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Friday, April 11, 2008
Fred Schwarz on Baseball & Conservatives on National Review Online
It’s time for all you closet conservatives to open the door and come out into the light.
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Beyond his protectionist anti-NAFTA talk in this campaign, he has opposed every trade liberalization measure since he joined the US Senate.
I was (very) bothered by it as well. I've known people who were teachers in affluent areas. I've known people who were teachers in impoverished areas. I did not find the teachers who taught in impoverished areas to be, on average, better teachers or human beings (nor did I find them to be worse teachers or human beings) than those who taught elsewhere. From what I can tell, the choice (when it is a choice) to teach in an impoverished area does not mark one out as a great human being, not even on average.
Moreover, I would submit that even if some people are great teachers AND great human beings, one cannot necessarily conclude that such people (not even on average) would be able to rise to the top of "pretty much any field." I would guess (without having any inclination to backup the statement) that the qualities that might lead one to committing oneself to philanthropy are ones that might even hinder that person's doing well in a number of other areas (though one's Capra-esque mileage may vary).
If nothing else, I'm pretty sure that in athletic fields such as baseball (huh? wuzzat?) there are plenty of well-known instances of the best players being very self-centered, and that solipsism (combined with industry and athleticism) seems likely (to me) to be a large factor in their success.
The fact you polled a couple of liberals and they told you it was an insult is hardly meaningful, thus my prior lack of response. Perhaps if you could explain the negative connotation, we'd get somewhere. Brie eating/Chardonnay sipping liberals, I can see the negative connotation. Shopping at Whole Foods is.... what?
I chide people for making fantastic logical contortions as to the actual meaning of Obama's words. Speculation as to state of mind is more reasonable, as per the Lott discussion.
I understand why people like him. He's clearly a smart guy and a good speaker. He's handsome and projects self-confidence. What I don't understand is the cult-like loyalty, the insistance that he is somehow special and different from other politicians. It will be amusing if he becomes president to watch his supporters froth with rage when he's unable to alter the laws of the universe with his thaumaturgy.
You really went out on a limb there. It's a pretty simple question. Obama says he's going to do something. Do you believe him?
No. All politicians "pander." It is the nature of the beast. Alou is making the assumption that there is xenophobic coding in it, which in his own words, "leads to racism." That is a different thing, and, it seems to me a little bit condescending towards all those bitter folks, assuming they will become racist if their jobs get shipped overseas, and in addition , that they are too ignorant to understand the economic policies which will help them, and that they envy the rich instead of enjoying their own lives.
Serious question: you have used right-wing double-standard victimization rhetoric 3 or 4 times now. Do you believe that the right takes too much #### and is treated unfairly in general?
This is of course the case, as E-X conceded. And, most public service jobs, politicized as they are, involve peopel taking #### from the media and the public. But teaching, as I explained in 1347, is the ultimate soft skills job, and that, combined with the fact that everyone goes to school and the divisive politics that surrounds the union, means teachers get #### on in ways that are different than most other jobs. This forum is pretty tame, but the contempt for teachers comes through in many posts.
I like and respect both you and E-X. I expect you will find some common ground.
Don't know. NAFTA, like all programs that affect a lot of people, has positives and negatives and the job of govt officials is to weigh costs and benefits. It may look different to a working-class guy in Ohio than it does to you.
This is definitely one place I drastically differ from you. As far as I'm concerned, if I want to trade something with someone in China, I fail to see why it's any of the government official's business (short of a compelling national security interest) or the working-class guy in Ohio's business.
The trade rhetoric from the Democrats has really pushed me quite a bit back towards McCain. Commerce is the ultimate soft diplomacy and the arguments that the Democratic candidate will play nicer ring false when they trumpet what is essentially soft warfare. The way the trade deal with Colombia turned out is a crock of ####.
Yes.
There is no "contempt for teachers." There's contempt for the arrogance of teachers.
You either missed the key part of that post or are deliberately ignoring it. The "two liberals" were incidental.
He is a new face, with a new kind of rhetoric in some ways, running against two aging, over-exposed, old-school been-around-forever pols. There is some of what you describe, but IMO that angle is overplayed by the righties/Clintonites in the media and on the net. It has been a way to use the fact that people like the guy against him. It has also been used much less lately--they have other stuff to hit him with now.
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes political discussion a pain sometimes, at least for me. I already know you are a sharp-as-a-tack right-wing tough guy (Perform or be gone) with a good vocab. You don't have to keep showing me.
And I gave you a simple answer. I don't know. Probably he will. Do you think McCain will escalate in Iraq?
I disagree with this.
I know wealthy folks from Latin America who love NAFTA. I also know people with rust-belt relatives who hate it. I myself am not protectionist. But I understand why some people are.
That's reasonable. And expected. I was always very skeptical about any Libertarians or right-leaning types who distance themselves from the current regime and Bush (and I have seen a lot of that here) actually voting for a guy with Obama's policies or not voting at all. Most of them will vote McCain, as I am sure HC is telling the SDs as part of her case for the nom.
Care to explain this? The union has a lot of problems, but as I explained in detail in 1347, the "arrogance", as you call it, goes both ways and is a complex issue.
I'm not doubting this sentence, but how exactly is this an argument in favor of Clinton? "Well, hell, we're going to lose to McCain anyway, so you may as well let me run and lose." Hillary Clinton's no better than Obama on trade from what I've seen - she's certainly running far to the left of her husband on trade policy (I've heard she actually opposed NAFTA at the time but lost the battle in the White House).
It's not an idelogical argument; it's a strategic one.
Obama started off as a guy with crossover appeal to independents and some Repubs ("purple")and sold himself as being more electable. The argument will be/is that Wright, "bittergate" and the fact that the BO is really a Liberal Demo eat heavily into his crossover appeal, and that she, with her strength in key states like NY, CA, FL, PA and OH, is the stronger candidate in terms of the electoral map. This goes way back--when he was rolling up those 11 straight wins, some of her people were getting the buzz out that none of that mattered since the Demos are not taking Kansas in Nov anyway. I don't know for sure, but I doubt Szym would have ever voted for HC, but he was supposedly considering Obama. Now, Szym says, he's looking much harder at McCain. HC will argue that a lot of people are doing that.
PA today is in some ways not a primary, but a sort of referendum. "The math" as I am sure you know, favors Obama very strongly and will regardless of today's outcome (unless it is 70-30 or something). But she will argue, if she smokes him by 15 points or so today, that the calculus has changed. If he keeps it pretty close, he will say it shows (again) that he can withstand the attacks and hs own mistakes and is the best choice for the party.
