The View from Right Field

Another Reason To Vote for John McCain

Following up on my post wondering what Barack Obama really believes, especially because of the tendency of his positions to fit with whatever works best fo the office he is running for, see this editorial in The Wall Street Journal. Senator Obama is now saying he may not even seek the tax increases on the rich that he has been talking about for so long. It all depends. Which means we really don’t know what he would try to do if he is elected president.

Some might think that this should make conservatives less concerned about an Obama presidency, especially since John McCain is not a true-blue conservative himself.

The problem with that argument is that, even if we don’t know what Senator Obama might do if he is elected president, we do know what the Democratic Congress will do. Even with the enthusiasm that Sarah Palin is bringing to the Republican campaign, there will be Republican losses in the House of Representatives and the Senate in November. The new Congress that will be sworn in in January will be more Democratic than the one we have now.

And it is very clear what that Democratic Congress will try to do.

Workers will lose the right to have secret ballot elections when it comes to decide whether or not they want a union to represent them. It will just be a matter of whether union supporters can get a majority of workers to sign a card saying they want a union. Management statements about unions during representation campaigns are limited by law. What limits will there be on union efforts to get those cards signed?

Conservative talk radio will probably be added to the list of endangered species. Liberal Democrats wanted to restore the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" to combat talk radio in the current Congress, but they knew President Bush would veto it. Does anybody think a President Obama would oppose that bill?

Is there any doubt that drilling for more oil would be off the table – and off the continental shelf? Speaker Pelosi shut down the House this summer to avoid letting members to vote on such a proposal. What are the chances it would get approved with a Democrat in the White House?

Some parents in the District Columbia have been given a chance to send their kids to schools they pick instead of the failing D.C. schools. The teachers unions don’t like this. Congress tried to cut this program this past year. With a Democrat in the White House, they should be able to get the job done next year.

In other words, even if we don’t know for sure what Barack Obama will do as President, we have a pretty good idea of what the Democratic Congress will try to do next year because we know what they have been trying to do this year.

Is that running against Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? I don’t know. All I know is that it is realistic, and it is another reason why we need John McCain in the White House.

The Reason John McCain Doesn't Send E-Mails

There have been some unfair and inaccurate commercials in the presidential campaign so far, and there will be more to come. However, I wonder if Barack Obama would like to take back his approval of the commercial his campaign put on the air yesterday.

According to the commercial, John McCain is so out of touch that he doesn’t know how to use a computer and can’t even send an e-mail. At the end of the commercial, Barack Obama says, "I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message."

I wonder if Senator Obama knew, when he approved that message, the reason why John McCain has troubles sending e-mails. According to an article in the Boston Globe on March 4, 2000, i.e., over eight years ago:

"McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball."

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Note: For more, see Jonah Goldberg at "the corner" blog at National Review Online. Jonah was the one who discovered the Boston Globe article first.

Sarah Palin: How Could You Possibly Like HER?

I live in a fairly rich, mostly white, upper middle class suburb. We have tall trees and big houses. And not many people like Sarah Palin. And they especially don’t understand how any intelligent person could like her. So, here go my thoughts on why I do.

First, experience. Let me compare Governor Palin’s experience with that of her opponent. Not her opponent for Vice President. I mean her opponent for President. The way I look at it, she was a mayor of a town in Alaska for six years (and on the city council for four years before that). Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois for eight years. I live in Illinois, and when it comes to important things, the leaders in the legislature pretty much decide among themselves, and then the party leaders tell their legislators how to vote. There is not much experience in that. Being a mayor for six years and on the city council for four years probably tells you at least as much about government as being a state senator in Illinois for eight years.

Barack Obama was elected to the United States Senate in 2004, but after two years he stopped being a senator to run for president. (I gave an example here about how much Senator Obama has cared about his duties as a senator since he started running for president.) So, unless running for an office counts as experience, Barack Obama has two years of experience as a senator.

Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska for a little over a year and a half before she started running for vice president. So, two years as a senator versus 1-1/2 years as a governor. That is about a push, except that Sarah Palin is running for vice president and Barack Obama is running for president. That sounds like advantage Palin to me.

Second, they say she believes creationism should be taught in the schools (only as one theory) and that is crazy. I have a couple of thoughts here. First, the older I get, the more it seems that many of the facts of science today are just theories that will be proved wrong tomorrow. A lot of what physicists know today is not what I was taught in high school 40+ years ago. If I was pressed as to how I thought the world was created, I would probably say that God directed and guided evolution. What some people think happened by random chance was God working. Is that creationism or is it evolution?

But in any case, if you really believe creationism should not be taught in the public schools, then vice president is a great job for Sarah Palin because the vice president is going to have no say in what is taught in public schools. A governor might. Maybe even a mayor. Heck, the president of the school board could have more influence on what is taught in a local school than the Vice President of the United States. So if this is an important issue to you, you are better off having Sarah Palin be vice president than governor.

Third, she doesn’t believe in abortion even for rape or incest. (She would allow abortion if the mother’s health was endangered.) I respect her view. If you believe that life starts at conception, then I understand how you could believe that. And she is following it. But once again, she is running for vice president. Even the president doesn’t get to decide this issue. All the president can do is veto bills and appoint judges (with the Senate’s consent). Even if an anti-abortion president appointed enough judges to get Roe v. Wade overturned, that would not outlaw abortion. All it would do is to return the question to the states. And if anybody thinks any state is going to pass a law prohibiting abortion in the case of rape or incest, then they are just being silly. It isn’t going to happen. And neither the president nor the vice president is going to decide this issue, no matter what the true believers on either side of this issue might say.

Fourth, back in the ‘90s, when she was mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin asked the local librarian what her response would be if she, as mayor, asked to have some books removed from the library. The librarian said she wouldn’t do it under any circumstances, and nothing else happened. However, now Sarah Palin is a book banner who doesn’t respect the First Amendment.

Actually, if you care about the First Amendment, then you have a problem this election because the three other candidates (both Democrats and Senator McCain) are supporters of campaign finance laws that restrict our freedom a lot more than just removing a book or two from a local library. Senators McCain, Obama, and Biden all support the kinds of laws we now have in place that prohibit some groups from putting commercials on TV or radio if the ads mention a candidate’s name in the 60 days before a general election. Prohibiting political speech in the middle of a political campaign. Now that is a First Amendment problem I care about. I do not know what Governor Palin thinks about this issue, but she can’t be any worse than the other three. (Also, if you really want that book that your local library doesn’t have, it’s called Amazon.com. It works great.)

Fifth, they say she knows nothing about foreign affairs. Well, I don’t know what Governor Palin’s positions are on foreign policy, but I do what her vice presidential opponent has supported while in the US Senate for the last 36 years. In the ‘70s Joe Biden was for cutting off aid to the people of South Vietnam when North Vietnam broke its agreement and invaded the South.

In the ‘80s Senator Biden opposed President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and the installation of Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe to counter the Soviet SS-20s. In other words he opposed two of the key policies that helped us win the Cold War.

In 1991 he voted against the Senate resolution supporting the Gulf War (even after the UN Security Council had passed a resolution supporting military action). In 2002 Senator Biden did vote to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. But once things started going bad, he switched sides. When the surge was proposed, he opposed it, and in 2007 he called it a "tragic mistake".

So, while I don’t know for sure what Governor Palin would do in foreign affairs, I do know that Senator Biden had been wrong on issue after issue for 36 years. Knowing that Governor Palin is a Republican, and knowing what Senator Biden has been for and against over the last 36 years, it’s easy: Advantage Palin.

But it is more than just that. I like the way Governor Palin fought the insiders and the corruption in Alaska and in the Republican Party in Alaska. That’s important to me. I think she can help get the Republican Party back on track. As a person, she seems real and genuine and one of us. Also, the more Democrats and the media attack her and her family, saying things like a mother of five shouldn’t run for vice president, and the more they look down their noses at her, the more I support her.

