John McCain on Pat Robertson

Well, it appears that my last question to John McCain about the difference between YouTube and MySpace didn't burn any bridges. And so it was that I was invited to McCain's latest conference call with bloggers this afternoon. I threw him another non-softball:

In 2000, you famously dubbed Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.” You pride yourself on being a straight talker, so let me ask you a straight question: Do you regret these words? If so, why have you changed your mind, and what specifically has Robertson done in the past eight years to become tolerant?

Unfortunately, unlike the dexterous Matt Lewis, Jen Rubin and Jim Geraghty, I'm still having trouble pressing *1 fast enough to get in the question queue.

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Does John McCain Know the Difference Between YouTube and MySpace?

The blogger-friendly John McCain held a conference call this afternoon with us "ankle-biting pundits." After reading Garrett Graff's excellent op-ed in the Post a couple months ago, I prepared the following question:

I’m sure most of us would agree, as a recent op-ed in the Washington Post observed, that the Internet, “probably more than any other force, will drive and define the nation's economic success and reshape its society over the next 20 years.”

Yet many politicians get a pass on technological literacy. For instance, last year, answering a campaign-trail question, Mitt Romney didn't seem to know the difference between YouTube (then the fourth most popular Web site in the world) and MySpace. This seems like not knowing the difference between Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, and Pakistan, the sixth most populous. Or the difference between Chevron, number four on the Fortune 500 list, and General Electric, number six.

This is bad enough in itself, but when you consider the congressional debates about taxing the Internet and net neutrality, I hope you’ll agree that our economic future and security require that we hold our leaders to higher standards.

Accordingly, can you tell us the difference between YouTube and MySpace?

Alas, I'm still having trouble mastering the *1 combo—the Jeopardy inequivalent of pressing the buzzer—so I didn't get the chance to see if McCain is any smarter than his fellow ignoramus senator, Ted "Tubes" Stevens (R-WTF).

Update (3/4/08): I'm a few days late, but I have exciting news to report: On February 28, I got to ask John McCain how YouTube differs from MySpace. He began his answer fitfully, but once he got his thoughts straight, gave a lengthy and accurate response. Here's a condensed and rough transcription:

MySpace is a social network ... People come up and do the communications with one another, establish relationships and all that ... YouTube … carries videos.

McCain also noted, as Michael Goldfarb put it, that

YouTube is reservoir of embarrassment—"John Edwards can attest to that (click it, you know you want to watch it again)." McCain would later remember that his campaign has a MySpace page.

Related: "John McCain: I Invented YouTube."

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The Democrats' Strategy Against John McCain

Via DailyKos.

Update (3/10/08): The Democrats get their wish.

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Farming the Subsidy Instead of the Land

Deroy Murdock envisions a speech by President McCain:

“My friends,” McCain might declare before some Mid-Western barn, “when it rains, you cry for flood relief, and it cascades in. When the skies are cloudless, you scream for drought assistance, and it arrives. When your prices are low, you demand help, and the checks soon follow. Since last January, corn prices have climbed 123 percent. Soy beans are up 176 percent, and spring wheat has risen 274 percent. And yet Washington stands ready to grant your howls for $286 billion in yet another farm-welfare bonanza. Enough already. Please stop farming the government and go till your fields. The party is over. The trough is empty. Goodbye.”

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The Daily Digest

1. James Joyner, "David Horowitz at CPAC."

"[T]he vast majority of the speakers at CPAC are much more mainstream and gracious. For every Horowitz, there are a half dozen Mark Tapscotts and Mike Pences. But it would be much more comforting if the radicals generated less enthusiasm."

2. Mark Blumenthal, "The Secret Lives of Pollsters."

"If pollsters disclosed more about how their polls were conducted, we would be in a better position to know which polls are likely to be right, and which ones can be safely ignored."

3. Deroy Murdock, "McCain Could Become the Reagan of Fiscal Discipline."

"McCain largely has refused to be led into temptation. He supported 2001’s $143.4 billion No Child Left Behind Act, but fought 2002’s $180 billion farm bailout, 2003’s $558 billion Medicare drug entitlement, and 2005’s $286.4 billion highway bill, which contained 6,371 earmarks worth $24 billion. 'Those were the four biggest budget-busting bills of the Bush presidency,' notes Heritage Foundation fiscal analyst Brian Riedl. 'And McCain voted against three of them.'"

