No Labels, no candidate.

"The centrist group No Labels has abandoned its plans to run a presidential ticket in the 2024 election, having failed to recruit a candidate, its leader, Nancy Jacobson, said on Thursday," the NYT reports.  

"The group had told donors and members that it would put forward a candidate if President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump were the main parties’ nominees.... When former Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the highest-profile No Labels supporter, died last week, the organization was left with little political firepower to recruit potential candidates. "

"Lieberman emerges as front-runner for FBI post."

Why???

Politico reports:

A person familiar with Wednesday’s meeting said Trump bonded with Lieberman, and the president left leaning towards the former Connecticut senator, who retired in 2013...

Bonded with him, eh? What are his qualifications? This strikes me as an insane choice.

The pick would be an unorthodox one – the FBI is not usually run by politicians. Additionally, Lieberman is 75 years old, and FBI directors are typically appointed to serve 10-year terms.

Lieberman ran alongside Democrat Al Gore in 2000. He now works as special counsel at the same law firm with Marc Kasowitz, Trump's longtime lawyer in New York, which could be an issue for Democrats, a senior Democratic aide said.

Trump often talks to Kasowitz, who’s also represented Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News anchor, and other prominent New Yorkers.

That doesn't sound right.

Joe Lieberman on censoring pop culture and reporting "troublesome" young people.

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace got Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman talking about the Sandy Hook massacre, specifically the question of violence in video games, movies and TV. Lieberman said violence in popular culture "does cause vulnerable young men, particularly, to be more violent," and "We’ve got to ask the entertainment industry, what are you going to do to try to tone that down."

Wallace asked whether this would be voluntary, and Lieberman said:

In our society we try to do it voluntarily. But I think we’ve come to a point where we have to say, if not, maybe there are some things we can do to tone it down.

So, in other words, not voluntary! Having let his authoritarian side show, Lieberman shifts to talking about "the mental health system" and says:

I think we really have got to ask ourselves, first, off, this is like the slogan that we use in Homeland Security -- see something, say something.

See something... like what?

We’ve got to ask parents, friends, school officials, if you see a child, a young person, that really looks like they are potentially... real troublesome, get them mental health help and we have to ask ourselves, as a society, is there enough mental health help available for these kids?

Troublesome! He should have said troubled, if he meant to talk about mental illness, and he paused before he said the word. A fascinating slip. Troubling!

A thrill went up Chris Matthew's other leg.

"Josh Marshall, I'm falling in love with you."

Who's getting rich selling those see-you-naked TSA body scanners?

As noted in the previous post, I want to follow the money. Let's start with this article in The Examiner. It lists these "research results":

• In 2008, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff authored a 38 page report warning of terrorists exploiting our security deficiencies – including air travel.
• On Christmas Day 2009, just before the “attempted bombing incident” on board flight 253, there were a total of 40 body scanners in use in 19 airports in the U.S.
• On Christmas Day 2009, numerous witnesses watched while Abdulmutallab, the supposed 'terrorist' was escorted TO the plane by several men in suits.
• After the 'bombing attempt' Chertoff made a flurry of media appearances suggesting that the “attempted bombing incident” could have been avoided if all airports were using full body scanners.
• The Washington Post printed an article on January 1, 2010, calling Chertoff out for using his government credentials to promote a product that benefits his clients. It was revealed that Rapiscan Systems, the manufacturer of the naked body scanner Chertoff was recommending, was a client of Chertoff's security consulting agency.
• Rapiscan has since received over $250 million in scanner orders.

Abdulmutallab, the supposed 'terrorist'... Oh, lord. That's too conspiracy-theory for  me. And the Washington Post story from last January is behind a pay-wall now. There's this time line at Firedoglake:

• 2005: Michael Chertoff, as head of Homeland Security, orders the first batch of porno scanners from a company called Rapiscan Systems. After his departure, Chertoff gave dozens of interviews using his government credentials to promote the device. What he didn’t tell people was that Rapiscan was one of the clients of his consulting company, The Chertoff group.
• March 2009: The Department of Homeland Security says they will apply $1 billion in stimulus money to the nation’s airports. Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, personally promises to oversee the distribution of stimulus funds so money goes toward the goal of creating “4 million jobs” and not on “boondoggles”
• December 2009: Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz inserted language into the Homeland Security appropriations bill barring the use of full-body image scans as “primary” screening tools at airports, and it passed the House on a bipartisan vote of 310-118. Both the ACLU and the NRA backed it. The amendment also made it illegal to store and copy these images. It died in the Senate.
• December 25, 2009: The “Christmas bomber” attempts to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board a flight to Detroit.
• December 29, 2009: Joe Lieberman calls for “more widespread use of the full-body scanners after the aborted attack.”
• January 2010: Since they couldn’t get money for the porno scanners from Congress, TSA uses the “Christmas bomber” scare to appropriate $25 million they had received in stimulus money to buy the “backscatter” scanners — from Rapiscan, Chertoff’s client. Rapiscan said the contract “helped create” 25 jobs. The government gives the TSA the green light to spend a total of $173 million on the scanners. TSA spokesperson Sarah Horowitz said “the agency has enough funds that would come from the stimulus program and other federal sources” to purchase 300 more porno scanners, per CNN. Total jobs created, per the government’s own website: 1.
• April 2010: The GAO reports that “it remains unclear whether the AIT would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident based on the preliminary information GAO has received.”
• November 8, 2010: US Airline Pilots Association tells its members “NOT to submit to AIT screenings.”
• November 15, 2010: Joe Lieberman says he “comes down on the side of the patdowns.”

