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Josh Kraushaar says the Dem party is feeling the Obama magic. Like everything else he touches, it is suffering. The party shows evidence of decline when you look at its thin bench.

Nearly two years ago, then-Rep. Artur Davis, still a Democrat in good standing, was lamenting the future of his now-former party. In an interview I had with him back then, he expressed concern that Democrats talk the talk when it comes to diversity, but the party is surprisingly thin when it comes to recruiting and electing viable minority statewide candidates. The comments came in the wake of his disappointing primary loss for Alabama governor, and then-Rep. Kendrick Meek’s third-place finish in the Florida Senate race, where Meek got little support from party leaders.

Initially, I thought he was overstating things. After all, an overwhelming number of minority voters back Democratic candidates. But look at the Democrats’ list of convention speakers, and the lack of a deep, diverse bench is painfully evident. The party is highlighting the stars of yesteryear–former President Clinton, Sen. John Kerry, and defeated Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Among the party’s Senate recruits, the only minority candidate is Richard Carmona of Arizona, who faces a steep challenge in a solidly Republican state.

Davis’ critics may call him a turncoat, but his new party features more minorities holding Senate seats and governors’ offices, and they made sure convention viewers knew it. The tale of the tape: Republicans boast five minorities as governors or senators–Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez–and should have a sixth when Ted Cruz wins a gimme Senate race in Texas. Democrats have only four: Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and the two senators from Hawaii, Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka. Of the four, only Patrick has been touted as a possible contender for a future presidential ticket.

The problem, as Davis explained to me, was that most of the Democrats’ minority representation comes from House members who hail from overwhelmingly liberal, majority-minority districts. Most of these members of Congress don’t have the broad political coalition to appeal to a wider swath of voters. …

… For all the hype about the historic nature of President Obama’s presidency, he has brought along with him precious few Democrats who present the same post-racial appeal he showcased in 2008. He’s been single-mindedly focused on his own reelection at the expense of assisting down-ballot allies, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. …

Kimberley Strassel has similar thoughts.

… By 2009, President Obama presided over what could fairly be called a big-tent coalition. The Blue Dog caucus had swelled to 51 members, representing plenty of conservative America. Democrats held the majority of governorships. Mr. Obama had won historic victories in Virginia and North Carolina. The prediction of liberal demographers John Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s 2004 book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority”—lasting progressive dominance via a coalition of minorities, women, suburbanites and professionals—attracted greater attention among political analysts.

It took Mr. Obama two years to destroy this potential, with an agenda that forced his party to field vote after debilitating vote—stimulus, ObamaCare, spending, climate change. The public backlash, combined with the president’s mismanagement of the economy, has reversed Democrats’ electoral gains and left a party smaller than at any time since the mid-1990s.

Of the 21 Blue Dogs elected since 2006, five remain in office. The caucus is on the verge of extinction, as members have retired, been defeated in primaries waged by liberal activists, or face impossible re-elections. The GOP is set to take Senate seats in North Dakota and Nebraska, and maybe to overturn Democratic toeholds in states from Montana to Virginia. There is today a GOP senator in Massachusetts. Republicans claim 29 governorships and may gain two to four more this year. …

… The liberals who supported Mr. Obama’s expansion of the entitlement state are pinning everything on Mr. Obama’s re-election, assuming it will cement their big-government gains and allow them to grind back congressional majorities in the future.

But contemplate the situation if he loses. Consider a Democratic Party that may hold neither the White House nor Congress, that has disappeared in parts of the country, and that has few future Obama-like stars. Compare that to 2008. This is the party Barack Obama un-built. …

Now a NY Times columnist has noticed the wasteland that will be left behind by this administration. It’ll be interesting to see if Maureen Dowd keeps slamming The One.

How did the one formerly known as The One go for two?

In his renomination acceptance speech here on Thursday night, he told us that America’s problems were tougher to solve than he had originally thought.

And that’s why he has kindly agreed to give us more time.

Because, after all, it’s our fault. …

… We admit we like our solitude — maybe a little too much given our chosen profession. We could have opened up our weekend golf foursomes to a few pols — even women! — rather than just the usual junior aides.

And we could probably stomach giving lifts in the limo to some mayors and members of Congress, and actually pretend that we care about their advice — not to mention their votes.

Maybe we could drop the disdainful body language. For that matter, shouldn’t we put a little more effort into helping elect Democrats to Congress? Just because we only did a cameo in the Senate doesn’t mean some people there don’t think of it as a star turn.

Apparently, etiquette matters. We could send out a few thank-you notes to big donors and celebrities who give benefit concerts. Oddly, it turns out folks like to frame notes signed by the president and hang them on the wall.

Maybe we relied too much on Valerie Jarrett, a k a the Night Stalker and Keeper of the Essence. She says people should woo us. But could it be that we need to woo them as well?

How could we have let the storybook president lose his narrative? …

The jobs report gets a look from some of our favorites. Craig Pirrong is first.

We now understand exactly why Obama gave such a listless performance last night.  He knew the jobs report would be abysmal.

And abysmal it is. Anemic payroll growth of 96,000, along with downward revisions of the July numbers.  The unemployment rate declined-but only because labor force participation fell to its lowest level in 31 years.

And like clockwork, the administration trotted out its Chief of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, to say  it was “important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”

That is truly comical.  Krueger has been saying that every month.  I figured he would say it again, so I Googled “Krueger one monthly jobs report” and bingo, up came that link.

Not too predictable.  But too pathetic.  This pointillism-trying to discredit each single jobs report as not particularly informative-rings quite hollow when each successive jobs report is anemic.  Individually-yes, probably not important.  Collectively: damning. I wonder how Krueger maintains his self-respect.  But I guess you have to check that at the door when you take that job in troubled times.

So I guess Recovery Summer will have to wait until 2013, having failed to appear in 2010, 2011, and 2012. …

Mort Zuckerman says the jobs report is actually worse than it looks.

… The best single indicator of how confident workers are about their jobs is reflected in how they cling to them. The so-called quit rate has sagged to the lowest in years.

Older Americans can’t afford to quit. Ironically, since the recession began, employment in the age group of 55 and older is up 3.9 million, even as total employment is down by five million. These citizens hope to retire with dignity, but they feel the need to bolster savings as a salve for the stomach-churning decline in their net worth, 75% of which has come from the fall in the value of their home equity.

The baby-boomer population postponing its exit from the workforce in a recession creates a huge bottleneck that blocks youth employment. Displaced young workers now face double-digit unemployment and more life at home with their parents.

Many young couples decide that they can’t afford to start a family, and as a consequence the birthrate has just hit a 25-year low of 1.87%. Nor are young workers’ prospects very good. Layoff announcements have risen from year-ago levels and hiring plans have dropped sharply. People are not going to swallow talk of recovery until hiring is occurring at a pace to bring at least 300,000 more hires per month than the economy has been averaging for the past two years.

Furthermore, the jobs that are available are mostly not good ones. More than 40% of the new private-sector jobs are in low-paying categories such as health care, leisure activities, bars and restaurants.

We are experiencing, in effect, a modern-day depression. Consider two indicators: First, food stamps: More than 45 million Americans are in the program! An almost incredible record. It’s 15% of the population compared with the 7.9% participation from 1970-2000. Food-stamp enrollment has been rising at a rate of 400,000 per month over the past four years.

Second, Social Security disability—another record. More than 11 million Americans are collecting federal disability checks. Half of these beneficiaries have signed on since President Obama took office more than three years ago.

These dependent millions are the invisible counterparts of the soup kitchens and bread lines of the 1930s, invisible because they get their checks in the mail. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that millions of people who had good private-sector jobs now have to rely on welfare for life support.

This shameful situation, intolerable for a nation as wealthy as the United States, is not going to go away on Nov. 7. No matter who wins, the next president will betray the country if he doesn’t swiftly fashion policies to address the specific needs of the unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed.  …

David Harsanyi

If the work force continues shrinking at this pace, we’ll get the unemployment rate down to that 5 percent President Obama promised us before you know it. …

And Jennifer Rubin reminds the report is even worse because of the downward revisions to June and July reports.

On the heels of the president’s widely panned speech, a dreadful August jobs report was released this morning. The expectation was 125,00 to 130,000 new jobs; only 96,000 were added. Moreover, July and June job reports were adjusted downward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported: “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from +64,000 to +45,000, and the change for July was revised from +163,000 to +141,000.” …

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One of the wonderful by-products of Obama’s November loss will be the steady stream of tell-all books outlining the disasters in the administration and confirming what we always knew. It has started already. Rick Klein of ABC News introduces us to Bob Woodward’s new book.

An explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings inside and outside the White House led to the collapse of a historic spending and debt deal that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were on the verge of reaching last summer, according to revelations in author Bob Woodward’s latest book.

The book, “The Price of Politics,” on sale Sept. 11, 2012, shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs.

But at a critical juncture, with an agreement tantalizingly close, Obama pressed Boehner for additional taxes as part of a final deal — a miscalculation, in retrospect, given how far the House speaker felt he’d already gone. …

… The failure of Obama to connect with Boehner was vaguely reminiscent of another phone call late in the evening of Election Day 2010, after it became clear that the Republicans would take control of the House, making Boehner Speaker of the House.

Nobody in the Obama orbit could even find the soon-to-be-speaker’s phone number, Woodward reports. A Democratic Party aide finally secured it through a friend so the president could offer congratulations.

While questions persist about whether any grand bargain reached by the principals could have actually passed in the Tea Party-dominated Congress, Woodward issues a harsh judgment on White House and congressional leaders for failing to act boldly at a moment of crisis. Particular blame falls on the president.

“It was increasingly clear that no one was running Washington. That was trouble for everyone, but especially for Obama,” Woodward writes. …

… Obama found that he had little history with members of Congress to draw on. His administration’s early decision to forego bipartisanship for the sake of speed around the stimulus bill was encapsulated by his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel: “We have the votes. F— ‘em,” he’s quoted in the book as saying.

