TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME
You already knew that two of McCain's closest campaign allies, senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are set to visit Georgia, apparently on McCain's behalf.
Now key Obama ally Joe Biden is also set to visit Georgia this weekend.
--Greg Sargent
Election Central Saturday Roundup
The Democratic National Committee brought in more money for July than the Republican National Committee did, the first time this whole cycle that such a thing has occurred. That and other political news in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
51 Cool Ones
July fundraising total for Obama: $51 million.
(Compare: McCain raised $27 million.)
--David Kurtz
Another View on Ukraine
From TPM Reader NV ...
I have to take issue with TPM reader OA's statement that "[c]onceding Ukraine to Russia's sphere of interest would be a disaster for Ukraine--it would surely lead to civil war and would destabilize all of Eastern Europe (the Poles and the Balts aren't going to sit idly by)...." I think this overstates things quite a bit. I don't know what OA is suggesting the Poles and the "Balts" (who are they?) are going to do, if not sit idly by.I was born in eastern Ukraine and moved to the U.S. when I was 11 years old. I still have family in Ukraine and I visit them every year or two.
I think reader OA overstates whatever animosity may exist between people residing in western and eastern Ukraine. What can be considered the core of eastern Ukraine contains 30% of the country's population, and as the polls you cite suggest, opposition to NATO membership extends far beyond that core population. And I think dismissing that opposition as one based on semantics (i.e, if only they changed the name of NATO) is too simplistic and actually borders on the ridiculous. If "every Soviet citizen was told NATO was the enemy," as OA would have it, perhaps the U.S. and various European countries should have changed their names too. Or was this indoctrination limited to the word NATO and excluded all references to America, capitalism, etc.? There is a lot more going on here than the purported continued inability of Ukrainians to overcome Soviet indoctrination, to which, incidentally, people ceased being exposed to since at least Glasnost in the late 1980s.
As for the assertion that conceding Ukraine to Russia (as if the only option for Ukraine is falling totally within Russia's influence or joining NATO) will be disastrous and "surely lead to civil war," that seems extremely remote to me. Recent civil wars in Eastern Europe, as most civil wars, have pitted various ethnic and religious groups against each other. Ukraine is quite monolithic in both its religious and ethnic composition. The talk of two Ukraines is quite overblown and is very much a simplification, as anyone living in Ukraine will tell you. These are not distinct cultures in the same way as Albanians and Serbs are, for instance. There are differences, to be sure. For example, the East is industrialized, more developed, and relatively more prosperous. It accounts for a huge proportion of Ukraine's GDP. The West, on the whole, is rural, less developed, and more poor.
Further, I don't think that the defeat of Ukraine's prime minister in his 2004 presidential race can be attributed to the failure of "multi-vector" foreign policy. It's not clear that this was a policy failure in the first place, and it has worked out quite well for other former republics that have much less in common with Russia, both historically and culturally, such as Kazakhstan.
One must also understand that the relationship between Ukraine and Russia cannot at all be analogized to the relationship between Georgia and Russia. They are unique. The historic and cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine are extensive. Kiev, after all, was the cradle of Slavic civilization.
Finally, OA gets a fact wrong (not dispositive of his argument, but still an important point). The previous Ukrainian president was not "dumped" during the Orange Revolution. He did not run for reelection. To the extent anyone was dumped, it was the sitting prime minister who was the candidate for president supported by many in the east and ostensibly by Russia.
Having said all this, I agree with OA's conclusions. He's right in saying that "the only hope (for all) in the long run is to repair U.S.-Russian relations." And he's also right when he says that "the problem for Ukraine and Ukrainians is how to prevent the interference of the West AND the Russians in domestic politics."
--Josh Marshall
Do Read This
Some bracingly good sense and -- mirabile dictu! -- real on the ground knowledge about the Georgia situation by Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post.
--Josh Marshall
Approve This Message
A lot of you have probably seen this video. It's an amateur/independent pro-Obama, anti-McCain ad. There are a few elements -- tonal stuff -- that would have to be changed for a campaign to run something like this. But it's very good. The makings of a killer ad ...
--Josh Marshall
More on Ukraine
From TPM Reader OA ...