Doesn't E-X's statement speak for itself? (I'm not trying to dismiss your question. That's the explanation of my comment.)
Is free trade really free with closed borders and limited visas?
No one _literally_ disputes Dan's right to buy and sell goods and services with his Chinese counterpart (although I agree that restriction of free trade PRACTICALLY does just this) ... but I think that might be an oversimplification of the issues.
Does Dan have the right take advantage of importing and reselling a product made under "inhumane" labor laws?
Does it matter if instead of Dan, BBTF resident, it's "Dan, Inc."?
Does a nation/state have the right/responsiblity to enhance the welfare of it's citizens AT THE EXPENSE of other peoples?
Is it different to "force" someone to work for you via threat of violence or via the leverage of your superior capital?
Can you have capitalism without exploitation?
I am sure no one will believe me - but these are legitimate questions...
Well, if you are down on E-X, fair enough (although I love the guy). But you said "teachers." That includes me.
Unfortunately, all current trade agreements are treaties between governments, not treaties between you and your trade partner in China, and all of them contain enforcement mechanisms requiring the signatories to police far more than national security interests. So do you want to renegotiate them?
McCain, BTW, was in Wisconsin the other day being typically dogmatic on the issue in front of Chamber of Commerce types, but he didn't quite get the reception he expected:
McCain gets an earful on the realities of free trade
From my perspective: I have no contempt for teachers in general. (I don't know any thinking person who has contempt for teachers as a profession.) I have contempt for the arrogance of one alleged teacher who oozes arrogance in nearly every post, demeans everyone else's point of view which is not lock stept with his, and is presumptuous about what everyone else knows and about what he could teach them if only they would come visit him and bow down to his superiority.
.... In thinking about this, I've decided arrogance is not what most irritates me abvout X. Yes, he's arrogant. That is without question. You can't objectively read any of his blathering posts and not conclude that X is arrogant. However, that is not what is so loathesome about X. Even worse, X is self-righteous. That's what bothers me. Self-righteousness is grating.
To answer your points from #1696 in Digest form:
(1) Former Dixiecrats leave the Democratic party and become Republicans?
But according to David (and you seem to agree with him on this), for the most part, this isn't true. It might have been fairly good evidence, but apparently you both agree that it didn't happen. Its not happening doesn't disprove your point, but neither does it support it.
This happened over a period of time beginning in the late 60's/early 70's, once it became evident that the Dixiecrat POV had no future in the emerging Democratic Party. Furthermore, the white vote within the DP was rapidly getting crowded out by the newly registered black voters. Putting this together, these Dixiecrat voters could see the writing on the wall, and the switching began. You can see its eventual scope by comparing the makeup of both the congressional and the state legislature delegations today to those before 1964. The only real countertrends are the black vote and the growing disgust with Bush among a certain segment of educated whites.
(2) States which voted for (local) Dixiecrats prior to 1964, voted for (local) Republicans afterwards.
Given that (1) apparently didn't happen, even if (2) did happen, it'd be a mess trying to interpret it. Voting for a Republican, so long as a Dixiecrat is the local Democratic candidate, is certainly not evidence that Republicans are the heirs to the Dixiecrats. And after the Dixiecrats cease to be candidates, one cannot simply claim that a Republican's winning the local election is evidence that the Republicans represent what the Dixiecrats used to represent. It certainly could be the case, but it definitely does not have to be.
That's a bit confusing. But first. it did happen, though the switch was only gradual at first. Again, look at the current makeup of the state legislatures and the southern bloc in Congress.
And the race-based "interpretation" is hard to escape.
First you had the five most hardcore states deserting the Democrats in an election where the two parties' differences on civil rights have never been more stark: LBJ signed the 1964 bill, and Goldwater attacked it at every opportunity. If you can think of a more plausible explanation for that sudden 1964 switch other than race, I'm all ears.
Then you had the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by LBJ, whose main purpose was to enfranchise southern blacks and (logically) dilute the power of the white voters within the Democratic Party. Once again, this helped drive the former Dixiecrat voters into the arms of the GOP, a party that effectively became the new "white" party, just as surely (and statistically) as the NAACP was a "black" organization. It wasn't like the old Dixiecrat state parties, since blacks weren't formally excluded, but the anti-civil rights positions of those state and local parties did the job almost as well in keeping blacks away.
And by this time the writing was on the wall. And the defections continued on the local levels to the point where they are today.
(3) States which voted for (local) Dixiecrats prior to 1964 (and afterwards, as Dixiecrats remained in their locally-voted offices as Democrats), voted for (presidential) Republicans afterwards.
You two seem to agree that this did happen in 1964, 1972 and throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately for your argument, David's point that "so did the rest of the country" (for the non-1964 elections) is 100% valid. If (virtually) every state is voting for Nixon and Reagan and Bush, it's hard to single out the Southern reasons as being racist ones. Maybe they were voting for racist reasons, but I'm not sure it's fair to just assume that.
I notice that you gloss over 1968. Nixon won six southern states that year to the Democrats' one (Texas). And I'll ask you: How many of those Wallace votes would have gone to "Mr. Civil Rights" Hubert Humphrey over Mr. "I'll appoint 'strict constructionists' to the Supreme Court" Richard Nixon?
Beyond that, the direct evidence is more muddled due to the McGovern and Carter fiascos, but even in 1972, NIXON'S PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULAR VOTE IN EVERY SINGLE SOUTHERN STATE EXCEEDED THE NATIONAL AVERAGE of 60.7%, with margins ranging from 66.0% in Louisiana (which included a large black vote in New Orleans) to 78.2% in Mississippi. Take out the black vote and the Republican percentage would have been even higher.
You can interpret these figures in a non-racial way if you so choose, but there's never been such a dramatic party shift by any statistically significant racial voting group in so short a time in the history of this country. The southern white vote shift in presidential elections from 1944 to 1964 to 1972 was akin to an earthquake, and while you might convince David that this shift wasn't primarily racial in motivation, I doubt if you'll find many (if any) serious historians who'd agree with him.
(4) Voting records of the Dixiecrats themselves.
