Ross is right that populist conservatism needs elites who are not in denial about political realities.  One reason why this is necessary is so that populist conservatism acquires some substance and definition beyond the reflex of deriding Beltway insiders and their all-important cocktails.  What has been amazing to me as I watch and participate in the back-and-forth between Palinites and Palin critics is how readily the admirers of Palin’s so-called populism adopt the definition of populism set by those establishmentarians most instinctively hostile to it.  Under this hostile definition, populism is necessarily loud, proud and ignorant, because this flatters establishmentarian assumptions about their own views.  According to establishmentarians, populists typically know little or nothing about policy, to which those who rally around anyone remotely resembling a populist often reply, “Yes, our candidate knows nothing–isn’t it great?”  The candidate’s admirers think they are sticking it to poncy elitists when they revel in their candidate’s cluelessness and “good instincts,” but they are just helping to confirm the prejudices of anti-populists and reinforce the status quo. 

Rather than offering a coherent alternative on behalf of the many, this kind of populism is readily co-opted and deployed in the service of established interests that have no intention of changing anything important.  In the end, this pseudo-populism anoints existing policy, no matter how flawed and directed to serving particular interests, with the chrism of popular enthusiasm for a certain candidate.  As I said before, populism without policy substance is not populism at all, but a reflex doomed to being rejected as the hollow protest that it is.  The Palinites who want to identify populist conservatism with her are setting up populist conservatism for failure by defining it as little more than lifestyle politics, contempt for mainstream media and the occasional flag-waving. 

This is called populism because crowds will always respond favorably to generic appeals to patriotism, having government work for them and being represented by “one of us,” but in the absence of anything more it grows old pretty quickly.  One way to recognize pseudo-populism is how easy it is, and how quickly it loses its lustre.  One of the most important populist goals ought to be entitlement reform, since there are few things more threatening to the long-term well-being of the people than exploding entitlement costs, but that would entail controversy, political risk and telling the public unpleasant truths about the unsustainability of existing entitlements and the folly of adding on more.  What distinguishes real populism from cheap demaoguery, among other things, is the willingness to tell people that they cannot have it all and to govern as if that were true.

Apparently the Joe the Plumber rhetoric is so insipid that even Palin feels embarrassed to have to use it.  From Tapper:

The Alaska governor said the election in 18 days “is the choice between a candidate who will raise your taxes and that threatens our future, and a leader who’s going to Washington to work for Joe the Plumber, as you heard a lot about last night. And I, I begged our speechwriters, ‘Don’t make me say Joe the Plumber, please, in any speeches.’

“And I was asked, ‘Just one time, just at this fundraiser.'”

Maybe she resents the displacement of old Joe Sixpack from the spotlight.  You would think that she would have more sympathy with her co-running mate as someone whom the McCain camp also failed to vet thoroughly.

The culture war within the conservative movement over Palin will ultimately destroy the movement, and the Republican Party, if both sides don’t come to some sort of an understanding. ~D.R. Tucker

This invests Palin’s candidacy and the reactions to it with far more significance than they deserve.  Assuming McCain loses, which seems likely, the selection of Palin is of limited, temporary importance for the political fortunes of the GOP.  After next month, barring some tremendous changes in the campaign, Palin will return to Alaska and will not become a dominant force in Republican politics nationally.  The reactions to Palin are important insofar as they reflect existing tensions and resentments among conservatives, but Palin serves here mainly as a focus for old arguments over the direction of movement and party.  On one side, you mostly have her critics who are also typically critical of either the pseudo-populism practiced by the GOP for the past several decades or who are critical of the prominence of social issues in Republican rhetoric.  This does not break down neatly, as you have Peggy Noonan, who cannot fairly be described as anything other than pro-life, now describing Palin as an example of “a new vulgarization in American politics,” and Kathleen Parker, an early Palin booster, declaring her “out of her league.”  Quin Hillyer at AmSpec has been shaking his head in disbelief for weeks.  

