Bad Op, Good Op

Who's a poor blogger, slaving over a hot keyboard, to believe? The Krait claims that both campaigns are beset by pessimism. The BlowHard is willing to chug a 6-pack of Liquid-Plumr if The Hopester loses on November 4. In the end, smart money will be on The Roadrunner (aka The Hopester), not Wile E. Coyote (The Geezer) giving chase. The Coyote always comes a cropper with his mail-orders to the Acme Corporation for explosive devices to put an end to The 'Runner. The Geezer ordered his "secret weapon" box from Acme and out jumped The Mighty Quinnette. The inevitable same result? Beep, Beep! The 'Runner zooms away. If this is (fair & balanced) life imitating Chuck Jones' art, so be it.

[Vannevar Bush Hyperlink Directory]
[1] The Krait (Bad Op)
[2] The BlowHard (Good Op)

[x NY Fishwrap]
[1]
Is Anybody Happy?
By Gail Collins

Now is the October of our discontent.

First of all, George W. Bush showed up on TV Friday morning to reassure the nation. What could possibly be worse?

Everybody knows that anything our president says is very likely wrong, and certainly won’t happen. If he announced: “I’m sending government agents to Spokane to arrest the looters,” we would expect that the officials would get lost, nobody would be arrested, and the looters probably never existed in the first place.

So hearts sunk throughout the nation when Bush appeared at a Chamber of Commerce gathering to say that the economy would recover.

“America is the most attractive destination for investors around the globe. America is the home of the most talented and enterprising and creative workers in the world,” said the president, who also insisted that “democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised.”

Which translates into: all the money is going to Asia, nobody will ever get a job again and Karl Marx was right after all.

Bummer.

Americans are also in a very low state about the presidential elections. Once again we’ve hit that magic moment when both sides are sure they’re going to lose.

The Republicans are deeply depressed. Only Sarah Palin is chipper, perhaps because, as she told her supporters, the staff won’t let her watch the news.

The Democrats are terrified. They’re convinced something terrible is going to happen because something terrible always happens. Look at 2000! Look at 2004! All the exit polls said it was going to be Kerry and then he lost. How could that happen? Because God hates Democrats, that’s why.

It’s like the curse of the Bambino. The Democrats fear they’re under a jinx because they committed some sin, the political equivalent of trading away Babe Ruth. If so, it probably started with nominating Joe Lieberman for vice president.

The only people who seem to have faith that Barack Obama can pull this off are the Republicans. They thought McCain did well in the final debate and were crushed when viewers only saw his rolling eyes and glares.

Maybe McCain’s problem is not his temperament but his positions. It’s hard to be cheerful and self-satisfied when you’re peddling an unpopular product.

This week, when McCain made appearances at the Al Smith dinner and “The Late Show With David Letterman,” he was funny and self-deprecating. Suddenly you remembered — this guy used to be likeable. Back before he was trying to argue that what a country in economic collapse needs most is tax cuts for the rich and an end to Senate earmarks.

With less than three weeks to go, saddled with an unpopular ideology and an unattractive candidate, the McCain campaign’s deep thinkers decided the only possible hope was ...

Joe the Plumber! Joe is, of course, the conservative guy from northwestern Ohio who told Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more” because he planned to buy a business that he hoped would reel in more than $250,000 a year in profits.

The proper answer, as Obama should have known, was: “No, it won’t.”

Instead, he engaged JtheP in conversation, remarking that it might be helpful in this time of crisis to “spread the wealth around” a little. Since this was before George W. Bush put the nail into the coffin of capitalism at the Chamber of Commerce speech, Joe was appalled.

The Republican presidential campaign is now all Joe, all the time. Obama’s plan to give tax breaks to people making less than $200,000 a year is being described on a McCain Internet ad as “welfare government handouts.” In Miami, Lieberman told a rally that McCain would “fight for José el plomero!”