4. Fred Kaplan, "What's Really in the U.S. Military Budget?"

"As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion."

5. Chris Wilson, "Testify Before Congress, Meals Not Included."

"Even if a congressional committee forces you to testify in Washington, the government is not obligated to pay your way. The Committee on House Administration's handbook for such matters calls reimbursements to witnesses an 'extraordinary measure' that must be authorized by the chair."

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The Daily Digest

1. Paul Krugman, "The Edwards Effect."

2. Edward Morrisey, "Has Ann Coulter Finally Jumped the Shark?"

3. Evan Thomas, "What These Eyes [John McCain's] Have Seen."

4. Ed Lasky, "Murdoch Takes on the New York Times."

5. Robert Bluey, "Romney Thinks Some Bloggers Are More Equal Than Others."

6. James Kirchik, "I Would Take Stronger Medication."

7. Amy Waldman, "The Truth About Jena."

8. Michael Barbaro, "Wal-Mart: The New Washington."

9. Steven Levy, "Yahooligans at the Window."

10. Richard Perez-Pena, "Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq with a Soldier’s Eyes."

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On the GOP YouTube Debate

1. Playing Devil's advocate for a minute, why is it such a big deal that a Hillary operative got to ask the Republican candidates a question without disclosing his affiliation? Why does this render his question worthless? Should we exclude anybody who's aligned with a campaign?

2. Some of the questions were silly—the introductory song, the Bible, the Confederate flag—but I actually thought many of them were excellent: Specific, pointed and interesting.

3. Anderson Cooper did a poor job moderating: He failed to stop Rudy and Romney from monopolizing the debate's first five minutes; he allowed McCain to attack Ron Paul on foreign policy during a question about the fair tax; and, by deciding which candidates got which questions, he turned potentially hard-hitting questions into softballs (Huckabee, the former minister, on the Bible; Duncan Hunter, whom the NRA rates an A+, on gun control; Thompson, a self-declared federalist, on banning abortion at the federal level).

4. On Fred: (1) Interesting video, but surely it speaks poorly of him that he used his time to attack others instead of even mentioning—let alone touting—himself. (2) ATR documents his hypocrisy in taking an anti-amnesty pledge—during the debate—but refusing to take a no-new-taxes pledge. (3) It's inexcusable that a self-proclaimed federalist couldn't name three government programs he'd remove or reduce.

5. Why can't CNN enlarge the videos on its big screen?

Update: Ed Morrisey fleshes out my first point:

Bad journalistic practices? Definitely yes. But does that negate the questions themselves? I don't think so. The CNN/YouTube format closely parallels that of the traditional town-hall forum. For the most part, attendees do not get vetted at these events either, nor should they. After all, while a primary usually involves voters of one party, the entire nation has a stake in the selection of the nominees. If Hillary Clinton held a town hall in my community, I should have an opportunity to question her about her positions on issues without pledging a loyalty oath to do so.

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McCain on Medical Marijuana

Dialing in from Phoenix, where his wife Cindy is having an operation on her knee, John McCain held a conference call with bloggers this afternoon. Having learned the hard way that in order to ask a question, you need to press *1 as soon as possible, I was rewarded with the first question. With apologies to Radley Balko,

Should federal law supersede the will of the people in a given state when it comes to medical marijuana?

McCain's answer: "There is no convincing evidence" that medical marijuana relieves pain and suffering that cannot be relieved by prescriptions.

But what about referenda in California and New Mexico, I followed-up?

The will of the people can be wrong, McCain declared. Look at Iraq today. Look at North Korea 60 years ago. "I'll be glad to continue the discussion," he concluded, "but I'm not changing my opinion."

McCain's first answer is factually inaccurate, which I hope to elaborate on tonight. His second answer is more interesting, but suffice it to say that whenever you ignore the will of the people—which you sometimes need to do—you need a very compelling reason to do so.

Quote of the day: Bloggers who criticize John McCain but haven't come aboard his campaign bus, "remain[] attached to their couches and mattresses."