While there may be other critics who have found the prominent role of social issues in justifying Palin’s selection dissatisfying, it is not accurate to say that all criticism of Palin on the right is simply a matter of Northeast corridor establishmentarians, moderates and pro-choicers scoring points off their old foes.  To the extent that disagreement over Palin does expose existing rifts, the latter are trying to advance their old arguments against the prominence of (pseudo-)populist appeals and a focus on abortion in Republican rhetoric by pointing to Palin as an example of the sort of political mistakes these priorities encourage, but what Palinites seem not to understand is that they are playing into the hands of establishmentarians and pro-choice Republicans by identifying her candidacy as an embodiment of social conservatism.  Insofar as her candidacy is a failure, her admirers have set themselves up to have their views tied to the fate of that candidacy.

Tucker makes an odd claim that wrecks his entire argument:

Conservative unease with Palin has little to do with her educational level or economic class; Rick Santorum is highly-educated and not exactly “working-class”, but he would have generated the same negative heat from the folks who currently dislike Palin had McCain selected him as his running mate.

Actually, educational level and economic class have a great deal to do with it, but more because Palin and her admirers seem to revel in touting both.  Above all, it is her bearing that grates on a lot of her critics.  Quoth Noonan: “She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation….”  Now Santorum would not have been selected because he had just lost his re-election bid in a swing state in a rout and he openly and strenuously opposed McCain during the primaries, but few on the right would say that Santorum did not, on the whole, speak seriously.  Sometimes he was overzealous and perhaps hyperbolic, but if there was anything the matter with Santorum it was rather the grim seriousness he seemed to bring to everything, at least in the final year of his Senate career. 

Let’s imagine for a moment that Santorum was a viable VP choice who had just somehow been re-elected to the Senate and who had not spent much of the presidential campaign speaking out against John McCain as little more than a sell-out.  There is no question that he would have generated the same hostility from the left (and from libertarians), and his foreign policy views would be just as dissatisfying to non-interventionists, but it is undeniable that he would be taken far more seriously by all of Palin’s critics because, whatever one may say against him, he is a significantly more serious figure with a much firmer grasp on policy.  Even his outlandish foreign policy views are views that he has developed; he would not have been fed lines about Venezuela and Russia–he dreaded the Venezuelan “menace” before it was trendy.  He could cite the unorthodox policies he championed from prison reform to foreign debt relief to Africa AIDS programs to pushing for action on Darfur; whether or not one finds his policies worth supporting, he had a record that could be taken seriously.  His public remarks were not simply cookie-cutter, three-legs-of-the-Republican-stool talking points.  As the Brooks column on Santorum from two years ago shows, there was respect for Santorum’s accomplishments that transcended disagreements over social and cultural issues.  Santorum’s choice to make his campaign a referendum on hyper-aggressive foreign policy, which was absolutely crazy in 2006 and would be even more so today, distracted everyone from his genuine strengths and his record of collaborating with members of the other party on his unorthodox agenda.  It would have been impossible to dismiss Santorum as a lightweight, as Brooks noted back in ’06:

His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama’s recent book.   

Considering how highly Brooks regards Obama’s sophistication, that is high praise indeed.  That was the tragedy of Santorum, who went beyond even McCain in making hawkishness and obsessing about alleged foreign threats almost the entirety of his re-election campaign and who failed to emphasize all those elements of his career that made him an impressive Senator.  Santorum would have, incidentally, done far, far more to reinforce McCain’s image as the unorthodox Republican than Palin and her thin record could have ever done, but the combativeness that drove him to fixate on the “gathering storm” that he imagined (and I do mean imagined) was looming on the horizon is same trait that kept pushing him into conflict with McCain and ultimately wore out Pennsylvanian voters’ patience. 

There seems to be an unfortunate, growing tendency among Palinites to assume that her conservative critics must dislike her ultimately because she is pro-life (or religious), which misses all the ways in which she and Santorum, for example, are so profoundly different in terms of qualifications, understanding of policy and preparation for high office.  In fact, I would say that had Santorum somehow still been in office and had not been such a harsh critic of McCain, he would have been the new fusionists’ dream selection, satisfying interventionists and social conservatives equally, and his selection would have driven home how blind the GOP is to the profoundly misguided nature and deep unpopularity of their foreign policy vision.  Even so, what you would not have seen with a McCain/Santorum campaign are attacks from conservative writers and pundits that Santorum was unprepared and clueless.  In recognizing the truth of that the Palinites might learn an important lesson about their favorite candidate.