I want to say something about the polling data on NATO and Ukraine--I am a historian who has worked and visited Ukraine many times, both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the biggest mistakes made by the U.S. and its allies after 1991--and I thought so at the time--was to retain the name "NATO" even as the mission was redefined. In the Soviet Union, every citizen was taught that NATO was the enemy. It's a name that continues to carry the most negative connotations. It's as if U.S. citizens were polled on whether they thought the country needed a KGB.In other words, the situation is more complicated than you allow. Ukraine, after all, elected (and will likely reelect) a President in 2004 who favoured integration with NATO and the European Union--even as polls then showed that most people were opposed to Ukraine joining NATO. The problem for Ukraine and Ukrainians is how to prevent the interference of the West AND the Russians in domestic politics. The previous President--the one who was ceremoniously dumped during the Orange Revolution--followed a "multi-vectored" foreign policy, essentially playing off the Russians and the West. That didn't work out so well. Conceding Ukraine to Russia's sphere of interest would be a disaster for Ukraine--it would surely lead to civil war and would destabilize all of Eastern Europe (the Poles and the Balts aren't going to sit idly by); but having Ukraine join NATO in the current political climate would be no less of a disaster and would be seen by the Russians as a provocation of the highest order.
Ultimately, the only hope (for all) in the long run is to repair U.S.-Russian relations. What has happened in Georgia is the result of the incompetence of the Bush administration. It's a terrible black eye for the U.S., though no one in Washington is willing to say it out loud at the moment. The November elections can't come quickly enough, as far as I am concerned.
As I told this reader in my private response, I don't think we're very far apart. In fact, what he says sounds extremely sensible to me. His point that the Ukrainians are electing leaders who favor integration with NATO is a very good one.
Yesterday I read a blog post at another site that summarized my position as a Realist stance believing that we should concede all of the states of the former Soviet Union and perhaps some of the former Warsaw Pact countries to a Russian sphere of influence, and simply be done with it. Needless to say, that is not my position at all. And I think it is a sign of how dangerously monochromatic this discussion has become that there is apparently only the option of allowing the complete Russian domination of Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states or driving our military alliance right up to what are still in many cases Russia's disputed borders. I think we can mobilize a lot of our and Europe's soft and hard power to insure that these states remain independent, open economies -- existing on the model of interstate relations of contemporary Western Europe rather than some ugly amalgam of late 19th and early 20th century Europe. But I also don't want to see bad actors of the Scheunemann and McCain variety get us jacked up into some enduring and dangerous posture of confrontation with the Russians over a couple separatist regions of Georgia -- something that I don't think is either necessary or at all in our interests. The truth is that the US screwed up here in a big way. This isn't to excuse the Russians. But we pumped the Georgians up as our big Iraq allies, got them revved up about coming into NATO, playing all this pipeline politics, all of which led them to have a much more aggressive posture toward the Russians than we were willing, in the final analysis, to back up. So now they've gotten badly mauled. And we have to decide whether to double down on the moronic policy (McCain position) or try to unwind and loosen this knot, walk this thing back to something like the status quo ante and then try working the whole nestle of problems in a very different way. Like I've said a few times, see the last paragraph of this post by Greg Djerejian where he discusses a difficult but sensible way forward.
--Josh Marshall
Todd Gitlin muses at TPMCafe: If only "An American President Who Inspires America" fit on a bumper sticker.
--David Kurtz
More on Ukraine
Earlier I noted polling data suggesting that most Ukrainians actually oppose the country's entrance into NATO. I've now gotten hold of some more private polling data, based on a survey of a thousand people around the country last June. The interviews were conducted face to face in both Russian and Ukrainian. Let me run down some key numbers.
Do you support Ukraine joining the NATO alliance?
Yes 22%
No 66%
Don't Know 11%
Do you think it is very important, somewhat important, somewhat unimportant or not at all important for Ukraine to join the European Union?
Very Important 18%
Somwhat Important 36%
Somewhat unimportant 18%
Not at all important 11%
Don't know 15%
Other questions about whether it is important for Ukraine to integrate with Russia or the West either politically and economically, show majorities for integration with Russia, about a third supporting integrating with both and only very small minorities for integrating with the West.