Obama’s relationship with Democrats wasn’t always much better. …

… Woodward portrays a president who remained a supreme believer in his own powers of persuasion, even as he faltered in efforts to coax congressional leaders in both parties toward compromise. Boehner told Woodward that at one point, when Boehner voiced concern about passing the deal they were working out, the president reached out and touched his forearm.

“John, I’ve got great confidence in my ability to sway the American people,” Boehner quotes the president as having told him.

But after the breakthrough agreement fell apart, Boehner’s “Plan B” would ultimately exclude the president from most of the key negotiations. The president was “voted off the island,” in Woodward’s phrase, even by members of his own party, as congressional leaders patched together an eleventh hour framework to avoid default.

Frustration over the lack of clear White House planning was voiced to Obama’s face at one point, with a Democratic congressional staffer taking the extraordinary step of confronting the president in the Oval Office.

With the nation facing the very real possibility of defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, David Krone, the chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told the president directly that he couldn’t simply reject the only option left to Congress.

“It is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B,” Krone said, according to Woodward.

 

More on this book from Conn Carroll. 

Arrogant, aloof, and unprepared is how Bob Woodward portrays President Obama in his new book The Price of Politics, set to be released next week.

The book recounts Obama’s troubled relationship with Congress, from his inauguration through last summer’s failed debt-limit negotiations, with Woodward concluding, “It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition. But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on important matters of national business. . . . Obama has not.”

Snippets of the book, as reported by The Washington Post, include:

‘The book portrays Obama as a man of paradoxical impulses, able to charm an audience with his folksy manner but less adept and less interested in cultivating his relationships with Reid and Pelosi. While the president worries that he can’t rely on the two leaders, they are portrayed as impatient with him. As the final details of the 2009 stimulus package were being worked out on Capitol Hill, Obama phoned the speaker’s office to exhort the troops. Pelosi put the president on speakerphone so everyone could hear.

“Warming to his subject, he continued with an uplifting speech,” Woodward writes. “Pelosi reached over and pressed the mute button. They could hear Obama, but now he couldn’t hear them. The president continued speaking, his disembodied voice filling the room, and the two leaders got back to the hard numbers.” ’ …

Why is this such a nasty campaign? John Harris, one of Politico’s heavyweights, says the fault is largely Obama’s.

A crabby, negative campaign that has been more about misleading and marginal controversies than the major challenges facing the country? Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can both claim parenthood of this ugly child.

But there is a particular category of the 2012 race to the low road in which the two sides are not competing on equal terms: Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.

With a few exceptions, Romney has maintained that Obama is a bad president who has turned to desperate tactics to try to save himself. But Romney has not made the case that Obama is a bad person, nor made a sustained critique of his morality a central feature of his campaign.

Obama, who first sprang to national attention with an appeal to civility, has made these kind of attacks central to his strategy. The argument, by implication from Obama and directly from his surrogates, is not merely that Romney is the wrong choice for president but that there is something fundamentally wrong with him.

To make the case, Obama and his aides have used an arsenal of techniques — personal ridicule, suggestions of ethical misdeeds and aspersions against Romney’s patriotism — that many voters and commentators claim to abhor, even as the tactics have regularly proved effective.

The unequal distribution of personal putdowns — Obama and his team indulging in them far more frequently than Romney — has been largely obscured by two factors. …

Jay Nordlinger gives his impressions of Fauxcahontas at the DNC.

…   Over and over, Warren said, “The game is rigged. The system is rigged against you.” This is not just a lie, it is a harmful one — a lie with consequences. Because it locks people into the grievance culture (the same culture Condi Rice spoke against in that marvelous speech at the Republican convention).

We are damn lucky to be in America. The “system” is less rigged against us than it is against people practically everywhere else. We have a fairer shot than almost anybody.

Sometimes I think, “Americans are simultaneously the luckiest and most griping people in all the world.” This is why immigrants are sometimes shocked by us: Don’t we know how good we have it? No, we don’t, really.

  I don’t know about you, but I was taught that America was a racist country, and almost a uniquely racist one. A singularly racist one. Then I grew up and found out: It’s damn near the least racist country in the entire world! Ever visited, studied, or lived in an Asian country, an Arab country, an African one?

We don’t know from racism.

  In her speech, Warren expressed her gratitude for America, and in a charming way: “I’m grateful, down to my toes, for every opportunity that America gave me.” But much of the rest of her speech was grievance, grievance, grievance; blame, blame, blame. And not necessarily legitimate grievance and blame either. …

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Daily Caller says Alan Dershowitz is not happy about the Dems refusal, in their platform, to call for Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.

… On the issue of Jerusalem, this year’s Democratic platform doesn’t take the stand that the city is the capital of Israel, while in past platforms it was explicitly stated.

Dershowitz said he is concerned that this year’s Democratic Party platform will make Israel a partisan issue, something he thinks is not good for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue and never make a national election any kind of referendum on Israel,” he said. “I don’t think it is a good thing that the Republican platform seems to be more pro-Israel than the Democratic platform.”

Dershowtiz said that this is not the last the Democratic Party has heard about the platform as he is personally going to get to the bottom of what happened.

“As soon as I hang up with you, I will call people I know in the White House and in the Democratic Party and find out what’s going on,” he said.  ”But believe me this is not the last the Democrats will have heard about this issue. They will hear from me on this one.” …

More on this from Jennifer Rubin.

The Democrat’s Israel debacle goes on. When last we left things, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (R-Fla.) was effectively called a liar by the Israeli ambassador, whom she claimed had accused Republicans of endangering Israel. Well that got worse. Wasserman Schultz called Phil Klein, the reporter who exposed her comment, a liar; he then produced an audiotape. Will no one call for this woman’s resignation? Is there no level of duplicity that is intolerable to the Democrats? (No need to answer; we know.) The White House apologized for smearing Charles Krauthammer over the Churchill bust incident, but can the DNC muster an apology for Klein?

Meanwhile, the fight over the Democratic Party platform on Israel and the Obama team’s unsuccessful and insulting effort to claim pro-Israel leaders approved weakening the 2008 platform language has gotten, if possible, worse. …

Those items out of the way, we can continue with something we started yesterday. We allude to the roughing up the Dems are getting from the mainstream media. Politico ran a piece on how Obama is “egotistical, selfish, dull.”

For over a year now, the political press has been writing the ever-evolving book on Mitt Romney. But as the Democratic National Convention gets under way in Charlotte, major media outlets are sending President Barack Obama through the spin cycle, lobbing five high-profile bombs at the incumbent in a single holiday weekend.

The New York Times ran a front-page piece Monday with the unmistakable subtext that Obama is a hyper-competitive egotist who often is not as good as he thinks he is at endeavors ranging from politics to poker.

The Washington Post noted the continued controversy over Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line, and how the clumsy remark continues to leave him vulnerable to criticism that he doesn’t understand free enterprise.

The Huffington Post argued that, for all his promises of a new kind of politics, Obama has “played the same old game.”

The Wall Street Journal weighed in with a piece that portrayed Obama as stingy with fundraising — and vocal support — for fellow Democratic candidates. …

Then Politico ran a piece on the 8 snarkiest things Clinton said about Obama.

There is only one president who actually came from Hope.

Former President Bill Clinton — a native of Hope, Ark. — is expected to offer a rousing endorsement of President Barack Obama in his speech Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention. But four years ago, while his wife Hillary competed for the Democratic nomination, Clinton wasn’t always so supportive of Obama’s “hope and change” message.

Here are Bill Clinton’s most controversial quotes about Obama:

1. “The idea that one of these campaigns is positive and the other is negative when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months is a little tough to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that’s in the media doesn’t mean the facts aren’t out there.” — Jan. 7, 2008

Not to be left out, The Economist’s Democracy in America Blog takes a swipe at Valerie Jarrett.

THIS morning at Bloomberg’s convention office (a temporarily converted Gold’s Gym) Valerie Jarrett was the featured speaker. Ms Jarrett’s title is senior advisor to the president, but in reality she is much more than that; she is the White House gatekeeper, the point of contact between the president and the business world in particular, and according to most knowledgeable folk the most powerful person in the building not named Obama. She has seen off three chiefs of staff already. She also very rarely talks to the press.

I found her impressive but also rather alarming, answering questions at remarkable speed, but without ever smiling or indeed engaging with anyone in the room. And because she was so relentlessly on message, the session was entirely predictable and not very illuminating. Except when she was asked what mistakes the Obama administration has made, always a very thorny question for a politician. If you say none, you look absurd. If you admit to error, the press jump all over you, as I am about to do.

What she said was the mistake had come in not working harder to communicate to voters all the benefits that the administration’s policies have brought. “If people voted their self-interest, they would vote for him”, she said. It was only because of a weakness in communication that they might not.

Leave aside that Mr Obama was supposed to be a great communicator (I actually think he is a great orator, but not a very good communicator; the two skills are distinct). This, I think, goes to the heart of one of the Obama administration’s weaknesses, one that certainly cost him the 2010 mid-terms and might cost him the presidency itself in two month’s time. It is the idea that if only people were in full command of the facts, they would immediately see that the president was wise and right. It is arrogant, and, when you think about it, fundamentally anti-democratic. And it leads you to push policies that voters don’t actually like.

CNN wants in on the act. They decide to fact check the Dem claim of 4.5 million new jobs created by the administration.

… Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it’s only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren’t the same ones that were lost.

According to a study released last week by the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, low-wage fields such as retail sales and food service are adding jobs nearly three times as fast as higher-paid occupations.

Conclusion:

The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category for the administration. But overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession.

Rich Karlgaard thinks the second NY Times story we carried yesterday could cost Obama the election.

A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities. …

In a piece that should be read by every American, Phil Gramm compares the policies of Reagan to those of Obama. 