There is an idea circulating out there that the killer combo of Joe the Plumber and “spread the wealth” may save the election for McCain.  Now you might say that this is just whistling past the graveyard, but that doesn’t do it credit.  This is really more like four-part harmony singing in a freshly-dug grave as the dirt is being piled on. 

This is something that I didn’t elaborate on last night, but the idea that the message of Spread The Wealth would be a political loser at the present time is bizarre, which makes McCain’s insistence on identifying Obama as the “spread the wealth” candidate even more bizarre.  I mean, does McCain want to get crushed in a landslide?  Let’s think about this.  There is an economic downturn coming on the heels of an era of wage stagnation and growing economic inequality, the financial sector has imploded thanks to the combined blunders of government and holders of concentrated wealth and Obama’s use of a phrase that on its own could easily be mistaken for an expression of neo-Harringtonian distributism is supposed to be politically radioactive?  Consolidation of power, concentration of wealth and centralism all stand condemned for having created the present fiasco, and there is supposed to be a political downside to talking about distributing wealth? 

Contra Pethokoukis, Long’s slogan was Share Our Wealth, which definitely had a more direct appeal to economic solidarity and redistribution than “spread the wealth” suggests.  In theory, a true believer in an unfettered market would hold that his economic model more equitably and efficiently creates and then spreads the wealth, but there is no disagreement that wealth can and should be “spread around.”  McCain halfway hinted at this last night, but he had already tried to make the use of the phrase into something terrible.  Integral to a social vision of a broad middle class of property-holders is the idea that wealth is widely and more or less evenly distributed, and there is an assumption in this vision that this is best for political and social stability, as it prevents the sort of dangerous stratification that prevails in societies in which a wealthy oligarchy dominates a poor underclass.  If conservatives cede distributist language to left-liberals, they are not only abandoning an important part of their intellectual and political tradition, but they are also surrendering their ability to speak on behalf of middle-class Americans and they appear to be giving up on the idea that a relatively more free market system can better distribute wealth than a welfarist system organized by the central government.

Then again, the frequent attack on Obama’s redistributive policies* seems bizarre in the wake of the bailout that McCain also supported, which is very plainly a redistribution of our wealth to financial institutions.  The argument in its favor is supposed to be that we will all suffer if it is not done, but there is no question that it is ultimately redistributive.  No one who supported the bailout can credibly fling the label socialist as an insult or use “spread the wealth” as a bludgeon.  It is a clear act of the government using its power to take taxpayers’ dollars (or funds borrowed on public credit) and allocate it elsewhere.  Even though the bailout provokes at least a large plurality to strong opposition, both candidates supported it, so it is not clear that the bailout or talk of redistributive policies hurts one more than the other.

*Let’s also remember that this entire discussion is premised on the assumption that Obama would reduce taxes on most middle-class households, and the issue at stake is whether he should raise taxes on those with higher incomes.

Why am I hearing all this glowing stuff about my president this fall? Oh, yeah: It’s a way of knocking Governor Palin. What a dunce, certainly as compared with that brainiac Reagan. ~Jay Nordlinger

Nordinger’s remarks reflect what seems to me to be a very strange habit on the right, which is to forego independent analysis of the merits of a candidate and base one’s judgement on the degree of hostility shown to the candidate by one’s opponents.  Ever since the cognoscenti wrongly declared Reagan to be lacking in intelligence and policy acumen, it is now gospel that any criticism of a Republican politician that says he or she is lacking in intelligence or policy acumen is equally wrong.  It might be that Reagan had demonstrated a better grasp of policy and had a greater interest in ideas than his critics gave him credit for; it does not necessarily follow that Palin is being criticized in the same inaccurate way.  Perhaps in terms of raw intelligence Reagan and Palin may not be all that different, but how did each one make use of that intelligence?  One of the standard raps against Mr. Bush is that he is not intelligent, which is not really true.  What is so much worse about Mr. Bush is that he is reasonably intelligent but seems to lack interest in learning about things he doesn’t know, and he seems unusually resistant to information that does not conform to his assumptions.  Palin displays many of the same characteristics, but in addition to an apparent lack of curiosity there is apparently a kind of resentment of those who know more than she does, which is the worst trait in someone not already familiar with policy matters.     

