***Dave Does the Election – Weekend Roundup

We start off this evening with our usual focus, Gov. Sarah Palin. Sure, she’s nearly dropped out of sight except on SNL, and her relevance to the campaign was overshadowed by the presidential debate last week (more anon), but remember, she and Joltin’ Joe go at it hammer and tongs on Thursday night … maybe.

There’s actually an odd groundswell of support for McCain to cut Sarah loose — framed, of course, as her deciding to (as they say) “spend more time with her family.” It’s a bad sign when even McCain’s aides are condemning her cluelessness.

But this is even goofier than the Obama “fire Joe, hire Hillary” meme. In both cases, it would reveal a grievous lack of both judgment beforehand and commitment afterward for a presidential candidate to choose a different veep in the middle of the campaign; you can only get away with it when something Big and New and Disturbing comes up, and it sure didn’t help George McGovern in ’72. McCain can’t claim that there were skeletons in Palin’s closet when it was his own campaign’s choice to rush her nomination that left them lying there.

Besides, who’s he going to pick? Huckabee’s chuckling his way to the television bank, so there’s nobody on the right available. Going for the AWAV vote hasn’t proven very effective, and, besides, Condi was already vetoed because of the homophobic rumor mill. And the “base” would never allow McCain to pick his own “Joe.”

Maybe Palin can redeem herself with her own November surprise. Sure, that would show the McCain campaign as the most cynical and manipulative political effort of all time (“Don’t intrude on the family privacy! Really! This ideal family right over here! Don’t ask questions about them! Aren’t they cute? But off-limits. Smile, people!”), but what have they got to lose at this point?

And then there’s Sen. McCain, and the debate with Sen. Obama. A few comments to McCain:

1. Ragging on earmarks sounds really good, John (Obama did correctly by noting that it’s a tiny fraction of the overall federal spending, but he could have easily noted your own running mate’s record), but it’s a bad way to deal with science. It especially comes off as ignorant when your opponent has just released a detailed plan on how his administration would approach science, both from a spending standpoint and from a refreshingly honest policy standpoint.
2. No matter how many times you try to make it sound naive, the real naivete in international politics is this weird “do as we say first, then we’ll negotiate” riff that the Bush Administration adopted for so many years, and which you seem ready to continue. That you don’t seem to recognize anything related to nuance in foreign policy it itself a sign of immaturity and inexperience. (That goes right along with his running mate, the one with all that great foreign policy expertise, never having seen the need to get a passport)
3. Before you go on about how your opponent is an ignorant and bumbling dolt for suggesting that circumstances might make it worthwhile to cross the Afghan-Pakistan border first and make arrangements with the Pakistani government later, you might want to touch bases with your running mate. Of course, it’s worrisome that Palin actually espouses something that Obama said — oh, my God, it’s a Dirty Trick!
4. You can keep touting your support for veterans, but it would be nice if your voting record actually backed that up. I realize this is a “fact-lite” campaign, but, really …

I gave an effective win to Obama on the debate, largely because McCain didn’t secure anything resembling a knock-out blow to take away the momentum of the Obama campaign. The next question would be who won the spin (which spin included McCain campaign ads touting their debate victory well before the debate even started). 

Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign took Obama’s gracious agreement on some of McCain’s points as fodder for making political points, even though every one of those agreements had a “but” following it, and it was more properly a sign of Obama trying to be polite and civil.

For what it’s worth, the immediate polls and those taken over the weekend seem to indicate that Obama was seen as the overally winner, and he continues to increase (slowly) his lead over McCain. It may be that McCain’s unconvincing attempt to seem to be the great statesman with his faux campaign suspension has actually backfired. Or it may be that McCain came off in the debate itself as “surly, rude, condescending, and hostile,” unwilling to even look Obama in the face, for whatever reason. Or it may be that (and this would be a true miracle), the public realized that a is that a fundamental difference between the two men is that McCain sees everything in black-and-white, us-vs-them, simple-problems-simple-answer terms, while Obama, even when he’s wrong, takes a more careful, encompassing approach that recognizes multiple factors and players at work, and that responses to complex issues themselves need to be complex and well-considered.

Yeah, that last one is a long shot, but after the last eight years, maybe the populace is willing to accept “nuance” as a strength, not a weakness.

I’ll end the presidential commentary on three notes. First, Obama’s goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015 is amazingly profound and worthwhile. Second, as much as I admire Jon Stewart, the fact is that Beretta actually makes several shotgun models. 

Third is a bit more profound. Take on face value that both McCain and Obama are sincere and dedicated to their call for “change” in Washington. Both have a long series of things they want to do (let’s leave aside whether they’ll have any money left to do them with). The question becomes, who is going to be able to get their agenda moved forward? McCain will almost certainly face a significant Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, not the slender margin that Bush currently has. Is he really likely to be able to get anything of substance through. to really bridge that partisan gap, especially after this election? Obama has to face a Senate that the GOP can prevent cloture in, but that’s a darned sight better odds that he’ll be able to actually get something done.

Of course, some would consider that “a feature, not a bug,” and see the increased friction of a split government as a good thing, forcing some measure of bipartisanship and generally slowing down the wheels of Washington. As a broad rule, I tend to agree — but the pendulum needs to swing a bit to the left before we bring it down to the center. Those Republicans (plus Lieberman) in the Senate will keep an Obama administration from, in the direst circumstance, doing anything too whacky (indeed, it’s altogether possible they will keep Obama from doing anything significant, but that’s a risk we have to face). In the meantime, we may get something with at least the trappings of a progressive, even liberal, agenda in Washington, in a way we really haven’t had since, oh, the Carter Administration (and we can all see how things have been peachy-keen there since).

And in non-presidential politics, I’m pleased to see that businesses in California, both conservative and progressive, have made it clear that, pragmatically, Proposition 8 (to take away the right of gays to marry) is a bad idea. That may point out a fissure in the Fiscal vs. Social Conservatives, but those sorts of stances will make it all the more (hopefully) likely that Prop 8 will go down to defeat.

And so it goes.