Only twice since World War II has the U.S. unemployment rate reached 10%: It was 10.8% in 1982 and 10% in 2009. The different responses of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama—Reagan lowering taxes and lifting regulatory and other barriers to economic growth, Mr. Obama increasing the size and reach of the government—represent polar extremes in policy. And in results.

Fifty-five months after the recession started in July 1981, the Reagan recovery had created 7.8 million more jobs than when the recession started, and real per capita gross domestic product was up by $3,091. Fifty-five months after the recession that began in December 2007, there were four million fewer Americans working than when the recession started, and real per capita GDP was down $803.

The trajectory of household income is even more telling. According to Sentier Research analysis of monthly U.S. Census data, during the current recovery American households have lost more income than they lost during the recession. In December 2007, real median household income was $54,916. It had fallen to $53,508 when the recession ended 18 months later. But by June 2012, real median family income had fallen to $50,964.

During the Reagan recovery from 1981 to 1986, real median household income on an annualized basis rose by $3,380 or 7.7%.

There are other, deeply troubling differences between the Reagan and Obama recoveries.

Mona Charen says the economy did not have to do so poorly. When Clinton lost the ’94 elections he changed course. When Obama got spanked by the voters he dug in.

… After suffering a rebuke in 1994, Clinton backed away from Hillarycare, tax increases, opposition to welfare reform and huge increases in federal spending. With Republicans controlling the Congress, Bill Clinton — after some resistance and after insisting it couldn’t be done — signed a balanced budget.

The combination of the end of the Cold War and the dot.com bubble gave Clinton’s first term respectable economic growth of 3.2 percent. But the real boom came toward the latter half of his second term, after Clinton (reluctantly) signed welfare reform, a dramatic cut in the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, and a phased-in reduction in the estate (or death) tax, which exempted estates up to $1 million from $600,000. Clinton lobbied for and got the North American Free Trade Agreement and maintained a strong dollar. With Republicans in Congress demanding spending restraint, the federal government — younger readers may be incredulous — ran a surplus.

The results, as Charles Kadlec recalls in Forbes, were impressive. Economic growth jumped to 4.2 percent. Unemployment fell from 5.4 to 4 percent. Average real wages improved. Millions of Americans shared in the general prosperity as their 401(k)s swelled with the rising stock market. Investors responded with enthusiasm to the sense that America was a business-friendly country. Venture capital exploded.

Obama has chosen the exact opposite response to voter disaffection. Unlike Clinton, Obama is a committed leftist. He doubled down on Obamacare, ramming it through in an ugly, totally partisan vote. He refuses to budge on his insistence on tax increases — though he has himself acknowledged that tax hikes are counterproductive in a weak economy. He has attempted to undo the key feature of welfare reform, the work requirement. And he has presided over the downgrading of America’s AAA credit rating as he races heedlessly into crippling levels of federal debt. …

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From time to time we have items written by Josh Kraushaar of National Journal which is part of the main stream media. Kraushaar, however, has an independent mind. Here’s something he wrote before Ryan was picked that illustrates the point.

… I’m having an increasingly difficult time reconciling the buzz that Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are the clear favorites, even as I’m finding it harder to see what they add to the ticket. Given Romney’s tendency to play it safe, GOP operatives insist they’re the front-runners, but my gut instinct and contrarian nature make me think we could be in for a preconvention surprise. …

… By picking Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, he could send a message that he’s willing to undertake the tough but necessary entitlement reforms to get the economy back on track. Romney always finds himself in his element when he preaches the merits of the free market. Why not embrace the wonkery and go with a fresh-faced pol who has maintained widespread appeal in a competitive district despite the many attacks on him from the left?

That said, picking Ryan also carries the most risk of any of the prospective candidates. Romney badly needs to win over the remaining undecided working-class voters, who don’t naturally connect with his privileged background. By picking a running mate whose driving theme is reforming (read: trimming) entitlement programs that many depend on, Romney could push some of them into Obama’s camp. …

… Of course, each of these choices carries varying degrees of risk. Jindal’s unstinting social conservatism could turn off women, Rubio faces murmurs about ties to ethically-tainted Florida politicians, Christie’s Jersey bluntness may not play well in other parts of the country, and Ayotte is untested on the national stage. But the reality is that the so-called safe picks – Pawlenty and Portman – offer just as much risk, if not more. Their biggest risk is that they don’t offer Romney much other than the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Establishment Approval.

Romney holds a fundamental advantage over President Obama in the November election: He controls his own destiny. Obama already has used up most of his best attack ads against Romney and is merely hoping that the economy doesn’t get any worse. He’s largely at the mercy of forces beyond his control now. Most voters have already made up their minds about him. But by picking a talented running mate and delivering a winning convention acceptance speech, Romney has the opportunity to convince the skeptics and redefine the election.

 

Three weeks after the above by Kraushaar, he penned an approving piece on the Romney decision to attack Obama’s ideology.

… Remember: Obama isn’t actively campaigning on most of the policies he advanced during his three years in office, save for the bailout of GM and Chrysler. He’s relying on caricaturing Romney as a crude capitalist, while broadly contrasting his agenda as protecting the middle class. No mention of the stimulus, with only sparing mentions of his health care law and historic support of gay marriage — usually to his most ardent supporters at fundraisers.

Polls show the economy being the most important factor in voters’ decisions, but all these tangential issues have direct impact in their views of the candidates’ economic competence. The Romney campaign, for example, is making the case that trimming spending and tackling entitlement reform, are steps to ensure the economy’s long-term health.

One of the most significant takeaways from the national polling over the last several months is that Obama’s job approval rating has remained relatively stable even as their perception of the economy have dropped markedly. There’s a plausible argument that voters are resigned to a “new normal” — it’s a theory that my colleague Ron Brownstein first broached last month.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Romney campaign reached the same conclusion, even if they won’t admit it. They’ve tacked away from a generic critique of Obama’s economic performance — the “prevent defense” strategy — and gone full bore with the ideological red meat. So far, it’s working.

There is something strange going on at the NY Times. There have been a number of items on the administration that are not very favorable. First on Saturday there was a page one piece on Valerie Jarrett.

President Obama was in a bind, and his chief of staff could not figure out how he had ended up there.

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were up in arms last fall over a proposal to require employers to provide health insurance that covered birth control. But caving in to the church’s demands for a broad exemption in the name of religious liberty would pit the president against a crucial constituency, women’s groups, who saw the coverage as basic preventive care.

Worried about the political and legal implications, the chief of staff, William M. Daley, reached out to the proposal’s author, Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary. How, he wondered, had the White House been put in this situation with so little presidential input? “You are way out there on a limb on this,” he recalls telling her.

“It was then made clear to me that, no, there were senior White House officials who had been involved and supported this,” said Mr. Daley, who left his post early this year.

What he did not realize was that while he was trying to put out what he considered a fire, the person fanning the flames was sitting just one flight up from him: Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas’ first friend, the proposal’s chief patron and a tenacious White House operator who would ultimately outmaneuver not only Mr. Daley but also the vice president in her effort to include the broadest possible contraception coverage in the administration’s health care overhaul.

A Chicagoan who helped Mr. Obama navigate his rise through that city’s aggressive politics, Ms. Jarrett came to Washington with no national experience. But her unmatched access to the Obamas has made her a driving force in some of the most significant domestic policy decisions of the president’s first term, her persuasive power only amplified by Mr. Obama’s insular management style.

From the first, her official job has been somewhat vague. But nearly four years on, with Mr. Obama poised to accept his party’s renomination this week, her standing is clear, to her many admirers and detractors alike. “She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House,” said one former senior White House official, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity.

The next Times hit piece was on Obama’s competitiveness by Jodi Kantor.

… For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

When he reads a book to children at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, Mr. Obama seems incapable of just flipping open a volume and reading. In 2010, he began by announcing that he would perform “the best rendition ever” of “Green Eggs and Ham,” ripping into his Sam-I-Ams with unusual conviction. Two years later at the same event, he read “Where the Wild Things Are” with even more animation, roooooaring his terrible roar and gnaaaaashing his terrible teeth. By the time he got to the wild rumpus, he was howling so loudly that Bo, the first dog, joined in.

“He’s shooting for a Tony,” Mr. Chaudhary joked. (He has already won a Grammy, in 2006, for his reading of his memoir, “Dreams From My Father” — not because he was a natural, said Brian Smith, the producer, but because he paused so many times to polish his performance.)

Asked if there was anything at which the president allowed himself to just flat-out fail, Mr. Nesbitt gave a long pause. “If he picks up something new, at first he’s not good, but he’ll work until he gets better,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s fixation on prowess can get him into trouble. Not everyone wants to be graded by him, certainly not Republicans. Mr. Dowd, the former Bush adviser, said he admired Mr. Obama, but added, “Nobody likes to be in the room with someone who thinks they’re the smartest person in the room.”

Even some Democrats in Washington say they have been irritated by his tips on topics ranging from the best way to shake hands on the trail (really look voters in the eye, he has instructed) to writing well (“You have to think three or four sentences ahead,” he told one reluctant pupil).

For another, he may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr. Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace. 

Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could. …

Andrew Malcolm with late night humor. 

Leno: The Democrats are getting ready for their convention in North Carolina. Or, as they’re telling Joe Biden, “South Carolina.”

Fallon: The party announced that most Democratic National Convention speakers this week will be women. Though it’s really gonna be annoying when they stop speaking, but won’t tell you why.

Leno: Tropical storm Isaac threatened to hit the GOP convention in Tampa. But thanks to Obama’s economic policies many Florida businesses are already boarded up.

Letterman: What’s great about America. They’re now making waffle-flavored vodka. See? Good things are happening under Obama.

Fallon: The Obama campaign is suggesting supporters text the word “GIVE” to donate $50. Though it’s frustrating when the phone’s autocorrect keeps changing it to: “Fix the economy!”

Leno: Joe Biden was going to visit Tampa to cause problems for the GOP convention. Then he was going up to Charlotte to do the same for the Democrats.

