DOA

Can this be for real, or is it just the usual gameplaying - make women feel good about Barack by pretending to be respecting Hillary?

George Stephanopoulos reported Clinton's name being in the mix last week on Good Morning America, but the buzz grew louder today after Clinton was spotted boarding a flight to Chicago.

It might have been about a job in the Obama administration, or maybe she had a craving for deep dish.

Her spokesman Philippe Reines would not discuss Clinton's schedule, and of course the Obama Transition Team would not comment.

The thinking about a Secretary of State Clinton is simple, I'm told: she's smart, she's strong, she's experienced, she's a team player, she is usually pretty diplomatic, and she also brings some gender diversity to an Obama Team concerned about such matters.

Let's be serious - why would Obama want Hillary around, and why would Hillary want to put her career in the hands of Barack. Secretaries of State last about 2 years, don't they?

She brings instant stature to the job, one Democrat told me. Many world leaders have known her for almost two decades.

"Clinton is the gold standard around the world, " said Chris Lehane, a former spokesman for Vice President Al Gore.

Ya, sure. Consider this idea DOA.

Pressing Sarah

At the Republican Governor's Conference in Miami, it might as well be reconfigured into the Sarah Palin Conference. After Barack, she's the biggest political star in the country.

At a short press conference, she was asked what she's doing since the last governor's get-together.

“I had a baby, I did some traveling, I very briefly expanded my wardrobe, I made a few speeches, I met a few VIPS, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey,” she said.

And yes, she spoke again of “Joe the Plumber,” the Ohio man who briefly dominated the McCain-Palin campaign and its talk about taxes.

Ms. Palin thanked the people who attended her rallies, including young women she hopes she has influenced.

“I am going to remember all the young girls who came up to me at rallies to see the first woman having the privilege of carrying our party’s VP nomination,” she said. “We’re going to work harder, we’re going to be stronger, we’re going to do better and one day, one of them will be the president.”

That raised again the question surrounding Ms. Palin since the election ended: will she run in 2012?

“The future is not that 2012 Presidential race, it’s next year and our next budgets,” she said. It is in 2010, she said, that “we’ll have 36 governors positions open.”

Glib Guidance

The biggest failure in network news has some advice for one of America's biggest political stars.

Couric thinks Sarah Palin has a thing or two to learn about politics before she contemplates a White House run in 2012. "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing.

Katie is right, actually. That is what Sarah should do. Blow everyone away in a couple of years by just how informed she is.

But I'm not anyone to give advice to anyone about anything," she told Page Six at Glamour Magazine's 2008 Women of the Year Awards dinner at the Essex House.

Right again!

Although her interview with Palin made the Alaska governor look dumb (while rejuvenating Couric's flagging career in the process), Couric won't give herself too much credit. "I was really just a conduit that allowed her to air her views," she said. "I don't want to judge. I'll let the voters do that."

Of course you will.

Bad News

MSNBC got confirmation of the Sarah Palin Africa controversy from a McCain campaign insider who doesn't exist.

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

How can such a thing happen to a major news organization?

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

"The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air," said Jeremy Gaines, network spokesman. "We recognized the error almost immediately and ran a correction on air within minutes."

Gaines told the Times that someone in the network's newsroom had presumed the information solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague.

The hoax doesn't mean that Sarah knows where Africa is...

The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin — not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

It just proves that MSNBC doesn't know what journalism is.

Moving Over, Not On

This is the end. But also the beginning. Barack's White Lies is moving, and evolving. Think of it as Change You Can Believe In. The new blog will be called, eventually, Real Clear Thinker. All future posts can be found at realclearthinker.com.

I took it in stride when Barack won, and decided that this is a time to adjust - we must accept his victory and learn the lessons that come with it. America has changed, and in order to be effective in doing political analysis, as well as affecting the course that the nation is following, it seems to me that you have to be here, in the moment - not stuck in some dream of the past.

