Showing posts with label Charles Krauthammer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Krauthammer. Show all posts
Friday, October 24, 2008
Dr. Krauthammer: Obama can be as partisan as he wants
Special Report w/ Brit Hume
October 23, 2008
FOX News Channel
BRIT HUME, HOST: Well, it was a big deal earlier in the campaign for Barack Obama. In fact, one of the phrases attached to him by his admirers was that he was "post-partisan." And he talked a lot about reaching across the aisle and ending the poisonous atmosphere in Washington.
Talk of that has subsided. Those examples you heard him cite are about the only ones he does cite, and, of course, they are not about reaching across the aisle. They are about allegedly offending interest groups within his own party.
The question I have is, is this idea of bipartisanship simply gone away in this campaign?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It certainly has in Obama's case.
When he was running against the other Democrats in the first half of the year, between let's say Iowa and Berlin, and he had to distinguish himself from others with whom he had no real difference in substance, he was the transcendent uniter, the guy who was on the magic carpet tour soaring above ordinary politics.
It worked, and at the time he was going to be a man who would transcend race and region and class and party. That was all part of his appeal.
All of a sudden, as you say, it's disappeared. Why? Two reasons. A, it's a McCain issue. He knows in fighting against McCain, McCain has the real stuff. He's lived it. He has done it. All of these examples Obama brought up are trivial and insubstantial.
Generally speaking, in Illinois and in the Senate, he has been a party man. So why raise an issue that is actually McCain's strength?
Secondly, he doesn't need bipartisanship. There is a wave breaking here, and the Congress will be heavily Democratic. It's conceivable that there is 60 Democrats or almost. He is not going to need any Republicans, so he can be as partisan as he wants.
So it is not an issue he needs, and it's not an issue he's strong on.
MARA LIASSON: I think this issue is so interesting because Barack Obama has a post-partisan aura or a post-partisan persona, but he doesn't have a post-partisan or bipartisan record.
Right now I think Democrats used to extol people, people who were usually Republican who reached across the aisle, but right now they're in a very partisan mood. Look at how readily they accepted Obama's throwing over the public's funding for a campaign. You didn't hear a whimper out of Democrats for that. He has busted all the records.
HUME: Private money, yes. If it were a Republican with all this prize —
LIASSON: And he's raising big money from big donors, you know. About a quarter of his money comes from under $200.
NPR has a poll that's coming out tomorrow morning that asks a very interesting question. They said would you rather have a Republican president be a check on the Democratic congress or Democratic president.
Republican president won by quite a big margin. But when we asked the question again, would you rather have Barack Obama working with a Democratic Congress or John McCain as a check on it, of course, Obama edged out McCain by a very small margin.
So people are still in the mood for this. But I just think that that is not what this campaign is being waged on. There's no doubt that McCain has this all over Obama, but it doesn't seem to be what's moving voters.
FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Look, Obama was not only the most liberal senator in 2007, he was the fourth most partisan. In other words, the average senator I think he votes with his party about 84 percent, something like that, and he was at 96 percent voting with Democrats.
He raised this thing. He has no record of being bipartisan at all in any serious way, but it sounded good for a while. And now he has dropped it I think for the reason Charles said. Democrats think they will be able to ram everything through. They don't need Republicans.
HUME: I understand that. That seems to scare the public to some extent, as Mara cited.
So should McCain make more of an issue of that, of Obama as a guy who will give in to the Congress, and the Congress will give in to him?
BARNES: I think that's a good issue. But we never see much strategic voting. In other words, people who might like Obama, but when they hear it would be one party rule in Washington, they will vote for McCain. You know, people usually vote for the candidate they like.
BARNES: It's worth linking Obama to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid because they're unpopular.
McCain for President
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 24, 2008
Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.
I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.
First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.
McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.
Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.
McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.
Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.
The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?
Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?
There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?
And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.
The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.
Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.
I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.
First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.
McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.
Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.
McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.
Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.
The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?
Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?
There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?
And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.
The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.
Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
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