In an email today, I forwarded Dick Morris's column for the day: http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-truman-show/ And in which forward I noted that

Dick Morris is the smartest strategist out there, but (a) McCain’s people would have to turn on a dime, and (b) the media swoon may be unassailable. Note the red-highlighted section. This moronic act of omission by Bush led directly to the Florida recount debacle, which in turn led to the left’s “he’s not really President” paranoia that poisoned the following eight years, even after a thumping 2004 reelection.

The "red-highlighted" section I referenced was this:

In 2000, Bush's three-to-four point lead in the polls was erased over the final weekend when reports surfaced that he had been cited for DWI 20 years before and had not revealed the fact to the public. Bush still won the election, of course, but Gore won the popular vote by half a point.

This was a colossal, imbecilic move on W's part. Or non-move, since it was incumbent on the candidate to totally inoculate himself to the issue early on in the campaign. At this point, I’m not sure what equivalently-imbecilic stunt Obama could do to squander his lead. Perhaps prancing around in a dress? Oh, wait, that would probably solidify it, since there’s a part of the population who would say, “Yes! It’s time we had not just a minority but a transvestite Negro as President!”

A Western correspondent chides this blog's author's limpid response to a NYT article on Acorn fraud:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/donor-patrol-obamas-online-site-accepts-more-fakes/?pagemode=print

"You sound so blase. This is illegal .... It is a violation of campaign finance laws. Why isn't this being investigated?"

I reply thus: Acorn is being investigated in many states, but it’ll simply come down to “justice delayed is justice denied.” And any successful prosecutions will raise cries of "racism" and “voter suppression.” Perversely, it turns out that Acorn’s claims of the number of new voters it’s registered are wildly inflated.

As noted last evening, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,443990,00.html

Get Out the Vote? Despite claims by various media outlets that new voter registration is up from previous years, a new Gallup survey says that is not the case. The poll indicates just 13 percent of registered voters will cast ballots for the first time. That is the same number found in Gallup's 2004 pre-election poll. And the number of registered voters who say they do not plan to vote has actually risen two percentage points. These findings come as The New York Times reports a claim by the voter registration group ACORN that it had signed up 1.3 million new voters is vastly exaggerated. The executive director of ACORN affiliate Project Vote says the actual figure is closer to 450,000. He says about 400,000 registrations were rejected because they were duplicates, incomplete or fraudulent.

So Obama has been taken for a ride by the organization he’s pumped zillions into. Meaning a better questions for the electorate would be: "Would you trust this man to negotiate foreign treaties when he dosn't even have the skills of a Chicago politician to get delivery of the votes he's paid for?"

Well, the final Obama/McCain debate is over. And I'm afraid it's over. All Barry had to do was stick to his talking points and not yawn. He's succeeding in running out the clock. McCain had already blown the second debate by not confronting Obama on his well-worn canards, like "95% of people making less than $200,000 a year* will get a tax rebate." Well, no. As any bright 16-year-old could have riposted,

40% of Americans don't pay any income tax. If Mr. Obama sends them a check, it's not a rebate. It's opening the vault door of the Treasury and shoveling money out with a grain scoop. If you work hard and pay taxes, do you want those dollars (and those of your children and grandchildren) spent to mail checks to people who never pay taxes?

This time around, to capture the mood of the American people, McCain should have recalled the movie Network, in which Peter Finch as Howard Beale famously shouted, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Not that this is a unique idea. O'Reilly and Dick Morris have preached this for several weeks. Surely someone among McCain's advisors must have a television set. But too many of his handlers want to keep John tamped down and docile, so as to pander to independents, who are perceived as people having been born without a spine. I submit McCain could reverse the poll numbers overnight if he'd have said

If I'm elected, the first thing I'm going to do is appoint a Special Prosecutor to bring to justice the people who made this financial mess. This was partly through government interference that forced lenders to give mortgages to people who couldn't afford them. That includes Democrats and Republicans, but especially Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. And there'll be special attention for those who got huge political contributions from corrupted lending organizations. Actually, that would include you, Senator Obama, since you got the second-highest Freddie Mac wad of hush money. You didn't quite catch up to Chris Dodd this time, and I'm promising there won't be a next time. And as for those snot-nosed Wall Street shysters who packaged and peddled these sub-prime instruments that stank like Gorgonzola cheese, you can expect some perp-walks. That's where miscreants are led into courtrooms wearing manacles and leg irons, which is my idea of humane treatment. Afterwards, I want them wearing orange jumpsuits, being led off to prison. And none of those white-collar prisons with maid service. I want them to serve hard time, where they get a 250-pound weightlifter for a cellmate who takes one look and says, "You got a purty mouth." Thank you and good night.

*Sometimes expressed by Obama as "$250,000 a year," sometimes as "middle class." The specifics change with the barometric pressure, as near as I can tell. Götterdämmerung being a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war of the gods which brings about the end of the world.

If money is the mother's milk of politics, surely pork is its first solid food. All congressional members tout how they bring home the bacon to their districts. This is one of the things they define as constituent service. It is true that high-priced call girls also describe what they do as a service, but let's not dwell on that for now. What else is a politician to say? That he's gotten rather fond of those fine restaurants that Washington abounds in, much superior to those in Gooseberry Falls that he once called home? "And that I still call home!" he will hasten to add. So in the present bailout —to distinguish it from those to come— pork became the ideal lubricant to help recalcitrant congressmen ease their consciences. Much of the pork was especially tainted. And it is small comfort to know that most of it would likely have been slipped into future bills, if not this one. The two parties clearly indulged in a slop-trough mano a mano: "Okay, you can have this odious provision if we can have this putrid one." It is fortunate that after the voice vote to pass the bill, Congressman Barney Frank verified the ayes and nays by asking the members to rise. It would have been difficult for them to raise their hands while holding their noses. But the bill is passed by congress and the president quickly signed it, the former now having sense enough to leave town, although surely regretting they once again must return to their beloved Gooseberry Falls locales across America.

Today congress passed the bailout bill, which by the way, is a term I find no more a pejorative than rescue, which some felt would be less offensive and presumably have led to more speedy passage. If one envisions bailing out a boat to save its contents and passengers, how would that be less noble and no less a rescue? But I digress. Let us jump backwards to that time long, long ago, Monday. The bill went down to a thumping defeat, done in largely by GOP congressmen. Much was made of their philosophical opposition to this magnitude of government meddling or nascent socialism. But it was clear also that the normal fear of the electorate was galvanized to a new level by phone lines tied up by furious constituents. (Note that I never heard about "thousands of emails." Telephone calls are probably the most effective way of registering your complaints, unless you can join a mob with pitchforks and torches.) Alas, I submit that these callers were largely wrongheaded. All of humankind will be offended by the vision of Wall Street whiz-kids golden-parachuting their way out of the mess they profited from. And I further submit that the best way to prevent future excesses would be CEOs being perp-walked in manacles to court. But the complaining callers comprehended neither the depth of the problem nor the domino effect that would ensue. It took a few days before the credit crisis became the disagreeable but needed medicine. Oh, yes, we almost forgot. A generous swallow of pork helped the medicine go down. More about that in the next post.