Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

With "Palinmania" continuing to grow at every stop on the campaign trail, John McCain and his advisors are suddenly faced with a most unique and troubling problem; his Vice Presidential pick is much more popular than he and will almost certainly draw bigger crowds than the presumptive presidential nominee once she goes out and campaigns on her own. This will no doubt be pointed out by the press and the Obama campaign (is there a difference at this point?) and might serve to underscore McCain’s relative weakness and the tepid level of enthusiasm he generates even among party faithful.

-- RICK MORAN

As soon as Sarah Palin surfaced as our new national novelty, a hue and cry was heard in certain liberal quarters: "Where's Hillary?" Or, as a poster on the Daily Kos website preferred to put it, "Where the hell is Hillary????"

The implication, of course, was that Hillary Clinton needed to stride to the forefront, rip the feminist banner from Palin's clutches, and expose her as a fraud who has no business trolling for votes among the Hillaryites. And by climbing into the arena, Hillary presumably would be doing Barack Obama a big favor, since it didn't yet appear that Obama had a clue about how to high-stick a hockey mom.

So went the frequent liberal argument, anyway, as days passed without even a public word from the woman whose entire agenda, everything she'd long worked for, now seemed seriously imperiled. But Hillary has wisely held back. As her former spokesman, Howard Wolfson, points out, "Every day we are focused on Palin is a day we are not amplifying the Obama campaign's message that Senator McCain simply represents four more years of President Bush."

-- DICK POLMAN

While Obama supporters flail about and bemoan the state of the race, here’s something to consider: the fix which Barack Obama is now in is entirely of his own making.

-- JENNIFER RUBIN

Maybe Republicans are right. Maybe liberals aren't constitutionally cut out to be commander-in-chief. Not constitution as in 1787, but constitution as in backbone and gut-check. Panic, it seems, is their natural state. And so it is that every time John McCain lands some good polling numbers they freak out and start talking about leaving for Canada.

There are three reasons why they should calm down.

-- GARY YOUNGE

The Republican mantra--government bad, free markets good--is taking a beating in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout as both presidential candidates approve the Treasury's action to keep the housing and financial markets from going over a cliff but, in this personality-driven election, voters won't pay much attention to the issue.

Barack Obama is understandably reluctant to talk about the Bush Administration's and Congress' lack of oversight that led to the fiasco for fear of being attacked as a proponent of Big Government. John McCain, with his Keating Five background, will avoid the subject and keep pounding away at "business as usual" in Washington.

. . . But behind all the clichés, the bailout should prompt some serious thinking about the balance between freedom and responsibility in a capitalist system that has made the nation prosperous but can cause chaos when all regulation is seen as bad and the cowboys of the financial world are free to do whatever they want.

-- ROBERT STEIN

As Bob Woodward's new book The War Within rolls out this week, many Democrats are giddy at the skewering Bush is taking. According to the numerous press accounts of the book and the lengthy excerpts running in the Washington Post, Woodward portrays Bush at best as out of touch and at worst as duplicitous about the collapse of his Iraq strategy in 2006. Woodward reveals plenty of insider nuggets and quotes that show a deeply divided and often hapless Administration on the verge of complete defeat in Iraq.

But beneath the surface, the core of Woodward's account actually seems to reinforce the narrative that Bush is trying to spin about Iraq--that against mighty resistance inside and outside the government, a small group made the gutsy decision to double-down with the surge. As with every Woodward book, there's a story within the story. His sources share their tales (or in some cases, secret papers) to settle a score or shape the historical narrative. And here we see National Security Adviser Steve Hadley taking over Iraq decision-making and guiding Bush as he stared down leery Generals and worried political advisers to push the 2007 surge.

-- DEREK CHOLLET

Dana [Goldstein] has an interesting article about urbanism at the RNC. "The Republican National Convention," she reports, "[was] swarming with people who say climate change is unrelated to human activity. Like evolution, many social conservatives will tell you, global warming is 'just a theory' advanced by secular intellectuals, and so requires no urgent action."

There's no real way to phrase this such that it doesn't sound wildly partisan, but two of the emotionally resonant beliefs that many on the right pour a lot of time and energy into require a genuine hostility to empiricism. They require you to believe propositions that, based on the current evidence, are inarguably untrue. This isn't the case for the most forms of supply siderism (at the extreme level it's generally just very dishonest) or the opposition to universal health care or the desire to restrict choice. But creationism in schools and the willful effort to ignore the evidence on man-made climate change are in a category unto themselves. And most all Republican politicians have to evince, at the least, a deep sympathy for these positions, and many soak in applause from forthrightly echoing them. I can think of some unpopular, and maybe even unwise, beliefs that afflict the left, but I can't really think of anything in the same category of proud, even aggressive, know-nothingism.

-- EZRA KLEIN

Cartoon by Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate