The week

National Review, Oct 20, 2008

* Cheer up! Things could get much worse.

* The financial blizzard and the first debate have lit up the presidential candidates like flares. John McCain is a man of the Senate, proud of its friendships, and reveling in the free hand that senators are given. He uses his stature to express the same nature he showed as a Navy pilot: aggressive, risk-taking, self-directed. Barack Obama is professorial, and writerly; he intellectualizes problems, the better to distance himself from them. Because he is eloquent, Americans have been slow to appreciate his underlying stance, though they may be starting to. We have put both types in the White House before (Andrew Jackson and TR for McCain, John Quincy Adams and Woodrow Wilson for Obama), with mixed results. McCain is a hero, possibly a leader, hopefully an executive; Obama would be the ideal historian of the Obama administration. We hope Bismarck was right when he said that God looks out for drunkards, children, and the United States.

* McCain says our corporate-tax rates are among the highest in the industrialized world, and wants to cut them. Barack Obama says we have low corporate taxes based on how much revenue they bring in. They are both right: We have high rates that bring in little revenue. Maybe McCain is on to something?

* Obama adds that we have "tax breaks" for companies that send jobs overseas. What he means is that we let such companies pay foreign taxes and pay our taxes only when they bring their profits home. Making them pay both sets of taxes simultaneously is a formula for making them uncompetitive abroad. Obama talks a lot about restoring our leadership in the world. Apparently he does not have economic leadership in mind.

* If you listened only to Obama, you would think that McCain's health-care plan consisted entirely of taxing health benefits. It's nice to hear that there are tax increases of which Obama disapproves. Over time, the McCain plan would amount to a net tax increase, since it would replace the unlimited tax break for employer-provided insurance with a limited break for both employer-provided and individually purchased insurance. But McCain plans to cut other taxes, and the net effect would be to give people more control over a higher percentage of their wages. Obama is adept at exploiting the rhetoric of markets, but their substance still eludes him.

* Obama ran an ad saying McCain favored "cutting Social Security benefits in half" and "risking Social Security on the stock market." Actually, it was the last Democratic administration that proposed having the government invest Social Security funds in stocks. McCain wanted to let young workers invest some of their Social Security payments for themselves, if they so chose, and to reduce the rate of growth of benefits for high-income workers. Every time there is a bear market, liberals say that the idea of reforming Social Security is forever discredited. But over the long run, stocks are a good investment; ditto free markets.

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* Obama and his allies have shown an unhealthy zeal for suppressing critical speech. His campaign has instructed its acolytes to drown out radio interviews with critics such as Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso (both of whom are NR regulars). It has sent menacing cease-and-desist letters to television stations airing NRA ads against him. The New York Times has editorialized against letting ads on Obama's extremist pro-abortion record be aired. The ads say that Obama favors taxpayer-funded abortion, which the Times calls a lie and a smear. It happens to be true: Obama has sponsored legislation to this effect. (All the news that's fit to print, if it favors the Democrats.) The Democrats are confident this year, but they won't leave anything to chance, or freedom.

* The assault on Sarah Palin, psychotic in intensity and irrelevance, continues. Comedienne Sandra Bernhard warned Palin that she would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she campaigned in Manhattan. Just a potty-mouthed funny woman? Then what about Rep. Alcee Hastings, who told an audience of Jewish Democrats in Florida that "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks"? Or Rep. Charles Rangel, who prefaced a discussion of Palin by saying, "You got to be kind to the disabled." Meanwhile, hackers who broke into her private e-mail account and posted (innocuous) messages online defended themselves by saying she was conducting government business there. Huh? Aren't the usual grounds for outrage that a politician uses a government account for private business? Some Democrats, when pressed, back off: Rangel said he should have called Palin "disadvantaged," while Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, who was present during Hastings's rant, warned his fellow Democrats that they "had better win enough of those gun toters if we are to be successful." Warning wasted, congressman. They are unhinged, they are flying, they can't help themselves.

* Conservatives must acknowledge that Palin has real shortcomings, besides the fantasies projected onto her by her enemies. By all accounts she has been a competent mayor and governor, moving smoothly from the lesser position to the larger. But her knowledge of a range of national and foreign affairs is startlingly skimpy; her inability to turn questions on such matters to her strengths highlights her weakness. In an earlier time, no one cared much what vice presidents thought; it is also true that some opinionated veeps had very bad opinions (Henry Wallace, Andrew Johnson, Aaron Burr). But Sarah Palin is running now, during a war (which was predictable) and a financial crisis (which was not). She must cram. We expect she would grow on the job, but she has little time to grow before Election Day.