Father Richard John Neuhaus died this morning in New York City. He was seventy two.

If there was ever a man who conveyed through his writing that he was ready for this moment, it was Fr. Neuhaus.  But perhaps in my selfishness, there is no man I am more sorrowful to lose.

One could consider this loss in the context of the modern social conservative movement, or for First Things the natural comparisons to losing William F. Buckley, Jr.  But in truth, it is a far greater loss than that.

As Father Neuhaus was the greatest driving force on the Roman side for the idea of Catholics and Evangelicals Together, an audacious idea which (how quickly we forget) really until the 1980s was just social and political madness, his impact reverberated throughout the whole of the Christian experience in America.

It is not hyperbole to say that by unifying Catholics, Evangelicals, and Jews in an ongoing public conversation on life and liberty, Father Neuhaus helped erase two hundred years of what America knew about the way religious groups communicated, debated, and ultimately allied with each other together to advocate and organize for the benefit of society.

Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America, in spite of his Catholicism - perhaps just because George W. Bush gave him a pet name - but it was an accurate choice nonetheless.  It is the sort of thing that would have made De Tocqueville’s jaw drop to the ground, and De Tocqueville really did understand us.

The story of the modern social conservative movement is all about activism and politics, petitions and court cases, but Father Neuhaus’s great testament was about something grander: through those he inspired, through his writings, through his organizing, and through something as simple as connecting people over lunch who may share nothing in terms of what they can eat on the table but share greatly in what is unseen, Father Neuhaus fundamentally changed religious life in America forever.

This is not an exaggeration.  Nor by any means is it a dismissal of anyone else’s influence - but ultimately, the changes most other conservative thought leaders have helped achieve in the twentieth century were made at the hands of other men, elected to office.  Father Neuhaus did not merely inspire the intellectual undergirding of change: with God’s help, he fashioned it himself, through hard work, a gift for eloquence, and always a wry smile at the end.

The world Father Neuhaus leaves is one where evangelicals and Catholics are more united than they are divided - where the old ethnic politics and arguments have faded, and where we worship and work together in harmony.  My mother, never anything but a Protestant, upon learning of this Catholic convert priest’s passing, wrote to say she paused on learning the news to sing Faure’s Pie Jesu for him.  I can think of nothing more fitting.

Pie Jesu, Domine
dona eis requiem
sempiternam requiem

Gentle Jesus, Lord God
grant them peace
in their eternal home

RIP, RJN.

On its face, the invitation of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony is a brilliant and savvy political move.

During the 2008 campaign, much was made of then-candidate Obama’s ability to potentially crack the longtime Republican hold on evangelical Christians. And while Obama’s performance among churchgoers did not turn out to be as significant as some anticipated, it was still sizeable enough to mark a meaningful stride for the Democrats. Obama bested John Kerry’s numbers by 5% among the percentage of weekly churchgoers, and by 4% among evangelicals (capturing 25% total).

If those evangelical numbers turn out to be a one-election thing, they can be dismissed as churchgoing voters merely following the trends of the general populace, considering that evangelicals had been reluctant to support John McCain from the beginning.  To put the number in perspective, John McCain actually won a higher percentage of the self-reported gay, lesbian, and bisexual vote - a full 27% - so as you can see, Obama was starting with a rather low foundation.  And Obama’s largest gains came among young evangelical voters, so there’s a question if generational politics outweighed faith here.

On the other hand, if 25% is not the ceiling but the new floor, and those numbers turn into a trend, it will be a very bad thing for Republicans, for whom churchgoing Christians have been an extremely reliable voting and volunteering constituency for more than a generation.

Unlike many of the activists, politicians, and media personalities on the social right who supported Proposition 8, Rick Warren is an actual church leader, with a unique and vibrant following at Saddleback and nationwide.  A friendly, jovial presence who’s very in touch with the conversation of the times, he has been a leading voice supporting the idea that Christians should view politics through more than just the lens of hot-button issues like abortion and marriage. One of the kings of the skim latte Christianity otherwise called the seeker-church movement, Warren is a major advocate for inclusion and openness among evangelicals, and hasn’t been shy about breaking with other center-right faith leaders on political issues.  He’s made global warming a significant issue for his church and is a signer of the Evangelical Climate Change initiative, and he fully supported moderate court appointee Harriet Miers when most social conservatives were attacking her full bore.  He’s also called on evangelicals to learn from the example of mainline churches when it comes to arguing for public morality (or government expansion) on issues like poverty, racism, and social and economic justice, founding an international church initiative (P.E.A.C.E.) supported by the likes of U2’s Bono.

Warren’s basic views on salvation and faith - such as believing that you have to accept Jesus Christ as your savior to enter heaven - are hardly out of the mainstream of Christianity.  His “Purpose Driven Life” message appeals to center-right and center-left churchgoing Christians who increasingly care just as much about the plight of the poor and the diseased as they do about the unborn.  Warren in many respects embodies the new mainline church, espousing a welcoming faith that urges its members to go out and do for the betterment of their neighbors, not just proselytize.  His flock should be the first target of a Democratic Party eager to expand into the ranks of the faithful.

