More Political Ramblings

I promise, some economic and market stuff is coming. Please be patient. There's just too much political fodder out there to deal with right now.

Item 1: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused someone currently campaigning for the US presidency of inciting Georgia into conflict with Russia.

Please. All one need to to incite conflict between Georgia and Russia is wake up in the morning.

Conflict in that region is as much a given as is conflict in the Middle East, where they've been killing each other since Abraham kicked Ishmael out of the tent.

Putin didn't name names. But he said it was someone who stood to benefit from the conflict.

Hmmm ... could it be ... maybe ... John McCain?

After all, McCain got a boost in the polls following the skirmish. Little wonder; his considerable legislative experience, combined with his in-depth military knowledge, give McCain an edge for the commander-in-chief role that only a purely partisan Dem could discount.

So what does this tell us? Gee, it sure looks to me like the guy's trying to start some rumors about McCain inciting violence abroad for his own political gain. I'm pretty sure he didn't need to do that - like I said, violence in that region brews just below the surface all the time.

And I don't think that he would do that - any more than Clinton's supporters thought he would have wagged the dog following the Lewinsky affair by bombing Afghanistan and Sudan.

Now, why would Putin want to hurt McCain's chances for the presidency? Apparently he'd prefer an Obama White House. That way he'd be free to nationalize oil and gas interests, rebuild the Bear's nuclear arsenal, and invade former republics at will, without the repercussions that might exist under a McCain presidency.

Hey, it's not necessarily what I think. It's obviously what Putin thinks. He's a smart, savvy guy. Certainly more knowledgeable about politics, diplomacy, espionage, and stuff like that than little old me.

And if Vladimir Putin supports Obama for president, that's all the reason I need not to.

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Okay, on to the the GOP veep pick. A stellar choice in my book.

Before I explain why, I need to pat myself on the back. I said on a message board recently that McCain should pick a woman, and I panned Kay Bailey Hutchinson for being too old, Libby Dole for being even older, and Christie Whiteman for being pro-choice, which would alienate too many of the Republican base that's already a bit skittish about McCain's moderatism. Then I said that Sarah Palin would be a great pick - she's 44, she's a governor, she knows energy and environmental issues inside and out, she's ethical to a fault, and she's pro-life. But nobody's heard of her.

Well, I was right on all but the last count. Now, everybody's heard of her.

What do I like about the pick? All of the above.

She's 44 - a nice counterbalance to McCain's age. She's a governor. Unlike the other three people on the tickets, she's actually run something. She's been a chief executive, in other words. As a CEO myself, let me tell you what that means. A senator, if he or she serves long enough (longer than one term, Barack) might get to be a committee chairman.

I was a committee chairman when I was in my fraternity, in college.

A senator looks at two or three issues a year, and co-sponsors legislation on those issues with one or more other senators. They debate. They give speeches. They vote on stuff (if they're not out campaigning for a higher office).

With a CEO, the buck stops here. You make decisions - broad decisions. You have to look at all issues. You don't vote. You don't rely on a committee. You confer with the smart people that you're smart enough to surround yourself with. But at the end of the day, you make decisions. A day as a CEO is worth a year as a committee chairman.

She's a woman, which could help attract some of the disgruntled Hillary supporters, as well as the "security moms" that helped W win re-election. She knows energy and environmental issues, like I said. She's pro-life, and pro-family - she herself has five kids, one of whom has a disability.

She's been in the business world. She's smart, well-spoken and down-to-earth. She relates well - not just to audiences, like Obama. But to individuals. She's the antithesis of "elitist." You'll never hear her say people are bitter, and cling to their guns and their God. Because she gets people.

She's a fiscal conservative. She jettisoned the gubernatorial jet, in a state where you can't get there from here by road, to save money. Money she put back in the people's pockets. She runs surpluses. And hey, she only has one house!

She's telegenic - I wish we didn't care about that, but the reality of post-TV politics is that it matters. And she has strong ethics - she earned her way into the office of governor on her reputation as a whistle-blower on corrupt state politics, even taking on her own party. She's a maverick's maverick. She is change, but in a tangible sense - not just rhetoric. It's change we can truly believe in, because it's been demonstrated.

There are, however, a few things I don't like - at least politically, in terms of her chances. The fact that she's a woman could alienate some extremists within the GOP that see a "soft" moderate prez nominee teamed up with a woman. I don't feel that way, but there may be some that do. I'm just saying it's a risk of the pick. But McCain's a risk-taker, and I applaud that.

The second thing is the experience factor. Personally, it doesn't bother me. She has a great deal of life experience that could benefit her in the role. And I'd take her experience as CEO of a state 600 times the size of Joe Biden's home state over Barack Obama's 140-odd days actually in the office any day of the week. But the Dems will point out that a half-term governor and former mayor of a town of 9,000 people will be a heartbeat away from the leadership of the free world.

That's okay. The retort is obvious. Better that than having the leader of the free world be a guy who's a half-term senator - and has been campaigning for president most of that time, and who was a state senator before that. A guy Hillary Clinton said "has that speech he gave." A guy Joe Biden said wasn't ready for the presidency. See, I think that the veep role is one where some on-the-job training is okay.

The third thing that could hurt the ticket is the supposed "scandal" brewing over her ousting Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner, who claims he was canned for refusing to fire a trooper who was married to Palin's sister, with the marriage ending in a contentious divorce and custody battle.

If that's true, it tarnishes her image as an ethical standard-bearer. But I always take the word of a "disgruntled former employee" with a grain of salt. Probably because I've had some of them come after me, or I've had to go after them, and I've always prevailed. Truth will out. And in a campaign with a Keating Five alum, Rezko's pal, and a guy who spends four grand a month on train fare and shows up for work a few minutes past nine every day, if that's the biggest ethical knock against her, it shouldn't hurt the ticket much.

This race hearkens back to 1988. You had a relatively inexperienced Democratic presidential nominee, who, in apparent acknowledgment of that inexperience, chose as his running mate a seasoned member of the Senate to bolster up the ticket. Many people said at the time they'd have voted Democratic if the ticket had been reversed.

Including yours truly. Bentsen was a Texas Democrat, which is pretty much like a Republican just about anywhere else.

As for the GOP, you had a Republican candidate that many in the party felt was too moderate. Kemp was the better choice at the time to carry on the Reagan legacy, just as there were better candidates in this year's GOP primary than McCain, in my view. But then, as now, the moderate won the nomination. And he selected an unknown running mate that satisfied the Kemp crowd.

This time it's a little different. McCain's pick wasn't made just to please the GOP base, but also to be inclusive, to appeal to the disenfranchised women who felt the Democrats left them in the lurch. And unlike Dukakis' pick of Bentsen, I'm not so sure Obama's does anything to temper his reputation as being to the far left in his ideology.

And, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, "I saw Dan Quayle in action. And Sarah Palin is no Dan Quayle." (Thank goodness.)

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Maybe it's just me, but it seems to bode ill for the Democrats that the only way they feel they can attack John McCain is by saying he's just like George W. Bush.

It's so ignorant - just look at his voting record. (I know, the Dems ran an ad saying he voted with Bush 90% of the time. But they cherry-picked the last eight years to come up with that number - they simply chose to exclude the many, many more times he voted against his own party. At least he was there to vote, and not out campaigning for all but 140 days of his last Senate term.)

And think about where he did agree with Bush. He felt the world was better off without Saddam Hussein. (So do I.)

He was highly critical of the way the war was conducted under Rumsfeld. (So was I - but that runs against the Bush Administration.)

And, he acknowledges that the surge worked - as do I, and every other thinking American.

Now, he wants our troops back home. So do I. But he wants to make sure we withdraw in a way that doesn't do more harm than good. So do I. Because he remembers Vietnam. So do I.

Maybe if one has no experience on which to campaign, one can only campaign on the demonization of one's opponent, and on lying to the American people by saying he's "more of the same."

But if that's all you've got, you may be in trouble. And it's getting old. I just hope that, thirty years from now, Dems will have something a little more solid to campaign on than "he's just like George W. Bush." After all, you don't see Republicans campaigning on, "he's just like Jimmy Carter."

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I'll close with this gem. I may have actually found a reason to vote for Barack Obama.

The House Democratic Caucus chairman told American Banker that an Obama presidency would bring significant financial regulatory reforms (which I don't doubt in the least). He said Obama would bring to the markets "more transparency ... so we don't have this opaqueness where nobody knows who owns what and where the bottom is."

Wait - Obama is going to bring regulatory reforms to the markets that will allow everybody to know "where the bottom is"? That's not transparency, it's clairvoyance!

Sign me up - I'll make a lot of money off knowing where the bottom of every market is.

Of course, there's one little problem. Somebody would have to be on the other side of that trade. The only way to create a market where everybody knows exactly what they need to know to profit, is to just print money and hand it out, something some in the liberal camp embrace. Otherwise, the good chairman is describing an impossible scenario.

But hey - there's always hope!