And so, unlike most of my upper middle class neighbors with their big houses and broad lawns, I like Sarah Palin. I really like her.

Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Afghanistan

Jessica Reaves’ somewhat one-sided article on Sarah Palin in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune includes the following quote about Governor Palin: "Oh, you’ll have to excuse her lack of understanding of NATO’s operational plan in Afghanistan. She’s a woman." I assume the quote is apocryphal, but it doesn’t matter. The point is the same, whether it is real or not.

Actually, I find all of these lack-of-experience/lack-of-interest criticisms of Governor Palin somewhat amusing. Let me explain.

A number of NATO countries have troops in Afghanistan. Some of those troops are doing a fantastic job. Other countries have put such restrictions on what their troops can do that the troops are almost useless.

This is something Congress should care about. The Subcommittee on Europe of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could be holding hearings on NATO’s role in Afghanistan. But when the chairman of that subcommittee, Barack Obama, was asked back in February why the subcommittee had held no hearings, he said: "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven’t had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." In other words, Senator Obama was too busy running for President to hold hearings about NATO and its role in Afghanistan.

So, when it comes to Afghanistan, at least Governor Palin has an excuse; she had another job. As for Senator Obama, he just didn’t have the time.

Oprah Says No to Sarah Palin

Oprah Winfrey has said that, because of her support for Barack Obama, she will not have Sarah Palin (or any other politician) on her show before the election. Three comments. First, I have no problem with her decision. It’s her show and it’s her money. She gets to decide what to do with it.

Second, I would hope that those who support Oprah’s decision to not have Governor Palin on her show, will give the same benefit to conservative talk radio hosts and let them do with their shows what they want to do. After all, if Oprah can decide not to have Governor Palin on her show because she supports Senator Obama, why should the federal government pass a new version of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," as many liberal Democrats have proposed, to require radio stations and radio shows to provide political "balance" (as defined by the federal government) on their shows.

Some will say Oprah’s situation is different because in her case it is not a question of balance since she is not having any politicians on her show. No, that’s not it. I think what Oprah is saying is that she wants to get Barack Obama elected, and therefore she is not going to let anybody appear on her show because that might help them beat Senator Obama. But as I said, I have no problem with that. It’s her show. She gets to decide what to do with it. I just think the same theory should apply to talk radio.

Third, if Oprah can decide to not have Governor Palin on her show, then I hope nobody objects if people who disagree with Oprah’s support of Senator Obama decide to not watch her show or to not buy the products that she sells or that are advertised on her show. After all, if Oprah wants to use her influence, the influence that comes from the number of people who watch her show, to support Senator Obama, then people who do not support Senator Obama have the right to not add to her influence by watching her show and buying her products. They have the right to not add to the influence she has, influence she is using to elect a candidate they disagree with.

Sarah Palin. And Little Trig.

Among the criticisms of Sarah Palin, this one, by Susannah Meadows on Newsweek.com, may be one of the most unfair:

"As the camera focused on that little guy in the stands, I felt an unfamiliar stirring. Then the mom in me kicked in. What's a four-month-old, I wondered, doing out late at night in a hall filled with hoards of screamers? For all the sanctimonious applause for Palin's pledge to be an advocate for special needs-children, no one seemed bothered by the fact that the little guy was being used as a prop to motivate voters. (I hate listening to mothers judge other mothers. I'd rather just listen to my own scornful internal monologue.)"

While Ms. Meadows says she hates listening to "mothers judge other mothers", she promptly does just that – and in the process implies Governor Palin was abusing her baby for political advantage by bringing him to the convention hall.

I disagree. First, from the pictures I saw of little Trig, he certainly didn’t look like he was being abused. He looked pretty calm and peaceful to me.

But beyond that, I think Ms. Meadows is wrong on why the Palins brought their children, all of their children, to the convention hall Wednesday night. And I think I know why they did it – because our family has done the same thing.

The Palins didn’t bring Trig to the convention hall for politics; they brought him there for family. They brought him because he is part of their family, and Wednesday night was one of the biggest nights in their family history. And they wanted him to be part of it.