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Deroy Murdock lists all the states, cities and universities that invest in Bain Capital.

Democrats convened in Charlotte, NC, will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain crime family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their winnings, evading taxes and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts.

But Bain’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election.

Government-worker pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain’s economic stewardship. New York-based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts and Freedom of Information requests to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain:

* Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund ($2.2 million) …

Mark Steyn explains the new rules that can tell us what are “racist” remarks. They’re not called remarks though; the new term is “dog whistles.” 

American racism is starting to remind me of American alcoholism. At the founding of the republic, in the days when beer was thought of as “liquid bread” and a healthy nutritional breakfast, Americans drank about three-to-four times as much as they do now. Today the United States has a lower per capita rate of alcohol consumption than almost any other developed nation, but it has more alcoholism support groups than any other developed nation – around 164 groups per million people. France, which drinks about 50 percent more per capita than America, has one-twentieth the number of support groups. The French and Italians enjoy drinking, the English and Irish enjoy getting drunk, and Americans enjoy getting drunk on ever more absurd stigmatizatory excess. At Walmart they card you if you “appear to be under” – what is it up to now? 43? 57? And the citizenry take this as a compliment: Well-preserved grandmothers return from failed attempts to purchase a bottle of wine with gay cries of, “I was carded at Costco! They’ve made my weekend!”

And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who “appear to be” racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use “Chicago” as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O’Donnell pronounced “golf” a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was “working to earn a spot on the PGA tour,” O’Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word “golf” is subliminally associated with “Tiger Woods,” and the word “Tiger” is not-so-subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc, etc. So by using the word “golf” you’re sending a racist dog whistle that Obama is a sex addict who reverses over fire hydrants.

While we’re on the subject of GOP white supremacists, former Secretary of State Condi Rice spoke movingly of her rise to the top from a childhood in segregated Birmingham, Ala. But everyone knows that’s just more Republican racist dog-whistling for “when’s Bull Connor gonna whistle up those dogs and get me off stage?” Meanwhile, over at The Huffington Post, Geoffrey Dunn, author of “The Lies Of Sarah Palin” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011, in case you missed it), was scoffing at Clint Eastwood’s star turn at the convention – “better known as the Gathering of Pasty White People,” added Mr. Dunn, demonstrating the stylistic panache that set a-flutter the hearts of so many St. Martin’s Press commissioning editors. Warming to his theme, Mr. Dunn noted that Clint had been mayor of “the upscale and frighteningly white community” of Carmel, California. …

John Fund explains how Akin can bow out of the Missouri senate race.

… Should Akin decide that his sliding poll numbers — he now trails McCaskill by ten points and many of his own supporters want him to exit the race — dictate dropping out, he will certainly want a say in who replaces him. John Brunner, a wealthy businessman, and Sarah Steelman, a former state treasurer, both challenged him in the GOP primary and are viewed as unacceptable by Akin forces. On the other hand, Wagner is respected in the Akin camp and a sufficiently conservative presence to satisfy Tea Party members who are suspicious of anyone the Missouri GOP establishment might anoint.

Should Akin leave the race and be replaced by Wagner, both candidates would have to petition a court to get off the ballot before September 25. But state election laws would allow a swap in which Wagner took Akin’s place and he reclaimed the Republican nomination for his House seat. His current district leans strongly Republican; he would be likely to hold it against a Democratic opponent this fall.

“It’s clunky, but it would work so long as it doesn’t look like a back-room deal,” one Akin supporter who is a Missouri delegate told me. “Todd would be treated with dignity and could go back to the House and we would have a candidate with very strong skills who could beat McCaskill.” …

Joel Kotkin writes on the new class war.

… Obama’s core middle-class support, and that of his party, comes from what might be best described as “the clerisy,” a 21st century version of France’s pre-revolution First Estate. This includes an ever-expanding class of minders — lawyers, teachers, university professors, the media and, most particularly, the relatively well paid legions of public sector workers — who inhabit Washington, academia, large non-profits and government centers across the country.

This largely well-heeled “middle class” still adores the president, and party theoreticians see it as the Democratic Party’s new base. Gallup surveys reveal Obama does best among “professionals” such as teachers, lawyers and educators. After retirees, educators and lawyers are the two biggest sources of campaign contributions for Obama by occupation. Obama’s largest source of funds among individual organizations is the University of California, Harvard is fifth and its wannabe cousin Stanford ranks ninth.

Like teachers, much of academia and the legal bar like expanding government since the tax spigot flows in the right direction: that is, into their mouths. Like the old clerical classes, who relied on tithes and the collection bowl, many in today’s clerisy lives somewhat high on the hog; nearly one in five federal workers earn over $100,000.

Essentially, the clerisy has become a new, mass privileged class who live a safer, more secure life compared to those trapped in the harsher, less cosseted private economy. … 

… The GOP, for its part, now relies on another part of the middle class, what I would call the yeomanry. In many ways they represent the contemporary version of Jeffersonian farmers or the beneficiaries of President Lincoln’s Homestead Act. They are primarily small property owners who lack the girth and connections of the clerisy but resist joining the government-dependent poor. Particularly critical are small business owners, who Gallup identifies as “the least approving” of Obama among all the major occupation groups. Barely one in three likes the present administration.

The yeomanry diverge from the clerisy in other ways. They tend to live in the suburbs, a geography much detested by many leaders of the clerisy and, likely, the president himself. Yeomen families tend to be concentrated in those parts of the country that have more children and are more apt to seek solutions to social problems through private efforts. Philanthropy, church work and voluntarism — what you might call, appropriately enough, the Utah approach, after the state that leads in philanthropy.

The nature of their work also differentiates the clerisy from the yeomanry. The clerisy labors largely in offices and has no contact with actual production. Many yeomen, particularly in business services, depend on industry for their livelihoods either directly or indirectly. The clerisy’s stultifying, and often job-toxic regulations and “green” agenda may be one reason why people engaged in farming, fishing, forestry, transportation, manufacturing and construction overwhelmingly disapprove of the president’s policies, according to Gallup. …

Karl at Hot Air posts on the goals of Eastwood.

… Eastwood was not “rambling.” He improvised within a structure, making a clear and concise case for dumping Obama.

Eastwood’s approach to this performance was not accidental. Eastwood is — by reason of his resume — the foremost expert in the world on Clint Eastwood fans. Harry Callahan may have understood that a man has to know his limitations. Eastwood knows his… and he also knows his strengths. A man does not produce and star in dozens of Clint Eastwood movies without having thought deeply about and received the benefit of copious market research into what appeals to people about Clint Eastwood.

From the standpoint of political science, it would be fair to hypothesize that appeals to both disaffected and libertarian voters (which is something of a feat) in a way that Mitt Romney could never hope to do. More colloquially, it would be fair to suggest that Eastwood appeals to the sort of people who gravitated to H. Ross Perot in the Nineties. He appeals to people who distrust institutions, who think that conventional politics fails the American people. The sort of people for whom Harry Callahan, Will Munny, Frank Horrigan, Luther Whitney and Walt Kowalski have an emotional resonance.

So why would Eastwood deliver a conventional political speech? Had he delivered his material as a series of slick-sounding zingers, it would have been the sort of speech the media expected from Chris Christie’s keynote address. But that would have been: (a) not in keeping with the Romney campaign’s softer approach; and (b) diminishing and disappointing to Eastwood’s target audience. Most of the chattering class failed to grasp this. Some on Team Romney failed to grasp this. But the evidence coming in, both anecdotally and from polling, suggests Eastwood still has his finger on the popular pulse in a way pols and pundits never will.

Mark Steyn with more on this saying, “Play Clinty For Me.”

Like William F. Gavin, I hugely enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s turn last night, but I’m not sure I agree that it was “unintentionally hilarious” and that “he forgot his lines, lost his way.” Clint is a brilliant actor, and a superb director of other actors (and I don’t just mean a quarter-century ago: In the last five years, he’s directed eight films). He’s also, as Mr. Gavin observed, a terrific jazz improviser at the piano — and, in film and music documentaries, an extremely articulate interviewee. So I wouldn’t assume that the general tenor of his performance wasn’t exactly as he intended. The hair was a clue: No Hollywood icon goes out on stage like that unless he means to.

John Hayward writes:

“The intended recipient was not Mitt Romney, the convention delegates, or even Republican voters, but rather wavering independents. Clint was there to tell them it’s OK to find Obama, his ugly campaign operation, and his increasingly shrill band of die-hard defenders ridiculous. It’s OK to laugh at them.”

I’m not sure he could have pulled that off if he’d delivered a slick telepromptered pitch. …

Jim Treacher has another off the charts demonstration of Prez Narcissist. The tribute to Neil Armstrong has a picture of The One looking at the moon.

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Craig Pirrong reacts to the news that the president doesn’t think he has campaigned enough.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a looonnggg piece on Obama Agonistes, the struggler facing a tough reelection campaign.  Oh! The injustice!

In it, his confidants identify his problem: He hasn’t campaigned enough:

“Over his first term, Mr. Obama, 51 years old, has fundamentally shifted his view of modern presidential power, say those who know him well. He is now convinced the most essential part of his job, given politically divided Washington, is rallying public opinion to his side.

As a result, if he wins a second term, Mr. Obama plans to remain in campaign mode.”

Note: that was not from The Onion.  Follow the link, and you’ll find the above in the WSJ.

Umm, when has he ever been out of campaign mode?

This explanation for his failures is a variant on a theme that he personally and his minions have flogged for the past several years: his biggest mistake has been that he hasn’t taken the time to explain the brilliant wonderfulness of The One and his deeds to the boobs in the boonies and the burbs.  So he will dedicate himself to righting that mistake and instructing us slow learners. …

Roger Kimball has the Obamanation of the Day. Pickerhead asks again, how sick is this guy?