Update: Phil Klein notes that Rudy and Romney also oppose decriminalizing medical marijuana.

Update (2/23/08): Hendrik Hertzberg points out that

[u]nlike McCain, Obama and Clinton have at least promised to stop the feds from harassing medical marijuana patients and dispensaries in the dozen states whose laws permit marijuana to be used for medical purposes. But neither has given any indication of a willingness to rescue us from the larger disgrace of the drug war—the billions wasted, the millions harmed, the utter futility of it. On this point, hesitancy trumps hope, and expedience trumps experience.

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Giuliani-McCain?

"I happen to be a very big admirer of Senator McCain, and I can tell you quite honestly, if I weren't running for president, I would be here supporting him. If for some reason I made the decision not to run, he'd be my candidate, and I really admire the man tremendously."

—Rudy Giuliani.

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Wisdom from Joe Klein's Politics Lost, Part 2

6. On John McCain:

It was one of the oddest qualities I'd ever seen in a candidate—entirely sincere and politically brilliant. . . . In one fairly dramatic example, McCain told me, unbidden, that the breakup of his first marriage was all his fault: "I've lived a very, very flawed life. I don't think people would think so well of me if they knew more about that part of it". . . .

"There aren't many of us who haven't done things we're ashamed of over the past 25 years," I said.

7. On Al Gore:

There was something about the vice president that simply demanded couchification. He was successfully analyzed by his opponents. He was unsuccessfully analyzed by his own consultants.

8. On John Kerry:

He proved weak, indecisive, and yes, aloof. At six feet, four inches tall, with a head of hair that came out of central casting and a sonorous baritone that slouched toward drone, he literally seemed to have his head in the clouds; there was a distressing, unfocused, soporific quality tot he man. The prevailing mystery of the Kerry campaign, especially for those who had known him longest—the Vietnam veterans he had led in war (and in peace marches)—was: Whatever happened to the courageous young leader who had risked his life to protect his crew in Vietnam and risked his political career to oppose the war when he came home?

9. On Bill Clinton

[A] womanizer of desperately bad taste.

10. On Howard Dean (paraphrased):

When the Democratic front-runner for president in 2004 said the capture of Saddam Hussein didn't make America safer, "the real problem was that Dean didn't seem particularly happy that Saddam had been captured—in fact, he seemed disappointed that the president's war effort had succeeded in any way."

11. On Mario Cuomo:

In 1982, I traveled through New York State with Mario Cuomo, who was more than 30 points behind Ed Koch in the Democratic primary for governor. The biggest issue in the race was the death penalty, and Cuomo was on the wrong side of it. And yet, at every stop, Cuomo insisted on explaining his position; if the audience didn't ask him about the death penalty, he'd bring it up himself. "You might well ask me how I'd react if a member of my family were the victim of a brutal crime," he would posit, in an eerie prediction of the question that would boggle Dukakis in 1988. "Well, my daughter was recently assaulted on the street in our neighborhood by a man who burned her breast with a cigarette. My son Andrew got into the car with a baseball bat and looked all over the neighborhood for the guy—and I've got to say, if I'd ever caught up with him ... [ellipsis in original] well, I can't guarantee what I would have done. But I'd be acting on my worst impulses, my momentary anger. One of the purposes of the state is to protect us from our worst impulses—and the desire for vengeance is one of the very worst. So, lock 'em up. Throw away the key. But don't succumb to our worst impulses, our vengeance."

12. On Democratic words that work (paraphrased):

Greenberg and Clinton devised a brilliant euphemism for spending money: "investing" in the future.

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The Daily Digest

William Randolph Hearst’s mansion

How much money does Bob Novak make?

Of Valerie Plame Wilson, Novak asserts, "I don’t think she was an important person in the C.I.A." Deroy Murdock highlights evidence to the contrary.

Meet Jeremy Lott, my boss when I interned at the Cato Institute and now the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at Cato's libertarian sister, the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (He blogs here.)

John McCain was never going to win the Republican nomination for president. As Sean Higgins of IBD argues (and Phil Klein backs up), "McCain's status as a politician with a national following is based solely on a single win in New Hampshire eight years ago that had as much to do with his rivals' mistakes as anything else. He's never demonstrated any ability to win over Republican voters nationally. Given these facts, the question isn't why his campaign is faltering now but why is anyone surprised by this?"