If you'll permit me an analogy, think of those of us who enjoy the political process, study it, and try to move people's thinking to a better place, as singer/songwriters. We perform songs about the world we live in. While singing songs from the sixties might draw an audience - heck, it would even be fun - I don't want to be an oldies act. Singing nostalgia is valid because it offers escape, but I don't want to engage in escapism, I want to be relevant to now. I want to grab hold of the moment and say, "it's moving in the wrong direction, help me get it back on course."

In order to do that, I decided it is necessary to let go of some things. I'm not going to worry about Barack being too young and inexperienced, I'm going to try to trust that he is a gifted enough person that maybe he can rise to the occasion. I'm not going to wallow in the cruel hoax of turning to the people who are dismantling the American experiment and asking them to save it - I want to accept that Democrats have won because Republicans screwed up, and that's how it goes in the toggle mentality of a two party system.

Their worst goals must be resisted, yes, but as an optimist, I will trust that the flaws of liberalism, when seen up close, will reaffirm in America it's basic conservatism. We must help them be the tools of their own demise.

I also think we must accept that America has been altered inexorably - this is not the European culture we grew up in, the forces that sought to minimize it's whiteness and make it a multi-cultural place have succeeded. That's not a bad thing, per se, it's just a different thing. It only hurts when you fight it. At the same time, we must make sure that the new America loves and respects that which is America, that it isn't here just to enjoy the benefits without respecting the underpinnings that made the spoils possible.

In other words, if new people are going to be in charge, I can live with that. I don't care who is in charge, I care what is in charge. What philosophies are going to guide us, what are our values going to be? Bad values can be pushed by people of any culture or race, as can good ones.

So I decided that I had to accept the tipping point that Barack's election represents. Power has shifted to the new guys. Fighting that would be like trying to fight the British invasion of the 1960's. The Beatles were not the revolution - the forces of change were unstoppable - they simply rode the wave created by the enormous demand for change. Television, and access to money, gave kids a new voice in the marketplace, and we used those tools to, for better and for worse, adjust the world to meet our tastes.

The same has happened now - we have raised a couple of generations of suburban kids whose lives haven't known the struggles of necessity. It is foolhardy to expect, for a moment, that they would view life the way we do. How could a twenty-something professional of today, earning a comfortable upper middle class living while sitting at his computer in Starbucks, have even the vaguest notion of the life that formed the Greatest Generation? We must stop expecting the impossible.

I'm not arguing that the fight is over - the struggle between conservative and liberal values is a permanent one, as is the political fight between the groups aligned, however loosely, behind those banners. I'm just saying that we have to realize that some things have already been decided - that liberalism has, to a large extent, already won, and we must map carefully the piece of land we're standing on so that we can best defend, and perhaps extend, our ground.

It is in this spirit that I begin a gradual relaunch of Barack's White Lies. A new look, a new location, a new name. While I liked the edginess of the name for the election - I enjoyed that it made liberals uncomfortable - my old fashioned conservative sensibilities lead me to feel uncomfortable calling my blog Barack's White Lies.

I don't wish to be disrespectful to the office of the President of the United States, which, hopefully, will always be occupied by a person who loves the ideals and the brilliance of the men, and the document, that created it.

The blog will live on under the name of Real Clear Thinker. It's an amalgam of the names of a couple of my favorite places to read - Real Clear Politics and The American Thinker - not so much inspired by them as absorbed and reconstructed.

When shocked liberals ask how I have come to a particular conclusion, I just tell them that I thought about it. And that's the truth. I like thinking clearly, and I believe that if others engage in a similar enterprise, they'll come to conclusions that are pretty close to mine.

That's what Real Clear Thinker is all about.

Moving Over, Not On

This is the end. But also the beginning. Barack's White Lies is moving, and evolving. Think of it as Change You Can Believe In. The new blog will be called, eventually, Real Clear Thinker. All future posts can be found at realclearthinker.com.