I admit it, when it comes to Barack Obama, I think pretty low. But not, apparently, quite low enough. This exchange, from an interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times, took even my jaded breath away:

Falsani: Do you believe in sin?

Obama: Yes.

Falsani: What is sin?

Obama: Being out of alignment with my values.

Have you ever found a pithier summary of the narcissistic core of today’s “progressive” Left-liberal ideology?  I’m not sure I have.

Tim Dalrymple has another OMG example.

The liberal elites who are denigrating Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention last night are only hurting themselves.  Swing-state independents and undecideds like Clint Eastwood a lot more than they like liberal elites.  They will only harden in their support for Clint’s folksy commonsense the more it’s contrasted with the cheap and scornful hyper-partisanship of the Daily Kos and HuffPo crowd.

I thought the premise was brilliant.  Clint seemed a little nervous, a little out of his element, but that only made him more relatable, more like the kind of guy you’d have a beer with.  (Seriously, who wouldn’t want to have a beer with Clint Eastwood?)  But the premise was perfect.

To everyone who has not consumed the Kool Aid, Barack Obama seems strikingly insubstantial.  ”Senator Present” from Illinois became a U. S. Senator who was more interested in campaigning than legislating.  Then he became an empty promise in the 2008 campaign, a micron-thin veneer of glitz and glamor over a hollow core, an empty screen onto which everyone projected their wishes.  Six weeks after the inauguration, when he was thoroughly in the honeymoon phase and largely still campaigning against President Bush and on behalf of a stimulus, he uttered one of the most vapid and immature things I have ever heard from a President, when he told a bunch of television anchors at the White House: “I like being President, and it turns out I’m very good at it.”

That’s humility and wisdom for you: six weeks into a four-year term, and he’s already prepared to declare himself “very good at it.”  I guess that’s what happens when you’re the kind of guy who gets a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing. Thank goodness he likes being President, though — because, you know, it’s all about him. …

Mark Thiessen comes up with a list of Obama’s foreign policy failures.

(During the convention), Condi Rice took on President Obama’s foreign policy leadership, declaring “We cannot be reluctant to lead and you cannot lead from behind.” Here are ten areas where Obama’s reluctance to lead has cost America dearly in the past three-and-a-half years:

Obama has failed to lead on Iran. Sanctions and negotiations are failing, and Iran has made more progress toward a nuclear weapon in the past three-and-a-half years under Obama than it has in the three decades since the Iranian revolution – with more centrifuges, more stockpiles of high enriched uranium, and more hardened facilities than when Obama took office. Iran has no fear that Obama will take military action to stop them – because they know full well that Obama has staked his presidential legacy on ending wars, not starting them.

Obama is failing to lead in Syria.  Iran’s closest ally in the Middle East is massacring tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children while America sits on the sidelines doing nothing – because Russia and China won’t let us.

Obama is failing to lead on Afghanistan.  He launched a surge but then undermined it by announcing our withdrawal before the additional forces arrived – sending a signal to the Taliban that they could simply wait for America’s pre-announced retreat to re-take major swaths of the country and invite al Qaeda back. …

Bret Stephens has more on the global has-been who never was.

… Consider the record. His failed personal effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. His failed personal effort to negotiate a climate-change deal at Copenhagen in 2009. His failed efforts to strike a nuclear deal with Iran that year and this year. His failed effort to improve America’s public standing in the Muslim world with the now-forgotten Cairo speech. His failed reset with Russia. His failed effort to strong-arm Israel into a permanent settlement freeze. His failed (if half-hearted) effort to maintain a residual U.S. military force in Iraq. His failed efforts to cut deals with the Taliban and reach out to North Korea. His failed effort to win over China and Russia for even a symbolic U.N. condemnation of Syria’s Bashar Assad. His failed efforts to intercede in Europe’s economic crisis. (“Herr Obama should above all deal with the reduction of the American deficit” was the free advice German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble offered this year.)

 

In June, the PewResearchCenter released one of its periodic surveys of global opinion. It found that since 2009, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. had slipped nearly everywhere in the world except Russia and, go figure, Japan. George W. Bush was more popular in Egypt in the last year of his presidency than Mr. Obama is today. …

Powerline says Liz Warren is increasingly compared to Martha Coakley who lost to Scott Brown the last time.

“Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be the Great Liberal Hope, the one Democrat tough enough to evict Scott Brown from Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Then she started campaigning.” So begins a devastating critique of Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy that appeared in Boston Magazine.

Shockingly, as the reader who alerted me to this article put it, the Harvard prof who lives in Cambridge isn’t connecting in the suburbs with middle class and union folks:

To nearly everyone who knows her name, Elizabeth Warren has become a symbol. But in the months since she announced her intention to unseat Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren has become something else: a candidate. And that is proving to be the challenge. . . .

At public events, she sticks to her stump speech and rarely strays from her talking points. …

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Clive Crook in his Atlantic Monthly blog tells us what a young boy in England was thinking when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

A personal recollection, if you’ll indulge me. Reflecting on Neil Armstrong and the American mission to put a man on the moon, it occurs to me that this astonishing achievement probably altered the course of my life.

My father, who has been very ill lately, was born in the same year as Armstrong. He was an engineer in the British nuclear power industry, a job that involved a lot of international collaboration. As a result, I was raised on tales of his experience of working with American engineers on the finer problems of fuel rod manipulation and so forth. He used to say Americans worked harder, faster and to a higher standard than his British colleagues. They love their work, he used to tell me; not many Brits are like that. (I’d better not say what he thought of his colleagues in France and Italy.) My father is a skeptical man, not given to enthusiasm or exaggeration, so his admiration of the American engineers impressed me all the more.

When it came to what NASA accomplished, his admiration turned to awe. It makes me chuckle even now to think back to it. This reverence was so unlike him. He wanted me to understand just how difficult a thing it was–and how daring. “I know you think it’s incredibly hard, but it’s so much harder than that.” He followed the engineering as closely as he could and explained a lot of it to me. He persuaded me so well that I secretly decided it couldn’t actually be done. The margins for error were just too small. I was sure something would go wrong and they’d fail. Of course we stayed up all night and watched the video of the first walk on the surface. We were both moved to tears.

Armstrong’s subsequent shunning of the limelight only deepened my father’s regard for him, were that possible. Armstrong–an engineer by training and vocation–was embarrassed to be given so much credit, knowing that it rested on the work of the rest of the NASA team. More than forty years later, the only thing that seems anachronistic about the commander of Apollo 11 is that he had no capacity whatever for self-promotion–which in most fields of endeavor we have made a substitute for achievement, or at any rate a necessary component of success.

I think by 1969 my father’s admiration of Americans had seeped in anyway, but that night something gave way once and for all.

Evelyn Gordon is not surprised Hamas has a better developed moral sense than the UN.

If I were UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, or any of the 120 countries that sent delegates to the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Iran this week, I’d be more than a little embarrassed to discover that Hamas, a terrorist organization that thinks nothing of slaughtering innocent men, women and children in buses, restaurants and hotels, actually has a more developed sense of morality than I do.

While Hamas was invited to attend the NAM summit by Iran, it ultimately declined. This decision followed a public threat by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that if Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh went, he would stay home. But senior Hamas officials say the desire to prevent an open rift with Abbas was only a secondary consideration. Their number-one reason for staying home was that they didn’t want to be seen as supporting Iran at a time when Iran is openly supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s slaughter of his own people by supplying him with arms and even troops. …

Jennifer Rubin says Ryan is starting to live inside the Dems’ head.

The Democrats are losing it, literally. The Obama camp and its surrogates are losing the fight to control the narrative about Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) They are losing the effort to distract voters through the presence at the GOP convention of Obama campaign staffers such as Robert Gibbs and Ben LaBolt, who spend their time wandering about and whining to the media here in Tampa about the “negativity” of the other side. They are losing the ability to con the media into focusing on likability, as if perceptions of Romney and Ryan wouldn’t improve after this event.

That spilled over last night in a group outburst from Romney-Ryan critics over Paul Ryan’s speech. Needless to say, the speech was a ringing success with delegates and in much of the mainstream media. Ryan bloodied President Obama with blow after blow, all the while appearing cheery and sincere. The crowd loved it. So nearly en masse the left decided that Ryan “lied.”

For starters, that is the ultimate compliment. It is in effect saying the speech worked so well and was received so well that the only thing to say is that it was a con job. …

Seth Mandel at Contentions says Obama is like John Lindsay, another empty suit who did not care how much money he spent.

Since we’re now in the portion of the presidential election campaign in which the parties hold their respective national nominating conventions, the urge to find historical comparisons to analyze the candidates will be even stronger than usual. But there is one comparison when contemplating President Obama’s re-election agenda that seems apt, but goes unmentioned: John Lindsay.

Lindsay, like Obama, was young, charismatic and telegenic when he ran for mayor of New York City in the mid-1960s. Like Obama, Lindsay ran as a moderate (he was actually a liberal Republican, but eventually switched parties to run for president as a Democrat), and like Obama Lindsay ran a campaign of hope and optimism at a time of dreary pessimism. But Lindsay also put in place some of the worst public policy New York saw in the 20th century, and the assumptions and outlook that led him to that legislation mirror those of the current occupant of the White House. If Barack Obama wins re-election, he will take office forty years after Lindsay left his, and the latter’s administration offers us a good case study of the weaknesses of Obama’s political instincts.

A great guide through the problems of the Lindsay years is Greg David’s new book on the economics of postwar New York: Modern New York: The Life and Economics of a City. David was editor of Crain’s New York Business for two decades, and the book’s chapters are essential snapshots of each mayoral administration during those years. David’s chapter on Lindsay is particularly relevant. …

IBD Editors call BS on the media’s “fact checkers.”

If media “fact checkers” are just impartial guardians of the truth, how come they got their own facts wrong about Paul Ryan’s speech, and did so in a way that helped President Obama’s re-election effort?