It’s worth noting that Warren has been a huge supporter of funding for the AIDS crisis in Africa, and invited Obama - who he has called “an amazing man” and said talked of his potential to be a great President because he is a man of “good character” - to speak to an AIDS conference at his church, much to the chagrin of those on the right, several of whom criticized him for the invitation.

Now Obama’s returning the favor, giving Warren a prominent and gracious invitation, endeavoring to cement that 25% of evangelicals in his corner and building from there. But the uproar from the left - particularly those who support same-sex marriage and fought against Proposition 8 in California - has been fearsome and unrelenting.  What’s more, one suspects it comes as a surprise to the Obama transition office - it shouldn’t be.

This is partly due to ignorance on the part of the activist left - Warren is no partisan, no Falwell or Robertson, nor are the many Christians who read his work. When you see this kind of pompous tone-deafness - arising from such people as the Huffington Post’s Linda Hirshman, who penned an unfunny satire of Warren in which he describes the holocaust as “the German effort to bring [the Jews] to Christian truth” - you understand why the Democrats still lost nearly 75% of evangelicals in this past election.

Yet it’s more than just ignorance here: it’s just the most public part of a comprehensive feeling of betrayal on the part of Obama’s vocally leftist supporters. They’ve already embraced the call of “Take Back Barack” - perhaps not realizing the eyebrow raising nature of such an ownership proposition - but was he ever really one of them to begin with? Is it that he escaped the left, or did he just become more honest, more forthright about what he believed all along

Obama said he opposed same-sex marriage consistently during the campaign (to use his formulation, while simultaneously opposing Proposition 8 in California in a rather token manner, calling it “unnecessary.” Irony of ironies, Obama’s own supporters made the difference on the issue at the ballot box, particularly African-American voters, who overwhelmingly supported Obama, but voted against same-sex marriage at a 70% clip.

“Betrayal!” shouts the left, as if they expect some sop to their issues after Proposition 8’s passage.  But Obama made no promises of significance during the 2008 election either on gay rights or same-sex marriage policies to betray.  He has been a far more traditional voice on family and cultural issues than John Kerry or Al Gore, and he’s smart enough to recognize that’s one of the reasons he won in November: he was acceptable enough to win a higher percentage of the faithful with inspiring rhetoric, while the social left just assumed he was one of them.

All of this makes the choice of Rick Warren, a figure who represents the Democrats’ best avenue to a permanent political majority, perfectly rational and politically wise.  And it begs the question: who’s the real extremist here?

That brings us to our AOL Hot Seat poll of the day (we’ll put up the poll when it’s available):

Advocates of same sex marriage say that they cannot tolerate the presence of Rick Warren giving an invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama because Rev. Warren supported California’s Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage, which was supported by a majority of California voters.  So who’s the extremist in this situation - Rev. Warren, or those who find his presence intolerable?

• Rev. Warren
• Rev. Warren’s detractors
• Not Sure

If you’re a football fan, you know all about scripted plays - the method behind those precision-based offenses that can come out onto the field running a prepared order of plays, no huddle, picking up yards with ease.  If they’re successful, they can set the tone for the whole game. In presidential politics, the first 100 days is the equivalent for any new Commander in Chief: can the momentum from electoral victory translate to policy results?

But in truth, every new president faces an issue or event within the first 100 days that tends to ruin the script.  For Bill Clinton, it was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  Clinton had wanted to make his presidency about permanently cementing the middle class for the center-left, but before he even got on track, he became locked in a battle with old guard members of his own party like Sam Nunn and Robert Byrd, unintentionally helping spark the culture war revival of the nineties.  George Stephanopoulos, in his better than you might expect memoir “All Too Human,” is convinced that the Clinton presidency could’ve gone much differently without this unexpected fight on undesired ground.

For George W. Bush, the script-breaking moment was the unanticipated controversy over stem cells - an issue that forced his first address to the nation.  While his policy was controversial for both sides of the ideological divide, his attempt at a moderate solution on the issue was ultimately far more successful than Clinton’s, and has been vindicated in the years since (for more on that, I highly recommend reading Ryan T. Anderson and Joseph Bottum’s essay in last month’s First Things, where they explain that “the history of the stem-cell debate is a study of what happens when politics and science reach out to each other.”)

Clinton failed his test, and Bush got a C+ (from the public at least) on his.  But with the ever-expanding scandal of what happened in Illinois, President-elect Obama is now facing a rift in his script that is unprecedented and shocking: a disruption that comes before he has even been sworn into office.

One wonders when the first Obama presidential press conference will take place now.  It’s clear he was unprepared for this circumstance - his hesitancy in answering questions, his claims that he knows of nothing wrong done by his staff, the Axelrod disconnect, the scrubbed meetings.  The press still loves Obama with all the passion of an epic high school crush, but the one thing that upsets them is feeling they’re getting avoided by their beloved (”Why isn’t he calling any more?  Am I not important to him?”).