I took it in stride when Barack won, and decided that this is a time to adjust - we must accept his victory and learn the lessons that come with it. America has changed, and in order to be effective in doing political analysis, as well as affecting the course that the nation is following, it seems to me that you have to be here, in the moment - not stuck in some dream of the past.

If you'll permit me an analogy, think of those of us who enjoy the political process, study it, and try to move people's thinking to a better place, as singer/songwriters. We perform songs about the world we live in. While singing songs from the sixties might draw an audience - heck, it would even be fun - I don't want to be an oldies act. Singing nostalgia is valid because it offers escape, but I don't want to engage in escapism, I want to be relevant to now. I want to grab hold of the moment and say, "it's moving in the wrong direction, help me get it back on course."

In order to do that, I decided it is necessary to let go of some things. I'm not going to worry about Barack being too young and inexperienced, I'm going to try to trust that he is a gifted enough person that maybe he can rise to the occasion. I'm not going to wallow in the cruel hoax of turning to the people who are dismantling the American experiment and asking them to save it - I want to accept that Democrats have won because Republicans screwed up, and that's how it goes in the toggle mentality of a two party system.

Their worst goals must be resisted, yes, but as an optimist, I will trust that the flaws of liberalism, when seen up close, will reaffirm in America it's basic conservatism. We must help them be the tools of their own demise.

I also think we must accept that America has been altered inexorably - this is not the European culture we grew up in, the forces that sought to minimize it's whiteness and make it a multi-cultural place have succeeded. That's not a bad thing, per se, it's just a different thing. It only hurts when you fight it. At the same time, we must make sure that the new America loves and respects that which is America, that it isn't here just to enjoy the benefits without respecting the underpinnings that made the spoils possible.

In other words, if new people are going to be in charge, I can live with that. I don't care who is in charge, I care what is in charge. What philosophies are going to guide us, what are our values going to be? Bad values can be pushed by people of any culture or race, as can good ones.

So I decided that I had to accept the tipping point that Barack's election represents. Power has shifted to the new guys. Fighting that would be like trying to fight the British invasion of the 1960's. The Beatles were not the revolution - the forces of change were unstoppable - they simply rode the wave created by the enormous demand for change. Television, and access to money, gave kids a new voice in the marketplace, and we used those tools to, for better and for worse, adjust the world to meet our tastes.

The same has happened now - we have raised a couple of generations of suburban kids whose lives haven't known the struggles of necessity. It is foolhardy to expect, for a moment, that they would view life the way we do. How could a twenty-something professional of today, earning a comfortable upper middle class living while sitting at his computer in Starbucks, have even the vaguest notion of the life that formed the Greatest Generation? We must stop expecting the impossible.

I'm not arguing that the fight is over - the struggle between conservative and liberal values is a permanent one, as is the political fight between the groups aligned, however loosely, behind those banners. I'm just saying that we have to realize that some things have already been decided - that liberalism has, to a large extent, already won, and we must map carefully the piece of land we're standing on so that we can best defend, and perhaps extend, our ground.

It is in this spirit that I begin a gradual relaunch of Barack's White Lies. A new look, a new location, a new name. While I liked the edginess of the name for the election - I enjoyed that it made liberals uncomfortable - my old fashioned conservative sensibilities lead me to feel uncomfortable calling my blog Barack's White Lies.

I don't wish to be disrespectful to the office of the President of the United States, which, hopefully, will always be occupied by a person who loves the ideals and the brilliance of the men, and the document, that created it.

The blog will live on under the name of Real Clear Thinker. It's an amalgam of the names of a couple of my favorite places to read - Real Clear Politics and The American Thinker - not so much inspired by them as absorbed and reconstructed.

When shocked liberals ask how I have come to a particular conclusion, I just tell them that I thought about it. And that's the truth. I like thinking clearly, and I believe that if others engage in a similar enterprise, they'll come to conclusions that are pretty close to mine.

That's what Real Clear Thinker is all about.