--Josh Marshall
Bacevich on Moyers
Many of you are familiar with Andrew J. Bacevich, the retired Army Colonel and International Relations expert, who's become one of the most insightful critics of contemporary American militarism. By most historical standards Bacevich is a conservative. But his criticism of America's post-Cold War military posture, particularly the Iraq War, have made him an ally of many on the left. And in a tragic turn of events his son, First Lieutentant Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed last year in Iraq -- a war his father had been making the case against for half a decade.
Bill Moyers is interviewing Bacevich tonight at 9 PM on PBS in about the Imperial Presidency, American militarism and their challenge to American democracy. We got some advanced excerpts of the show, which we're going to be posting shortly.
Late Update: Here's the video:
--Josh Marshall
His Grandiosity on Display
John McCain says: "My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression."
Let's run-down the list. Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, followed by the US expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars of aggression between successor states. US invasion of Afghanistan. US invasion of Iraq. There are a slew of other examples of serious international crises over last 16-18 years.
One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events.
There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country.
--Josh Marshall
Reality Check
You've probably heard a lot about how, in the wake of the Georgia crisis, we need to allow Ukraine into NATO. This is from the International Herald Tribune back in June ...
According to polls conducted recently by the independent Democratic Initiatives Foundation in Kiev, 59 percent of Ukrainians would vote against joining NATO, up from 53 percent last December, while 22 percent would vote in favor, down from 32 percent.
Other polls have shown similar levels of support.
Now, one point to bear in mind. There's a profound division between east and west in Ukraine -- with the east leaning strongly toward Russia and the west leaning toward further integration with the West. So in western Ukraine, support undoubtedly runs much higher. Still, to the extent we're dealing with Ukraine as a unified country, which we are if we're planning on agreeing to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, then the fact that NATO membership has very thin support in the country should play into the calculus.
--Josh Marshall
Big Trouble
It seems Georgian President Saakashvili's tear of international showboating continues unabated. In a press conference with Secretary Rice currently being televised he is claiming that Europe is to blame for the Russian invasion because of the failure to grant NATO entry to Georgia. This is followed by some odd arguments about why Georgia didn't at the least give Russia a robust pretext by launching into South Ossetia last weekend. It's Czechoslovakia (1938 & 1968), Poland, Kuwait, Afghanistan and several other crises of the past rolled into one and we don't greet this like standing up to Hitler and Stalin our honor is lost today and our freedom tomorrow.
I know there are a lot of people out there whose sense of personal grandiosity wants to puff this guy up into some sort of world historical figure. But he's trouble. And to our great national misfortune the same cabal responsible for scheming the US into Iraq is working hand and glove with him to pull this country into deeper misfortune. And one of them might be president in 6 months.
--Josh Marshall
Election Central Morning Roundup
Just how odd is John McCain's move in sending his own delegation to Georgia? That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
More Like It
From the Post ...
Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."
He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."
I am curious how this interlude in the campaign ends up playing. McCain's stance on this issue shows him to be close to certifiable -- not only on specific policy points but also in what I guess I would call affect. But it's not lost on me that people without much background on what actually happened might think this shows him at his strongest, best, etc. On the other hand, he really has gone considerably beyond what's ever been considered appropriate or acceptable for a presidential candidate. He's worked at fairly evident cross-purposes with the president of his own party. He's been in several times a day phone contact with one of the key players in the drama. He's dispatching his own faux diplomatic delegations to the scene. Probably it's all too much inside baseball to register with anyone who's not already watching closely and decided. But who knows?
Late Update: On the other hand, the Times gets wobbly in the knees over McCain flexing his credentials.
--Josh Marshall
An informed observer writes in ...
Here's the first reaction from the Obama side to the Wall St Journal article bruiting McCain's tech plan: It appears he plans to give a $2 billion cash handout to 10 companies (the big employers of engineers). We can't be sure right away how many have hired the lobbyists on the McCain campaign team.
Might be worth checking which of McCain's lobbyists helped him put this plan together.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: "Casino Jack and the United States of Money"
This is one I'm really looking forward to. The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) has a new film in the works on Jack Abramoff. It's not expected to be released until 2009, but when we caught up with Gibney last month in Austin, where he was previewing the film at Netroots Nation, he was already well-versed in the arcana of the Abramoff scandal. We got a chance to talk with Gibney about Jack and the other colorful characters in that circle: Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and ... Dolph Lundgren:
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
--David Kurtz
Sounds Fun
McCain promises a "dramatically different relationship" with Russia if he becomes president.
