A Second Hand Conjecture

John Podhoretz thinks the Palin speech might be among the most dazzling debuts in American political history. I don’t know about that, but I do know it was the most powerful, important, and effective speech by a vice presidential candidate since Nixon’s “Checkers.” John later notes that McCain looked relieved by it all. Again, I thought of Checkers and and a smiling Eisenhower addressing the convention: “tonight I saw courage…”

The parallels are pretty striking actually. The week of acrimonious scandal, the uncertainty of the party leadership, the lack of truth to the charges, and ultimately the triumphant personal redemption through a national televised address, which transformed a very young party favorite into a powerful national voice. Interestingly, the most notable departure from this historical recreation is the conduct of McCain throughout. He cut a superior and more loyal figure than Ike did and that’s impressive.

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Apparently the teenage pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol has excited social conservatives even more about the candidate (for the when-it-counts demonstration of opposition to abortion). According to Grover Norquist, the soc-cons are “over the moon” in their support.

That’s interesting. It reminds me that historically a minor or unfair scandal that is politically survivable (as this one most certainly is), can often help a young candidate, as it compels his or her supporters to circle wagons and commit to advocacy, as well as forcing his or her opponents to commit to opposition and be proven either wrong or very petty and vindictive. It should also be said that it can have more obvious benefit in stripping the candidate of any illusions about comity in national politics.

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Approval ratings for recent presidents at the end of their final terms. Bush will presumably end somewhere in Carter’s 1980 territory.

(About.com)

Lest that depress McCain supporters, such measures can of course be highly misleading in predicting general election outcomes for their successors. Nixon’s 1968 victory was a damned near run thing, and despite the lingering unpopularity of Nixon in 1976, and a generally toxic atmosphere for the GOP in general, it should be remembered that Ford nearly beat Carter (popular vote: 50.1 to 48%, electoral college 297 to 240). Of all these presidents’ personal histories, political philosophies, personalities and general images, McCain and Ford’s are probably most similar. Right down to being Naval war heroes.

Speaking of which, if you’ve never read the story of how a young Lt. j.g. Gerald Ford saved the ship one night in the Pacific, it’s worth a moment to do so.

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(photo: Charles Roffey – Charles & Fred)

Someone once said that in Damascus you truly can get a little bit pregnant. It’s a good aphorism, because if you asked the foreign minister of almost any state in the Middle East or the Mediterranean what his government’s policy relationship was with Syria, he would automatically furrow his brow and call it “complicated.” You always seem to be about half-way somewhere with Syria. Lately that appears to be true even for Tzipi Livni. If so for Israel, doubly so for Lebanon.

Surveying it, Jihad Yazigi describes the situation that exists between the two countries as customarily “complicated”, but the dimension of complication he’s seeing is something relatively new. Where before thirty years of Syrian military occupation (and often not very covert political subversion) might be the most obvious locus, Yazigi is today talking about labor and direct investment in Syria by Lebanese:

Syria would probably not be liberalizing its economy and going through a revival of its services sector without the thousands of Lebanese managers that are running Syrian firms. Lebanese managerial know-how is being exported throughout the Arab world and Syria will continue to need it if it wants to further the opening up of its economy.
(The Syria Report)

That’s a very new economic relationship, as historically it is Syrian labor that has traveled to liberal and cosmopolitan Beirut. It is Syrian enterprise that has worked to create a paternalistic relationship between the two countries with one-way investment, generally government directed.

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