’A faux lead’
“Currently polls show McCain either narrowly ahead or even with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is impressive considering how poorly the GOP, and specifically the president, are viewed by the public,” NBC News political director Chuck Todd writes at www.msnbc.msn.com.
“But it is a faux lead. If the de facto Democratic nominee is clear within the next 4-6 weeks, that person will see a poll bounce. And according to GOP pollster Steve Lombardo, it could be one heck of a bounce, like post-convention. He anticipates the Democratic candidate will move up 10 points once the primary race is over,” Mr. Todd said.
“That will be a jolting set of numbers for the McCain camp to absorb. They ought to be prepping the media now, because if they wait for the inevitable overreaction of the pundit class, the bounce will take on more importance.”
Coming clean
“President Bush announced Monday that he will send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress for a vote. It was a bold decision and the right one. Whatever the outcome, the vote will be a defining moment for U.S. trade policy,” Daniel Ikenson writes at National Review Online (www.nation alreview.com).
“Monday’s decision quickly met with recriminations from Democratic leaders in Congress, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and trade leaders Max Baucus and Charles Rangel, who claim the move circumvents protocol and all but guarantees failure of the agreement. But the president, having already jumped through countless hoops to assuage congressional critics, sensed that Congress wasn’t acting in good faith and instead had no plans to give the administration its endorsement,” said Mr. Ikenson, associate director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
Mr. Ikenson added: “In reality, the only reason there has been a 16-month hiatus since the agreement was signed is that the Democratic Party is in the grips of an identity crisis. U.S. producers, consumers, and the Colombian people have been held hostage to Democratic soul searching. The president’s decision will force Democrats to finally come clean about trade.”
Not going well
“Weeks have passed since Barack Obama asked his countrymen to lend him their ears. He came to Philadelphia to bury the controversy over the crackpot theories of his longtime pastor and spiritual mentor, not to praise them,” San Antonio Express-News columnist Jonathan Gurwitz writes.
“The evil that men say lives after they leave the pulpit. The good is oft interred with their robes. Obama called for people to take full measure of the man and his works, to reflect on the complexities of race in this country and to join him in a dialogue that moves beyond old racial wounds on a path to a more perfect union.
“So how is that dialogue going? Not so well,” Mr. Gurwitz said.
“Obama followed the speech with an appearance on a Philadelphia radio program in which he sought to clarify the comparison of his grandmother’s unsavory biases and the delusions of his pastor. ’The point I was making,’ he said, ’was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person.’
“Really? Pigeonholing stereotypes is supposed to advance the racial dialogue? Ponder for a moment the aggrieved frenzy that would ensue if John McCain or even Hillary Clinton were to hold forth about the habits of the typical black or brown person.
“Barack Obama’s retreat from the promise of a post-racial America in the course of temporizing about — or, as he put it, understanding the reality of — the indefensible statements of Rev. Jeremiah Wright was depressing. But something worse has issued from this new dialogue, something more than depressing. It’s disgusting.
“It did not take long before apologists, taking Obama’s cue, began comparing Wright’s tirades with the prophetic oratory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That calumny reached its nadir last week as the nation observed the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination.”
Hanging around
An Illinois woman who referred to black children as “monkeys” said yesterday that she is staying on as a delegate for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The Obama campaign had said Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski was stepping down, but she says that was never her plan.
“I was elected by the people to represent Senator Obama, and I will continue to do what the people want,” she said.
The incident took place Saturday, when two children were playing in a tree next door to Mrs. Ramirez-Sliwinski’s house in Carpentersville, the Associated Press reports.
Their parents were outside supervising the children, but Mrs. Ramirez-Sliwinski says she went over and told them to get out of the tree because she was concerned about the boys’ safety and the small magnolia tree was being damaged. She said the children shouldn’t be climbing in the tree like monkeys.
The mother of one boy called police, who issued Mrs. Ramirez-Sliwinski a $75 ticket for disorderly conduct. Police say the ticket was warranted because her remark scared one of the children and disturbed a parent.
Mrs. Ramirez-Sliwinski says the word wasn’t meant racially and she will fight the ticket. She also says she doesn’t plan to run for another term as a Carpentersville village trustee.
The Obama campaign said Wednesday it respects her decision to stay on as a delegate and believes she didn’t intend any offense by using the word “monkeys.”
“It is clear the incident was a misunderstanding,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
Crash culprit
Federal investigators have found that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s re-election campaign caused its Web site to crash on the eve of the August 2006 primary, a collapse he had blamed on supporters of Democratic challenger Ned Lamont.
“In short, the server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured,” according to an Oct. 25, 2006, e-mail included in FBI documents obtained yesterday by the Associated Press. “There was no evidence of [an] attack.”
Investigators added that, once reported by the media, the accusations by Mr. Lieberman’s campaign helped overwhelm the Web site on primary day, too.
The Advocate of Stamford, Conn., first reported the results of the investigation.
Mr. Lamont said yesterday that Mr. Lieberman should apologize.
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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