In this case, this is a scandal that’s just too juicy for the press to ignore. It doesn’t have any of the complexity of Tony Rezko or the hot-button issues of Jeremiah Wright - it’s as simple and easy to explain as it gets, and has audio evidence (that should leak eventually) to boot.  Jen Rubin at Commentary has an excellent post on this, citing a New York Times article as an example of the trend.  Even Obama’s media supporters can’t help but point out that Obama confidants like COS Rahm Emanuel and National Campaign Co-Chair Jesse Jackson Jr. are up to their ears in connections to this scandal:

Mr. Emanuel was among the few people in Mr. Obama’s circle who occasionally spoke to Mr. Blagojevich. He declined to answer questions on Wednesday, waving off a reporter who approached him as he walked across Capitol Hill.

A Democrat familiar with Illinois politics and the Obama transition, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there probably were calls between the Blagojevich and Obama camps about the Senate seat. It was not clear if any calls were recorded by federal agents, who had tapped the governor’s phones.

So when will the first press conference happen?  When it does, what will they ask?  A friend suggests draft questions of: “Do you feel hurt by this?” “Have you talked to your staffers about how hurt you are?” “Has Rahm Emanuel been feeling bad about this too?”  “We’re sure you’ve already parted ways with Jackson, Jr. Did that hurt?”

It seems on first appearance that Obama himself did nothing wrong.  And I personally don’t believe the President-elect is dumb enough to be recorded in anything connected to this matter.  But this is exactly the sort of deal that Emanuel has been rumored to be connected to in the past, and he has shared more staff with Blagojevich than any other politician.  These reports will only continue, and he can’t duck reporters forever.

All this brings us to our question of the day (we’ll be adding a poll widget brought to you by the folks at AOL’s Political Machine - shoutout!): the Honeymoon is over before it began.  So what comes next?

Does the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was endorsed by Barack Obama two years ago, for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to (among others) the national co-chair of Obama’s presidential campaign:

• Suggest that the press should have looked more closely at Obama’s involvement in Chicago machine politics during the campaign?
• Signal that Obama’s background in Chicago machine politics will continue to haunt him, in much the way Arkansas scandals haunted Bill Clinton?
• Represent the point at which the media starts asking Obama questions he can’t or won’t answer to their satisfaction?
• Just an unfortunate distraction for the new President, nothing more?

In every Presidential election, it’s my experience that reports of fraud tend to be a bit exaggerated. Yes, there will always be a degree of problems - but most of those are of the human error variety, not purposeful lawbreaking. With so many millions voting, and so many election officials who are really just volunteer librarians, mistakes are bound to happen. The Electoral system helps guard against these things mattering, and I am fairly confident that outside some isolated incidents in big cities, voter fraud won’t change who wins the Presidency tomorrow. Corrupt as they are, I doubt very much that ACORN will provide the margin of victory.

Now, when it comes to local elections, I think the story is the reverse. Voter fraud can have a huge impact on a local level, and yet it’s almost always underreported. ACORN can’t make a difference in the presidential stakes, but they can make a difference in who becomes the next mayor, commissioner, or Congressman. And it’s surprisingly easy for that to happen in an environment where election laws and regulations are shockingly lax.

Consider where I live - Loudoun County, Virginia, arguably the swing county in a swing state, and one Obama is absolutely certain to win if you’re keeping score. Here in Virginia, you can go in and vote absentee early - a slightly different arrangement than other states, but quite straightforward in practice. An enormous number of people, more than 450,000, have taken advantage of this so far. All you have to do is go to your local office, stand in line for about 30-45 minutes, fill out a form, and vote.

At the Loudoun location on Saturday, they weren’t requiring picture ID - not even a Federal one, just any ID. Turns out you don’t need one. How convenient.

But if, in theory, Virginia decided to require that you present an ID as opposed to just sign a piece of paper (which will only matter if there’s a lawsuit, of course, which costs money and time and is politically dangerous), it’s awfully easy to get ahold of a Virginia voter card with someone else’s name on it (perhaps one of these fun creations). Especially if you rent rather than own.

You see, in a state with more than 400,000 newly registered voters since the last election, polling places have changed a lot. The Volunteer Firehouse location where I’ve voted all but once in the past 8 years can’t contain the polling place this year, so it’s moved. So have the polling places for much of Loudoun. The local Election Board was kind enough to send out a mass mailing informing every voter effected by this change a few months back.

And they were also kind enough to include a new voter card, with your name, address, and local polling place printed on it.

Personally, I received five voter cards in the mail. One was mine - four others were for people who have not lived in the house I rent for more than three years. Five different names. Same address. They sure do make it easy.

Useful, that. If you were interested in helping your guy, whoever it is, win.