I don't know what these are. If they voted overwhelmingly against their own party from 1964 on (while still getting regularly elected by their constituency), I'd certainly take that as (at least some) evidence that the Republicans were more closely allied to their political positions. If they didn't vote overwhelmingly Republican, then it might be harder to use it to support your hypothesis (since it would suggest that Democrats' positions were more or less just as supportable as Republican ones -- claiming that one party are the heirs of the Dixiecrats when the latter are splitting their votes seems to be problematic, though not impossible).
This is the short version, but the few southern Democrats who were seen as racial moderates were quickly ousted, in earlier years sometimes replaced by hardcore Dixiecrats, but in later years by Republicans. Frank Smith of Mississippi would be Exhibit A of the former category, and of course Nick Galifinakis of North Carolina (Helms's first trophy) would be Exhibit A of the latter---I offer this in the full knowledge that David will come back at some point and try to show that Jesse Helms was merely a sincere small government maven who never gave the race question per se a passing thought. David's welcome to munch on that Moon cheese for the rest of his life, but most of us might wonder just what it is he's really putting in his mouth.
And the larger point that can be lost in all this is simple to outline. Before the civil rights revolution, within the South the "white" party was that of the Democrats. After a brief transitional period from 1964 through the early 70's, the "white" party in the South emerged as the Republican Party. This was no coincidence, in spite of David's fantasy that the switch wasn't caused primarily by race. And a handful of exceptional southern black Republican voters don't change this basic truth.
Please don't tell HC that! I meant what I said - if not for the economic downturn and the protectionist rhetoric, I'd be more likely to vote for Obama than McCain. McCain might say he doesn't know much about economics, but I'll take a know-nothing over a know-nothing know-it-all. The "New Politics" became the "Old Politics" the second Obama kept his promise to protect the jobs of blue-collar workers by doing his best to scuttle a trade pact that would have immediately reduced the tariffs on those exports to Colombia those blue-collar workers made from 35% to 0%.
Obviously, there are pragmatic concerns in getting to that point. But the policy of the US government should be to encourage trade pacts which destroy trade barriers on both sides, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and with everyone in between, including Cuba and Iran.
Apparently I did. If you care to repost it, I'd be happy to address. If not, oh well.
You diminish the opinions of others by largely blaming this perception on Clintonian dirty tricks or right wing conspiracies. It's not always the work of nefarious forces, although it's kind of fun to see liberals lumping the Clintons in with those forces.
Thaumaturgy is a perfectly cromulent word. I make no claims to conservative tough guy status anymore than I accuse the liberals here of being effete sissyboys. Both are silly stereotypes. The perform or be gone line goes to the arrogance of some teachers, who complain about the inconvenience of possibly having to worry about their job security. In an economy where the majority of workers are at-will employees who can be fired at any time, for any reason, hearing that sort of talk is galling.
Yes. I don't think that's a good thing, but I can't imagine why he would promise to do something unpopular before an election and then not attempt to do it if elected. Typically it's the other way around.
Oh, and I would like to endorse Dan Szymborski for President.
* There are of course many other groups which lean right, and that may give the right advantages in other ways. I've no idea who gets the overall structural advantage. But I'm just talking about journalistic coverage here.
Even though this does not contradict what you have said, I would change "white" to conservative. The South is mostly conservative. When the Democratic Party was home to conservatives, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic. Following the rise of modern conservativism with the Goldwater-Reaganites taking power in the Republican Party and the McGovernites ruling the roost in the Democratic Party, Southern conservatives shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. They did this first in voting Republican in national elections and then eventually re-registering as Republicans.
The South remains more one-party than most of the rest of the country. However, there are today more elected liberals (or centrist-liberals) in the South than ever before. And those liberals -- of the John Edwards, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Bill Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Jim Webb ilk -- are all Democrats.
Not at all. It was a strategy used by people who don't like him and want him to lose. "Dirty tricks" "nefarious forces" and "conspiracies" are your words.
Well, at least we are getting to it. It may be "galling" to you but that does not have anything to do with the issue. As discussed at length earlier, evaluating teacher performance is tricky, and many of the people who can't cut it are weeded out by attrition anyway. This not to say that teachers should not be evaluated in some way, but the nature of the job, as well as the politics surrounding the schools, in addition to the differences between schools and commercial enterprises, problematize it on several levels. As I said in my long education post on page 14, all-or-nothing rhetoric in this area is not only irresponsible but also ill-conceived.
No thanks--not worth my time or yours. But the part about my two liberal friends was half a sentence in a long post. Maybe I can "speculate" about your "state of mind" in terms of why that stuck.
I fully agree with this and with emphasis on the latter. We have trade restrictions against a good number of "rogue" regimes. Not only are these strictures ineffective in bringing about the change we are hoping for, but they give an excuse to the rogues as to why their economies are such failures. And these excuses are even bought by some people in our country. Cuba can more-less freely trade with every country in the world but the U.S. and Israel and Israel is meaningless. Cuba is an economic basket case because of its own policies, not because the U.S. won't trade with it. Yet, Cuba and Cuba's apologists constantly repeat the refrain (which makes no sense) that, but for the embargo, Cuba would not be so poor.
And speaking of Cuba... I am getting the sense (or maybe it's just hope) that Raul Castro could be another Mikhail Gorbachev with his reforms. Gorbachev was the most important figure in the collapse of Soviet Communism, not because he wanted things to go the way they did, but because he mistakenly believed that you could run a prison state without armed guards fiercely oppressing the prisoners. Gorbachev let up the reigns and the whole tyrranical system fell apart, brick by brick. Cuba is a terribly repressive state, where people live in constant fear of the secret police, the torture chambers, the brutal repercussions of speaking up. But if Raul Castro starts to loosen the chains on his prisoners, he will likely find he has lost control of the prison and the whole miserable place will devour its communist captors.
Just like there's no contempt for lawyers. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Indeed they are. The idea that what is best in the world is best conserved by eliminating any brakes on the drive for profit is a strange idea indeed.
As for contempt for teachers, I've often heard non-teachers dismiss teaching as not being a 'real' job. Easy hours, summers off, no competition, and other blather of that kind.
Funny. I grew up in an area where people had a lot of choices, and the worst guys I knew in high school, the kind who would cheerfully screw a passed out woman at a party, became corporate lawyers. The nice guys, the kind who would get her home intact, went into teaching or social work.
Go figure.
Thanks, Arky, but I think I'll pass on ascribing any weight to this powerful anecdotal evidence of yours.