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McCain Agonistes

Matt Lewis puts his finger on it, as recounted to the Politico by a "McCain source":

[S]peaking at a private event, [McCain] accepted praise for his little-appreciated anti-abortion stance—only to remind the conservative crowd that he also supported stem cell research.

"How many times have I seen that?" mused this person [the McCain source]. "He just cannot keep himself on message, he just can't keep himself from telling people where he disagrees with them."

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The Daily Digest

The WSJ documents how different presidential candidates are using Google AdWords. For instance, John McCain buys ads on queries for "president," his name and the names of his main opponents, among other things. Mitt Romney, who employs Google for a "couple hundred" words, which change daily, targets locutions like "Olympics," "health care" and "cutting spending."

Continuing the CEO campaign theme, Jonathan Martin reports that Romney's organizational structure in Iowa—20 full-time staffers, coordinators in most of the state's 99 counties and a group of about 50 "super volunteers"—has virtually locked up the state for him.

The newly renovated White House press room will open on Wednesday. Mike Allen provides a vicarious tour of the new facility and of its storied history.

Check out the Capitolist, an anonymous, uncensored message board for congressional staffers (to post, you must use a computer with a Capitol Hill IP address).

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Elephants Chase Donkeys

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McCain Shakeup Affects E-Team

Pat Hynes still has a job, but his boss, Christian Ferry, does not.

As for the campaign's prospects, Ryan Sager convincingly writes, "Spread some butter on this guy... he's toast."

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The Daily Digest

Twins

Jennifer Rubin, who recently skewered Fred Thompson, hearts Mike Huckabee.

Onion-esque headline: CIA to Vindicate Conspiracy Theorists. Subtitle: Agency cops to quarter-century of drugging American citizens, opening our mail, and wiretapping and kidnapping us. Serious details in today's Post.

Demonstrating why he was the president's former chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson defends John McCain with eloquence, erudition and pith. "On occasion, Senator John McCain seems like a martyr anxious for the stake, offering his own lighter to get the proceedings started. His flamboyant heresies on campaign finance reform, global warming and immigration have left conservatives suspicious that he has a mild form of Chuck Hagel's disease: an uncontrollable moral exhibitionism designed to please the liberal media. . . . [But] [t]his is not moral exhibitionism; it is just morality. And my respect for McCain, it turns out, is less and less grudging."

Ron Rosenbaum wants to know the last time you read a celebrity profile that was disparaging? While you're thinking, chew on this: "The rules of the game, as established by the glossy magazines and the stars' PR reps, ensure that 'access' (well, a half-hour chat in a restaurant that enables the magazine to proclaim it has an 'exclusive' interview) and the all-important exclusive cover shot are granted only to those magazines and journalists who will refrain from anything but fawning prose. It works out well for everybody. Celebrity journalists who play along get a good payday, magazines get newsstand sales bumps, and the rest of us are inculcated into the received myths of Celebland, the legends that sustain the illusion that it is somehow truly important."

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Tech President Standouts

Earlier this week, USA Today ran through the highlights:

• Obama used the Web to organize a national "walk for change" day. His campaign says 10,000 people canvassed neighborhoods across the country Saturday to build local support networks.
  

• Hillary is asking online voters to pick her campaign song. Her latest video shows comical clips of what she ironically calls "truly wonderful" suggestions (singers wailing "metal girl" and "bring sexy back"). "I'm so gratified that all of you thought this was such a wonderful idea," she says, followed by clips of men calling it "ridiculous" and "insulting."
  

• Romney's adult sons write a "Five Brothers" blog that reinforces the former Massachusetts governor's "family values" theme.
  

• McCain posted his college basketball picks during the NCAA tournament's March Madness, urged supporters to submit theirs and offered a free campaign fleece to the best prognosticator.
  

• Biden uses video clips at www.headtohead08.com to compare himself with rivals on issues.
  

• Edwards and Dodd offer RSS feeds of their campaign-event calendars.

Then there's Ron Paul and Fred Thompson.