It’s really quite easy to do a bit of DIY Election Fraud in an age where they send the Voter Card, info and all, direct to you. But hell, you won’t even need it in the Old Dominion - there’s no ID required. Just sign the paper promising you’re cool, and your vote matters just as much as everyone’s.

It’s like leaving the front door wide open for days, and being surprised that the TV is gone when you come back.

Democracy: you’re doing it wrong.

crossposted from thisisanadventure

As far as I can find with initial searching (I asked a friend to plug it in to Nexis), I don’t see anything from Obama on this subject. But the reason it seems off to me is that the timing’s all wrong: the election Biden is talking about happened in 2005, right after Obama was elected to the Senate. He had to have been in office for mere days when it took place (correction: during the first round, he hadn’t even been sworn in yet), and it’s doubtful he made any statement on it. If he did, it is not on his own site, nor is it available on the normal search methods, nor is it in the Congressional Record as far as I can see.

Can the campaign produce any evidence that Barack Obama took this prescient opinion on the elections in Israel? If not, will Joe Biden retract his claim?

Update: Glenn Kessler at the WaPo notices it as well.

What helps a campaign immeasurably is when the charge it makes seems to fit the person against whom the charge is being made. So, for example, the Bush strategy in 2004 to make John Kerry appear to be a flip-flopper and haughty was aided by the fact that it played to a pre-existing (and largely accurate) view of Kerry.

The difficulty Senator Obama presents is that his demeanor and countenance seem to act as a shield against the charge that he is, in terms of his policies and political philosophy, quite liberal and on the extreme end of the political spectrum. Senator Obama’s voting record certainly shows that to be the case. But the way he carries himself — combined with his post-primary, head-snapping shifts in policy — are designed to make Obama appear as a centrist. I don’t for a moment believe he is; Obama’s political career, taken in its totality, makes him the most liberal presidential candidate since George McGovern. But Obama has shown himself to be a nimble candidate, against whom it is difficult to land clean blows.

In addition, Obama came across in the debate as mostly agreeable, repeatedly saying “I agree with John” on this or that. I think that was an effective tactic; it gave Obama the patina of being bipartisan and a man ever in search of common ground. In fact, Obama has complied, in the words of Joshua Muravchik, “one of the most partisan of all voting records.” But once again, his style and manner send a different signal.

Potentially, the most lethal political charge against Obama is that he is a deeply liberal/ideological figure who has associated with radical individuals in order to advance his political career. The question is whether Obama’s countenance and personal style make those charges seem far-fetched; or whether the McCain campaign can convince voters that Obama’s appeal is at its core fraudulent and his new-found centrism a mirage.

I have some sympathy with the task faced by Team McCain; telling a campaign what needs to be done is much easier than actually carrying it out. That’s why it would be useful for more commentators to actually have had some experience in governing and political campaigns, which tend to be more complicated and difficult than pontificating.

Which happens to be what the Obama campaign just did:

REP. ROY BLUNT: Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing.

“Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour – Senator McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal. During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track,” said Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton.

Here is the full quote from MSNBC:

REP. ROY BLUNT: I do think that John McCain was very helpful in what he did. I saw him this morning, we’ve been talking with his staff. Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican, in my view, would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House. Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a singe Republican vote, but they don’t seem to be willing to do that. I’m pleased we can have negotiations now that get us back towards things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and frankly be better understood in the country than the plan—the path we were on a couple of days ago.

Yeah, that’s kind of…you know…the opposite.

In just the first few paragraphs you have testimony that she was “effective and accessible.” So where are we going here? Well, despite the testimony that she was ”accessible,” others find her “secretive” and inclined to put a premium on “loyalty.” The evidence? The Governor’s office declined a request for emails that would have cost over $400,000. Proof positive. Oh, and the records sought (about Polar Bears and such) were in fact obtained.

Then there is the ” she blurs personal and public behavior” charge. The evidence? A phone call from Todd Palin to a state legislator about the latter’s chief of staff, which Palin denies was mentioned. Pretty thin gruel.

Next we have her tenure as mayor, where again all heck breaks loose because — are ya sitting down? — she brought in her own team. No! Unheard of. Jeeez. Next she’ll be firing the town museum director. Oh no– it’s true! Palin says (”Oh yeah, she says,” you can hear the Times reporters hrrumphing) she was cutting the budget.

This is pathetic, really. Is there something illegal here? Is there something nefarious? What is the point?

There’s more from Jen. Scrabbling away, they are.

You want proof about how successful the Sarah Palin pick has been in coalescing and motivating the socially conservative base of the GOP? Look no further than the subdued schedule today at the FRCAction Values Voter conference in Washington, DC.

A year ago, the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit propelled Gov. Mike Huckabee to unforeseen heights among grassroots evangelicals. This year, both Barack Obama and John McCain were invited to speak - the word is that organizers expected a video from Obama, and a speech from McCain or his running mate - but neither is expected to appear now. It’s instead a schedule with the odd (Lou Dobbs), the apolitical (Joe Gibbs), the political (Michael Steele), the aging (Phyllis Schlafly - surprisingly chipper), and the hilariously ironic (Newt Gingrich - sorry, smart as he is, his presence at Value Voters events brings on laughter for me).