Yes, of course. It can't possibly be people observing and sharing their opinions. It's a "strategy" used by his enemies. Nothing ever just happens in your world, does it? It's always the coordinated work of people, probably right wingers, working behind the scenes.
This is, to put it bluntly, crap. People who can't "cut it" are weeded out of every job. The difference is that teachers only need to "cut it" for a few years. Everybody else has to keep performing throughout their entire career. I'm gratified by your magnaminous gesture that teachers should maybe, kinda-sorta be evaluated in some way. Baby steps though, because it's tricky apparently.
Almost certainly not worth mine, true. If it's not worth yours, you may want to stop whining about a throwaway line that wasn't addressed to you from a thread that happened a month ago.
I thought ark was making some sort of ironic commentary about the stereotyping of teachers.
(Full disclosure: my brother is a teacher at a public high school.)
The difference, of course, is that "performance" in many fields means out-competing, out-earning, out-bidding, out-maneuvering other people both within and outside your organization. Again, as I said somewhere upthread, you might could run schools on that "cut it or else" model, but at the risk of serving students very badly. Education is reproductive, and irreducibly labor-intensive, and it's a field in which the patient accumulation of social skills is presumed to be a plus: i.e. a fourth-grade teacher who's seen every student behavior possible over the last 20 years is generally supposed to be a better teacher, and is almost always found in better schools, than a low-paid, inexperienced new graduate.
Even though this does not contradict what you have said, I would change "white" to conservative. The South is mostly conservative. When the Democratic Party was home to conservatives, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic. Following the rise of modern conservativism with the Goldwater-Reaganites taking power in the Republican Party and the McGovernites ruling the roost in the Democratic Party, Southern conservatives shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. They did this first in voting Republican in national elections and then eventually re-registering as Republicans.
Rich, to the extent that you acknowledge that the de facto southern definition of "conservative" has been inseparable from (and tainted by) the race question, I won't press the point. For example, I'm pretty sure that Mississippi voters would have called the late, great Senator Theodore G. Bilbo a "conservative." They would have said the same thing about Strom Thurmond's race-baiting 1948 campaign---he was a famous "conservative," too. While I would certainly agree with you and David (and arkitektron, for that matter) that these two troglodytes had absolutely nothing to do with any honest version of conservatism, the empirical argument would be against us. This was the face beneath the mask of southern "conservatism" for well over a century, and even if it's now shed much of its Jim Crow mold, its ancestry is pretty hard to deny.
But remember that the voting dynamics of the South today are improving in one key respect: The rise of the black vote. This doesn't have much effect in the hardcore states like Mississippi or Alabama or South Carolina, but in plenty of quasi-border states like Virginia it can mean the difference between a race-baiting reactionary like George Allen and a socially conservative but totally within the mainstream politician like Jim Webb. Add to that the increasing number of college educated voters, throw in another fiasco or two like Iraq, and you might even see another realignment of sorts.
Yes, of course. It can't possibly be people observing and sharing their opinions. It's a "strategy" used by his enemies. Nothing ever just happens in your world, does it? It's always the coordinated work of people, probably right wingers, working behind the scenes.
You know, GoodFace, it's just possible that it might be---BOTH. Both honest questioning AND a lot of right wing generated noise. And you might say the same (though politically opposite) thing about the flap over McCain's "100 years" remark, which I'm sure that lots of Democrats will also try their best to run into the ground. As always, it's the sense of proportion that differentiates between the honest question and the dishonest obsession.
Few things "just happen" in political campaigns actually, IMO. Obama drew some adulation not seen by a lot of political figures; some people simply "observed" it perhaps, and I also think the "cult of Obama" was/is used as a way to undercut him by his opponents.
It is a complex thing, as are the tenure policies, which have plusses and minuses. Bob DMG touches on some of the many interrelated issues. My guess is you don't know much about it. If you do, let's hear it. I do know a lot about it. You want to wade in and talk about it, fine. If you prefer to attack me instead, so be it.
Not whining. Just pointed out (and showed) that "Whole Foods Liberal" does have an insulting connotation in some right-wing quarters. You denied that. End of story.
It is probably not much consolation to people who work under "at will" employment terms, but my impression from talking to my brother (and other teachers) on the subject is that teachers can be at least as frustrated by the inability to weed out good from bad as are non-teachers.
At the same time, it's not hard to understand why people are angered by a perceived lack of accountability. If you can lose your job at any time and for almost any reason, someone who has a multi-year process to look forward to before being fired is going to look fairly unsympathetic on economic grounds, even if they're being paid substantially less than you are.
I am deliberately shying away from the meat of the debate, but I do think that, in considering the overall working conditions and relative compensation of the teaching profession, job security relative to the average worker's has to be taken into account somewhere along the line. To put it in baseball terms, having a three-year guaranteed deal is probably worth a significant discount versus what the player would be paid year-to-year, just by virtue of providing more security.
Yes. Good ear.
Are you telling me that whenever someone refers to "a San Francisco liberal", that reference is other than strictly geographical??
solely geographical.
Southern conservativism (and in some instances all American conservativism) was infused with racism from colonial times to the 1970s.* Further, since the rise of Newt Gingrich (and maybe more importantly Rush Limbaugh**), southerners have largely defined what American conservativism is. Yet I don't see anything in the current mainstream of conservativism which is in the least racist. By contrast, the accpetance and promotion of raced-based AA programs is mainstream in the Democratic Party. I don't believe that is done out of anti-white or anti-Asian hatred, but it is, nonetheless, racist.
* It's hard to say just when this conservative racism ends in the mainstream. (I don't doubt it still exists on the fringes of so-called conservativism, much as anti-Semitism remains.) My understanding of history is that Hitlerism/WWII helped to undermine this racism and anti-Semitism more than any Americans ever could. But surely the playing out of the Civil Rights movement and its aftermath spelled the end. Yes, southern conservatives and their allies fought hard to stop the Civil Rights movement. And they united in opposition to most of the "remedy" programs (such as forced bussing). But as those programs played themselves out, conservatives in general tossed aside racial discrimination in favor of an equal treatment under the law philosophy. And that is where they are today.
** Limbaugh comes from somewhere in southern Missouri. While that is not "the deep South," its history and social attitudes are more southern than otherwise.
Indeed. People complaining about slackers and burnouts happens all the time in teachers' lounges etc.