Rebirth

Sarah's got herself in rehab.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, amid speculation she'll run for president in four years, blamed Bush administration policies for the defeat last week of the GOP ticket and prayed she wouldn't miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

Not drug rehab. Political rehab. She's redefining herself - trying to shed the bad news of the McCain run and maximize her potential as the country's most popular Republican.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

With a horrible economy setting in, Palin is wise to separate herself from Bush, and Republicans, in general.

"It's amazing that we did as well as we did," Palin, who was Sen. John McCain's running mate, said of the election in a separate interview with the Anchorage Daily News.

"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing," Palin said in a story published Sunday.

Palin has scheduled a series of national interviews this week with Fox, NBC's "Today" show and CNN. She also plans to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Florida this week.

Pat's Tingle

Pat Robertson is as excited by Barack as Michael Moore is.

"He can be one of the great presidents of the United States if he doesn't get pulled to far from the center."

On Palin - "Just not ready for prime time."

Ya Sarah

Sarah calls them jerks.

They deserve it.

An angry aide characterized the Palins as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."

Back Stabber

Who is trashing Sarah? Mitt Romney says the petty anonomous leaks against Palin aren't coming from him. Here's the headline in today's Boston Herald - "Mitt Romney: I’m no back stabber."

Fox News, the New York Times [NYT] and Newsweek have reported on a host of criticisms of Palin, including that she threw tantrums that made staffers cry and didn’t know Africa was a continent. Several media outlets reported some of the leaks came from within the McCain campaign. But the political blog, The Palmetto Scoop, citing “very good sources,” said it was Romney loyalists working for McCain who were behind the “premeditated last minute sabotage” of Palin.

Fehrnstrom took issue with the Scoop’s claim that as much as 80 percent of Romney’s campaign staff went to work for Sen. John McCain’s team after the GOP primary. Only “a handful” of Romney operatives joined the Arizona senator’s campaign, he said.

Others beg to differ.

GOP strategist Holly Robichaud, who writes the “Lone Republican” blog for the Herald, said: “It’s definitely Romney’s people. They’ve been doing it for a while. Romney is thinking about running again in 2012 and he needs to kill off Sarah Palin in order to get there.”

Romney has some ground to make up if he's going to face Palin in four years.

Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen poll shows that 64 percent of Republicans want Palin to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2012 while 11 percent prefer Romney.

Puh Puh Puh Puh Palin

In four years, America's going to be eager for change. So which Republican is best positioned to challenge Barack in 2012?

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year -- Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

Wow. Palin leads the next most popular Republicans by 50 points! Now we know why they're out to get her.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.

What about all that talk from liberals about how awful Palin is, and how she represents McCain's biggest mistake?

Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Is it possible that McCain's biggest mistake wasn't Palin, but rather, McCain?

These findings echo a survey earlier this week which found that Republicans were happier with their vice presidential candidate than with their presidential nominee. Seventy-one percent (71%) said McCain made the right choice by picking Palin as his running mate, while only 65% said the party picked the right nominee for president.

Palin's strength is that she makes the base happy. From that platform, she'll have the power to go after the rest of the country.

The key for the 44-year-old Palin will be whether she can broaden her base of support. An Election Day survey found that 81% of Democrats and, more importantly, 57% of unaffiliated voters had an unfavorable view of her.

The survey numbers are from the most accurate pollster this year - Rasmussen.

Swinging Pennsylvania

This should have happened in July. But it could provide the difference in the bitter neighborhoods.

John McCain has not wielded the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. club over Democratic rival Barack Obama, who repudiated his former pastor and eventually left his Chicago church.

But that hasn't stopped some of those supporting the Republican presidential candidate. The GOP in Pennsylvania, a must-win state for McCain, is airing a tough, last-minute TV ad on Wright and Obama.

"If you think you could ever vote for Barack Obama, consider this: Obama chose as his spiritual leader, this man," the announcer says in the ad, first reported yesterday by Time magazine's political website.

Wright is then shown, in the now-famous video, thunderously saying from the pulpit of a Chicago church while Obama was a member, "Not God bless America, God damn America!"

