LAPSES IN DISCOURSE ON THE OBAMA SIDE

This blog was never intended to be impartial; and it would be hard to believe that anyone has thought that impartiality is one of its virtues. Yet it has tried to avoid unqualified partisanship, even as it found more to quarrel with logically on the McCain side of the campaign than on the Obama side. To redress the balance, let us look at some recent lapses in logic or fairness on the Obama side. It is not true that the McCain people claimed that McCain had invented Blackberry; in the excerpt that was cited to this effect, they merely claimed that he had helped Blackberry become a success, a nice parallel to what Al Gore actually claimed about helping set up the Internet. Nor was it very convincing of the Obama side to make so much of McCain’s acronymic confusions, e.g., saying "FEC" when he meant "SEC." That was no more than a slip of the tongue. The commentators missed the possibility that in the Florida radio interview McCain, who at 72 probably does not have perfect hearing had heard "you" when the interviewer said "Europe." To be sure, even before that point in the interview, he had had trouble focusing on Spain rather than Latin America. However, the idea that he would refuse to meet with the Spanish prime minister was not anything that McCain expressed; it was a gratuitous invention of his campaign staff, aggravating confusion rather than reducing it. Commentators have said that Palin would have creationism taught in the schools, but they have often failed to make the point that she suggested teaching it alongside of evolutionism rather than instead. There may be objections to that, but they would have to be more inventive than objections to teaching it instead. Finally, though Palin may not invite much sympathy on most points, most of the time, the fuss that the commentators have made about her not being able to define "the Bush doctrine" has been greatly exaggerated. Could we count on a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa who follows political news insatiably to be able to define it? Charles Krauthammer has suggested, in a rarely reasonable moment, that a number of different things have been called "the Bush doctrine," and ex tempore attempts at definition by better minds than Palin’s have brought forth both "the imperial presidency" and "pre-emptive war."

EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, JUDGMENT

Experience alone cannot be the grounds for entrusting someone with the Presidency. Not in his military service, but in his years as a Senator, McCain has plenty of relevant experience dealing with national and international affairs. However, his early enthusiasm for the Iraq war, and his instantaneous bluster about retaliating against Russian action in Georgia, show that his experience does not keep him from taking very controversial positions. The French generals in command in northern France when the Blitzkrieg struck in 1940 all had plenty of relevant experience, including practice in strategic judgments, expert knowledge, and (no doubt) impressive personal histories of passing one test after another for promotion. When it came to battle with the German army, they failed badly, among other ways, in not making full use of their resources, for example, more tanks than the Germans had, but not concentrated in panzer divisions, as the young DeGaulle had recommended. There is a big problem about experience and knowledge being out of date. The generals’ knowledge was out of date; DeGaulle’s was not. Judgment, backed if possible by a variety of experience. and cumulative up-to-date knowledge is what we want, but we cannot know whether we have someone with the judgment combining experience and knowledge in the right way until after the event. The best we can do meanwhile is ask for the variety of experience and the up-to-date knowledge, in candidates or if not in candidates, in their circles of advisers. Are we getting this information during the campaign? We do not seem to be getting it from either side.

EXPERIENCE MISHANDLED

Experience is a topic that has been mishandled from the beginning in the current political campaigns. From the beginning, McCain was credited on every side with military experience especially relevant to the judgment that he would be called upon to exercise as commander-in-chief. The question has never been raised, "How relevant is experience as a fighter-bomber pilot to that judgment?" Closely looked at, not very relevant, since fighter-bomber pilots are no more called upon to make strategic judgments than prisoners of war are, however honorable either sort of experience is. The absurdity that follows from not questioning claims of experience has lately become more visible and grandiose in the exchanges about Palin’s experience as a small-town mayor in a frontier state and Obama’s experience as a community organizer in urban America. Palin has no experience of urban America, which is where a huge proportion of Americans live. Her sneer against community organizers, besides being gratuitous, reveals her ignorance of the urban problems that they are trying to cope with. But the absurdity with which the topic of experience has been treated has since become even more startlingly visible. When Charlie Gibson asked her what was her response to being asked to take on the vice-presidency Palin answered that she did not pause to blink. Gibson did not follow up the ambiguity between being ready to say "Yes" and being ready to perform in a knowledgeable way. If someone asked Palin was she ready to perform brain surgery, would even she think that being ready to say "Yes" without blinking was a sensible answer?