The funny thing about social conservative conferences is how completely unnecessary they’ve become in the post-Palin universe. These rooms are populated by the grassroots heads of a hundred different organizations whose role has been significant when the Republican Party needed to sell a lackluster ticket or a less than appealing policy to a depressed evangelical base - many of these folks had to sell Harriet Miers against people who swore they were vile tools of Satan, and Lord knows that wasn’t that fun. But that’s all unnecessary in the aftermath of the Palin choice. Her stickers and buttons are everywhere - I don’t see a McCain sign in the whole place, but everyone’s wearing “Palin Power” or “I heart Palin” buttons; young and old, they’re smiling, they’re eager, they’re exuberant.

(Gratuitous plug: I still haven’t seen any PalinFacts.com gear, but I did hear people quoting them when I was on the escalator. If you want some yourself, head over to the Little Known Sarah Palin Facts store.).

Whether McCain wins in the fall or not, these people have found their new inspiration for the next generation of political activists. Barack Obama could’ve come here himself today, with a light shining down from heaven, and he wouldn’t make a dent in this crowd.

Give these people a champion, and reap the immediate political benefit. Had McCain chosen, say, Joe Lieberman, today’s conference would’ve been a huge event - you’d have had to convince all the folks in this room to be on board with a pro-choice Democrat on the national ticket, that the possibility of an Obama presidency would be just too much for them to bear. Had Palin fallen on her face on the national stage, they might have needed it, too.

But not any more - especially not in the wake of attacks from the media horde that makes these folks circle the wagons faster than you can say Clarence Thomas. These aren’t people who need selling - they’re full bore for the woman. No wonder McCain wants to travel with her, as the hardworking Anne Kornblut reported today: he’s smart enough to realize a good thing.

Well, time to tour the place to find some fun Christian swag. The celebrities here are random and confusing, unless Robbie George counts. I’ll let Leon tell you his Stephen Baldwin story, I just can’t match it. Too bad I’m busy tomorrow - missing out on Shohreh Aghdashloo. I hear if you pronounce her name correctly, she won’t destroy your soul with one look of her cavernous eyes.

Imagine an automatically updated RSS feed for video, personalized to your specific political, corporate, or news tags, delivered smoothly to your device, and that’s this new service. The ability, within hours of her speech, to pull up footage of Sarah Palin’s remarks and then effortlessly move to related news clips of responding coverage on a variety of networks was just wonderful when you’re on the go at a convention. To me, the untapped potential of this service for Sports is the most tempting - the day I can get an inexpensive service on my existing smartphone (as opposed to having to purchase some specific device) that delivers so quickly and smoothly that I can get fully streamed TV highlights from a first half of NFL play while sitting at the game at halftime will be a very happy day.

If you’re a gadget addict or a politics and news junkie, check them out at 1Cast.

Quinn had been one of Palin’s biggest critics in the days leading up to her speech (read her column here). But yesterday in an interview with Bill O’Reilly, she declared: “I was wrong about her.”

I thought that she was amazing. in her speech. She was funny and smart and poised and confident. She gave a great speech, beautifully delivered. I think she is going to be a formidable opponent. all of that I think is — I was wrong about her. and I didn’t know anything about her. I probably didn’t know any more than John McCain did a few days before he picked her.

Sally Quinn deserves credit for being far more honest than most of her media colleagues - she’ll actually admit she doesn’t know everything. Of course, there’s no evidence that McCain himself hadn’t known this stuff in advance, as Jen points out. But I think there’s something more here: I think a woman like Quinn is a perfect example of the sort of feminist most likely to be moved by Palin’s 21st century subtext of feminine empowerment, and subtle rejection of the vestiges of sixties-era emasculating uber-feminism.

Where Hillary embraced the sixties’ sexual revolution view of womanhood, Palin rejects much of it - it doesn’t take a village to raise her children, she and her guy can do it themselves - but in so doing, doesn’t lose any of the toughness or confidence that she needs to be a leader. This is the sort of thing, combined with great natural charm and humor (she can smile as she twists the knife) that Quinn finds so admirable.

Kudos to Quinn for admitting her error. Now if only the rest of the media was so honest.

But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state Senate.

Annenberg’s FactCheck.org, who I find to typically be quite fair in their judgment, steps in to defend Obama. On this point, they write:

Palin’s accusation that Obama hasn’t authored “a single major law or even a reform” in the U.S. Senate or the Illinois Senate is simply not a fair assessment. Obama has helped push through major ethics reforms in both bodies, for example.

In advancing this argument, FactCheck.org oversteps in a significant way, and one that I believe they ought to reexamine in order to justify their argument - or failing that, to retract their point entirely.