--Josh Marshall
Georgia On Their Mind
Bernard Avishai, William Hartung and Dr. C.A. Rotwang weigh in at TPMCafe.
--David Kurtz
Draft FEC Opinion Favors McCain
From Roll Call (sub. req.):
The Federal Election Commission will decide next Thursday whether presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) broke campaign finance laws late last year by taking out a bank loan to keep his then-struggling campaign afloat.In the recently rebooted agency's first major test, the FEC distributed a draft opinion Thursday siding with McCain, whose fate the commission's three Democrats and three Republicans must still decide at the public meeting next week.
The agency's legal department concluded that McCain did not break the law by taking the loan -- and then exceeding contribution limits -- despite warnings to the contrary from since-ousted FEC chairman David Mason, who had a tense back-and-forth with the campaign in early 2008.
"We believe that the matching payment act does permit candidates to withdraw after they have been declared eligible," the FEC's lawyers concluded in their new draft guidance. "Although no eligible candidate may exceed the expenditure limits, the statues simply do not say whether the commission has discretion to reverse its eligibility determination and decertify a candidate."
--David Kurtz
Swiftboat 2.0
As TPM Election Central reports, the Obama camp is coming to grips with the fact that the new book by swiftboating author Jerome Corsi isn't going away anytime soon. Set to remain at the top of the NYT bestseller list for another week, Obama Nation will test whether the campaign can mount a more effective response to such smears than John Kerry did in 2004.
--David Kurtz
Joe Leads the Way
Joe Klein: There's no way to "explain [the kind of campaign McCain is running] other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used."
For most I think the idea is still that McCain doesn't really approve of the campaign his campaign is running or he wouldn't if he knew about it.
--Josh Marshall
Likin' This Ad
I don't know how widely Obama is running this ad. But it's good. And it captures something key about McCain ...
--Josh Marshall
Done Deal
TPM Election Central reports on the contours of the forthcoming deal between the Obama and Hillary camps on her role at the Convention: her nomination will be put to a roll call vote as a symbolic nod to her hard-fought primary campaign, but she will urge her supporters to back Obama.
--David Kurtz
Put Not Your Faith in AEI
Andrew Sullivan, who's been on a tear on this story, has another good post on the bankrupt posturing of the neocons, jumping at the hopes of a new Cold War with the Russians, despite the lack of the ideological underpinnings on which we fought the first and any Russian global ambitions or capacity to fight it.
But I think in our own lives we all know the type who heads off into some new and exciting scheme, with high hopes and little forethought. And when things don't pan out or come crashing down at their feet, rather than take stock of the situation or reevaluate their own shiftless practices, they're off to some new ambitious plan or get-rich-quick scheme as if the last gambit had never happened.
And it's hard not to recognize that sad figure in the Max Boots and John McCains and Bill Bennetts and all the rest with their sustaining roots planted firmly at AEI HQ. After all, what happened to the long twilight struggle against radical Islam? So yesterday, I guess. Or can we do both simultaneously, even though the Russians are themselves up against hostile Islamic groups on their southern periphery?
Watching the Bennetts and the Krauthammers get all jazzed up about Georgia as the new Afghanistan, with all the painfully awkward nostalgia and excitement of an 80s era Gilligan's Island reunion flick is entertaining. But much less so when you realize these jokers might be running the government in six months.
--Josh Marshall
Election Central Morning Roundup
Obama goes up with a new TV ad in Indiana using McCain's "the economy is fine" talk in the GOP primaries against him. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Overview
Here's a good article from the LA Times on the strategic backdrop to the recent events in Georgia.
There's a core question of US foreign policy in play here that few seem to be discussing. And that is whether it is necessary to the vital interests of the United States, or even consistent with the vital interests of the United States (I'm dubious on this latter point), to demand a Russian sphere of influence which is coterminous with Russia's own current borders. That's the policy goal that is the backdrop of this whole conflict, writ large and small.
--Josh Marshall
McCain, Scourge of Lobbyists
Let me see if I can explain this simply.