Were the Republicans to nominate for President one Mr. Camacho (warning: some profanity) and a journalist said something unflattering about his grasp of the finer points of agricultural policy, you can already hear the refrains of “they also said Reagan was a dunce” and “who expects a candidate to know everything about price supports or to know the name of the agriculture minister of Peru?”  (Of course, no one ever asks Palin questions that are anywhere near that detailed.)  It’s as if there is no objective way to compare different candidates, so conservatives have to rely on the extent of media hostility to determine their candidates’ merits. 

Another response is to make excuses steeped in anti-intellectualism: “Palin may not know much, but she has good instincts.”  Why are the two always set in opposition to each other?  Why is it that the people with good instincts are invariably uninterested in knowledge?  How can they have good instincts if they do not have an instinct for wanting to learn more at all times?  It is undoubtedly true that Palin has practical knowledge about a number of things, but what we do not see from her defenders is any kind of argument that her practical knowledge is applicable in the position she is trying to obtain.  The argument that Palinites keep coming back to is that Palin and Reagan are the same and are being treated the same way by journalists who are supposed to be imputing stupidity to anyone who espouses a right-leaning point of view, which has the effect of diminishing Reagan rather than building up Palin.  McCain has adopted a similar argument as a way of defending his decision, and this is that many people said Reagan had no foreign policy experience (even though he understood the relevant issues in some depth) and people say the same thing about Palin, so they must therefore be wrong about Palin’s readiness.  We heard the argumentum ad Reaganum when Bush was criticized for his lack of foreign policy understanding and his lack of readiness, but using Reagan to cover Bush’s weaknesses was absolutely wrong then, and it is wrong again in this case.

I have my komboloi in hand to ward off the utter boredom.  Here we go.

McCain: People are angry.  There is excess.  People are angry.  McCain targets mortgage lenders, but wants to keep home ownership high.  Repeats his crazy mortgage bailout plan.  Pretends that his plan “puts homeowners first.”  Obama: This is worst crisis since 1380, and I know many of us still remember that one…Okay, he didn’t say that.  He wants to penalize outsourcing; repeats his middle-class tax cut bit.  Notes that McCain’s plan is a giveaway to banks, which puts Obama closer to conservatives than McCain. 

Obama: Usual refrain about tax breaks for oil companies, tax cuts for his famous 95%.  Fighting for Joe the Plumber’s vote.  McCain: Obama said spread the wealth alone; McCain wants Joe to spread it around.  This is actually more insipid than the last debate.  McCain: Why increase taxes?  Why would you do that?  Joe the Plumber isn’t happy with that.  Apparently Joe the Plumber has replaced Joe Sixpack as the embodiment of Middle America.  Obama says he would prefer to be an anarcho-capitalist, but circumstances don’t allow it.

Obama repeats his claim that he supports net spending cut.  Eliminate programs that don’t work–bold move!  These programs are always nameless, which is probably one of the reasons they don’t work.  Ethic of responsibility?  What?  That’s dangerously close to calling on people to accept austerity.  McCain is stuttering, and reverts to his litany about energy independence.  In the mythical world where we have energy independence, life will be beautiful.  Perhaps Aeolus will power the entire grid.  Spending freeze!  (Obama says that’s a hatchet.)  Ethanol is bad; eliminate tariff on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol.  Fight the earmarks!  What does McCain have against planetariums?  McCain wants to use hatchets and scalpels.

Hatchets and scalpels and katanas, oh my!

Obama: You’re just more of the same, John.  But where is Joe the Plumber in all this?  I believe he may have been left behind.  McCain: “You’re not convincing”–it’s not very convincing to say that your opponent isn’t convincing.

McCain: Why are your allies being so mean to me and Sarah?  Repudiate John Lewis!  Obama’s spent more money on negative ads than anyone (because he’s spent a lot more on ads than anyone else).  He broke his word on public financing!  Now it’s getting a bit more heated.  Obama: All of McCain’s ads are negative, but no one cares about this, so let’s talk issues.  Obama starts referring to 527s.  Wow, this debate has become the inside baseball World Series. 