Sure, but "anger" is not an argument, and like I said upthread, teacher pay is not a function of anything other than baseline economic reality, the nature of the job, and in and of itself shows the areas of incompatibility between certain aspects of teaching and capitalist economic imperatives. It is not because of evil capitalists or politicians. Dealing with education is like anything else: you have to strike a balance between a one-way worldview and the cost/benefit reality of actual ideas put into practice. As an example, I don't like guns myself, but I understand that my view of guns does not apply to people living in Montana and/or people who do like guns, so the legislation issue and my personal worldview are totally different. So, although I am a pretty hardcore liberal, I don't yap much about "gun control." Too often people conflate the two. In this case, a certain amount of security is healthy and necessary in any work environment; too much can lead to stagnation. As I said upthread, there needs to be a balance between public and private sector thinking. "Smash the union and make the arrogant teachers as accountable as people in other jobs that are not similar" is not a productive approach, nor is "#### the public. We are underpaid and underappreciated."
And on it goes.
.
Yep. I just said--and think--that the "cult of Obama" issue was "overplayed", not that it was "non-existent." And, like I said, since Wright hit the news, I've heard a lot less about it. It was more of a front issue when Obama was riding high.
While clearly the prima facie evidence is on your side with regard to Allen, I think a fairer, less partisan analysis of him would show that he was not (and is not) "a race-baiting reactionary.*" Rather, Allen was mostly just not a good politician. My understanding is that he learned the term "macaca" from his north African mother. It was probably entrenched in his vocabulary. And he should have been smart enough to realize that others would find it offensive. Yet, in a most impolitic way, he referred to one of Webb's operatives as "macaca" and it ultimately buried him.
* By that, I mean that I don't think George Allen personally judges people based on their race. Beside his north African mother, he was raised by his father, who not only was a famous football coach, but was known for being fair to all of his players, regardless of race. I should look this up, but I think Allen was one of the first coaches to play a non-white QB in the 1960s, Roman Gabriel.
I was about to say "Ferragamo?"
I wasn't saying that it was. I was saying that job security is something that has tangible economic benefits, and failure to acknowledge that in discussing the U.S.'s educational situation is a serious mistake.
I'm not saying teachers need to beat their breasts and wail about how unfair it is that the rest of the country suffers under heinous employment terms, and how it's only fair that they get stuck with long hours and lousy pay in exchange. I'm just saying it's wise, both from a tactical perspective and from a practical, solutions-oriented perspective, not to treat it as just one of those things that comes with the job.
Concur, as I indicate above--that, along with acknowledging that teaching is not the same as working for a private corporation. It is also easy to understand people being "angry" when they feel like they work their asses off and get treated like crap, blamed for larger societal issues and mocked as being incompetent and stupid.
Good to see we're in a frenzy of agreement.
Yeah, but remember I used to teach in public schools. I've gone to parties or met people and have them tell me how easy my job was, how I only did it because I was a loser, or tell me they'd watched O'Reilly and knew how ###### up the union was. Some people would say nice things, too, but it's not like telling someone "I work for ______ Inc."
So, this conversation may not be much, but it is a start.
Wait. Isn't watching O'Reilly part of the definition of a loser?
The whole central question aside, I don't understand people who pull this kind of #### at all. Maybe it's just my upbringing, but what kind of an ####### do you have to be to go off on someone at a party about how easy their job is? Completely independent of whether it was accurate or not, I just can't imagine doing something like that. Never mind better math and science education -- America is obviously in dire need of better etiquette education.
So, this conversation may not be much, but it is a start.
Well, don't get too encouraged -- as I say, I start with one checkmark on the teachers' side. :)
This is, to put it mildly, inaccurate. People who can't "cut it" routinely keep their jobs, get promoted, get stuck in career cul-de-sacs but don't get fired, and so on. Mediocrity rules, baby. In education, in business, in government, everywhere. The idea that teaching is some sort of oddball backwater where incompetence reigns, while in business the cream rises to the top and efficiency is law, is... misguided.
Anyone have any exit polls?
Well, it was usually more in a patronizing way, but yeah, it used to happen quite a bit. Once, I had a tutoring gig with a kid, years ago, and as I came into the living room, a commentator was on, going off on teachers. The dad said "Are you in the union?" and looked like he wanted to punch me. I said I was there to help his son, and we could talk politics later.
But, hell, I understood. Kid had it tough at home, grades were dropping, mom had cancer, the dad was working two jobs--I think it was Steinbeck who said in East of Eden we all have our "cup of bitterness."
Well, don't get too encouraged
No worries there. But civility is better than nothing.
Except for the fact that he was wearing Confederate flag pin on his lapel as long ago as when he sat for his high school yearbook photo in 1967. In Southern California. And made a habit of collecting and displaying Confederate flags in his homes as an adult. And displayed a noose hanging from a tree in his Richmond law office. And according to at least some of his college classmates, liked to throw the "N" word around (others said they never heard him use it).
But yeah, other than "macaca" he was no race-baiter.
I notice that Hillary is now saying the future of her candidacy depends on her winning the Pennsylvania primary. Gee. Could you set the bar any lower?
I'd tend to agree on a gut level, but I have worked in education my whole career (although in adult developmental ed, we do not have tenure--I have a full-time gig with benefits, but no tenure) so I don't say much about it.
Mediocrity of course is actively combated here, albeit wholly subjectively, by the 'ignore user' option.
Yeah, L.A. Ram QBs probably all look alike to you, right Rich?
I meant it only in a general sense. That their are islands of exception I have no doubt whatever. I have to admit I didn't quite follow your "so I don't say much about it.".
I see that Bill Clinton is now playing the race card, by claiming the Obama campaign is playing the race card. Ah, now Hillary is playing the last minute, "I'm willing to nuke Iran" card. What a lovely couple.
I don't have much exp with private sector work (only consulting) so I think it would be wrong for me to make many statements about what it is like to work in a company/law firm or whatever. People I have known who have worked in private sector situations, however, do not seem to be living on the edge in intense, red-in-tooth-and-claw, high-wire, perform-or-be-gone situations, and firings etc are a big deal. In addition, I've heard stuff about execs "coasting", people keeping jobs based on politics when they were morons, etc.
But that is a small sample.
Maybe so, but it does jibe with my experience. I've long wanted to write a book or even an article exploding the myth that business as it's regularly conducted gives us an even remotely efficient model for getting things done, but there always seems to be something just a little higher on my to-do list.
Thanks for the clarification.
Well, I've only ever worked in the private sector, so I suppose I can offer my experience.