The boldfacing is mine, but go to the link for the internal links in that text.

So the “groping” technique was developed as a way to punish people into using the scanners — because there are $148 million more on the way. And just so nobody gets the idea to follow Tyner’s lead, the TSA is using threats and intimidation to guarantee the market for the porno scanners. Whether Tyner is prosecuted or not, people will hear about what happened to him and think twice before refusing to become fodder for their new machines.

CORRECTION: I had the wrong link to the Examiner, which went to a website I didn't want to link to. Why is it so hard to find this information about the scanners?! I couldn't find anything recent in the NYT or the Washington Post.

Let's talk about Joe Lieberman.

It seems to me that the Senate is likely to end up 50-50. Did you notice California is considered a toss-up now? But that 50 for the Democrats assumes the inclusion of Joe Lieberman, who's an independent. Why wouldn't he switch to the Republicans?

"Incumbent sore loser to launch desperate bid to keep power."

Writes Allahpundit about Lisa Murkowski.

Everyone commenting on this story is looking back to see how they wrote about Joe Lieberman in 2006, right? Gotta do a hypocrisy check before posting on this one. I'm sure Allahpundit did though, because I'm reading "sore loser" as a wink. Yeah, I remember Lieberman/Loserman.

"Iraq was yesterday's war, Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war."

Said Joe Lieberman.

ADDED: Spencer Ackerman said:

Is it a mistake to respond to this with more than ridicule? Maybe, but if not: it’s a ludicrously blithe and cost-free assertion to say that we need to take preemptive action in Yemen. What the fuck does Joe Lieberman know about Yemen? What does anyone in the Washington policy community know about Yemen? .... Lieberman just gets to go on Fox and monger away, unchallenged. Such is life....

Kind of hard to backpedal from that, but the NYT has this:

In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels....

AND: Instapundit notes:

What’s interesting is the raft of commenters accusing Lieberman of being a stooge for Israel because of this statement, when he’s quoting an administration official.

I'm seeing, at the original report that I began with: "an administration official told him that..." So I didn't think I was quoting a quote. It's a paraphrase, I think. But Lieberman didn't make it up, and the NYT article makes it pretty clear that the attacks on Lieberman are embarrassing and should be withdrawn quickly.

Al Franken's dick move.

So... should we boycott Minnesota?

Snowe or Joe, that is the question.

"It's starting to seem like it may just be better for Dems to try to make a deal with Olympia Snowe, kick Joe Lieberman out of the party and be done with it. The leadership in the senate thought that Lieberman was on board with the latest compromise. But in an appearance on Face the Nation and later in a sit-down with Sen. Reid, Lieberman said he'd join the Republican filibuster if the Medicare buy-in remained in the bill. What's most telling about Lieberman isn't his positions, which are not that much different from Sen. Nelson's and perhaps Sen. Lincoln's. It's more that he seems to keep upping the ante just when the rest of the caucus thinks they've got a deal."


Josh Marshall. Who thinks Lieberman "just doesn't seem to be negotiating in good faith."

"U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda..."

ABC reports:

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures....

One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts....

On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

We are lucky it is Joe Lieberman who is in the position to force this investigation.

Investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.

In a blog posting early Monday titled "Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing," Awlaki calls Hassan a "hero" and a "man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

In war, traitors are heroes to the other side.  But it is a challenge for us to remember that we are at war. Of those now in power for us, Joe Lieberman manages to remember. Who else? Leon Panetta? Have we heard a peep from him in the past week? Apparently, not.

Hasan "should have been gone," says Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

Lieberman promises to ask the hard questions about why Nidal Malik Hasan was tolerated despite warning signs. And let no one be in denial: The warning signs were beyond clear.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe....

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second."

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan's "anti-American rants." He said: "The system is not doing what it's supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty."

It is pathetic not to be able to distinguish between discrimination again Muslims and seeing that something is wrong with a particular individual who is a Muslim. It is thoroughly inept to think you have to choose between fighting terrorism and avoiding invidious discrimination.

It would seem that the Army was vulnerable to Rule 4 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals":

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.

Of course, we should live up to our own rules. The key is to have good rules and not to distort your own rules out of fear of erring in one direction when there are multiple interests at stake. I imagine that Hasan thought his colleagues were complete idiots to let him get away with the outrageous things that he — a psychiatrist! — said.

"Bravo, Joe."

"It's a relief to see at least someone standing up to the Washington rush to rearrange 18% of the U.S. economy without carefully inspecting the cost and the consequences."

Obama opposes the release of more Abu Ghraib photo.

CNN reports:

"Last week, the president met with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the [Defense Department] photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops, and because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court," [an Administration] official said....

The ACLU said the Pentagon had agreed to release a "substantial" number of photographs by May 28. Officials at the Pentagon have said the photographs are from more than 60 criminal investigations between 2001 and 2006 and show military personnel allegedly abusing detainees....