Update (6/18): The Boston Globe adds its take (and introduces an interesting word, velocious, the adjectival form of "velocity").

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The Daily Digest

For political reporters, a presidential race opens up endless opportunities. Slate's John Dickerson is seizing one of them with his new series of articles "exploring the key question" facing each candidate. First up: is Rudy too liberal for Republicans? (No.)

Grover Norquist and John McCain pretty much hate each other, but I think Grover nails why McCain's long-known temper is an issue: "You can have a temper and be angry. He has a history of personalizing disputes. When he's mad at the NRA, he attacks Wayne LaPierre." (For what it's worth, Republican strategist Nelson Warfield chalks this up to thinking before speaking: "[W]ith John McCain, there is no three-second delay.")

Everyone knows Mike Huckabee had the best sound bite of the GOP's second presidential debate—"We've had a Congress that's spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop"—but I think Mitt Romney crafted the best policy-based sound bite: "My fear is that McCain-Kennedy would do to immigration what McCain-Kennedy has done to campaign finance."

Daniel Gross describes the difference between Generation Google and Warren Buffet: "For top corporate executives, the Internet is a place where they work, access important information, check stock quotes, and read e-mails. But with each passing year, for a larger number of consumers, the Internet is a place where they hang out, meet friends, do schoolwork, watch videos, plan weddings, start businesses, play games, and listen to music—in short, it's where they live." (Related: Wikipedians vs. Britannicacs.)

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McCain on McCain v. Cornyn

From the senator's opening statement during a blogger conference call (rough transcription, because it's live):

The exchange between myself and my friend John Cornyn has been a bit exaggerated. . . . I’m sorry YouTube wasn’t there to give you a full and complete picture. . . . Sometimes we have tough issues and sometimes we are very frank with each other.

Update: John McCain held one of his semi-regular conference calls with bloggers this afternoon, at the end of which he promised to hold one every week, if necessary. Even though the 30-minute call was postponed twice, and the subject apparently changed from “clean government” to anything goes, I still blew the opportunity to ask a question, since I haven’t yet mastered the art of pressing *1 (the equivalent of pressing the buzzer in Jeopardy).

The bloggers were respectful, but I couldn't help but notice the gulf between their written words and the softness of their spoken questions. Several people asked about last week's immigration bill, and the most memorable line was McCain's sarcastic swipe at Romney for his history of pandering, particularly with respect to Romney's varmint remark.

Here are the questions I prepared:

1. Senator, it’s said that all good war plans include an end game or an exit strategy. Surely, part of that equation includes domestic support for the war. If, in January 2009, say 75% of the American people have decided that the Iraq war is no longer worthwhile, would you bring the troops home, or would you defy popular will? If the latter, what does this say about democracy?

2. Senator, you’ve decided to forgo public campaign subsidies. How do you reconcile this with your oft-repeated position—indeed, perhaps your signature issue—that only public money is noncorruptive? Second, if you are not going to use public financing, why should public financing even exist?

Thanks to Pat Hynes for organizing the call.

Update: Ryan Sager posts McCain's words, which prompts a rather mild response from Romney's spokesman.

Update: Ryan posts audio of the above, and it looks like I wasn't the only one with technical difficulties.

Update (5/26): Ryan posts a full transcript.

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The Daily Digest

More evidence of McCain's Obey-esque temper.

Jonathan Martin pinpoints what's wrong with the GOP's seven dwarfs: Huckabee; Brownback; Hunter; Gilmore; Thompson; Tancredo and Paul.

All politicians airbrush their resumes, but Hillary's airbrush is particularly amusing. In 2005, she returned a $5,000 campaign donation from Wal-Mart, citing "serious differences" with its practices. Yet she remained "largely silent," according to former directors and executives, when she sat on the company's board, from 1986 to 1992.

A few months ago I bet a colleague that Al Gore will not run for president. In short, the reputational risks and overwhelming stress of a campaign far outweigh uprooting his comfortable, lucrative and joyous post-political life. Although old Time hand Eric Pooley pines for a Gore resurgence, his cover story this week bears me out.

Dave Weigel tries to calm down Michelle Malkin, who is forced to retract a claim that Ron Paul "allied himself" with groups who believe that 9/11 was an inside job.

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