The truth is that Sarah Palin’s statement is absolutely correct: neither Barack Obama nor the staffers in his employ (like speeches, remember, they tend to be written by others) have authored a single major law or reform.

The FactCheck.org folks first turn to the last part of Palin’s statement - “even in the state Senate.” They write:

Of course, we can’t say what Palin considers “major.” But if Palin’s own ethics reforms in Alaska were important enough to highlight in her convention address, then it’s only fair to credit Obama’s efforts on that topic. In 1998 in the Illinois Senate, Obama cosponsored an ethics overhaul that bars elected officials from using their campaign funds for personal use and and was called the the first major overhaul of Illinois campaign and ethics laws in 25 years. It also bans fundraisers in the state Capitol during legislative sessions. Obama’s Republican cosponsor Kirk Dillard even appeared in an Obama ad last summer describing Obama’s skills working with members of both parties to get legislation passed.

In this paragraph, FactCheck.org take an extremely generous view of legislative authorship. Bill cosponsors typically have very little to do with the drafting of a bill - especially in a state senate. Cosponsors are typically recruited after the bill itself is crafted, as a way of creating weight behind a piece of legislation and highlighting the importance of the measure. The ideal list of cosponsors includes members whose constituencies are most effected by the bill, a handful of influential committee members and leadership members who will determine the bill’s placement on the schedule for hearings, and at least one member of the opposing party (and sometimes not more than one - you just need one to call it “bipartisan,” as John McCain knows very well).

Some of these cosponsors will, on occasion, have an issue with one aspect of the legislation; they’ll sign onto the bill in turn for a small change in their favor, or more frequently, they’ll sign on to create some political cover for themselves. But in no sense is a cosponsor an author of a piece of legislation: neither they nor their staff drafted the legislation, and they do not have any opportunity to fundamentally alter the law except in the most extreme and odd circumstances.

Here’s a perfect example for you to consider: McCain-Feingold. The BCRA legislation is famous because of the two principal sponsors - but did you know there were 41 other co-sponsors in the Senate alone? They were:

Bayh, Bingaman, Boxer, Cantwell, Carnahan, Carper, Cleland, Clinton, Cochran, Collins, Corzine, Dayton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Edwards, Feingold, Feinstein, Graham, Harkin, Jeffords, Johnson, Kerry, Kohl, Landrieu, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Lincoln, Mikulski, Miller, Nelson, Reed, Reid, Sarbanes, Schumer, Snowe, Stabenow, Thompson, Wellstone, and Wyden.

There’s no question that Barack Obama has worked to get bills passed, in the state Senate and in the Senate. But if Hillary Clinton had claimed during the primary campaign to have “taken the initiative to reform Washington by authoring McCain-Feingold,” something tells me Obama would have pounced on that as a vast exaggeration - which, of course, it would be.

Cosponsors are allies in a fight: what they aren’t is, by any stretch, the authors of a piece of legislation.

FactCheck.org continues:

In Washington, Obama was instrumental in helping to craft the 2007 ethics reform law that ended gifts and meals from lobbyists, cut off subsidized jet travel for members of Congress, required lobbyists to disclose contributions they “bundle” to candidates, and put the brakes on other, similar common practices.

I’ve looked through FactCheck.org’s source list on this post, and unless I’m missing something, the only citation they have to support this argument is this article from Illinois Issues, a publication so unbiased in its coverage that it has repeatedly published the works of one Barack Obama on community organizing and other topics. Needless to say, surely you would have to have a better source to claim that Obama was “instrumental” to the crafting of a piece of major legislation. You’d think.

But let’s assume my depiction of cosponsorship is dead wrong, and that charitably, as a cosponsor, Obama should receive credit as a coauthor of the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.”

There’s only one problem with that: Barack Obama was not a cosponsor of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

In other words, the only piece of legislation FactCheck.org claims as the basis for attacking Sarah Palin - their only citation for what is, by their measure, Obama’s sole significant legislative act in the U.S. Senate - is a bill he did not cosponsor, did not write, and did not do much except comment on in the press.

In fact, the only evidence that he did anything other than put pressure on the bill’s authors to include a few changed passages on bundling is that Obama participated in a few press events and conference calls about the bill. That’s really shoddy. I should hope FactCheck reconsiders this paragraph and their argument that Obama was “instrumental” in this legislative feat, because it’s the sort of thing that makes one wonder about fairness.

Finally, there’s this point:

In addition, we already noted in a recent article Obama’s efforts with Republican senators to help detect and secure weapons of mass destruction and to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles around the world, and to create a publicly searchable database on federal spending.

I’ll grant the validity of this paragraph, but I do not see how this conflicts with Palin’s statement in any way. Her argument was that Obama had not authored (or directed the authorship of - as I said, the lawyers ultimately write these things, so let’s not pick nits as some did with Palin’s speech being written by a professional in that area) a piece of significant law. This is absolutely true. There is no major piece of legislation in Obama’s resume that was authored, created, or even outlined by him - and if he were to introduce one tomorrow, that would still fail the test - it has to pass, remember, to become a law.

