From the second exchange between Greenwald and W. James Antle III in the LA Times:
Given the overwhelmingly Democratic tilt of the career bureaucracy in most civilian portions of the federal government, I must say I'm not terribly concerned that Bush's "burrowing" is going to derail any Obama administration initiatives. Elliot Abrams is not going to be making Obama's foreign policy, and Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey is not going to be overruling Holder (assuming he's confirmed) at the Department of Justice. I won't defend the practice, but burrowing is common, bipartisan and in this case likely to be [no] more of an impediment to the Obama administration than the pranks of political appointees removing keys from White House keyboards or similar hi-jinks.
Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."
I know we are rightly embroiled in the economic calamity, but it seems that academics have been studying the decrease in violence in Iraq, and...surprise! Adding a paltry 30K soldiers to a country of 30M didn't really make the difference. It was the ethnic cleansing:
Studying satellite imagery of night light in Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by Sunni residents, [UCLA researchers] came up with an alternative conclusion: The Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims had largely stopped killing each other by the time the "surge" of U.S. troops arrived in 2007.
In other words, the remaining Sunnis, defeated, turned out the lights and left. And then the U.S. troops came in.
As issues like Obama's position on FISA, or the various Supreme Court rulings causes a lot of debate about Obama's need to move right or to the center, I thought I would raise a point I heard or saw somewhere (but can't remember or I would credit better): The public already thinks of Obama as a "liberal" and they like him just fine.
Q33. How would you describe the views of Barack Obama on most matters having to do with politics: Do you generally think of Obama as very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative or very conservative, or haven't you heard enough about him yet to say?
Those saying liberal were split 30% saying "very liberal" and 26% "somewhat liberal." Among Democrats only 19% said "very liberal" so it isn't us driving this number up, and Obama is doing just fine (remember he was ahead by 12 in this same poll).
Apparently being a liberal is not toxic.
I do see a positive in this situation though. Even if Obama never embraces the liberal label, if he gets elected and governs well that will do a lot to improve the brand regardless. The public already thinks he is a liberal, so seeing him govern well wears well on liberalism.
After all, we don't need marketing tricks to redeem liberalism. All we have to do is govern better than conservatives, which isn't hard at all. That bar is low. Government that merely functions being run by a person deemed "liberal" is real world proof liberalism works. All Obama has to do is not purposely run a kleptocratic, scorched earth travesty of an administration full of flat earthers and theocrats, where the only debate among historians will be whether Orwell, Kafka or Heller best analog its absurdity and malice.
I could write at least four or five posts on that LA Times/Bloomberg poll that had Obama up 12 points on McCain, not for that result (noteworthy and heartening as it is), but for all the other questions they asked.
I particularly like questions 24 and 25, so here they are in detail (with some attempt at formatting and yes my colour choices suck)
Q24/25 Do you have a positive or negative feeling about the (24)Democratic/(25)Republican Party? (IF POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE) Is it very or only somewhat (positive/negative)?
Of course, what the story doesn't tell you is how much this is connected with the media's own complicity in hyping McCain, as was so thoroughly documented in Free Ride: John McCain and the Media. The media's complicitly is explicitly invoked by at the end of "McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare" and is directly tied to the pitch to help spread the video to others.
The Times story doesn't completely ignore the core problem for McCain-his complete lack of candor, credibility and integrity that the media scrupulously hides from public view. But it steers away from any reflection on the media's own culpability, and in doing so, it invokes a whole series of tired narrative conventions that serve to illustrate how the media "covers" the news-as in keeping it under wraps. You'll see what I mean on the flip.
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