log Cabin Republicans figure out how to take Romney down for going whole hog against the gay community. They're running this ad...

...in Iowa.

See, this is why the idea of a Romney campaign seems so absurd to me. I mean, this is all the Dems would do on TV, because let me tell you people, if you think John Kerry was a flip-flopper, this guy will blow you away!

Of course, on the other hand, unlike Rudy, at least the Christian Right hasn't said they'll mount a 3rd party challenge if he wins the nomination.

Rudy!

This would be positively poetic.

Giuliani's ineptitude screwed firefighters on 9/11

Wow. And the GOP wants this guy to be president?

Haven't we had enough of Republican incompetence for a couple of years?

Stardust

Not bad. A little corny at times, but the characters are fairly interesting and there's some good jokey moments (there's a prince that bleeds blue, for instance). Deniro's character is priceless, too.

On a darker note, this now makes 4 movies in a row where some obnoxious a$$hole put a damper on the whole experience. This time, oddly, it was a 40-year-old couple who couldn't shut their traps once during THE ENTIRE FILM.

And there were only 8 people in the whole theater. I was sure we'd be safe from that crap this time.

Yeah, yeah, I know, "why didn't you go tell the manager?" you ask. Two reasons: 1. I hate confrontation, frankly, and I gather most people feel the same way, which is probably why 2. I always have to be the guy that does something about it, because no one else will, and that annoys me. Despite how much I hate confrontation, I sometimes feel a moral obligation to stand up to these a$$holes, because every time they get away with being obnoxious a$$holes it just perpetuates that behavior, and I'm condemning every poor bastard that has to share a theater with them in the future to the same plight. But why should I have to play the civility police every time I want to watch a movie?

I really don't think I can handle movie theaters anymore. I'm sick of being unable to enjoy a movie I paid out the nose for because I'm still fuming about a) the obnoxious a$$hole who couldn't just sit and watch, or b) the confrontation I had in the middle of the movie with the obnoxious a$$hole who answered my polite request to just sit and watch with some permutation of "go f&*k yourself."

And guess what, folks? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

I've seen all sorts of ideas for fixing the obnoxious a$$hole problem in theater: ban cell phones, put jamming technology in theaters, give movie-goers a remote control that alerts the staff, etc. I've got one, and I'm hearing other people say it, too. It's easier than banning cell phones and cheaper than installing phone jammers and buying a thousand special remotes. I call it "the Giuliani solution": put ushers in the theaters. One employee in each auditorium, with one job: boot out all the obnoxious a$$holes, consistently and publicly.

My guess is that, if a given theater boots all the obnoxious a$$holes at every movie showing, with utter consistency and right in front of all the other movie-goers, in 6 months the theater will be virtually obnoxious-a$$hole-free. The theater shouldn't worry about lost business: I bet 9 out of 10 obnoxious a$$holes will come back after they nurse their bruised egos, and this time they'll just sit and watch. Furthermore, the theater will gain a reputation as a place where people can actually watch movies in peace, and people might actually go to the movies more. Here's a thought: after you clean out the obnoxious a$$holes, advertise about that fact.

I guarantee you it would be a lot more effective than lecturing the audience during the commercials with singing frogs or a CGI fairy godmother. The problem ain't that the obnoxious a$$holes don't know it's rude. Until they actually see people (or themselves) being asked to leave, the fairy godmother's admonishment that they'll get kicked out is just an empty threat. Just like, once upon a time, the law against jumping the turnstiles in the subway was.

interesting results from an Iowa poll

New poll of Iowa Republicans. Romney wins, followed by Giuliani. Guess who's in third?

Barack Obama.

only 2 Republicans have signed onto Youtube debate

From the Washington Post blog (c/o Jeff Jarvis):

Four days after the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C,. more than 400 questions directed to the GOP presidential field have been uploaded on YouTube -- targeted at Republicans scheduled to get their turn at videopopulism on Sept. 17.

But so far, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) have agreed to participate in the debate, co-hosted by Republican Party of Florida in St. Petersburg.
...
Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both with dozens of videos on their YouTube channels, have not signed up. Neither have the rest of the Republican candidates, including Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), whose "Tancredo Takes" on his YouTube channel draw hundreds of views. Sources familiar with the Guiliani campaign said he's unlikely to participate...

In an interview Wednesday with the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, Romney said he's not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

Very telling. You figure there might a whole mess of questions from Republican primary voters that certain GOP frontrunners don't want to answer? Or that the "Republican primary voter" is a breed that the GOP doesn't want the rest of the country to see?

Josh Marshall's gotten some reader comments, and has posted a couple of good points.

The first one:

You realize why Rudy doesn't like the YouTube debate format, right? He doesn't want the NY fire fighter's to get a clean shot at him on national TV.

Probably true. One can only imagine the reaction of the FDNY posting a scathing video demolishing Rudy's 9/11 cred, how he could possibly answer it, and what that would do to his numbers. Remember, 9/11 is his campaign. That's all he's got. And what are the moderators gonna do, not air the video from the friggin' FDNY? The scandal would probably cause such a ruckus that everyone would end up hearing about it and seeing the video on the Nightly News instead!
Here's the second one:

One of the thoughts that occurred to me with regards to the Democratic Youtube debate was how weird the questions for the GOP candidates could potentially be...As far as issues like illegal immigration and "coercive interrogation techniques" go, how does one ask questions like this in a Youtube format in an amusing way? The differences between the GOP base and the political mainstream can seem less extreme when asked by someone like Wolf Blitzer, but if presented from the standard GOP rank-and-file member of the base, it seemed like a great way to show how unhinged the GOP has become on some of these issues. Personally, I'm surprised the GOP ever got close to agreeing to this format, and once the Democratic debate happened and showed the format in action, I didn't see how it could have been pulled off by the GOP.

I agree that the Republican base, right now, is much farther from independents than the Democratic base, but I kinda think the moderators could weed out the less reasonable-sounding ones. I bet one could find the vids on Youtube (perhaps there's a specific category for the GOP debate? One would think so.) and look for oneself, but I don't really want to subject myself to that.

For what it's worth, I happen to think a debate between a floundering, desperate John McCain and a surging, confident Ron Paul could be fascinating to watch. Romney does contribute some great gag-lines, like "There is a global jihadist movement ... And they've come together as Shi'a and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda with that intent" and "I'm pro-life," but other than that everyone else is just a waste of oxygen in these things anyway.

the Joke Line goes to bat for Libby

Greenwald, as devastating as ever. Read it. I'll just say this: the single most salient point in this whole Libby issue is the fact that both the prosecutor and the judge were Republicans appointed by the president himself.

Also, Glenn very slyly buries this one in a pile of evidence that many people get rolled this hard for perjury all the time, but I think it speaks to many, many things:

New York Times, September 11, 1987 (h/t Attaturk):

The United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, declared yesterday that the one-year prison sentence that a Queens judge received for perjury was "somewhat shocking."

"A sentence of one year seemed to me to be very lenient," Mr. Giuliani said, when asked to comment on the sentence imposed Wednesday on Justice Francis X. Smith, the former Queens administrative judge. . . .

Justice Smith was convicted of committing perjury before a grand jury investigating corruption in the city, Mr. Giuliani said later, adding that "he could have helped root out corruption" by cooperating with the grand jury.

he helps the bad guys

Another one of Matthews' more lucid moments. It's a relatively obvious point, but since no one else is saying it, props to Matthews (h/t TPM).