When Sen. McCain was doing his highly circumscribed senate investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Jack's then-firm, Greenberg Traurig, hired sometimes McCain foreign policy advisor and most-times lobbyist Randy Scheunemann "for advice on handling the Senate investigation."
This was while Scheunemann was also lobbying for the government of Georgia.
McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told the Times "he believed that Mr. Scheunemann was hired because he had worked in Congress for more than a decade and had experience with investigations, and not because of any ties he had to Mr. McCain."
--Josh Marshall
Bridge to Yesterday
In a world where economic might and national power are increasingly driven by information technology, can we afford a president who hasn't learned to use email? Amanda Terkel asks the question.
--Josh Marshall
Good Old Days
I will grant him this, Sen. McCain becomes markedly more animated and focused when he's talking about the Tsarist Empire and the Cold War. And I can see that Mark Halperin at ABC News is getting with the program when he cheers McCain's ability to use the Georgian crisis as an opportunity to "distance himself from the more accommodationist Bush Administration."
I think Halperin does us all a service by signaling that the Bush administration will seem "accomodationist" in comparison to a potential McCain administration. At several points in his statements over the last few days McCain has said that he "doesn't think" we're headed back to the Cold War. But listen to the tone of his voice and tell me if it doesn't sound like the one President Bush used to employ when he'd say, circa 2002-2003, that we were taking every step possible to avoid war with Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
James Galbraith, at the TPMCafe Book Club, on Thomas Sowell's attack yesterday on Obama in National Review Online: Since when did conservative economists care about tax revenue? Hasn't he heard of starving the beast?
--David Kurtz
Judgment
CNN is currently running a segment promoting Jerome Corsi's new anti-Obama book.
--Josh Marshall
Dangerous
Everyone should watch this McCain press conference. McCain is uncomfortable not being in the Cold War. He feels out of his element and he wants to go back.
--Josh Marshall
McCain Sending Delegation to Georgia
This is quite hilarious. Sen. McCain has just announced that he's sending his own delegation to Georgia (Sens. Lieberman and Graham) and now he's insisting that it's not a time for politics and partisanship.
--Josh Marshall
Watching CNN on Georgia -- apparently President Bush isn't up to snuff for not adopting all of Sen. McCain's nutty ideas.
--Josh Marshall
Oh Boy
Wouldn't want to think we've got ourselves tied up with a loose canon in the President of Georgia.
President Saakashvili today told Georgians that the US military was moving in to take over control of the country's air and seaports -- which would be a pretty big deal since much of the country still appears to be an active war zone.
And about five minutes later the Pentagon said he didn't know what he was talking about.
"We are not looking to, nor do we need to, take control of any air or seaports to conduct this mission," said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary. "The role of the U.S. military is strictly to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the victims of this conflict."
John McCain says he's talking to Saakashvili every day. What's he telling him? Is he confusing the situation?
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: A Chat with Van Jones
The closing keynote speaker of the Netroots Nation convention in Austin last month was environmental and social justice activist Van Jones. Following his Sunday morning speech TPMtv caught up with Mr. Jones and asked him about the perception of the environmental movement in the black community and how to alter that perception for the better in creating a full-blown eco-populist movement ...
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
--Ben Craw
Freelance
In this article, McCain tells the Tribune's Jill Zuckman that he's been on the phone with the President of Georgia every day of the current crisis.
--Josh Marshall
SEE NO EVIL
McCain campaign's double-talk on Obama's patriotism largely ignored by national press.
Late Update: Howard Fineman of Newsweek proves the point perfectly.
--Greg Sargent
The Lunacy Continues
Continues, and of course keep in mind that these are the kinds of cranks likely to have the ear of a potential McCain administration.
Max Boot -- who the Council on Foreign Relations still continues to allow to speak in its name -- says we should move directly to arming the Georgians with Stinger (anti-aircraft) and Javelin (anti-armor) missiles.
We need to protect the country from pampered foreign policy analysts who derive such evident excitement from every prospect of war.
--Josh Marshall
Is This What I Paid For?
It seems like John McCain's foreign policy freelancing may be further complicating the situation in Georgia. And President Saakashvili seems reasonably to be asking whether he shouldn't be getting more for having McCain top foreign policy advisor on his payroll for all these years.
This morning Saakashvili told CNN: "Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, 'We are all Georgians now,'" Saakashvili said on CNN's American Morning. "Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it's time to pass from this. From words to deeds."
