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Monday, October 13, 2008
Dow booms, at least for today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve had CNBC on mute all day long, and I didn’t have to check the ticker to see how the market was doing. Those folks were actually smiling!
I hadn’t seen smiles on CNBC since Hector was a pup, as my Dad would say. Dow closes up more than 930 points!! Now the test will be to see how much of that gain we keep tomorrow.
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‘Senate and House Republicans are going to get crushed’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Erick Erickson of Macon is editor of redstate.com, which calls itself “the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill and … the most cited right of center blog in the media.”
So I guess I’ll cite it too. Here’s the opening to an Erickson post today:
“With only a few weeks left until election day, let’s be blunt: McCain-Palin ‘08 does not seem to be making headway against the polling. McCain has one more debate in which he could, and we should hope that he does.
At the same time, the Senate and House Republicans are going to get crushed. They just are. You can say the polls are biased. You can say the polls are rigged. But do so at your peril. Ignore the numbers and look at the trends.”
Erickson goes on to ask readers for donations to GOP candidates to help them survive what’s coming. But he’s at least candid about the situation.
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Obama’s Gallup lead back to double digits
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gallup has released its latest tracking numbers — Obama’s lead is back up to 10 points, up three from yesterday. It’s the tenth consecutive day in which Obama has polled at 50 percent or better. Over that same time frame, McCain has never done better than 43 percent.
And correct me if I’m wrong — some of you will no doubt try to correct me even if I’m right — it seems to me that I saw an awful lot of Obama ads over the weekend, and few if any McCain ads. Anybody else see the same thing?
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Why Ayers, Wright, etc., just won’t work….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll:
“Registered voters by a 24-point margin, 59-35 percent, now say McCain is more focused on attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues. That’s grown from a roughly even 48-45 percent split on this question in late August.
There’s far less criticism of the tone of Obama’s campaign: Registered voters by 68-26 percent say he’s mainly addressing the issues, not attacking his opponent, a slightly more positive rating than in August.
The deciding factor, as ever in presidential politics, is independents. They see McCain as mainly attacking his opponent, by 61-33 percent, but Obama as mainly addressing the issues, by 68 -26 percent.”
The diehards on the right will dismiss such findings as more liberal media disinformation. But you can tell by its actions that the McCain camp’s internal polling is telling it the same thing. Attacking Obama is worse than useless — it ends up hurting McCain. But they don’t seem to have a more viable option.
Even the ever-smarmy Bill Kristol — days after insisting that McCain had to go negative — is now preaching a turn to sunny positivism. In his NY Times column, he advises McCain to “do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.”
Kristol goes on:
“The bad news, of course, is that right now Obama’s approval/disapproval rating is better than McCain’s. Indeed, Obama’s is a bit higher than it was a month ago. That suggests the failure of the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama.
So drop them.”
Of course, that advice comes shortly after Kristol drops this little neutron bomb:
“(McCain’s) campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.”
And speaking NY Times columnists, congratulations to Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics. Not too shabby, Mr. Krugman, not too shabby….
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Seasons change, and so do other things
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s been a weird fall by almost any measure, with the economy in a historic plummet and a wild and woolly presidential race dominating the news.
But I confess that in some ways, the drama on Wall Street and the campaign trail have been welcome diversions from a strange, disorienting silence back on the home front.
Our two downstairs bedrooms are empty now, their occupants both gone off to college for the first time. The doors are always shut when you walk past them now, a symbolic reminder of the emptiness inside.
Even the dogs are a little off their feed, having lost their favorite playmates. The downstairs bathroom, once cluttered with makeup and curling irons and other girlish accoutrements, now stays bizarrely pristine day after day, like some roped-off exhibit in a museum.
The bedrooms have become museums as well. Last weekend, when I ventured inside to close off the heating vents, I took a moment or two to look around. It was odd —- spaces that were recently brimming with life had become little collections of history and moments frozen in time.
On the walls were movie posters from a decade ago, starring the adolescent crush of that era. Josh Hartnett, anybody? On the desk and bureaus were pictures of their friends, and of our family when they and we were younger.
It was all familiar yet somehow artificial, like those recreations of the Oval Office that you find at presidential libraries. I didn’t want to touch anything, didn’t want to disturb it from its proper place. I just closed the door.
Another thing you discover: Phone calls and e-mails and Facebook messages are poor substitutes for a hug or a smile.
But things change, right? Life cycles through, and sometimes it’s change you want; sometimes it’s not. You deal with it either way, and try to do so gracefully. And change that you once thought would come gradually can instead hit you all at once, making the world and your role in it seem suddenly diminished.
For more than 20 years, for example, you think of yourself as a parent first and foremost, never letting that responsibility out of your head. And then suddenly, that daily responsibility is lifted. You’re now a bench player, to be called upon as needed. Your role has changed.
King Solomon, as the story goes, once asked his wisest adviser for a magic ring, a ring that could sadden him whenever he was happy and cheer him whenever he was sad.
Much to Solomon’s surprise, the adviser later produced just such a ring, engraved with four words:
“This too shall pass.”
Solomon, being a wise man himself, recognized that the sentence applied even to the king.
So things change; roles change. Bottom rail on top now, as the saying goes, and a little while later the roles will be reversed yet again.
By tradition, Solomon also authored the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes. Most of us are probably familiar with its most famous passage, even if we don’t recall its source:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,” it says in part.
“A time to kill, and a time to heal… A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
As a nation, we are engaged for the moment in what amounts to “a time to hate, a time of war,” at least in political terms. But this too shall pass, to be followed in the nature of things by what we hope will be a season of healing and relative peace.
It’s important to remember that. Should we get too heedless in our anger or arrogance over the next few weeks, should fear of loss or change drive us too far, we may find ourselves inflicting wounds and divisions that are too deep to heal easily.
Yes, change and loss are hard. But I can tell you they are easier to accept than we sometimes think.
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