One does not expect Obama to match John McCain’s lengthy record of significant bills authored and successfully passed in his short elected career as a talented public speaker who happens to be an elected politician. But it’s more disappointing when you consider what a brilliant writer Obama is, and not just on matters of law or personal memoir: he’s a talented fiction writer, too.

Everyone knows Obama wrote a memoir, Dreams from My Father, covering his time in Chicago. What fewer know is that during his years as an organizer Obama was also working hard on fiction-writing. “He wrote stories about the people he was working with,” Mike Kruglik told me, “fiction that was beautiful, beautifully crafted, fantastically evocative about what it was like to be in that community, including how bleak the landscape was, how threadbare some of the institutions were, what it looked like and felt like.” I asked Kruglik if he had read the stories. “Yeah,” he answered. “[Obama] gave them to me. They were about what a pastor was doing with his church.” Kruglik says he can’t remember much beyond that — this was years ago — but given the prominent role that Obama’s pastors and his church have played in the campaign, there would probably be a great deal of interest in the stories today. But you won’t get them from Kruglik, who says he gave the stories back to Obama without making any copies.

This seems just the sort of skill that would be well-suited in crafting a major law or a reform. But we’ll have to wait and see if that comes to pass - despite FactCheck.org’s insistence, Barack Obama has not done that yet.

You would shame the man, but he has none left to invoke.

Yesterday Moe and I with his colleagues in respected corners of the news media who had disparaged Sarah Palin, relying on the rantings from the foulest corners of the blogosphere as the basis for their articles. Douthat’s disappointment - along with that of his colleagues McArdle and Goldberg - turned slowly into outrage over the course of the day, as it became clear that much of his frustration was directed at the worst offender of them all: Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan is on the extreme edge of the assault on Palin - even as Campbell Brown and others have drastically scaled back their attacks on Palin as they realized their allegations were either unfounded, irrelevant, or significant stretches of fact, Sullivan continues to beat the drum. He repeats rumor and innuendo as established truth, but even worse, insists that every tabloidesque rumor be met with immediacy by Palin herself. It’s more than a little pathetic: Andrew Sullivan, once one of the most brilliant wits of the neocon blogosphere, now occupies that darkened zone of the tabloid preacher - the streetcorner pamphleteer who cries to all who will hear, “The Government will not respond to my writings the existence of extraterrestrials among us, and THIS LACK OF DENIAL PROVES DEFINITIVELY THAT THEY ARE HERE!”

As Jonathan Last blogs at the fantastic Galley Slaves: Sullivan demanded that he be able to inspect Palin’s amniotic fluid or Trig Palin’s placenta in order to determine the “hidden truth” about Palin’s pregnancy. Sullivan posted repeatedly, writing over and over again - with no basis other than his own expertise in photo analysis and the rantings of bloggers and commenters with no reputation for accuracy - that Palin’s pregnancy was a suspect issue that demanded clarification. Was the baby hers? Who was the father? Was it a faked pregnancy? All were questions that Sullivan insisted needed answering.

In the wake of revelations about Bristol Palin, rendering much of what he argued moot, Sullivan now insists that his continued writings and tabloidesque musings about Trig Palin’s conception and birth aren’t out of bounds at all, merely because the baby exists.

Presumably, they should put it wherever people put babies to keep them out of the public eye.

Sullivan’s public descent into rampaging dementia is frightening, and one wonders what it could possibly signify about his relationship with The Atlantic. I have been public for years in my belief that The Atlantic is the best magazine in America, and it has, as others have noted, a brand built on a century of brilliant writers and the best minds of the literati. Today, Sullivan represents a complete downfall of that brand name - embracing fully the worst kind of speculatory writing, based on nothing more than what he sees on television and receives from adoring fans in his inbox.

Sullivan has had a bizarre series of public loop-de-loops in recent months, primarily motivated by his devout affection for Barack Obama. His insistence on ignoring his own past political views led to a strong back and forth earlier this year, when Pete Wehner - who I know to be a former fan of Sullivan’s writings before the man went nuts - showed how Sullivan’s current claims completely conflicted with everything he’d once written about the war on terror. To which Sullivan, after much ridiculousness in response, could only respond: “I was deceived and feel terrible responsibility for my naivete.”

Perhaps someday Andrew Sullivan will say he feels deceived by the Andrew Sullivan he is today, and feel terrible responsibility for believing the rantings of the nuttiest members of the online left. But until that day, if it ever comes, he will keep up his courageous quest, insisting that he is just “posing questions,” that he has no bias on this point but a search for hidden, dirty, scandalous truth. He will ask the tough questions, the hard questions, the questions he can ask about medical practice and birth because of his long history as an OB-GYN, an educated nurse, and the handsomest midwife in the tristate area.

The Atlantic sure is getting what it’s paying for.