Someday, maybe 20 or 25 years from now, when President Palin is out of the White House and retired, Sarah and Todd Palin will be able to tell Trig that he was there the day his mother made the speech that set her on the road to being elected our country’s first woman president.

I know that is true because our family is Cubs fans. Our daughter went to her first game at Wrigley Field just after her first birthday. Our son, who was born in the winter, went to his first Cubs game when he was Trig’s age, four months old.

If Ms. Meadows thinks the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul was "a hall filled with hoards of screamers" last night, she should have been at Wrigley Field that day. Every time the Cubs scored, the fans cheered – and our son cried. I started hoping for a Cubs victory – and a low-scoring game. The Cubs did win that day, but unfortunately it was not a low-scoring game.

And now, 22 years later, when our 22-year old son and our 24-year old daughter see a certain 45-year old pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies go out to the mound, they both know they were there that day back in 1986 when Jamie Moyer pitched his first major league game, beating future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton and winning the game for the Chicago Cubs, 7 to 5.

That is why Trig was there last night. Because it was a night for the Palin family, the whole Palin family, to be together.

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Update (9/4/08 10:47 p.m.): I changed "becoming our country's first woman president" to "being elected our country's first woman president" becaue that is what I meant.  I also corrected the spelling of Susannah Meadows's first name and a couple of other typos.

Cubs – September Pitching Update

Rich Harden is getting almost two weeks off. Carlos Zambrano’s arm is … well, who knows. And so it looks like getting to October, and doing something there, may depend a whole lot more on Jason Marquis and Sean Marshall than anybody ever thought. Go Cubs Go.

Sarah Palin. Living Her Principles.

Principles are an easy thing to have. But sometimes they are hard to follow. When I read stories about people who have sacrificed their jobs, their money, sometimes even risked their lives, for their principles, I realize how lucky I am to have never been put in a position where I had to make such a choice. We all like to think we would make the right decision, but until we actually have to make it, who knows what we would do.

Which makes me all the more impressed with people who do stand up for their principles, who actually risk something for what they believe in. People who do their duty, who follow what they think is right, even though it will cost them and will make their lives more difficult.

When I spoke enthusiastically about Sarah Palin on Saturday, I did so because of what I knew about her fights against the corruption in the Republican Party in Alaska. When she was on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and saw things that she thought were improper, she didn’t just go along or make perfunctory protests. She reported it. And when nothing was done, she resigned and blew the whistle. She risked her career to do what she thought was right. It is easy to talk about doing it, but she did it.

That spirit is something we need in the Republican Party if we are going to reclaim the principles we used to believe in. We claim we still believe in things like limited government and federalism and keeping the budget under control, but Republicans in Congress – and the White House – have not done a good job of following those principles lately. Instead, they have been doing things like Senator Ted Stevens’ and Representative Don Young’s "bridge to nowhere".

Sarah Palin opposed the bridge to nowhere and fought people like Ted Stevens and Don Young in the Alaska Republican Party. That is what we need to do if we are going to reclaim the Republican Party for its principles, instead of its earmarks. I think Sarah Palin believes in that, too, so I was glad when John McCain picked her.

But now, there’s more. Governor Palin is pro-life (or anti-choice or whatever you want to call it). But she not only talks about her principles, she follows them. Last April she gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome even though she knew that the baby had the condition before he was born. As a parent, I must say I am glad I never had to make that choice and that I respect somebody who can follow their principles the way the Palins did.

And even more. Governor Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant. It is going to be hard, but she is going to have the baby and marry her boyfriend. As the Palins’ statement said, "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support." I am impressed.

Sarah Palin is the kind of person I am glad to be supporting for Vice President – and she is somebody who will work well with John McCain, a person who also knows something about following principles and making hard decisions.

Barack Obama: Very Liberal or Just a Moderate Democrat for Change?