"We know that many terrorists captured in Iraq have told American interrogators that one of the reasons they decided to join the violent jihadist war against America was what they saw on Al-Qaeda videos of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib," [Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, wrote in a March 7th letter to the President.] ""Releasing these old photographs of detainee treatment now will provide new fodder to Al-Qaeda's propaganda and recruitment operations, undercut the progress you have made in our international relations, and endanger America's military and diplomatic personnel throughout the world."

Andrew McCarthy, writing on the Web site of the National Review, issued a harsh warning Tuesday: "American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because Pres. Barack Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse."

Barack Obama, the pragmatic moderate. I approve.

The political news of the day.

1. Obama's Attorney General: Eric Holder -- "a centrist on most law enforcement issues, though he has sharply criticized the secrecy and the expansive views of executive power advanced by the Bush Justice Department."

2. Ted Stevens finally goes down to defeat. The new Senator from Alaska is Mark Begich. The Dems now have 58 seats in the Senate, 2 short of filibuster-busting power.

3. Hillary might say "no" to SOS: "The Clinton camp’s effort to downplay her interest in the post might simply reflect her need to create an alternative storyline if the deal falls apart for other reasons, including the possibility that insurmountable problems arise during the vetting process, Democrats not connected with Clinton cautioned. Another possible motivation: Pushing back against the perception that she’s at the mercy of Obama’s team."

4. No Beau.

5. Joe won't go.

6. Draft Sarah.

7. Ayers airs his pent-up thoughts: "Not only did I never kill or injure another person, but the Weather Underground in its six-year existence never killed or injured another person... We did something that was extreme. Some of you would call it not only extreme but kind of nuts. You might call it off the track. You might call it crazy. You might call it defying of common sense. It was certainly illegal. To call it terrorism stretches the definition of terrorism to everything you don't approve of."

8. Remember Jerry Brown? He's now the California attorney general and he's seeking constitution review of Prop 8 in the California Supreme Court. He's looking for "certainty and finality in this matter."

9. Huck's being mean to Mitt.

10. Do we have to keep thinking about Al Franken?

How McCain lost me.

As promised, I'm mining my archive -- beginning in late August -- to try to understand how I turned against John McCain.

August 25: "Nicely done. I'm glad to see the return of the light touch," I say about an Obama ad that uses the song "What a Wonderful World" -- "don't know much about..." -- to highlight McCain's statement "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should."

August 28, 7:11 AM: Wondering if McCain would pick Lieberman as his VP, I wrote: "... I've got to say that I kind of love Lieberman. He's just about exactly where I am on most things. Why should I fret about what evangelicals and staunch conservatives think? It would suit me just fine! It will wreak havoc with my cruel neutrality." I'd taken a vow to remain neutral (cruelly neutral) until at least October, and this little outburst shows that the choice of Lieberman would have come close to clinching my vote.

August 28, 7:48 AM: I'm struck by a McCain ad that uses an old Obama quote: "You know, I am a believer in … in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job. Uh, and I think that if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people." McCain's experience argument was working.

August 29: McCain picks Sarah Palin, and I'm live-blogging the roll-out of the news. When I hear that it will be a woman "a chill ran through my body when I heard that, and I have broken a sob or two as I write this." When I hear the news that it will be Sarah Palin, I write: "Tears! Chills!!!!" I fret that "she is inexperienced" and note that will cancel out the argument that Obama is inexperienced (the very argument that had worked on me the previous day). I note that people will try to catch her sounding inexperienced. "I haven't heard her enough to have any idea whether she has the nerve and the mental capacity to sound right all the time." The live-blogging continues in a second post, and I'm excited by pictures of the family and details about her family. I love her speech -- "amazingly clear and strong, passionate and devoid of any hesitation or filler 'uhs.'" "Wow! Great performance! Fabulous first walk onto the national stage!" Bold-face in the original.

September 2: The second night of the Republican Convention. (Hey, remember Hurricane Gustav?!) "Wolf Blitzer is pushing the meme -- which I've heard elsewhere -- that McCain is a 'maverick' and that means he makes impulsive decisions like the choice of Sarah Palin. He doesn't add -- but there are versions of this meme where it is added -- that this supposedly gut level choice of Sarah Palin should stand as a warning about the way he will make decisions about foreign policy." I had bought the old "experience" theme. I was not buying the "maverick." But the "experience" theme is still being sung by Fred Thompson ("Obama is 'history-making' all right: he's the most inexperienced, left-wing candidate the Democrats have ever run -- says Thompson.") and Joe Lieberman ("Eloquence is no substitute for a record").

September 4: I react to McCain's convention speech. "The speech felt very long and had its ups and downs.... Ah, why is a speech important? The big idea is John McCain's life, and somewhere along the way tonight that point was made. It was made over and over. It's now for us to decide if we want this man to lead us for the next 4 years."

September 7: "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies." Nothing made me laugh more all year that the way I laughed on September 7th at the third video at the link. That might have jarred something free from my clotted thoughts: McCain is incoherent!

September 13: I'm impressed by an anti-McCain ad:

The ad begins with the can't-use-email mockery but switches to McCain's really serious cluelessness problem: McCain has said he doesn't understand much about economics. These 2 things taken together mainly convey the message: McCain is old. McCain's age is also a serious problem, and Obama is justified in massaging our doubts about it, but there's an odd disproportion between the not being able to use email and not understanding economics.

September 18: John McCain gets confused talking about world leaders, and I'm inclined to defend him. If I've got my doubts about his mental acuity, I'm fighting them.

