A phenomenal set of charts showing public perceptions of progress in Iraq over the last two years, which illustrates fantastically the impact of the surge, not just on the reality over there but on people’s perceptions of progress. In every case, the light blue lines represent negative perceptions, while the dark blue represents positive perceptions.

These come from a set of Pew surveys published here, and there’s more interesting stuff where this came from.

Great to see the surge working, and being perceived to be working. I’ve been a believer in the surge from the beginning, although I was by no means sure it would work – I just believed that it was, as Churchill once said of democracy, the worst option except for all the others. This should also provide a good boost to McCain’s campaign and also damage Obama’s ability to make hay out of his consistent opposition to the war and desire to bring troops home. The latter is addressed by this chart, from the same source:

Occasionally I get behind on my reading / posting and that’s been happening again. The best thing to do is take the articles I wanted to write about and just post the links here:

• Health Questions for the Candidates, by Betsy McCaughey, in the WSJ
• Once You Take Away Barack Obama’s Likeability… What’s Left?, and Eternal Hero’s Return, by Jim Geraghty, National Review Online
• The NY Times’ Public Editor’s criticism of the paper’s McCain smear

Nice mature response here from Barack Obama to a legitimate criticism from John McCain. (From Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot on National Review Online.)

Obama apparently said the following in the Democratic debate Tuesday night:

As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.

John McCain rightly pointed out when asked about the comment later:

I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It’s called ‘al-Qaida in Iraq,’ [unless of course, you’re the New York Times, in which case Al-Qaida (or Al-Qaeda) is not in Iraq but in Mesopotamia, wherever that is…]

When presented with this snippet, Obama responded as follows:

I’ve got some news for John McCain, that is there was no such thing Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade.

“I’ve got some news for John McCain. I’ve got some news for John McCain. He took us into a war, along with George Bush that should have never been authorized, never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001. I’ve been paying attention John McCain!

“John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that’s cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to an end so that we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, like we should have been doing in the first place. That’s the news John McCain!

“I respect John McCain, but he’s tied to the politics of the past; we’re about the policies of the future. He’s the party of yesterday. We want to be the party of tomorrow. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”

This is kind of the 46-year-old politician’s version of the schoolchild’s “oh yeah? well, you suck!” It doesn’t address the question itself, but instead tries to change the subject and counter-attack with something completely different. But, thankfully, Obama “respects” John McCain – phew. That’s alright then.

Now, I think it’s inevitable that during a campaign as long and arduous as all these guys have to go through, they’re going to goof every once in a while, and when it’s a Republican who goofs, it gets blanket coverage (see Romney saying Osama instead of Obama compared with this Obama goof and Hillary’s “Medvedev – whatever” comment from the debate last night). But it sure would be nice if the candidates would just say, “you know what? I misspoke. I apologize. What I meant was….” I guess we can dream on with that one…

I note the Wall Street Journal has finally covered Barack Obama’s Patriot Employer Act, which I posted on a couple of weeks ago. It seems he’s been touting it on the campaign trail, too, so apparently he’s still keen on it and willing to admit that fact:

Recently in Janesville, Wis., he repeated his intention to make it a priority as President: “We will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.”

The paper does a nice job covering the several reasons why this would be awful. Let’s hope that message gets out to the population as a whole and not just the WSJ’s already-conservative readership.

USA Today has done an analysis of the likely impact on deficits and spending under the Democratic candidates. It draws on analysis released by the National Taxpayers Union, which suggests that Obama’s plans, to the extent they can be nailed down, would lead to increases in spending of $287 billion annually compared with an increase of $218 billion for Hillary Clinton’s plans.

The findings are pretty predictable, although the exact amounts are rather meaningless (see the NTU’s detailed analysis for the kind of methods they used to come up with the numbers). We get the gist, though: either candidate would require a lot more spending. And the main strategies for funding the spending are repealing the Bush tax cuts (i.e. a big tax increase) and withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. So they would fund their big spending plans by taxing us more and giving up on the efforts to stabilise those two countries.

Even these two things taken together, leaving aside the fact that the campaign’s estimates of how much they would contribute, would leave a shortfall, meaning more taxes, of course. And none of this takes account of the fact that spending is increasing anyway, especially as regards social security. But of course reducing spending or reforming social security doesn’t come into the equation at all.

Ultimately, these tax increases, the reduced freedoms enjoyed by individuals under a Democratic admininstration, and the appointment of judges to the higher courts are the biggest reasons to vote Republican (McCain) this year, even if he’s not the candidate a lot of Republicans had hoped for. Certainly, McCain may cause other problems, but on these three big issues there is clear blue sky between his positions and those of Obama and Clinton.

If I were to ask who the Lady Macbeth of the 2008 election is, most people would quickly say “Hillary Clinton.” But this past week, Michelle Obama has been demonstrating that she has at least a small claim on that label. She’s also proving to be a possible heir to the mantle of Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Several times this week Mrs. Obama has made remarks which have landed her in hot water with at least some segments of the electorate and the blogosphere. What kicked it off was her remark that:

For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.