When Barack Obama started running for the Democratic presidential nomination, it seemed like he was a very liberal Democrat. In vote after vote in the Senate, Obama voted the left-wing line. Against Alito (of course). Against Roberts. Always voting against the Iraq war. Always voting with the Democratic majority, and usually with the liberal-left wing of that majority. He looked like a very liberal Democrat. And then, early this year, a National Journal survey showed him to have the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007. (National Journal, January 31, 2008)*

But recently I have begun to wonder. Since winning the nomination, Obama has criticized the Supreme Court decision that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty in child rape cases. He has supported the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. These are not positions of what Howard Dean called the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Obama has also said his rhetoric during the primaries against NAFTA was overheated. Even his statements on abortion have seemed to moderate a little, at least when compared with the standard NOW line.

All of this has made me wonder what Barack Obama really believes. Is he really the left-wing liberal that his votes in the Senate in 2007 told us he was and like he was earlier this year when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, criticizing all those bitter people clinging to their religion and guns? Or is he the more moderate, almost centrist Democrat we have been seeing in the last couple of months who supports the death penalty for child rapists and gun rights?

I don’t know for sure, but I do have a guess. Let me explain. To do so, I first need to take a look at Senator Obama’s political career. (Don’t worry. It won’t take long,)

Obama’s first elected political office was State Senator from the Hyde Park area of Chicago. This is the area around the University of Chicago, and it is a liberal, a very liberal, area. And so, when Obama was in the Illinois Senate, he voted very liberal. There has been a big controversy over some votes Obama cast on certain abortion bills when he was in the Illinois Senate. A couple of weeks ago Obama mis-spoke, as they say, about those votes. Whether his "confusion" about those votes was deliberate or a result of a poor memory isn’t relevant for my point here. What is relevant is that Obama today is taking a position on abortion that is more centrist and moderate than the position he took back then. In other words, when Obama was representing the super-liberal people of Hyde Park, he took an extremely liberal position on abortion. Once he became the Democratic nominee for president and his audience became all the people in the United States, Obama’s position shifted – or at least became more nuanced, as they also say. But the key is that in both cases Obama was reflecting his constituents – or at least the people he hoped would become his constituents.

Obama’s races for the United States Senate in 2004 don’t tell us much. Both his main opponent in the Democratic primary and his original Republican opponent in the general election had their campaigns torpedoed by disclosures from old divorce cases. And running against Alan Keyes tells us nothing.

I do not know when Obama started thinking about running for President. It may have been right after his speech to the Democratic convention in 2004, but you would have to think it was certainly by the summer of 2006. By the end of 2006, his presidential ambitions were obvious. To win the Democratic primary, you have to run left. And this is what Obama did – and maybe this is how he came to have the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007. He continued along that path until he finally got the nomination, at which point things seemed to shift to the center, as I noted above,

So what does this tell us about Obama? Does it tell us he is very liberal, except when political expedience makes him take more moderate positions? Or does it tell us that he is really moderate, except when political expedience (and his constituents) requires him to take liberal positions?

The fact is we don’t know. All that we know is that he always seems to take positions that fit with his party and with his constituents – and whatever office he is seeking. Whether in the U.S. Senate or the Illinois Senate, whether campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president or for the presidency itself, Senator Obama’s positions always seem to fit whatever he needs to say given what he is running for at that time. Whether that makes you feel comfortable about what Obama might do as president, I leave to you.

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* In the August 28 Chicago Tribune Steve Chapman argued that Obama might not be all that liberal. With respect to the National Journal survey, Chapman said that another survey found him to be just the 11th-most liberal Senator. In response to criticism of its rating system by Obama supporters, Charles Green of the National Journal noted that "[i]f Obama had voted differently a couple of times, or if we [i.e., the National Journal] had added or subtracted a couple of other votes in our ratings, he might not have been ranked as the most liberal senator. Perhaps he would have ended up as the fourth-most-liberal senator. Or maybe the sixth-most-liberal senator." (National Journal, August 28, 2008) In other words, even if he wasn’t the most liberal senator in 2007, he was still one of the most liberal senators in 2007.