Meanwhile, Joe was happily standing in his front yard, holding forth to the assembled national news media on his theories about everything from Social Security (bad) to the war in Iraq (good). And do not condemn him, people, unless you imagine that if all the cable television reporters in the world were in your driveway, begging for your opinion on the state of the nation, you would say: “No, I leave that to the experts.”

You should, however, understand that once the interview is over, the reporters will go down the street and ask the sanitation man whether you’ve ever failed to recycle.

Joe the Plumber, it turns out, is actually named Samuel and is not a licensed plumber. He has a lien on his house for unpaid taxes. While his professional life is still a little hazy, there is not much evidence he’s ever going to become a small business owner. And he would be a beneficiary of the Barack Obama tax plan.

I think the lessons here are very clear:

1) Do not organize your presidential campaign around a guy you’ve only seen on YouTube.

2) Before you become a media sensation, examine your conscience and start separating the bottles and newspapers.

3) Never let George W. Bush mention you at a Chamber of Commerce speech.

[Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of The Times editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish a sequel to her book, America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. She returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007. Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Prior to The New York Times, Collins wrote for the New York Daily News, Newsday, Connecticut Business Journal, United Press International, and the Associated Press in New York City.]
__________________________________________________________________
[2]
November 5, 2008
By Charles M. Blow

It’s over.

I’ve studied the polls and the electoral map for months, and I no longer believe that John McCain can win. Unless Barack Obama slips up, Jeremiah Wright shows up or a serious national security emergency flares up, Obama will become the 44th president of the United States.^★

The wayward wizards of Wall Street delivered the election to Obama by pushing the economy to the verge of collapse, forcing leery voters to choose between their pocketbooks and their prejudices. McCain delivered it to Obama with his reckless pick of Sarah Palin. That stunt made everything that followed feel like a stunt, tarnishing McCain’s reputation and damaging his credibility so that when he went negative it backfired. And, some radical rabble among McCain’s supporters delivered it to Obama by mistaking his political rallies for lynch mobs.

This perfect storm of poor judgments has set the stage for an Obama victory. It’s over. Fast forward to November 5.

President-elect Obama (yes, get used to it) could wake up that morning as one of the most powerful presidents in recent American history. Not only is his party likely to maintain control of both houses of the Congress, it could dramatically strengthen its hand.

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll released this week, the percentage of people who say that they approve of the way their own member of Congress is handling his or her job has never been lower and the percentage who say they disapprove has only been higher once before: on the verge of the Republican Revolution in 1994 when the Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate. But this time voters seem to be more disenchanted with Republicans than with Democrats. In November 1994, the Republican Party’s favorable rating was 54 percent and the Democrats’ was 44 percent. In the most recent poll, the Democrats’ favorable rating was 52 percent and the Republicans’ was 37 percent.

Some think that the Democrats could even pass the magic 60 mark in the Senate, providing them with a filibuster-proof majority. The last president to enjoy that advantage was Jimmy Carter.

Add to that the possibility of Obama appointing several justices to the Supreme Court (Carter didn’t appoint any), and the probability of his receiving an enthusiastic embrace from the international community, and we could see an administration unlike any we’ve seen for more than a generation.

Obama would make history by simply assuming office. But then, the question of governance: could this gifted, 47-year-old, first-term senator with a razor-thin political résumé harness his enormous power to push through an agenda that would meet our daunting challenges and secure our future?

History will be the judge, but on November 5, it’s on.

^★If I’m wrong, I’ll take my crow with a six pack of Liquid-Plumr.

[Charles M. Blow is The New York Times's visual Op-Ed columnist. His column appears every other Saturday. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper's graphics director, a position he held for nine years. In that role, he led The Times to a best of show award from the Society of News Design for the Times's information graphics coverage of 9/11, the first time the award had been given for graphics coverage. He also led the paper to its first two best in show awards from the Malofiej International Infographics Summit for work that included coverage of the Iraq war. Charles Blow went on to become the paper's Design Director for News before leaving in 2006 to become the Art Director of National Geographic Magazine. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Blow had been a graphic artist at The Detroit News. Blow graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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