September 19: I poll readers about my neutrality, and most of you think I'll be voting for McCain.

September 21: I enjoy an "SNL" skit -- written by Al Franken -- that bashes McCain (for being willing to say anything to win).

September 24: McCain suspends his campaign -- and threatens to skip the first debate -- because of the financial crisis. My first response was "This is, I think, a smart demonstration of leadership." Was I rooting for McCain? Maybe I was just rooting for a solution to the crisis, which had come to seem much more important that than which man got the presidency. But it's the update that says so much here:

Obama says that "there are times for politics and there are times to rise above politics and do what’s right," but now is not the time to cancel the debate. "This is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates." And: "Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever."

I suppose Obama couldn't very well follow McCain's lead. In fact, if McCain had really been serious about this, he should have worked it out with Obama in private, so that the two men could make a joint announcement. McCain went for political theatrics, and I guess he can use it against Obama now, which was probably the point, but Obama's reaction was so predictable that McCain's show of statesmanship was entirely bogus, so I will be impervious to that rhetoric.

After hearing from Obama, I view McCain as having pulled a stunt, a stunt that he should have seen would be ineffective.

September 25: I find Palin's interview with Katie Couric "Painful. Terrible." Yet McCain wants the VP debate to go first. She's not ready, and he's throwing out impulsive, erratic ideas.

September 25, a little later: I'm impressed by Mickey Kaus's mockery of McCain's stunt.

September 26: More criticism of McCain's campaign-suspension stunt:

Why did McCain arrive [in Congress] showily, as if he was the man to close the deal, and then not do anything? Has McCain said one word about whether he thinks now is the time to build a bulwark against socialism?

The House Republicans were going on about "socialism."

And can John McCain explain why government insurance as opposed to government asset-purchasing is the key to saving us from socialism?

Unless McCain talks about some of these things, I don't see the point of his swooping onto the scene to be the leader. Was he just betting that it would look good? But why should he have counted on Democrats allowing him to look good? And, insanely, it seems that Republicans have undercut him.

Belatedly, he must realize that it would have been better to take a low profile and let his congressional colleagues steer their deal to a conclusion -- which is what Barack Obama did.

And then there's the debate. Obama will be there, winning by forfeiture, unless McCain's ultimatum -- he can't debate unless the deal is closed -- was a bluff.

September 26: Once again Mickey Kaus expresses what I've been thinking. (And in the end, Mickey, like me, votes for Obama.) Later that day, I take another poll, and you people still think I'll end up voting for McCain.

September 26, evening: The first debate. The financial crisis dominates. McCain starts off with 2 problems I think are beside the point: 1. greed, 2. earmarks. McCain accidentally says he wasn't elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate a second time. Nevertheless, I conclude: "McCain made more good points and got in more punches," based on all the discussion of the war and foreign policy. But the opening part about economics hurt McCain and would continue to hurt him as the crisis remained the overwhelmingly important issue in the campaign.

October 7: Hmmm... a long gap since the last notable McCain post. I was probably feeling bad about his competence -- and about the financial crisis -- and declining to talk about it. Now, it's the "town hall" debate, and of course, I live-blog as usual:

McCain sounds a little shaky and winded...

McCain points to his record, and repeatedly tells us he's reached across the aisle....

Again with the earmarks. What was the dollar figure on earmarks? I heard $1 billion. That seems like nothing compared to the $750 billion bailout....

McCain's plan seems to be to sound passionate and caring. And to say "Lieberman" frequently....

I was just admiring Obama's elegant gestures with his long, thin hands, when McCain positioned himself in the background and made a hand gesture that can only be described as holding an invisible grapefruit in front of your chest....

Obama seems relaxed and smiling but also oddly pissed that McCain has been "throwing a lot of things out there."

Get the picture? McCain is erratic.

October 8: The morning after the debate, my attitude shifts:

It's October now, so I can say I kept my vow. It's not the vow keeping me neutral anymore. I don't like deciding, especially between 2 men I've long viewed as dangerously inadequate. The tumultuous financial crisis reminds me why I prefer to wait until the end: We get a better idea of what problems will plague the new President.

It is the response to the present crisis that mattered most last night, and the candidates tiresomely repeated old talking points. McCain kept trying to stoke outrage over earmarks, and Obama continued to lecture us about conserving energy. They clung to their old pet solutions when we are staring at a huge new -- I mean, newly perceived -- problem. Are they so utterly lacking in creativity and flexibility that they cannot offer us anything new in the face of dramatically changed circumstances? Or are they both just determined to play it safe and say nothing in these last few weeks that can be spun against them?

The first half hour of the debate was excruciating, with question after question about the crisis. The candidates' evasions were mind-numbing, and, despite my commitment to live-blogging, I had no words, not even little idle comments. I nearly gave up.

But this morning, I decided to make an effort to say which man had done the better job. It was Barack Obama. And I'm not saying this just because I admired his relaxed demeanor and youthful image and felt uneasy about the older man's jerky movements and desperate grimaces. I'm saying it because I am inclined to think that with the development of complex securities and the pursuit of profit along the edge of disaster, the free market failed spectacularly. When we need new regulation, Obama effectively associated McCain with his party's love of deregulation.

