Rebecca Walberg

After a campaign in which he has been one of the louder conservative voices criticizing Sarah Palin, and at best a muted and reticent supporter of McCain, David Frum writes a convincing post about why he’s voting for McCain and why other American voters who value smaller government, increased freedom, national security, small-c conservatism and politicians with integrity should do likewise.  He also addresses the Palin issue, to wit, why Republicans or conservatives who aren’t delighted with her addition to the ticket should still vote McCain-Palin.

His first point:

10) No elected official in American life has contributed more to the security of the nation than John McCain. Latterly, McCain was the most senior and most forceful advocate of the strategy that has saved the day in Iraq. For that reason alone, he deserves your vote.

Read the rest here.

Obama is a fascinating and perplexing character.  He seems to function as a screen onto which people can project whatever they want or need to see in a candidate: a post-racial messiah, a lacklustre Gen-Xer, a hard lefty, and so on.  Here is a well-written and intriguing assessment of Obama as Flake (not Fake, although a column could be written about that, too.)  My only quibble is that I don’t think it’s an accident that Obama didn’t publish a thing in Law Review and voted present so often; he was deliberately avoiding doing anything that might commit him to something that might cost him votes, whenever possible.  (Although this still makes the Trinity issue incomprehensible. I have yet to find a rational explanation for Trinity anywhere, although the “Wright as Authentic Black Father Figure” seems the most plausible.)

If American elections and the primaries that precede them are like soap operas, with convoluted plots, large casts, and an ability to consume the lives of fans and followers, elections and leadership conventions in Canada are more akin to a sitcom: shorter, frivolous, and usually forgotten the day after. I can see why the age of the permanent campaign is exhausting for those involved in American politics, but it’s fascinating viewing from the outside.

The Washington Times had an editorial over the weekend painting Obama as a Canadian politician.  The column makes some good points about the substance of Obama’s platform.  Inspired in part by Sean Wilentz’ new history of Reagan, though, I see a striking congruence between Obama in 2008 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Their policies, platforms and ideals could scarcely be more different, but their positions relative to the electorate and the rest of their parties are very similar.  The smart money never makes firm predictions with this long to go until the general election.  Nonetheless, I see a lot of potential for Obama to win big, and then to make changes that would stay with us for a generation, as Reagan did.  My column on this is up at Pajamas Media today.

The central conceit of Barack Obama’s candidacy is that he is a new kind of politician. His race aside, there is little about him that is genuinely refreshing; although he is young, there have been younger candidates, and he would not be the youngest president, if elected. His much heralded moderate status is entirely fictitious, and his most clearly elucidated positions, such as on foreign policy and taxation, are simply left-liberal orthodoxy.

The most insightful comparison of this election season may have come from Obama himself , who proposed, to howls of outrage from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, that he was a politician in the mold of Reagan. Obama was, with the self-flattering hyperbole that has become the hallmark of his speeches, suggesting that he might make the same lasting impression on America and the world that Reagan did. In reality, the most salient parallels between the two men lie in the appeal they have within and beyond their parties, their position relative to members of their own parties, and the break they represent from recent history.

For the rest of the column, click here to go Pajamas Media.

Stylish, but nonetheless hard, leftism pervades the New York Review of Books.  This isn’t surprising, given the weltanschauung of many of its regular contributors.  It remains not only a good read - the quality of the writing is excellent - but also a helpful one.  For every book that I manage to read, there are five or six that I’d love to, but don’t have time for, and so a 2500 word essay on an important book (or more often, two or three on the same theme) is invaluable, even considering the built-in bias.

The June 12 issue has a review by Michael Tomasky, editor of The Guardian’s American website, of three recent books on John McCain.  There are some interesting points made, and a useful recap of the Republican candidate’s earlier years in politics, before his Presidential aspirations became clear.  Of course, any changes in McCain’s positions are dismissed as political opportunism, and while this is undoubtedly the case some of the time, there is no reason to suppose that conviction and principle have no role in McCain’s changing views.  Unlike some politicians, when the facts change, he changes his opinions.

One line early in the essay, though, is breathtaking in its bad faith.  After establishing his conviction that, however admirable a man McCain had once been, he is motivated entirely by his own ambition, Tomasky suggests that “in doing what he had to do to become the nominee of a party of orthodox conservatives, he has so sublimated his honorable instincts that they have all but atrophied.”  Staggering, isn’t it?  Clearly there is no possible way that honorable instincts could lead one to agree with orthodox conservatism.

Like so much high-brow popular culture these days, NYRB is, it seems, best enjoyed if one can maintain a certain anthropological detachment.  The natives of Manhattan editorial offices do produce some fascinating art, but we can’t allow our appreciation of it to obscure the fact that their socially constructed reality is about as rational as the Greek pantheon, but far less awe-inspiring.