Case in point was the rush of “fact check” stories claiming Ryan misled when he talked about a shuttered auto plant in his home state.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler posted a piece — “Ryan misleads on GM plant closing in hometown” — saying Ryan “appeared to suggest” that Obama was responsible for the closure of a GM plant in Janesville, Wis.

“That’s not true,” Kessler said. “The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.”

What’s not true are Kessler’s “facts.”  …

Jennifer Rubin posts on the best and worst of Tampa.

The best zinger of the convention. From Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”

The worst part of Tampa, other than the humidity. The enormous, oppressive security apparatus (and those silly khaki uniforms for the local sheriff’s department, which cost $500,000.) …

Ed Morrissey shows how the Clint Eastwood pick turned out well.

Feel lucky, punk?  When Republicans chose Tampa as the site for the 2012 national convention, they didn’t do it for the weather, obviously.  They saw Florida as a key to their hopes of winning the presidential election and hoped to make an impact on voters with their week-long argument for Republican control of the White House.  According to a snap poll from Survey USA of 754 registered voters who watched the final night of the convention, they may have switched 10% of the vote with the effort:

1,211 adults were interviewed statewide 08/31/12, after Romney, Florida’s Marco Rubio and Clint Eastwood spoke to the convention 08/30/12. Of the adults, 1,100 were registered to vote in Florida. Of the registered voters, 754 heard the convention speeches. Of the convention speech watchers:

* 66% did not change their mind.
* 16% switched from “undecided” to Romney.
* 6% switched from Obama to Romney.
* Adding those 2 together, that’s 22% who switched TO Romney.
* 10% switched from “undecided” to Obama.
* 2% switched from Romney to Obama.
* Adding those 2 together, that’s 12% who switched TO Obama.
* Comparing the 2 aggregate numbers: 22% switched TO Romney, 12% switched TO Obama. …

David Harsanyi says Eastwood worked well for the GOP three ways.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how Clint Eastwood’s rambling appearance  would play with voters, though I knew immediately how it would play with most Beltway types.  For me, it was, without doubt, the most entertaining  convention speech in memory — hell, maybe the most entertaining of any political event period. But let’s concede for the sake of argument that Eastwood’s performance (empty chair and all) was all the terrible things that Democrats and many in the media have been saying it was … So what?

1. It was fun. How many potential voters actually changed their minds — or made up their minds – on the basis of an ad-libbed comedy routine by a celebrity? If anything, chances are probably higher that that some mildly curious voters found the idea of an iconic actor giving a speech — one, incidentally, that didn’t adhere to Republican orthodoxy — at the RNC as evidence that the GOP wasn’t as rigid and unapproachable as everyone’s been telling them. …

The tag team of Romney and Eastwood gets the nod from Jennifer Rubin.

The Romney team, following up on a strong convention, outfoxed the president by making a stop in Louisiana to view the Isaac storm damage and empathize with the victims. (No word if Mitt Romney folded everyone’s laundry and brought dinner as well.) President Obama hadn’t yet gone, so he was forced to cancel an Ohio event and scramble to get there himself. He was quite literally racing to catch up to Romney’s lead. One could imagine that after a convention in which $150 million of its negative ads were brushed aside, the Obama team has been thrown off guard.

Rattled and bitter that they could not knock the Romney-Ryan ticket off-message, the Obama team and its allies in the blogosphere fixated on Clint Eastwood. Listen, I was there and it was darn weird. But at times it was funny and devastating in its dismissal of the president’s excuses. And in clips and sound bites the day after the live performance, the oddness is diminished and the punch lines seem more biting. In simple terms, the movie icon encapsulated the message of the convention: If someone is doing a bad job, you have to fire him. …

Walter Jacobson says the tweet reacting to Eastwood shows Obama’s lack of confidence. The tweet shows the back of the Narcissist’s chair in the Cabinet room. It is hard to believe, but Obama’s chair has a brass plaque that says The President. And the back is slightly higher. How sick is this man? Better yet, the picture has been photoshopped. We have one with a clown’s head visible and another with the back of Alfred E. Neuman’s head.

While I was very uncertain whether the Eastwood appearance worked, I now believe it did.

If it didn’t, Obama would not have felt the need to respond.

It must have been a late night in AxelPlouffe HQ figuring out what to do, and whether Eastwood making a mockery of Obama’s empty  chair before tens of millions of people was something which could not be left to just the media to counter.

This is not the tweet of a confident man.

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Dweebs at the NY Times were shocked, shocked, to learn of the respect Paul Ryan pays to Friedrich Hayek. Richard Epstein writes of Hayek’s enduring value.

The wisdom of Hayek is exactly what this country needs right now.

My last column for Defining Ideas, “Franklin Delano Obama,” stressed the dangers of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights,” which was long on rights but short on any articulation of their correlative duties. Roosevelt’s program works well everywhere except in a world of scarce resources, which, alas, is the only world we will ever know.

Fortunately, Roosevelt quickly met with some determined intellectual resistance. In 1944, when Roosevelt unveiled his “Second Bill of Rights,” Friedrich von Hayek, an Austrian economist, political theorist, and future Nobel Prize winner, wrote The Road To Serfdom. That book rightly became a sensation both in England and in the United States, especially after the publication of its condensed version in The Reader’s Digest in April 1945. Hayek’s basic message was the exact opposite of Roosevelt’s. He was deeply suspicious of government intervention into markets, thinking that it could lead to economic stagnation on the one hand and to political tyranny on the other.

Hayek has never been out of the news. But, right now, his name has been batted around in political circles because Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, has acknowledged that he regards Hayek as one of his intellectual muses. That observation brought forward in the New York Times an ungracious critique (called “Made in Austria” in the print edition) of both Hayek and Ryan by Adam Davidson, a co-founder of NPR’s Planet Money. Davidson’s essay reveals a profound misunderstanding of Hayek’s contribution to twentieth-century thought in political economy.

Davidson leads with a snarky and inaccurate comment that, “A few years ago, it was probably possible to fit every living Hayekian into a conference room.” But it is utterly inexcusable to overlook, as Davidson does, Hayek’s enduring influence.  A year after the Road to Serfdom came out, Hayek published his 1945 masterpiece in the American Economics Review, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” which has been cited over 8,600 times. In this short essay, Hayek explained how the price system allows widely dispersed individuals with different agendas and preferences to coordinate their behaviors in ways that move various goods and services to higher value uses.

Alas, Davidson’s dismissive account of Hayek does not mention even one of Hayek’s major contributions to weaning the United States and Great Britain from the vices of centralized planning. Thus Hayek’s 1940 contribution to the “Socialist Calculation” debate debunked the then-fashionable notion that master planners could achieve the economic nirvana of running a centralized economy in which they obtain whatever distribution of income they choose while simultaneously making sound allocations of both labor and capital, just like in Soviet Russia.

Hayek exposed this fool’s mission by stressing how no given individual or group could obtain and organize the needed information about supply and demand conditions throughout the economy. The virtue of the price system was its use of a common unit of measurement—money—to allow various actors to compete for a given resource without having to lay bare why they need any particular good or service. The seller need only accept the highest bid, without nosing around in other people’s business. The interaction between buyers and sellers allows for constant incremental adjustments of both price and quantity. Old information gets updated in a quick and reliable way, thereby eluding the administrative gauntlet of the socialist state.

Jennifer Rubin posts on the VP also rans.

In selecting Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate, Mitt Romney may have significantly changed the trajectory of the race and also the GOP. As to the latter, Ryan’s elevation to the ticket has set back the careers of several rising GOP stars and firmly put the party on the reform track.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made the decision not to run for president in 2012. It wasn’t the “right time.” Maybe President Obama was inevitably going to be reelected. Maybe they needed more experience. For whatever reason, they took themselves out of the presidential race. Then Romney left them off the ticket. Now where do they stand? …

A couple of weeks ago, Niall Ferguson angered the left with his call for Obama to hit the road. Now he is going after higher ed.

School is in the air. It is the time of year when millions of apprehensive young people are crammed into their parents’ cars along with all their worldly gadgets and driven off to college.

The rest of the world looks on with envy. American universities are the best in the world—22 out of the world’s top 30, according to the Graduate School of Education at ShanghaiJiaoTongUniversity. Once it was Oxford or Cambridge that bright young Indians dreamed of attending; now it is Harvard or Stanford. Admission to a top U.S. college is the ultimate fast track to the top.

Little do the foreigners know that all is far from well in the groves of American academe.

Let’s start with the cost. According to the College Board, average tuition and fees for in-state residents at a sample of public colleges have soared by 25 percent since 2008–09. A key driver has been the reduction in funding as states have been forced to adopt austerity measures. In the same time frame, tuition and fees at private universities rose by less (13 percent), but still by a lot more than inflation.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, total student debt (which includes private loans and federal loans) climbed to more than $1 trillion. It is the only form of consumer debt that has continued to grow even as households pay off mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans. In real terms, students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago.

It’s not only Facebook stock that Silicon Valley superstar Peter Thiel is selling. He’s shorting higher education, too, arguing that college is the new asset bubble—the natural successor to subprime. …

And Open Market Blog says the higher education bubble is causing a demographic decline among college grads.

… As college costs and student loan debt soar (partly due to opulent university spending) and unemployment rises, young college graduates, crushed by student loan debt, are deciding not to have kids, resulting in demographic decline among the educated in America.  In recent years, student loan debt has skyrocketed from $100 billion to nearly $1 trillion, creating a potential debt bomb for the American economy.

France and England now have higher birth rates than America.  College-educated people in their 20s are definitely more likely to have kids there.  “American fertility is now lower than that of France” and the United Kingdom, notes The Economist, even though American fertility was higher than France or England in 2007.

Why the recent change?  Could it be because college graduates in England and France have less student loan debt? Tuition is lower there.  Per capita expenditures are lower at their elite schools. France and England spend much less on physical plant for colleges and universities. Faculty salaries don’t get as high there.