McCain: I’m way more liberal than you give me credit for.  My stem-cell research and immigration positions are anathema to my supporters.  Let Joe the Plumber keep his wealth!  Obama:  Well, your supporters want me dead, so what do you think about that?  But I don’t think that you’re like George Wallace.  Heck, you’re not even like Bull Connor.  McCain is about to go nuts.  And…now he starts getting angry.  McCain: Our crowds are great, and I repudiate all kinds of people.  Isn’t it strange that Obama is the one to keep bringing up the terrorist line? 

Ayers and ACORN have landed.  McCain: ACORN possibly destroying the fabric of democracy.  Obama: Ayers is an education professor, but used to be despicable.  They were on the Annenberg board, as were some Republicans.  Ayers will not be in the White House–that’s a stroke of luck.  ACORN?  I hardly even know those guys!  I am so mainstream it’s not even funny.  No, really, it’s not.  McCain: I’m not saying that this stuff matters; I’m just informing people!

Weird question about the VP candidates from Schieffer.  He’s basically asking each candidate to explain why it would be better if he died.  Obama: Biden is awesome.  Blather, blather, talking points.  McCain: Palin is even more awesome.  Rehashing the myth of Palin.  “A reformer through and through.”  McCain wants to get rid of the old boy network in Washington–I have a suggestion how he might help reach that goal.  He hasn’t answered the question.

Obama: You can’t help Sarah Palin’s baby with your spending freeze!  McCain: Biden was wrong on many foreign policy issues.  (That’s true–he has agreed with McCain most of the time.)  “Why do we have to spend more?” spake the mortgage bailout king.  McCain: Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil will not be imported when I’m President, because I don’t understand how the oil market works.  Apparently Russian oil is okay!  Nuclear waste storage is a piece of cake.  The litany on energy again.  Obama: I agree with John’s crazy 10-year plan.  China and Saudi Arabia make their usual guest appearances as foreign villains of the evening.

McCain: Drill here, drill now!  Don’t just look at drilling.  Colombian free trade is brilliant–why does Obama oppose the agreement?  Why does he love drugs and hate young people?  No-brainer!  Obama: Oh, I understand.  I don’t like death squads killing union members. 

Did McCain just play the Hoover card on Obama?  That’s some kind of audacity.

Joe the Plumber again–drink!

The unanswered question of the campaign: “Who is the real Joe the Plumber?”

I take it that McCain doesn’t want to spread the wealth.  He really dislikes that phrase.  I guess that means he wants to lump the wealth all together.  Presumably it will all be under Henry Paulson’s control.

McCain: No litmus tests, but Roe is bad and I’m a federalist.  Justices should be chosen based on their qualifications, unlike Vice Presidents.  Did he just say that Obama voted against confirming Breyer?  Obama can also time travel?  He is impressive.  Obama: Roe hangs in the balance, but there is absolutely no litmus test.  McCain: Change the culture of America.  Here comes the Born Alive bill.  This could be interesting.  Obama is hiding behind his old excuse for his vote.  He opposes late-term abortions, except for all those that fall under the exceptions used to facilitate most late-term abortions. 

The end is near, thank goodness.  They’re talking about education.  They have a lot of proposals, but what kind of retraining are they going to offer Joe the Plumber?  Alex Massie responds to Obama:

Put away the video games? Except the ones I have been advertising on!

They’re starting to wrap up.  As agitated as McCain was at certain points tonight, I think he fared a bit better than he has in previous debates.  He didn’t show quite as much contempt for Obama, and he didn’t wander around the stage because he was seated, so right away he was doing better.  Obama seemed more like primary-debate Obama and less like the confident and fluent candidate of the past two debates.  This was probably the closest to a genuine tie of all three, perhaps because both of them were so uninteresting, but this still ends up being a loss for McCain given the deficit he has to overcome.

Update: Apparently focus groups and instant polls among undecideds rate Obama the winner again.  I think one of the reasons why my assessment of McCain is more positive is that I didn’t spend much time looking at the broadcast.  I listened to the debate as a blogged, so I didn’t actually see most of McCain’s twitchy behavior, which seems to have gone over very poorly.  Even when listening, I noticed the exasperation in his voice, but he didn’t sound as the undecideds thought he appeared.