"Living on the edge" is putting it a little too strongly. Worrying that I might get fired doesn't keep me up at night -- not on a regular basis (though it does happen now and again). There is rarely an explicit, or even implicit, threat of losing one's job on a day-to-day basis.
However ... that possibility never really leaves one's mind, either. It definitely affects your attitude towards your job, and towards the demands your job makes of you. Sometimes it's much less of a concern -- if you're doing something vital for your employer, and it's specialized enough that you'd be difficult to replace, you don't worry much about being fired.
The employee's situation figures into it heavily, too. If you have a comfortable savings and no major long-term financial commitments, you can afford to be more relaxed about your job, since losing it is less of a big deal. In general, however, those two factors are things that don't go together -- young people have the latter without the former, people who've been in the workforce for a while may have the former, but probably have the latter, too. Quite a few people don't have either one, and those people are most stressed about their jobs because of how much damage getting fired would do to their lives.
It is by no means hell, and don't get me wrong -- there absolutely are cases where people keep their jobs, for one reason or another, despite abysmal performance. In general, though, these people are the exception, and for the average worker, it is a significant source of stress.
Well, we're all just riffing anecdotal here, but I'm in education, have tenure, and my wife works in a law firm. The differences in experiences couldn't be starker. She is constantly evaluated on performance, her salary and future hinge on every evaluation, with the possibility of demotion, de-equitization, promotion, and even eventual dismissal all as possibilities. I am virtually invulnerable, have no such anxieties. Short of dropping my pants in the classroom, I'll receive my paycheck into perpetuity. The incentives to work and excel are largely internal ones, though there are guild pressures if I want to be ambitious and well-regarded. But it's not remotely the same. And, she works harder than I do (and is justly better compensated for her harder work).
I'm kind of impartial here, since I've almost always worked for myself and have never had to worry about getting fired, but don't some people actually function better when they're not always facing the Sword of Damocles hanging over them? Is a feeling of job insecurity always conducive to better performance? Isn't it entirely possible that always having to worry about your job is just as likely to distract you than it is to spur you? In some types of jobs, at least, isn't constant pressure and oversight often likely to steer employees towards short term results as opposed to a long-term strategy? Was the revolving door managerial style of the Yankees in the 80's and early 90's more conducive to success than having Joe Torre around for 12 years in a row?
I guess what I'm saying is that the relationship of job security to job performance doesn't necessarily lead to a one size fits all answer. Not to mention that there are plenty of points along the job security spectrum between Major League manager and the United States Postal Service.
Only nine more months until we'll be inaugurating John McCain into the Oval Office.
I don't know really what you're getting at, Andy, but Joe succeeded in NY, no question. But he didn't succeed in NY in anything remotely like a "tenured" job, but instead constantly faced job anxiety. His - or any manager's - experience is more like the typical job than a tenured teacher's.
I'm sure there's no "one size fits all" thing, but, as I asked, I would like to hear what the best rationale for public school tenure is. I'm not suggesting there isn't a good argument. In my experience, as I said, the motivations are largely, if not entirely, internal since there are very few external pressures.
More power to your wife, JC. That's a helluva a lot of stress to have to deal with. I love huge bursts of sudden, death-defying stress, but the day-to-day stuff? No thanks. Must make for some fascinating discussions at your house.
Under "any", I'll take a shot, having put in a couple of years at a public university. One of the best arguments in favor of tenure for a public high school teacher might be my dad. He taught creative writing to 10th graders for 20 years, and by all accounts his students loved him. He was voted to give the commencement address by the student body five times in those 20 years (in a school of 2000 students who were never confined or encouraged to pick someone associated with the high school). His approach, to put it mildly, was unorthodox--this was when jackets and ties were de riguer, and he showed up for class wearing garden stained khakis and a t-shirt. No one told him how to teach, so he spent 70 hours a week sharing with his students his love for literature, for writing, and his knowledge of how good writing changes the writer and the reader. One of the at risk kids he turned around went on to become a great, great state supreme court justice. My best guess is, that were it not for tenure, he would have been forced to conform more, to be a different and less effective teacher, and therefore a different man. He wouldn't have been able to do it, and would have found something else to do for a living.
On the general question, I can see the argument on both sides. There are undoubtedly plenty of tenured teachers who don't belong there, but if you look at the history of tenure you can find very good reasons for insulating teachers from political pressure, especially on the university level.
And on the other side, I can certainly think of plenty of lawyers who've done great societal damage because of the win at all costs demands put on them by their employer. The bottom line of many law firms---might not have benefitted from some sort of a tenure system, but society's bottom line may well have. Not to mention the sort of job pressures faced by prosecutors or police officers who are on a de facto quota system, and often press dubious cases just to ward off charges that they're merely showing up at work and hanging around the 7-11.
My question is not about whether there are bad lawyers and bad teachers. I don't deny that. It's about the rationale for tenure for HS teachers. Private school teachers don't have tenure, do they? Do private schools suffer b/c of this?
Remember, I am out of the system now and work adult ed in a branch (cont ed/extension) that has no tenure, so I have a full-time college job with benes and protection (and two part-time gigs on the side) but no tenure per se. I like the system in many ways. OTOH, there are many people who never get full-time gigs, who are worthy of them, so that is a downside. I have many thoughts about the issue, but I would rather see E-X weigh in first, or anyone else for that matter.
Joey,
Given all the smacktalk on this thread from me and the others about how Obama was going to take PA and is going to clock McCain in November, we deserved that.
Edit: Well, I guess my man Andy talked a little smack, come to think of it. Something tells me Joey would have taunted us regardless.
Sorry, but I think it is. If your position is simply "protectionism is xenophobic" well, ok. Next topic.
My smack was about Hillary's negative numbers, which aren't going away. I predicted on one of those Washington Post sites that she'd win by 53.5 to 46.5, and it looks as if I was about 3% off. Big Whoops. Hillary's style of campaigning appeals to voters' fears and is right out of the Republican playbook. But Pennsylvania isn't the entire country, she still doesn't have the likely delegate math in her favor, and there are going to be a lot of superdelegates who will be very reluctant to appear to reward her for the way she's conducted her campaign over the past two months. You've seen that already over the past six weeks, as Obama has picked up the overwhelming majority of previously uncommitted superdelegates---even in the aftermath of Ohio and Texas.