McCain offered no defense of his party, only assertions that he had tried to get regulations passed. So, there he was, embedded in failure. He didn't stand by the principles of conservatism...

Look at how McCain failed to promote conservatism. McCain brought up Ronald Reagan 3 times: once to say he opposed him about sending troops to Lebanon and the other 2 times to say it was wonderful the way he worked with the liberal Tip O'Neill.

McCain never presented the conservative alternative to Obama. He never even called himself a conservative last night. He was wandering all over that red carpet, microphone in hand, and I have the feeling, in retrospect, that he was truly bewildered, mouthing old phrases, trying to slip by. But one old phrase that was missing was "I'm a proud conservative." Remember when he used to say that?...

McCain has lost definition. He's stumbling along to the finish line, hoping to achieve his lifelong ambition, to seize the crown at last. But why? To show he can get along with Democrats? I worry about what awful innovations the new President will concoct in league with the Democratic Congress, but at this point, I'm more worried about McCain than Obama.

This is not a commitment to vote for Obama, and I'm still going to provide the service of observing events from my slouchily neutral posture, to which no vow currently binds me. But you see the trend, and the destination is almost inevitable.

ADDED: I should have paid more attention to this. I heard it last night, but couldn't understand how it would deal with the crisis. It seems like a massive government benefit going out to people who overextended themselves taking loans. Why not give money to all the frugal people who believed they couldn't afford to buy a house? I don't understand the theory, other than as political pandering.

So this was the crucial tipping point. Dear readers, it was right there, the morning after the Town Hall debate.

October 8: "Nope, too slow. Touch her." Humor drives home my perception of McCain as an erratic old man.

October 10: Christopher Buckley has some influence, especially the phrase "his positions change, and lack coherence."

October 13: Christopher Hitchens has even more influence: "John McCain [seems] to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical." Yeah, that's what I'd been thinking. Exactly.

October 15: : My advice to McCain: "Act the way you would act if you knew for certain that you would lose... I think he should be the upright and honorable man that he wants us to be remembered as. This isn't a devious ploy to make him give up. I think it's the best hope for getting us bond with him now."

October 15, evening: I live-blog the last debate. "McCain plugs in prepared material about Joe the plumber who is worried about taxes.... McCain is wooden and overprepared, unwilling to react on the spot.... McCain mugs when it's not his turn.... McCain sounds over-rehearsed and he stumbles over many things. He says "abased" for "based." I think he knows he hasn't done enough tonight. He hasn't rattled Obama, not enough anyway...."

October 16: This still makes me laugh hysterically.

October 16, later: It bothers me tremendously that McCain hasn't defined himself as conservative.

Is there some sort of idea that if you think McCain is too liberal, you still have to vote for him, because if he's too liberal, then Obama is really too liberal? I don't buy that. 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.

October 26: McCain appeared on "Meet the Press," and I thought he sounded "exhausted or sick."

Whenever he found the chance, he would stress that Barack Obama has a far-left ideology, and whenever he needed a different argument -- such as when Brokaw confronted him with his own statements in favor of making the rich pay more taxes -- he would resort to the argument that different times require different solutions. How can you use these two rhetorical strategies alternately? It's incoherent.

Again: incoherent. At the link, I dissect the MTP transcript to demonstrate my point.

October 30: I come to terms with the problem of 1-party government:

Usually, I prefer divided government, but that doesn't mean I need to support McCain. I've seen McCain put way too much effort into pleasing Democrats and flouting his own party, and I can picture Obama standing up to the Democratic Congress and being his own man. What, really, will he owe them? McCain, by contrast, will need them. And we've seen that he wants to be loved by them.

Sometimes, I think that letting the Democrats control everything for 2 years would work out just fine. Let one party take responsibility for everything. When they can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do? It will be interesting to know. And it will do the Republicans good to retool and define themselves, with an eye toward the 2010 election. I'd like to see this clarification after so many years of obfuscation.

This goes along with my problem that McCain had abandoned the effort to define himself as conservative. I could see myself voting for a conservative. I would like some good conservatism. But I did not see it in McCain. Certainly, just bringing in Palin was no substitute for having his own clear principles.

October 30, later that day: I agree with The Economist: "on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision."

October 31: A dream reveals my emotional picture of McCain: an angry old man who is not interested in rational debate.

November 3: "One thing I don't like about John McCain is that he never showed respect for Bush. He was all about distancing himself from Bush, but if it's distance you want from Bush, there's Obama. And Obama had no reason to defend the other party's President, but for all his criticism of Bush's policies, I don't remember Obama taking ugly potshots at Bush. McCain treated Bush like an outcast. Was there even a word of defense for the man who protected us from terrorist attacks for 7 years?"

***

How did McCain lose me?

1. He did not understand economics, the most important issue.

2. He lost the ability to make the experience argument.

3. He never defined himself as a principled conservative.

4. Erratic and incoherent, he lacked sufficient mental capacity.

Slate article about John and Sarah that makes me think of Charles and Diana.

The Slate article, by Bill Gifford, is called "McCain's Visit to Palin Country: I Went to a Sarah Palin Rally, But All I Got Was a Lousy Handshake from John McCain":

The fire marshals have said no more people can be allowed into the gym....

Inside, the rally has already started.... [T]he screen flashes on, and there they are: Palin in her blood-red power suit, McCain standing next to her. She goes first, launching into a remixed version of her convention speech; in her squeaky, cheerleader-mom voice, its harsh sentiments come off as almost saucy. The crowd hoots and claps at the screen....