The buildings at my French-born wife’s alma mater don’t look very impressive, although she studied and learned a lot there.  If a French university outwardly looks more like a high school than a Harvard, that’s OK with them.  What matters to them is the learning that takes place within, not whether it looks like a college marketer’s movie-set image of what a university should look like. French students also study a lot more than American students, so they may be more accustomed to not having spare time (something that may help prepare them to have kids after they graduate, since parents of young children have little free time). …

Donald Boudreaux, the proprietor of the Cafe Hayek blog posted on the tiring memes we hear after each hurricane. One is the complaints about price gouging and the other will suggest the economy will be stimulated by all the construction that will bring our wealth back to even. He provides links to essays that debunk those memes and you can go there if you wish.

As tropical storm Isaac takes direct aim at my hometown of New Orleans, I predict two inevitable occurrences.

First, depending on the severity of the damage done by Isaac, prices of staple goods such as gasoline, bottled water, and plywood will spike in south Louisiana and Mississippi – price increases that will (here’s the prediction) spark a litany of economically uninformed laments about greed and “price gouging.”  So this New Orleans native offers here his thoughts, from April 2005, on price gouging.  No need to thank me.

Second, again depending on the severity of the destruction caused by Isaac, faux-wise commenters – some of whom are on economics faculties – will advise us all to understand the upside of Isaac’s destruction: a ‘stimulated’ economy.  My vanity nudges me here, as above, to share with you some earlier thoughts on this matter.

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The “scientist” who came up the with the fraudulent hockey stick graph of global warming is talking about suing Mark Steyn. James Delingpole wants to raise money to support the suit so it will go to discovery.

Today I’m launching a fund and I wonder whether anyone would like to contribute. Please, I implore you all, PLEASE chip in to help finance Professor Michael Mann’s suit for defamation against sinister, right-wing Canadian climate-change denier Mark Steyn and the fascist-denialist organ for which Steyn writes, National Review Online!

I don’t think Mann is going to win his case, not for one fraction of a millisecond. That’s why I think it’s so important that we give him all the financial encouragement we can at this sensitive early stage. There’s a danger that Mann may yet take advice from his lawyers, realise that there’s about as much chance of his defending the integrity of his ludicrous, comedy “Hockey Stick” curve as there is of George Galloway winning the Random Stranger I’d Feel Most Safe Sharing A Bed With While Completely Fast Asleep award (as annually voted by the readers of Mumsnet) – and pull out.

This must not be allowed to happen.

From obscure beginnings and with little discernible talent, Michael Mann has risen to become arguably the best loved comedy figure in the entire field of climate science, like Fatty Arbuckle, Pee Wee Herman and Coco the Clown rolled into one.

He singlehandedly invented Mann-made global warming using his amazing Hockey Stick curve – the one programmed using the ingenious algorithm whereby, whatever information you fed into it – fudged paleoclimatological reconstructions, the latest football scores, tofu futures – it always came out in the same, scary-looking This Is The End Of The World And We’ve Got To Act Now By Pumping Gazillions More Money Into Climate Research shape.

He gave us the phrase “Hide The Decline” – and starred in the hilarious song and video written in homage by a fan club called Minnesotans For Global Warming.

He described the battle between (apparently) well-funded “sceptics” like myself and “scientists” – ahem – like Michael Mann as “literally like a marine in battle against a cub scout.”

But of all the comedic pleasure this veritable Mickey Mouse among “climatologists” has given us so far, none comes even close to matching the joy and entertainment he will surely give us if he goes ahead with his court action against NRO and Steyn. … 

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Jennifer Rubin posts on Ann Romney’s speech.

She spoke with personal conviction, bringing the crowd to her feet with this personal endorsement of her husband:

… “I know this good and decent man for what he is — warm and loving and patient.

He has tried to live his life with a set of values centered on family, faith, and love of one’s fellow man. From the time we were first married, I’ve seen him spend countless hours helping others. I’ve seen him drop everything to help a friend in trouble, and been there when late-night calls of panic came from a member of our church whose child had been taken to the hospital.

You may not agree with Mitt’s positions on issues or his politics. Massachusetts is only 13% Republican, so it’s not like that’s a shock.

But let me say this to every American who is thinking about who should be our next President:

No one will work harder.

No one will care more.

No one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live!” …

Rubin also admired Christie’s efforts.

No one in the GOP gives a speech like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Clapping his hands and punching the air he strode onto the stage at the RNC, and then he proceeded to wow the crowd. If Ann Romney was empathetic, he was tough. If she vouched for her husband, he vouched for Americans. They were the yin and yang of the first night of the convention.

Ironically for a convention with so many people chattering about “likability”, Christie declared, citing his mother, that it is “better to be respected than loved.” It was a powerful counterpoint to the hang-wringing and media fixation over likability.

Christie turned likability, or as he called it, popularity, into a liability. His was a tough message, repeatedly drawing contrasts with the Democrats. “Our ideas are right for America. Their ideas have failed.”

Citing his own improbable success in a deep blue state he made the case for truth telling. Republicans, he said, will tell the people we “have to fundamentally reduce the size of government.” In his view, President Obama is weak and timid. (“They believe the American people need to be coddled.”) Republicans, he urged, “believe in telling seniors the truth.” …

Kim Strassel thinks a second term for Obama would be more of the same. Thank goodness we will avoid it when President Narcisscist goes down in flames.

President Obama has a reputation for talking, but not necessarily for saying much. He has achieved new levels of vagueness this election season. Beyond repeating that he’s in favor of making the “rich” pay for more government “investment,” he hasn’t offered a single new idea for a second term. This is deliberate.

The core of the Obama strategy is to make Americans worry that whatever Mitt Romney does, it will be worse. That’s a harder case for Mr. Obama to make if he is himself proposing change. And so the Obama pitch is that this election is a choice between stability (giving Mr. Obama four more years to let his policies finally work) and upheaval (giving Mr. Romney four years to re-ruin the nation).

The pitch is profoundly dishonest. While the choice between four more years of Obama status quo and Mr. Romney is certainly vivid, it isn’t accurate. The real contrast is between Mr. Romney’s and Mr. Obama’s future plans. And while the president hasn’t revealed what those plans are, there is plenty of evidence for what a second term would look like.

Let’s dispense with the obvious: An Obama second term will be foremost about higher taxes and greater spending. The president has been clear about the former and will consider victory in November a mandate to raise taxes on higher-income Americans and small businesses—at the least. …

Mark Steyn says there is no war on women, but there is a war on children.

… As George Will pointed out this week, nanny-state solutions (such as Michelle Obama’s current campaign to get us all nibbling organic endives) don’t work: Overweight kids in schools with high-calorie junk food, 35.5 percent; overweight kids in schools that banned all the bad stuff, 34.8 percent. Indeed, the bloating of government, of entitlements, of debt, and the increase in obesity track each other pretty closely over the past four decades. If all those debt graphs showing how we’ve looted our future to bribe the present are too complicated for you, look out the window: We are our own walking (or waddling) metaphor for consumption unmoored from production. And, to the Chinese and many others around the world pondering whether America has the self-discipline to get its house in order, a trip to the mall provides its own answer.

So we can’t fight a war in Afghanistan, but we can fight a “war on women” that only exists in upscale liberal feminists’ heads. We can’t do anything about exploding rates of childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but, if you define “health care” as forcing a Catholic institution to buy $8 contraception for the scions of wealth and privilege, we’re right on top of it. And above all, we’re doing it for the children, if by “doing it” you mean leaving them with a transgenerational bill unknown to human history – or engaging in what Boston University’s Larry Kotlikoff, speaking at the International Institute of Public Finance in Dresden last week, called “child fiscal abuse.”

If that sounds a trifle overheated, how about… hmm, “legitimate fiscal rape”? No? Then let’s call it a “war on children.” Unlike the “war on women,” it’s real.

John Fund profiles Artur Davis who will be making a major address at the GOP convention.

Only about 3 to 5 percent of voters are truly undecided between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Focus groups run by Republicans have found that some of the most effective ads appealing to those voters feature Democrats and independents speaking candidly about how they voted for Obama in 2008 but are now disappointed.

That’s one of the reasons that Republicans have decided to showcase former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama as a “headline” speaker at their convention. Davis, a moderate black Democrat who voted against Obamacare in 2010 and was crushed later that year in a Democratic primary for governor, has since left the Democratic party and is backing Mitt Romney. He was an early Obama supporter — the first Democratic congressman outside Illinois to endorse the candidate in 2007. He seconded Obama’s nomination for president at the 2008 Denver convention.

“The Obama I endorsed was the constitutional-law professor who said he supported the rule of law,” Davis explained to me. “Instead, we got someone who always went to the left whenever he reached a fork in the road.” Now Davis spends a great deal of time describing his conversion to Republican audiences. Even Jamelle Bouie, a writer for the left-wing American Prospect who doesn’t find Davis’s conversion story all that compelling, acknowledges its power. “Davis, like Joe Lieberman before him (and Zell Miller before that), can tell a credible story of ideological alienation,” Bouie wrote in the Washington Post. “He thought the Democratic Party was a big tent, but now — under Barack Obama — it is a haven for intolerant leftism.” …

David Harsanyi with more on the election.

A little more than a year ago, speaking to CBS Sunday Morning, Barack Obama said, “I don’t think we’re in danger of another recession, but we are in danger of not having a recovery that’s fast enough to deal with what is a genuine unemployment crisis for a whole lot of folks out there, and that’s why we need to be doing more.”

“… I expect to be judged a year from now on whether or not things have continued to get better.”

They haven’t.

That’s why Obama and friends are singularly focused on critical issues like Mitt Romney’s tax returns and dog whistles. This month, consumer confidence fell to a nine-month low as Americans continued to be anxious about the economy and unemployment. The Conference Board confidence index fell to 60.6, the lowest level since November. That does not bode well for an unemployment rate that has been over 8 percent for 42 months.