"He also picked Wright to baptize his children," the announcer says, before Wright is shown saying, "The US of KKKA!"

"Barack Obama, he chose as his pastor a man who blamed the US for the 9/11 attacks," the announcer continues. "Does that sound like someone who should be president?"

Sarah's French Kiss

Sarah Palin got used by some Canadian pranksters pretending to be French President Sarkozy.

While it's got to be embarrassing to have been taken in, Sarah survived the scam without humiliation. The worst part is not having figured it out over six minutes until the perp identified himself as being someone other than the French president.

Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

"Maybe in eight years," replies a laughing Palin.

The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy's "beautiful wife," in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had received the prank call.

"Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie," she said.

Most of the jokes were inside ones that Americans won't get.

Pulling Punches

Even Joe the Plumber is too upwardly mobile to overtly question Barack's patriotism - but why not just come out and say, when asked if his love of country is in doubt, say sure!

"McCain has fought and bled for our country, loves our country," said Joe Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber," who has campaigned throughout Ohio with and on behalf of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "There's too many questions with Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country. And I question that greatly."

What's wrong with saying, "Anyone who is mentored by a guy who ran a violent war against the U.S. government has some explaining to do." Why is everyone on the McCain team afraid to say that? Then, the ball would be in Barack's court to prove his lack of a relationship with Ayers.

Fox News' Neil Cavuto tried to clarify: "You're not doubting that he's a good American. Or you are?"

"His ideology is completely different from what democracy stands for," said Wurzelbacher.

Sounds like J the P is already listening to consultants.

Zogby Shocker

The race for president tightens, as the Zogby poll shows McCain cutting two points off Barack's lead. That's good news - but that's not the surprise.

Republican John McCain made a small gain against Democrat Barack Obama and has pulled back within the margin of error, now trailing Obama by five points, 49.1% to 44.1%, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking telephone poll shows.

This follows a couple of days in which the tracking polls had seemed to indicate an end to a McCain move to close the gap. But the news gets better.

Almost two days worth of the polling -- or about half of the current sample in the three-day rolling poll of likely voters nationwide, was conducted after Obama's 30-minute commercial aired Wednesday evening. There is no evidence it helped him, as he has dropped 1.1 points in the last two days, while McCain has gained 0.8 points during the same period.

And, here's the big news from John Zogby.

"Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama's lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all."

That's right - in Friday's numbers, McCain leads Obama by 1%.

Of course, the Friday results may be an anomaly - they do three day tracking polls to buffer against misperceptions that might develop from looking at one day's results. We'll watch eagerly for confirmation from the Rasmussen and Gallup polls, which release later.

Rasmussen showed a 4% Obama lead yesterday, but Gallup had moved to 8%, so the Zogby numbers must be viewed with some caution.

Barack Bizarro

Should illegals be part of the Social Security System? Should they receive benefits?

Trader Joe

Where's Joe?

Although it might seem like Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is everywhere these days, he wasn't at John MCain's rally this morning in the small town of Defiance, Ohio.

Except that nobody told the Republican presidential nominee that.

And so, in the midst of his speech, McCain called out to Wurzelbacher, as he often does on the campaign trail.

“Joe’s with us today," McCain told an audience of about 6,000 people. "Joe where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe with us today?” he asked.

Joining the Nader campaign, perhaps?

When Joe failed to appear, an awkward silence settled over the crowd.

Then McCain, politician that he is, made lemonade out of lemons. "All right," he told the crowd. "Well, you’re all Joe the Plumbers, so all of you stand up!"

Fear

This sucker should be in heavy rotation.

Palin Chases Khalidi

Sarah Palin goes after the LA Times for failing to release the video tape of the Rashid Khalidi party.

Here's background on Khalidi.

Defensive

Barack mocks McCain and Palin.

When it gets to the part where Sarah winks, I take her to mean, "you buyin' this crap that Barack is dishing out?" No, I'm not.