We can't really hear too well, the sound's been turned down so low, but still people clap and cheer. We're happy at last because we've realized we're going to get something far more precious: Palin and McCain will be coming out this side door, and we'll have our own private audience! ....

We wait some more. Finally McCain comes striding around from the back of the building, with a huge grin. But no Palin. The crowd cheers anyway....

McCain and Palin are doing rallies as a team, and it is too obvious that the crowd is genuinely thrilled about her. She is the one they've been waiting for (to vary a phrase).

There's a scene in Tina Brown's "Diana Chronicles." (You can read the passage if you go to that link and use the "search inside" function with "spina bifida" -- trust me -- and read forward.)

It's shortly after the wedding, and Charles and Diana are making an appearance in Wales. Charles, who's been the Prince of Wales all his life and expects the usual adoration, goes down one side of a crowded street and greets people in his usual style and Diana, the new Princess, proceeds down the other side glowing and touching and crouching in her distinctive new way. Occasionally, the couple switch sides, which means that the people waiting their turn are never sure if they are going to get personal contact with Charles or Diana. And every time the switch is made, the side of the street that is about to get Charles sighs with audible disappointment.

As Tina Brown tells it, Diana's superior popularity gets to Charles. It's not the only thing that wrecks the marriage, which was never on solid ground, but it's one of the many things.

What is it like for a man to suddenly find himself conspicuously upstaged and outloved by a woman that he picked out of near-obscurity to stand by him? Can he see it as his own great good fortune and benefit from the positive value, or does it eat at him, sour him, and ruin everything?

Charles, we know, blew it. He retreated into the arms of his comfortable old friend, Camilla Parker-Bowles, the woman he'd wanted all along, whom the family would not allow him to marry.

We don't know how John McCain will handle the country's dazzling, out-of-proportion love for Sarah Palin... other than that we can be quite sure that he won't retreat into the comfortable arms of Joe Lieberman.

Live-blogging night 2 of the Republican Convention.

5:22 Central Time: Just setting up the post. Let's watch!

5:31: Ugh. CNN is still going over and over the hurricane. Would they be making so much of a hurricane of this dimension if it was the Democratic Convention?

5:32: I'll have to run off at some point to go to a hair appointment. Feel free to tell me how you think I should get my hair cut. Pictures especially appreciated.

5:49: The subject is whether Sarah Palin should stay home with her "special needs" child. Can you be a mother and pursue a career? Gloria Borger, a self-identified "working mom," says you can't make "generalizations," and everyone must make her own decision.

5:57: Wolf Blitzer is pushing the meme -- which I've heard elsewhere -- that McCain is a "maverick" and that means he makes impulsive decisions like the choice of Sarah Palin. He doesn't add -- but there are versions of this meme where it is added -- that this supposedly gut level choice of Sarah Palin should stand as a warning about the way he will make decisions about foreign policy.

6:38: Super-serious singing of the the national anthem, but I really don't like the singer's enunciation. Weird to have the flag waving on a digital screen.

8:22: I'm back. Hair cut. Just scrolled through all the stuff I missed, and it seems like virtually nothing.

8:43: Very moving presentation of the story of a Medal of Honor winner, Michael Monsoor. I see from the NYT that Senator Lieberman spoke, but I didn't see that in my scroll-through, so I didn't mean to count that as "virtually nothing." What I saw was a lot of Blitzer et al. commentary. [ADDED: No, that was just a preview. I didn't miss it.]

8:53: It's Laura Bush, extolling her husband as a man of principle and resolve. She praises his achievements: the appointment of women and 2 new Supreme Court Justices, the faith based initiative, the fight against AIDS -- "you might call that change you can really believe in" -- "and let's not forget, President Bush has kept the American people safe." Will Laura's husband ever be honored? Does she believe he will? She introduces him.

8:56: And here he is, on the video screen. "I know the hard choices that fall solely to a President. John McCain's life has prepared him to make those choices. He is ready to lead this nation."

9:09: A film clip about Reagan. In the car, I heard the film clip about Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Convention, much more than the Democratic Convention, highlights the heroic individual. This fits the party's ideology. John McCain was "a foot soldier" in "the Reagan Revolution." Reagan "broke the self-confidence of the Evil Empire of Communism." And he had Nancy. He put "country first." ("Country First" is the new McCain campaign slogan.)

9:14: And now: Fred Thompson. Ah! He springs to the defense of Sarah Palin. "I say give me a tough Alaskan Governor who's taken on the political establishment of the largest state in the Union and won over the Beltway 'business as usual' crowd any day of the week!"

9:18: Fred says Sarah has got the other side "in a state of panic." And she knows "how to field dress a moose." Now, he's telling the story of John McCain's life, "putting his country first." He's putting a lot of passion into the delivery. The harrowing story of McCain's imprisonment. "We hear a lot of talk about hope these days. John McCain knows about hope. That's all he had."

9:29: Remember. After the comments go over 200, you need to click on "post a comment" and then "newer" to keep the conversation going. I know a lot of you know how to do that.

9:35: "The respect [John McCain] is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to America's critics abroad... *ahem*.... no, it's not that."

9:38: Obama is "history-making" all right: he's the most inexperienced, left-wing candidate the Democrats have ever run -- says Thompson.