As others have pointed out, Michelle Obama has been an adult for around 26 years. That’s a lot of time to have passed without even one event making her proud. Now, of course, the campaign has issued clarifications on what she really meant, as has the prospective First Lady too. But this feeds the idea that both she and her husband are far more militant than they have been carefully stage managed to appear. This is the reason why Obama’s speeches are so short on substance – because the substance that’s there would be shocking to many who have found him appealing.

The second event was this comment:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Some of the least charitable interpretations of this particular statement have found in it overtones of the Nazi slogan “Arbeit macht frei”, which I find to be quite a stretch and ultimately unhelpful. However, there is a nasty sense of authoritarianism here, and the fact that she – and not he – is expressing it also lends the Lady Macbeth overtones. In some ways, she seems to be more open and honest about his real ambitions / their shared ambitions / her ambitions on his behalf than he is himself. And so, far from being able to write these remarks off as the off-the-cuff comments from the candidate’s spouse, it’s possible to read deeper meaning into them.

Lastly was this one, which in some ways is the most innocuous of the bunch, unless you’re a real conspiracy theorist:

Every woman that I know, regardless of race, education, income, background, political affiliation, is struggling to keep her head above water.

Many women, especially those who stay home or working mothers, would doubtless agree that they at least sometimes feel this way. And read at that level, it’s not problematic. But two other connotations present themselves:

• Who is her husband running against, at present? The original Lady Macbeth, of course: a woman, who presumably is struggling to keep her head above water too.
• This feeds into the victimhood mentality of the liberal left, and really doesn’t apply to large numbers of people, precisely because you can’t simply disregard “education, income, background” and other factors. The Obamas themselves, as others have pointed out, are wealthy by any description, and although the kids may occasionally puke at inopportune moments I suspect they have it pretty good when they’re not running for president. So what are they really saying here except reinforcing the perception that woe is everyone and only the Democrats – specifically, Mr Obama – can help – classic liberal philosophy. The two combined nicely undermine the American Dream which, while perhaps questioned by some, is still a centerpiece of American self-identity.

All of the above taken together presents a certain picture which the Obama campaign is likely uncomfortable with. Despite the worthy attempts on all sides to avoid race or gender being an issue here, there’s a sense that these people are more militant about past injustices than their (his) rhetoric suggests. And there’s also a sense that beneath the smiling exterior lies something far more sinister – a hatred for country, and an authoritarian streak that ought to have everyone worried. The original Lady Macbeth, Hillary herself, is scary too, but these folks may be as competitive in this area as they have become in the primaries themselves.

It appears that Obama may actually have a policy we can really associate with him, albeit one which seems to be being pursued more aggressively by another Senator keen to use his name just at the moment (no prizes for guessing why). The Hot Air blog highlights an interview with Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio published by the Nation in which he states the following:

I’ve talked to Barack a lot about his Patriot Corporation Act, which is not trade per se, but it’s certainly part of the economic package around globalization. The Patriot Corporation Act has not gotten the attention that I would hope it would. But, basically it says that if you play by the rules, if you pay decent wages, health benefits, pension; do your production here; don’t resist unionization on neutral card check, then you will be designated a “Patriot Corporation” and you will get tax advantages and some [preference] on government contracts.

So we have something Barack Obama apparently believes in enough that he was willing to put pen to paper (or have his staffers put pen to paper) to craft legislation to make it a reality. And is it the kind of soaring, high-minded proposal we’ve all come to expect based on that wonderful rhetoric of his? Er, no.

It’s clear where the Nation’s own William Greider stands on this – he thinks it’s wonderful. But it’s just a tiny bit shortsighted, isn’t it? For starters, it ignores the main reasons why companies offshore and outsource in the first place – high labor costs (thank you Democrats), lots of burdensome regulation (thank you Democrats), high taxes (thank you Democrats) etc. etc. It reminds me of the experience we’ve all had sometimes – we have a table or chair where one of the legs is short, so we trim the others to make them symmetrical, but then we realise we overdid it, and now we have to go back to the original one and shorten that a bit too. Pretty soon we realise the table or chair is now about the right height for a garden gnome and give up and throw it away. The Democrats’ tendency to want to intervene throughout the economy will lead to the same result – one bit of tinkering leads to another and before long we’ve completely hamstrung the entire business sector and have nothing but a mountain of unemployment and a recession to show for it.

I’m just glad we finally know where Obama stands on something, and it’s particularly wonderful that it highlights the heavily left-leaning, interventionist philosophy we all know is hiding beneath the “yes we cans” and the unity message. Now if we could just infiltrate the mainstream media enough to actually get them to report on this stuff…

James Taranto in his Best of the Web column today puts into words very well something I’ve been thinking for some time but haven’t been able to express nearly so well:

Such empty oppositionalism has been the dominant theme of Democratic politics at least since the emergence of Howard Dean in 2003. But there is a weird genius about the way Obama, with his soothing style and inspiring persona, is able to present it as if it were something of real substance.

This is the real issue with Obama – there’s no substance there and yet he’s able somehow to convince his supporters that there is. Will the media ever call him on this? Or will the scales fall from the electorate’s eyes at some point anyway? I find it hard to believe that he can really keep this up for another nine months, but with the media’s help it’s perhaps just possible.