Isn't John McCain just a presidential candidate? Not actually president? Is he really supposed to be running his own freelance foreign policy as part of his campaign?
--Josh Marshall
On the Offensive
New Obama ad blames McCain-backed spending on Iraq for poor U.S. economy.
--David Kurtz
On Payroll
Whatever you do, do not miss the article in the Washington Post about Randy Scheunemann's lobbying for Georgia. From the lede ...
Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.
...
At the time of McCain's call, Scheunemann had formally ceased his own lobbying work for Georgia, according to federal disclosure reports. But he was still part of Orion Strategies, which had only two lobbyists, himself and Mike Mitchell.
Scheunemann remained with the firm for another month, until May 15, when the McCain campaign imposed a tough new anti-lobbyist policy and he was required to separate himself from the company.
Since 2004, Orion has bagged $800,000 from Georgia.
For months while McCain's presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia's lobbyist. Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.
Even though Scheunemann has now somehow cut his ties and is receiving no money directly from Georgia, as far as I can tell he is still the co-owner of the company -- and the name that is its main draw. So whatever it does still has a direct bearing on him because of that ownership stake.
After you read the article it's astonishing that Scheunemann is even still with the campaign. And it just adds to the continuing mystery of how McCain preserves this image of being the scourge of lobbyists when he is almost a caricature of the kind of politician whose conduct is managed by a series of lobbyists who manage his actions on almost every point of policy.
--Josh Marshall
Election Central Morning Roundup
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, currently running for U.S. Senate, will give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, it was announced this morning. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Such a Good Sign
As things unfold, keep an eye on the fact that the truly fanatic Bush hardliners -- folks like John Bolton and the cadre of neoconservatives who run with him who've spent the last few years suffering what amounts to felony assault at the hands of reality -- have largely lost faith in the Bush administration (he's gone too soft, in their eyes) and are now looking to McCain as their savior. Keep an eye out for the quotes Bolton has been giving about McCain.
--Josh Marshall
Gunnegtions
Another treat Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili got for having Sen. McCain's foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann on his payroll: Back in 2005, McCain nominated Saakashvili for a Nobel Peace Prize.
--Josh Marshall
Our Chat with Don Siegelman
In case, you missed it, our chat with former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman ...
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
--Josh Marshall
Rec Blogging
Another recommendation to read Fred Kaplan's Slate piece on Georgia. Check out William Hartung's recommendation (which is an interesting read in itself) and then of course Fred's piece.
--Josh Marshall
Joe Lieberman: Obama has not always "put the country first."
Late Update: McCain campaign officially endorses Lieberman's assertion. --gs
--David Kurtz
Product Placement?
The President of Georgia just quoted John McCain in a speech before a large crowd in Tbilisi. It helps having one of the Georgian president's employees running your foreign policy team.
Late update: Here's the video:
--Josh Marshall
Not Holding My Breath
But someone should call him out.
From TPM Reader KB ...
Josh, I agree with your reader email that it is almost impossible at this point for Obama himself to call out McCain on playing the race card. But that doesn't mean an outsider can't call out McCain. Imagine if a respected, non-partisan, friend-of-McCain went public with concerns about the images in McCain's advertising. One wonders what Colin and Alma Powell think of the images in the McCain ad and the racial subtext to them. A Powell rebuke would be powerful and debilitating to the McCain campaign. It would change the game.
--Josh Marshall
Dangerous and Unstable
I know I've made this point in various ways in several posts over the last day or so. But watching John McCain speak about the Georgian crisis in the video below should deeply worry anyone interested in a sane US foreign policy -- or the safety of their children. One arch joke from the earlier part of this decade was that the one good thing about the neocons obsession with getting into a war with Iraq was that it distracted them from their much bigger obsessions -- ratcheting up Cold Wars with China and/or Russia.
The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians -- and ironically and a bit improbably with the Chinese too. But the Russians are probably more willing to oblige us since their power remains limited to oil reserves and military power. In other words, they're people McCain's folks can understand and vice versa.