9:52: The CNN commentary is insufferable. After Thompson, they all just kept saying "red meat."

9:55: It's Joe Lieberman. I kind of love this guy. I voted for him one time. Man, he is a boring speaker though. I can't imagine him as the VP candidate. Palin is a much better speaker.

9:59: "I'm here to support John McCain because country matters more than party."

10:05: "Eloquence is no substitute for a record," Lieberman says of Obama. Now, he compares Obama to Bill Clinton. Clinton stood up to interest groups and worked with Republicans for major achievements. [ADDED: He was saying Clinton was better than Obama: "In the Senate [Obama] has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. Contrast that to John McCain’s record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget."]

10:07: Sarah Palin is a "great lady."

10:12: He's warming up. Maybe it's not so boring now. "These are not ordinary times and John McCain is no ordinary candidate." He says what he thinks is right... ah... too much repetition. John McCain has character and experience....

10:17: After-speech commentary. Donna Brazile is talking fast but stumbles in a way -- "Look, Joe... Lieberman is a man... " -- "speaking at this conviction, this convention" -- that makes me feel sure she's reading from a teleprompter.

10:21: David Gergen thinks Lieberman has "extremely annoyed" some Democrats by not only supporting his old friend McCain but also really going after Obama "in a very personal way."

10:43: That's it for me. A decent convention night. The highlight was Fred Thompson's dramatization of McCain's Vietnam experience. Or was it Joe Lieberman telling everyone we should vote against his party?

McCain will reveal his VP pick at 11 ET today [CORRECTION: not today, Friday].

The NYT reports. Perfect timing, tearing us away from the Democratic Convention just as Obama is about to deliver his oration to the multitude. [Except not: The announcement comes on Friday, and today is not, as I thought, Friday. The perils of early morning blogging!]

Republicans close to the campaign said that the top contenders remained the same three men who have been the source of speculation for weeks: former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and, possibly, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

It was unclear how seriously Mr. McCain was considering his good friend Mr. Lieberman, who favors abortion rights and whose selection could set off a revolt among delegates at the Republican National Convention next week in Minneapolis-St. Paul as well as a furious backlash among Christian conservatives, a crucial voting bloc of the Republican Party. But as recently as Tuesday, Mr. McCain was said to still be entertaining the idea of Mr. Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000.

How truly bizarre it would be if Lieberman is a VP pick a second time. What is it about him that inspires this confidence? It must be strong indeed if the opposite party's candidate could consider him. Picking Lieberman would maximize the distraction from Obama. It would really shake things up now, wouldn't it?

[Some] Republicans said they suspected that whatever Mr. McCain’s personal views, his aides could be pushing Mr. Lieberman with reporters as part of a disinformation campaign to stir interest in the selection and to make it appear as if Mr. McCain, a longtime opponent of abortion, was open to all possibilities and was therefore more of an independent candidate.

Some Republicans also said that Mr. Lieberman had not caught fire as a campaigner in 2000 and that he would alienate more voters, particularly evangelicals, than he would attract.

Yes, a crucial point must be that he's not a very good campaigner. He was terrible in the VP debate with Dick Cheney — and Dick Cheney was hardly even trying to be good. I was completely for Al Gore in 2000, and I was mystified to find myself suddenly open to the notion of voting for Bush. (I didn't.)

But I've got to say that I kind of love Lieberman. He's just about exactly where I am on most things. Why should I fret about what evangelicals and staunch conservatives think? It would suit me just fine! It will wreak havoc with my cruel neutrality.

John Kerry does a terrible job of representing Barack Obama on "Meet the Press."

As Joe Lieberman dominated every exchange, John Kerry seemed to think it would work to sit back and make Stan Laurel faces:



Kerry's performance hit rock bottom when he struggled to keep up with Obama's latest position on offshore oil drilling:

MR. BROKAW: Let's, let's talk about energy for a moment, if we can, because there have been several developments this past week that are important. A bipartisan coalition of 10 senators...

SEN. KERRY: Yes.

MR. BROKAW: ...five Democrats, five Republicans--want to expand offshore drilling and they want to end a tax credit on oil companies. Senator Obama, in the past, has often said that he's opposed to offshore drilling.... Now, having said that, here's what Senator Obama had to say over the weekend: "My interest is in making sure that we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices. ... If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage--I don't want to be so rigid that we can't get something done." I can already hear the bloggers saying, "Flip-flop." Here's a guy who just...

SEN. KERRY: Sure.

MR. BROKAW: ...a couple of months ago said, "No way we're going to do this," now he's opened the possibility of it again. Two weeks ago on this program Vice President Al Gore, who's the godfather in the Democratic Party of energy policies, said, "No way should we drill offshore."

SEN. KERRY: I agree with Al Gore, and I don't want to. But, but Barack Obama...

MR. BROKAW: You, you--so you don't agree with Senator Obama?

SEN. KERRY: Well, I don't agree--here's, here's what I think his position is demonstrating. He still believes we should not drill offshore.

What?!

MR. BROKAW: But he's prepared to do it if necessary.

SEN. KERRY: He has not changed--what he's prepared to do, Tom, is break America's gridlock by honoring a bipartisan effort if that is the only way to move us towards alternative and renewable fuels and, and, and an energy policy that's comprehensive. I think what you see in the response on this drilling is really the difference in how they might govern. Barack Obama doesn't want to drill offshore, doesn't believe it's the thing to do.