Add to that the fear of rising gas prices — the average price of a gallon of gasoline spiked 23.5 cents last month — and the potential of European and/or Middle Eastern troubles to shake markets, and a lot of people may be feeling like a brittle economy is about to shatter.

But, hey, have you heard that Mitt Romney made a birther joke!? …

Charles Gasparino analyzes Buffett’s portfolio moves and spots a trend.

Is the sky really falling on state and local governments, as Warren Buffett’s recent bearish bet on municipal debt suggests?

Much of the media and even some sophisticated investors think so — even if Buffett’s bet against munis was only cryptically disclosed in a quarterly filing of his investment company Berkshire Hathaway (he has yet to make a public comment on it).

And even if, when you dig deeper, the move suggests Buffett wasn’t making a bet against all munis but only those that adopt some of the same policies he and President Obama are advocating on a national level. …

Powerline introduces the first cartoon today.

Michael Ramirez is in Tampa, attending the convention. He took time out to draw this cartoon, which contrasts Hurricane Isaac with the force that has really brought destruction to America: Barack Obama’s left-wing, crony-socialist policies.

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David Harsanyi sees momentum shift to the GOP.

In the weeks leading up to Mitt Romney’s surprising pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate, dissatisfaction and pessimism within Republican and conservative circles was reaching epidemic levels.

As Romney was being pounded daily by the Obama campaign and liberal groups with a series of brutal ads scrutinizing (and often misrepresenting) his private sector record at Bain Capital, Republicans began to grumble about the GOP campaign. A less than spectacular trip to Europe and Israel confirmed their worst fears. Romney wasn’t on point. Romney wasn’t connecting. Romney was terrible.

And Romney, most definitely, wasn’t tough enough. Popular conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham accused him of bringing a “down pillow to a gun fight.” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz played on the Romney-is-soft theme, telling the presumptive GOP’s campaign to “put their big boy and big girl pants on.”

Since that time a sea change of opinion has taken hold on the right, as a once-skeptical base has found a reason to embrace Romney (his gutsy call on picking a reform-minded conservative) and the party realists are beginning to think that the former Massachusetts governor’s tactical plan might even work.

It’s still early, of course, and the political establishment is always willing to jump ship, but there seems to be genuine and growing belief that momentum is on the GOP’s side. What is making everyone so confident? Why do they think they can win? Romney surrogates believe aggressiveness, the president’s record and a bold fiscal conservative argument have turned Romney’s fortunes. …

John Podhoretz says Romney has a distinct advantage with his convention speech.

… As far as the convention speeches go, Romney has a surprising advantage over Barack Obama: The gift of novelty. What he will be doing the nation will never have seen him doing before. People will be curious to see how Romney does, interested to hear what he says—and, in a country that has spent a decade watching “American Idol,” will be full of opinions about how he performs.

Obama’s speech will generate nothing comparable. Quite the opposite. In the four years since his nomination in 2008, he has delivered a convention speech, an inaugural address, four State of the Unions, and (by my unofficial count) eight nationally televised prime-time addresses either in front of Congress or from within the White House. He has spoken and spoken and spoken—and at least judging from the response for the past two years, his speeches have not served to push the needle of public opinion in his direction.

So the public knows what Obama has to offer. Those who love him will love him; those who think he’s OK will think he’s OK; everybody else who doesn’t like him to varying degrees are unlikely to alter their views. Which means unless he delivers a masterpiece on September 6, his speech (and the convention that preceded it) are not likely to make much of a difference for him.

For Romney, therefore, the stakes are high and the rewards potentially higher. For Obama, it may just be another day being a rather gabby president.

Podhoretz continues his campaign analysis in the NY Post.

Hurricane permitting, the GOP convention kicks off Monday, and with it, the preliminaries are over and the general election begins in earnest. How stands the race?

At first glance, and even second and third glances, every indication is that we’re in for a nail-biter. The RealClearPolitics average, which aggregates all public polls, now has Barack Obama ahead nationally by a mere point.

The two tracking polls, which survey voters every day and collect data over each three-day period, have the race tied.

There’s reason to think Mitt Romney is in better condition than the national polls show.

First, one has to consider the effect on Romney of the Obama campaign’s unprecedented barrage against him. Chicago spent an astounding $120 million over the summer, much of it on negative ads targeting Romney personally, and almost all of it in 12 battleground states. To give you a sense of how much spending that is, the McCain campaign in 2008 spent a mere $75 million in the general election against Obama in all 50 states.

Though Romney has certainly been bloodied a bit — we all know how he won’t release a lot of his tax returns — the polling from those states and nationally suggests he’s suffered mere flesh wounds. We won’t really know if the Obama campaign managed to cut deeply enough to cause a lingering infection until the general election campaign is in full swing.

But if the infection doesn’t materialize, that will mean the Obama campaign spent tens and tens of millions for nothing. On June 23, Obama was up in the RCP average by 2.4 points. Yesterday, two months later, 1 point. All that spending, and Romney’s position actually improved. …

Jennifer Rubin thinks the Dems were real lucky the storm prevented Biden from making a fool of himself in Tampa.

I suppose the Obama team thought that it was clever to send Vice President Biden to Tampa during the Republican National Convention. It’s the equivalent of trash talking. ( “You think you own Tampa? We own Tampa!”) On Friday it was announced that Biden would not go, out of concern that emergency personnel would be stretched too thin. The Obama team should count its lucky stars that it had reason to cancel.

President Obama did not show good judgment in selecting Biden as the man to step into the presidency at a moment’s notice. Biden is not only long-winded but misguided on virtually every point of foreign policy. His “y’all back in chains” remark is symptomatic of his willingness to say or do anything. Even Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has called him out for his race baiting. (“Did he think it was cute . . . Yes, he did. Was it something stupid to say? You bet your life it was stupid.”) He is perhaps the last person you’d want in a crisis. It points not only to poor judgment but also Obama’s vanity (Don’t admit an error.).

Obama could have dumped Biden this year; lots of presidents including Democratic idol FDR made a change. But the idea that Obama might need someone’s help (specifically, Hillary Clinton’s) was likely too much to stomach.So he’s stuck with a man who is thought by many to be foolish and slightly out of it.

Meanwhile along comes smart, disciplined, vibrant Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). According to the latest CNN poll, voters — despite his newness on the national scene (for most people) and his status as a mere congressman — find Ryan to be more likable than Biden. Ryan’s favorables are +6, while Biden is at -1. A majority of voters think that the choice of Ryan was excellent or good, and by a substantial margin, they find him to be qualified to serve as president (52 to 43 percent). By a huge 57 to 39 percent, voters think that picking Ryan reflects favorably on Romney’s ability to make important decisions.

So why stick Biden in the same city to highlight that unfavorable comparison? This was arrogance getting the better of the Obama camp. It is fortunate it had reason to cancel.

Imagine what could have occurred. Since his opponent is in town, Ryan might have strolled out from the convention to a Biden event one day. Shake his hand and even suggest a little impromptu debate. Yikes!

Well, there will be time for a full debate in October. It should be an illuminating face-off: fresh ideas vs. hackneyed politics, mathematical precision vs. absurd invention (“The vice president should know better than to spout off half-baked facts in service of a dubious argument.”) and conservative reformer vs. defender of the status quo.

In the meantime, the Romney-Ryan campaign should do all they can to highlight the differences between the two men and what they say about the men at the top of the tickets.

Blogger Joel Runyon has an encounter with an old man at a coffee shop.

… The old man turned back at his coffee, took a sip, and then looked back at me.

“In fact, I’ve done lots of things that haven’t been done before”, he said half-smiling.

Not sure if he was simply toying with me or not, my curiosity got the better of me.

Oh really? Like what types of things?, All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive.

I invented the first computer.

Um, Excuse me?

I created the world’s first internally programmable computer. It used to take up a space about as big as this whole room and my wife and I used to walk into it to program it.

What’s your name?”. I asked, thinking that this guy is either another crazy homeless person in Portland or legitimately who he said he was.

“Russell Kirsch”

Sure enough, after .29 seconds, I found out he wasn’t lying to my face. Russell Kirsch indeed invented the world’s first internally programmable computer and as well as a bunch of other things and definitely lives in Portland. As he talked, I began googling him, he read my mind and volunteered:

Here, I’ll show you

He stood up and directed me to a variety of websites and showed me through the archives of what he’d created while every once in a while dropping some minor detail like:

I also created the first digital image. It was a photo of my son.

At this point, I learned better than to call Russell’s bluff, but sure enough, a few more google searches showed that he did just that. …

Runyon has a follow on to the above post.

After debating a few days whether or not to even share last weeks post, I hit publish. Over the first few days, it got some traffic along with some residual views from  views from my six pack transformation. But Sunday, the piece really took off. It hit the top of Hacker News for 6+ hours,  and got featured on BoingBoing (twice!). In short, over the last few days, the story has received over ~350,000 visits in the past few days and been shared 40,000 times on facebook and 8,000+ times on twitter.

After melting some servers, Russell’s words still reverberated.

Nothing is withheld from us which we have conceived to do.

Do things that have never been done.

All this started from talking to some old man I didn’t know in a coffee shop. It was an incredible conversation and even more incredible experience. Here’s 7 things I’ve learned from my encounter with Russell Kirsch:

Make Stuff

This is really simple.

Make stuff.

Go create something. The only limit on you is what you can imagine. So imagine some impossible things. Then stop waiting around and go create them.

You Are Not That Important – Be Humble

I could have missed out on an incredible encounter if I would have treated Russell like anybody else you see at a coffee shop.

I could have thought I was too important for a tangential conversation with a stranger about Macs and PCs but instead I chose to listen.

On the flip side, a few people commented that Russell needed to learn humility – saying he sounded arrogant. If anything came across like that, it’s my fault in the story telling. If anything, Russell was one of the most humble people I’ve ever met. …