McCain is going out of his way to cast this as a replay of 1938 and 1939. Is it really in our interest to get into a renewed Cold War with Russia right now? Do we have the military resources for a proxy/advisor war in the Caucasus at the moment? Should we find ourselves in the situation where the Russians want to reassert their sway in Eastern Europe, we would have some very serious and consequential decisions to make. But this just is not that. The key is that McCain, both in terms of policy and temperament, wants to court that result.
It's sort of funny when he's just an unhinged senator. But think for a moment where we'd be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they've now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him.
It's beyond Obama or political strategy or dinging McCain on this or that policy.
This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he's giving us of a McCain presidency.
--Josh Marshall
Jonesing For Another War
McCain gets on the grandiosity bandwagon talking about the crisis in Georgia.
Notice too that McCain's first talking point is that Georgia was one of the first countries to officially adopt Christianity. Beside pandering to the Christian right, what is the relevance of that exactly? This is one dangerous guy ...
--Josh Marshall
Pelosi Is No Jesus
Another gem from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN):
"[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that."
--David Kurtz
Oy
From the Journal ...
John McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a leading expert on U.S.-allied Georgia -- and was a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic until March, in the run-up to what has become a major battle between Georgia and Russia.Democratic rival Barack Obama's presidential campaign was quick to try to paint Mr. Scheunemann's dual roles as a conflict of interest after Sen. McCain swiftly took Georgia's side in the dispute, and cited it as evidence that Sen. McCain is "ensconced in a lobbyist culture," as Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan told reporters over the weekend.
But given the rapid escalation of the fighting, and the fact that Georgia is being viewed as a victim of its neighbor's aggression, Mr. Scheunemann's ties to the small nation and its pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili may look less like a weakness and more like a strength in the first foreign-policy crisis of the general election campaign.
It's genuinely hard to know where to start with this sort of nonsense. To say that Randy has a conflict of interest misses the point. And I'd hope that's not the argument the Obama campaign is trying to make. The point is that Randy was running point on what was clearly a deeply misguided policy -- one advanced by the Bush administration and lobbied for aggressively by the neoconservative foreign policy community in Washington, for whom, as I said, Randy was essentially running point. Anybody who wants to understand this situation needs to read Fred Kaplan's piece in Slate and Greg Djerejian's blog post from this morning.
Scheunemann's 'policy' was to get the Georgians ginned up on the idea that we were their close military allies and that we'd come to their rescue if their brinksmanship with the Russians went bad. Well, that didn't work out very well. Any situation where you start the shooting and then find yourself begging for a ceasefire within 48 hours is a major blunder. He's not an 'expert' on Georgia; he's the lead guy on the policy that got us into this situation. And the fact that John McCain would make him his chief policy advisor after he's been the conductor on so many trainwrecks should tell us all we need to know about Sen. McCain's foreign policy judgment.
--Josh Marshall
Main Squeeze
Last week I mentioned that the Times reporting earlier this year on the McCain/Paxson/Iseman story had missed the key element of McCain's participation in the influence peddling. Remember that McCain denied that he'd asked for a decision one way or another in the case Paxson and his lobbyist Iseman had before the FCC. He'd only pressed them to decide the matter one way or another. That was McCain's story.
FCC insiders knew different. In fact, McCain was squeezing one of the FCC commissioners -- making okaying Paxson's deal a condition of their reappointment.
What I hadn't realized is that McCain's quid pro quo had actually already been flagged, albeit circumspectly, in what was apparently a little noticed piece by Josh Green in The Atlantic Monthly.
Susan Ness, a Democratic commissioner, took the rare step of breaking with her fellow Democrats and voting with the Republican commissioners to approve the Paxson deal....
And while there is no evidence that McCain or anyone on his staff made an explicit quid pro quo demand, Ness's vote is widely thought to have been a bid to win her reappointment to the FCC--a bid that happened to have stalled before McCain's committee months earlier.
So here we have what Paxson and Iseman bought from McCain, which pulls the whole story together and gives a much better sense of just what went down.
I know there are others out there (beside those who've already been in touch) who know more about what happened and can shed more light on the favors McCain provided. So please drop me a line. As always, your anonymity is assured.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: A Chat with Don Siegelman
Free on bail while his appeal is pending, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was in Austin last month for Netroots Nation. I got a chance to ask him about the various investigations into allegations that his prosecution for public corruption was politically motivated -- and Karl Ro