What?! So you're saying that Obama's newest statements on the subject are just some meaningless politicking that you won't even pretend to believe temporarily while he gets himself elected?

There's a very--there's a four-state carefully circumscribed proposal in that, that, in that initiative that, that could conceivably allow some drilling.

that, that... that, that...

Can anyone listen to this part? Kerry gives off the signal that he's going to blather and smokescreen and do that thing his erstwhile fans called "nuance" in 2004.

could conceivably allow some drilling....

But what? But we shouldn't believe it will lead to any drilling?

He doesn't want to do that.

He doesn't? So Obama muddied his position, opened himself up to the accusation that he's flip-flopped, and the take away point really is just that he doesn't want drilling? Thanks a lot, Kerry.

Obama, do not send Kerry out to represent you again. He's terrible.

But if that's what gets us to the energy independence and to the other efforts, I think Joe Lieberman actually supports--now, he didn't support drilling. He's changed and moves in that direction.

"He" — who? I can't even tell if he's talking about Obama or Lieberman. So the point is, I think, that Obama wants to get some legislation through and he's willing to accept some provision that happens to be in it because it only opens a possibility of drilling, and he doesn't support drilling? I thought Obama wanted people to think he was open to offshore drilling, but Kerry is squelching that belief. How is Kerry trying to help Obama?

But here's the bottom line.

Go to the transcript for the news that oil companies make too much money and need to be taxed more. Let's skip a step ahead, and pick up in the middle what Lieberman's saying when he gets the floor again:

... John McCain says we need to drill offshore. That's American oil, we need to bring it into the market to help lower gas prices and make us energy independent. Barack Obama says, this weekend, maybe, and, and, if, but. He did not endorse--he did not come out with a strong decision, Obama, and say, "I'm for offshore drilling." And I predict to you he'll find reasons not to be for it if this comes to a vote in the Senate.

SEN. KERRY: Are you for it now? Have you changed?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I am for it...

SEN. KERRY: You've changed.

Oh, so Kerry was talking about Lieberman before. That's a distraction. We're talking about Obama and McCain, aren't we? Or is Kerry more concerned about the Senate-level debate about what legislation gets passed?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: ...because of the crisis. That's...

SEN. KERRY: You're now for it.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: ...absolutely right, because of the facts.

I want to take a minute from a personal perspective...

MR. BROKAW: Are you--you're--and you're not for it, Senator Kerry, under any circumstances.

SEN. KERRY: It is an absolutely fraudulent offering to America.

Is this helpful to Obama, who's been reframing his position?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: It, it is not.

SEN. KERRY: Drilling--let me tell you why. We only...

SEN. LIEBERMAN: My buddy here is filibustering this morning.

Yes, exactly! Kerry is being a Senator. Has he forgotten his role of helping Obama? But he wasn't invited onto "Meet the Press" to do his Senate work.

SEN. KERRY: We only have, we only have 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. Sixty-five percent of the oil comes from the Mideast. The problem with global climate change is oil. The problem for our security is our dependency on oil.

MR. BROKAW: So what you're saying...

SEN. KERRY: If we go out and drill more oil, even temporarily, when it doesn't come to the pump for about seven years, you're not dealing with the real crisis, which is moving America's innovation...

The same old Democratic talking points... I thought Obama trying to get away from that.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well...

SEN. KERRY: ...and creativity, the creation of new fuel.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: ...here, here's the difference. Here, here's the difference. Senator Obama, Senator Kerry say no to offshore drilling, no to nuclear power and...

SEN. KERRY: No, I don't say no to nuclear power.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: OK, hold on. Senator Obama certainly does. John McCain says we got to have all of the above. In the short term, we need to drill for American oil where we can find it and get it safely. That's offshore. Secondly, John McCain has presented--and we need nuclear power. Secondly, John McCain has presented the most bold alternative energy--wind, solar, electric car, hydrogen car--proposals that are around today.

I want to say just a word about the, the racial question here. And I, I speak personally. In the first place, the McCain campaign is, to use Barack Obama's words, raising the question is he a risky guy? But it has nothing to do with his name or his skin color. It has to do with his lack of experience and bad judgment, his unreadiness to be president. When you use the expressions that Senator Obama did three times this week, you're making a personal insult to John McCain.

I, I know John McCain. I've been with him for 20 years, private and public. This man does not have a bigoted bone in his body. His wife and he adopted a baby from Bangladesh, who, who they love. It's just wrong for Senator Obama to have done that. It was right for the campaign to call him on it. Let me just add a final word, Tom. In 2000, Al Gore gave me the extraordinary honor of being the first Jewish-American to run for national office, and Al Gore said he had confidence in the American people that they would judge me based on my record, not on my religion. And I urge Barack Obama to have the same faith in the American people that they will judge him on his record, or lack of record, certainly not on his name or his race.

MR. BROKAW: All right. We want to move on if we can.

Yes, let's move on, now that Joe Lieberman has just done a triumphant 2-part dance on the supine carcass of John Kerry. And that's it for the discussion of oil drilling. Is Brokaw playing it straight, biased against Obama, or just painfully aware that John Kerry is pathetically incapable or perversely unwilling to help Barack Obama?