And if those polls saying that her supporters won't vote for Obama (and vice versa) are to be believed, then why don't the national polls show McCain with big double digit leads against both of them? I doubt if the independents are going that much against him, and the Democrats don't have that big of a registration advantage to counter all those alleged defectors. Those bloated "If Hillary or Obama doesn't get the nomination, I'm voting for McCain" statements by angry Democrats simply don't compute against the general election polls. There are going to be some voters like that come November, but nothing like what people are claiming now.
I'll say it again: Polls in April don't elect you in November. And McCain still has George Bush to answer for, which may be even more of a problem for him than Rev. Wright is for Obama. Whatever nasty and true things you may say about him, it wasn't Rev. Wright who lied our way into Iraq.
I doubt they really care "how she's conducted her campaign." This is politics. What they would likely be most concerned about is supporting her despite Obama having edges in the delegate count and in the so-called "popular vote," which could throw the party into upheaval.
What I don't get is WTF the superdelegates are for, if it's merely to rubber stamp the results of the delegate count/popular vote. Why have them at all, if they're not actually supposed to be a meaningful part of the process?
And why the calls from Howard Dean and such to have the superdelegates come to an immediate decision in order to stop the election? Democrats talk all the time about having "every vote count," and alleged voter intimidation and such -- but they don't actually want to have the election. Why can't the nominee be decided at the convention, like it used to be?
That would be an astute observation... if only Democrats were running against Bush. But they don't seem to understand that they're not.
Since Andy was comparing the Bush albatross to the Wright albatross--and the Republicans aren't running against Wright--the comparison holds.
I disagree, Dayn. Obama is linked to Wright; but McCain isn't linked to Bush. Why would McCain "have to answer for" Bush?
I love deadpan humor.
He's linked to Bush in a much more vital way: he wants to perpetuate Bush's war in Iraq, which is the most pressing issue of the day*. Sure, Bush isn't running, but the "Bush Doctrine" is still very much in play. He'll have to answer for marching in lockstep with Bush on Iraq and, more recently, tax cuts and torture.
(* - It won't surprise me if, by the fall, the economy polls as a bigger issue for voters.)
I don't care enough about this irrlevant issue to respond in full. Let me just say that I think yours is a partisan and distorted spin on Allen. So if you want to be a partisan, believe what you will.
What "distorted spin"? I repeated a series of facts. Which of those facts did I get wrong? Ryan Lizza wrote a long piece for the New Republic that detailed much of this in the wake of "macaca"; he was the reporter who first confronted Allen about his longstanding affection for the Confederate flag. Allen never denied any of it.
Mediocre, of course, means average. So inevitably, there is truth in what Arki is saying. Not everyone is going to be "above average" anywhere.
However, unless a private business is so large that it can easily absorb the cost of poor performers or is in such an uncompetitive industry that poor performers don't cause profits to become losses, a private enterprise cannot afford to keep underperforming employees -- that is, sub-mediocre -- unless they are paying those employees substandard wages. To put it in economists' jargon, a competitive business will go bust if it pays wages higher than the marginal productivity of its labor.
Some private businesses (though not most) are in uncompetitive industries, so their margins are such that they can survive despite employing underperformers. Good examples of these kinds of businesses are those which contract with the government on cost-plus contracts. Having bad employees just means higher costs; and those costs are passed on to the taxpayers.
Public schools are mostly non-competitive.* They get their money from the taxpayers and they get their neighborhood kids, regardless of how many underperformers they employ.** That makes them similar to businesses in uncompetitive industries in this regard. However, unlike Arki's implication, this is not the rule in the vast majority of businesses. If it were, we would be a far poorer country. Our national wealth is not based on exxtracting natural resources. Our wealth is exacted almost entirely from the efficiencies and added values of our largely competitive private industries. And those companies in those sectors don't survive if they allow sub-mediocre performers to hold jobs without merit.
* There is some small degree of competition with public schools. In many states and districts, students are allowed to transfer to other schools or charters or similar outside programs, if they are unsatisfied with a local school. As well, people with the incomes to do so, choose to not reside in areas with lousy or underperforming public schools. As such, they are exercising consumer choice, which then affects the ability of a school to stay open if it cannot keep students.... When compared with most aspects of government service, public schools are actually in a very competitive sector. Except for the poor, school consumers have degrees of choice. Contrast that with the choice you have with your public works department or your superior court.
** While somewhat misguided, the NCLB Act can result in the closure of poorly performing schools, if they go on year after year not achievinig certain test scores. This is fairly parallel to a competitive business which closes if it fails to provide a good service to its customers.
The reason, btw, I think this aspect of the NCLB Act is misguided is because (as I understand the law) it misdefines what a "failed school" is. If you take a school where the average student scores, for example, 30% going in and scores 45% going out, that would be a "failed school" under the NCLB regime, as it failed over time to bring its averages up to say, 60%. (All of the numbers I am using here are examples only, but make the point.) Whereas another school, which had its average student scoring 88% going in and 80% going out, that would not be a failed school, because its end-point average was well above the passing grade.... Assuming my understanding of the NCLB Act is roughly correct, I think a better yardstick would be to grade the schools' (or teachers') performance based on the relative progress, not the absolute end-point.
That's a better argument. Still, McCain didn't get us into the war, and hasn't been responsible for the prosecution of it. But I do grant you have a point (though I don't think Hillary or Obama would pull out any time soon themselves).
But everyone wants tax cuts, except for liberals looking to punish people making 200K per year (*). And nobody really cares about the torture issue, at least not enough for it to affect their vote; it's basically a hammer to use if one doesn't like Bush. (It's also rather odd to argue that McCain would have to answer for Bush on torture, given that McCain is a former POW and is more aligned with liberals on that issue.)
(*) Note from last week's debate when Gibson asked Obama why Obama would favor increasing the capital gains tax when history shows that when the capital gains tax is decreased, revenues go up. Obama's response was -- incredibly -- that he would still look to raise the capital gains tax for the purposes of fairness.
The most down-trodden class of people in this country are those making $200,000 per year. The contempt with which these people are spoken of is stunning.
As I've said before, the tax cuts don't bother me. Tax cuts without commensurate cuts in spending bother me. Tax cuts in the face of ramped-up spending really bother me.
And nobody really cares about the torture issue, at least not enough for it to affect their vote; it's basically a hammer to use if one doesn't like Bush. (It's also rather odd to argue that McCain would have to answer for Bush on torture, given that McCain is a former POW and is more aligned with liberals on that issue.)