Via Clayton, a few notable facts: Palin beat Obama in Persons 55+ (reliable voters!) and multi person white households; in the 18-34 demo (Obamas home base) Palin drew 81% of his audience; In the 18-49 demo she drew 88% of his audience; Palin trounced Biden in all categories except multi-person black households. And here’s more from Nielsen itself:

• The Sara Palin speech generated 37.2 million viewers, just a 1.1 million viewers short of Barack Obama’s record-breaking speech on Day 4 of the Democratic Convention. The Palin speech was carried on only six networks while the Obama speech was carried on ten (including BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo).
• Palin attracted a large female audience (19.5 million women, or 4.9 million more than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention).
• Ratings for viewers 55+ (25.2) continue to be about ten times higher than for teens (2.2)
• Day 3 for the GOP attracted more Hispanic viewers (1.4 million) than Day 3 of the Democratic Convention (1.2 million), even though Univision and Telemundo did not carry the speech.

That last point is astounding. Even though it’s not a huge number, the fact is that Barack Obama had a ton of built in advantages for his speech - whereas the only one for Sarah Palin is that the media had placed expectations in such a negative way that everyone wanted to tune in (perhaps in hopes of a trainwreck?). And an excellent sign for the level of interest in Palin, and the number of people outside of the Twin Cities who viewed the speech as a defining event for this election.

1) Sarah Palin did not write her speech.
2) Sarah Palin did not talk about education or health care in her speech.

Ha-ha. /Nelson

The first attack is just silly on its face. Every politician with national stature has speechwriters - every single one. They have a press secretary or a communications director or even someone whose sole task it is to craft words that will achieve the right message in a powerful way. Not all politicians are great writers - some are - but all of them need help in framing their message correctly.

Even Barack Obama. His muse is a 26 year old white kid nicknamed “Favs.” The NYTimes profiled him here.

You mean…even The One DOESN’T WRITE HIS OWN SPEECHES! gasp Yes, sadly, it’s true.

The second attack is a creature of the Sixties-21st Century divide that I noted yesterday, in this post about post-feminism politics, in which apparently Republican women should behave the way that the leftist media believes they should - sticking to soft and homey issues. Instead, Palin spoke forcefully about the kitchen table issues that matter just as much, if not more, to most blue collar and middle class Americans: energy, taxes, and the war. She’s a mother, yes, and has a PTA background - but that doesn’t mean she only has thoughts about the issues the post-sexual revolution media still views as “girl stuff.”

Speechwriting is an odd task, and extremely challenging. But it can also be very rewarding - last night, as Sarah Palin gave her speech, I saw Matt Scully looking up toward the press section on cue after every punchline, making sure it registered with the hacks at their laptops. He’s got to learn this woman’s voice quick, and last night was a fantastic start.

It’s always good to see what works when you’re trying to figure out a new voice, one you haven’t studied before - and Palin is very new, and very unique, which makes her input on these speeches all the more significant. Anyone could write a Joe Biden speech at this point - just take a few slugs of whiskey, and stream of consciousness for about 4 hours. Don’t edit anything. Palin’s probably tougher to write for in this moment, but it’s clear she’s a natural - and if you give her something above average, her own ability will make it shine.

Let’s give Dean Barnett the last word - he hits directly on why this attack on Scully’s existence is so ludicrous. Read it here:

2) Interesting that the Obama campaign has decided that it has a winner in pointing out that Palin “cheated” by having a speechwriter. Of course, a pliant media did its job last night in spreading this supremely lame talking point. The funhouse at MSNBC was all over it, and even half the panel at Fox saw it as a nugget of information requiring dissemination. One can only wonder why media analysts didn’t feel it necessary to point out that Joe Biden’s oratory also received the ministrations of speechwriting pros (all appearances to the contrary). Could it be that Biden’s speech was so dreadful, no one felt the provenance of the speech required clarification?

Of course, this weak return of serve is unlikely to have its desired effect of dismissing Palin’s performance. Once again, Palin spoke directly to the American people last night – they’ll make up their own minds about her. It must really concern the Democrats that Palin will have many similar opportunities in the future.

A couple of final points on this matter – if giving a great speech is so darn easy, how come Joe Biden, John Kerry and Chris Dodd with a combined 340 years in politics have never been able to pull it off? And if it’s such an irrelevant skill, why again exactly is Barack Obama the Democrats’ nominee?

It’s funny: in the McCain set up, Robert Duvall is the patriotic video voice, Voight the inspirational video voice, and Powers Boothe is the “Be afraid. Be very afraid. Vote McCain. Or the world will burn” voice.

I like Powers Boothe.

Now if only they’d been smart enough to save him for AFTER the Redskins game.

Oh, and yes - even they have to admit it now.

Ross, we love you as a wise brother. But it’s high time you woke up to the fact that these people you’re talking to might as well be from the land of Nod when it comes to evaluating the media and realizing their own bias.