He had the moral high ground on this issue once upon a time. However, when he voted against the bill that would've forced intel agencies to abide by the Army Field Manual he ceded it.
The most down-trodden class of people in this country are those making $200,000 per year.
I'd say the fact that they're making 200 large a year means that, ipso facto, they're not "down-trodden." Scorned? Maybe. But I'd reserve a word as loaded as downtrodden for the, you know, downtrodden.
Okay, Chip, you are clearly a partisan. I am just the opposite. (If you've read enough of my posts, you would know that.) But if you cannot see how your take on Allen is partisan spin and you want me to waste my time on this pointless non-issue, I will bother with it:
"he was wearing Confederate flag pin on his lapel as long ago as when he sat for his high school yearbook photo in 1967. In Southern California."
First, what political views a high school boy or a college boy for that matter had just are not that imortant 30 years afterward. Most people are more extreme one way or the other when they are young. You seem pretty extreme (in your partisanship), perhaps that is because you are a juvenile. (I don't say that as an insult. I was more extreme when I was 24 than I am at 44.) so your statement that Allen wore a flag pin when he was in high school is interesting, but meaningless to me.
Second, while the Confederate flag symbol to you or to me or to most black Americans could be seen as offensive or racially insensitive, it likely meant nothing more than regional pride to a boy raised primarily in Virginia.
Third, you point out he was living in So Cal in 1967. It's certainly possible that because he was so far removed from where he considered home, Virginia, he wanted to have a symbol which represented home to him. Whereas, if he were living in his home state, having such a symbol at that time would have meant less to him. I have neighbors who are from Sri Lanka. Their home not only has a Sri Lankan flag on display, but they have tons of pictures and sculptures in their house which constantly remind them of their homeland. If they were back in Colombo, they likely would not have any of these things on display.
"And made a habit of collecting and displaying Confederate flags in his homes as an adult."
Again, consider for a moment that to many southern whites, that symbol is not intended to offend anyone, but rather is for them simply a matter of pride of place. I personally think this view is wrong. But I am a Californian who has no positive attachments to Dixie. It would be assinine of me to assume that what I think that symbol means (racism, slavery, etc.) is the same as what a contemporary white Southerner who is proud of his origins thinks it means.... Perhaps this is a bad analogy, but I have an Israeli flag. To me it represents Jewish pride and a warm association with my heritage. But to many (if not all) Palestinians, that flag is offensive. It means their oppression. My intent is not to offend anyone with that flag. If I followed your highly partisan charge, you would have me owning that flag in order to approve of oppression (or even to acknowledge this alleged oppression). But oppression is the last thing I think of when I see the Israeli flag.
"And according to at least some of his college classmates, liked to throw the "N" word around (others said they never heard him use it)."
I have never used the N-word in my life, other than to quote others.* It was never a part of my vocabularly, growing up in a mostly white, mostly upper-middle class, highly educated town in California. That was probably not the case in Allen's childhood in Virginia. He likely heard and used that term. I would imagine that was true of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Al Gore and Jesse Jackson and Harold Ford. Yet because one is exposed to and uses that word, ugly as it is, does not mean necessarily that he is a racist. It might, however, mean that he is insensitive or indiscrete or a poor politician. Without evidence that George Allen dislikes black people or has mistreated them, it is reasonable to assume, that if he really did (as these ex-classmates from 30 years earlier claim) use that word, that Allen was (as a collegian) insensitive. That is far from being a racist.
* But I did hear and use the Yiddish term, schwartze, which means "black." No one in my family is racist, so the use of the term was never intentionally belittling. To my memory, it was always the opposite. My older brother might have said in 1972: "Of course we'll beat the Russians in baskeball. We have all the schwartzes." (Little did he know the Soviets had all the referees.) Yet, outside of the family, we never would have used such language. It was the argot of our household. If I was dating a gentile, my sister would have asked me when I got home, "How's the shickse?" But in front of the shickse, my sister wouldn't use any Yiddish terms.... I think, therefore, the distinction is that, if you have reasonable discretion, you can have an argot within your group or family which might be offensive to outsiders, even if you mean no offense.... With George Allen, I sense that he lacks discretion and did offend people when he meant nothing by it.
The economist Bruce Bartlett, one of the original supply-siders (he worked for Kemp and helped craft the Kemp-Roth tax cut bill that became their touchstone) wrote about what he labelled the GOP's bait-and-switch tax strategy today in the LA Times.
Well, are we talking what the Democrats should do to campaign against McCain or what the ideal policy would be.
Both taxes and torture aren't good issues to get McCain on from the standpoint of the Democratic candidate.
On taxes, we can debate policies for deficit spending or who benefits from tax cuts until the cows come home, but even if the sums are relatively small, the average American, already hit hard by energy and food costs, is going to be pretty upset at even the possibility that their 10% bracket becomes 15% or their 25% becomes 28%.
Torture also doesn't seem to be a big issue with the voting public in general. And the big problem here is that it opens up a door for McCain to make his narrative. The Democrats shouldn't let McCain remind the public that he was injured in war, tortured in prison for years.
If the Democrats try to run against Bush's 3rd term, they'll have a long uphill struggle. The public likes McCain and he's no overgrown fratboy unlike the current officeholder. One can't say he doesn't understand the torture issue. One can't say he's some milquetoast sending other people's kids to die when he's been in war before and has a son in Iraq - a lot of blue-collar voters have sons in Iraq too and McCain can say he understands how they feel in a way neither Obama or Clinton can.
A lot of people here say that McCain's war hero status is irrelevant to the task ahead. That may be true, but most Americans *don't* think that way.
The best way to attack McCain is probably what Obama's been doing in small doses. Keep the attacks broad so that McCain can't make points - portray him in very broad terms as a chainsaw where America needs a scalpel, portray him as generally out of touch with 21st century America.
McCain's story is one of the most powerful tools at his disposal and the Democrats should do their best to take that weapon away from him. Don't give McCain a chance to emphasize his experiences as a POW. Don't give McCain a chance to talk about the worries he has for his son in Iraq. Don't give McCain a chance to talk about his Bangladeshi adopted daughter and how the McCains brought her over at the age of 2 so that they could take care of her medical treatment.
Make the attacks very general, don't give McCain a target, remember that most American people are voting for president, not head policy wonk. The wider the broadsides, the more opportunity there is for McCain to stumble and flail and lose his temper.