While I will be watching and probably liveblogging the dreary duo tonight, John Schwenkler will be reporting on Barr’s para-debate event, which is happening at good old CNU.  I remember Christopher Newport mainly as the host of one of our cross country meets back in college, and I recall that their course was very flat, which I very much appreciated at the time.  Now it is time to begin girding myself for the third and final trial of the nation’s patience.

Heather Mac Donald and Laura Ingraham go around and around over Palin after the publication of Mac Donald’s anti-Palin article.  Mac Donald stresses Palin’s lack of qualifications and her thin record, and Ingraham comes back again and again to Obama.  This is a strange response, but it is a very common one.  There is an assumption that if the media are treating candidates by different standards, conservatives should actively lower theirs for their candidates to compensate.  If Biden makes gaffes or false statements and these go unreported, conservatives must pretend not to notice when Palin makes super-gaffes or spouts utter nonsense.  If Obama has not held executive office, that somehow makes Palin’s less-than-stellar performance in executive office, her apparent abuse of power and concerted efforts to evade transparency rules perfectly fine.  At least she ran something, these people say!  Don’t pay close attention to how she ran it, mind you, but at least she made decisions!  

Should you notice any of these things despite people constantly shouting, “Yeah, but Obama…,” you must not think about them much, and if you must think about them it is absolutely out of the question to speak publicly about them.  The people who wanted to berate Obama for his tendency to pause and think during debate or interview answers–Sen. Harvard needs a TelePrompter, they would laugh–embarrass themselves with elaborate excuse-making for why Palin frequently makes no sense or repeats canned answers that may or may not be related to the question asked.  Gone are the days when they would spread the rumor that Palin winged her entire nomination speech from memory, and now you can almost hear them saying, “For the love, get this woman to a TelePrompter!”  We have heard more about malicious interview editing, “gotcha” journalism and “speaking over the heads of the media” in the last month than we have probably heard in the last two years, and all of it to cover up for the fact that Palin doesn’t answer questions, especially follow-up questions, well.  As everyone has already noted many times, the person sent out to ask who Obama is has never held a press conference since her nomination; accountability for thee, not for me, she says.  Instead of paying attention to excellence and merit, as Mac Donald urges, Palinites want to avoid measuring her against high standards because they know she will fall short, and the best they can say in response is that they think Obama is worse.        

Despite knowing very little about her political philosophy, you hear Ingraham affirming her support for Palin on the grounds that Palin’s philosophy is similar to her own.  In fact, the number of subjects on which we have any evidence for her independent, pre-nomination views is incredibly small, and what we do know is not necessarily encouraging.  To the extent that we know her views on anything since her nomination, she has predictably aligned herself with McCain, whom we are repeatedly told by many party loyalists is not very good in conservative eyes on a number of issues.  In other words, to the extent that anyone knows anything about Palin’s views, much of it is simply a reflection of McCain’s views being fed to her, but her views are supposedly what endear her to her supporters.  Despite a record that would not compare favorably with many other Republican governors who have been derided as friends of big government, as I have statedseveral times to the complete indifference of her admirers who claim to care so much about her record, her record as governor has been invoked countless times–and Ingraham invokes it again–as proof of something.   

I mention all of this by way of getting to Patrick Ruffini’s complaint that “the conservative establishment” has betrayed movement conservatives in their criticism of Palin.  Oh, the betrayal!  Ruffini writes:

In this charged environment, there is almost irressistible movement-conservative temptation to raise the figurative middle finger to anyone or anything associated with establishment Republicanism — one which gave us runaway spending, a $700 billion bailout that preceeded an 18% stock market swoon, and bank nationalization….

Now, zoom back in on the Palin situation. In the midst of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, conservative establishment pundits appear to blame John McCain’s inability to seal the deal not on the misfortune of being the candidate of the in-party of his thin track record on economic matters or his jarring response to the crisis, but on a hockey mom from Alaska.

Ruffini isn’t resisting that temptation.  Now here’s the thing: Palin is now directly associated with establishment Republicanism.  As you may have heard, she is John McCain’s running mate.  McCain backed the bailout that Ruffini rightly hates, and his mortgage-bailout-in-every-pot scheme makes Paulson’s partial nationalization move look like weak-kneed gradualism on the road to the lenders’ paradise.  Palin works for McCain.  Think about that.  She is one of the people mostly closely associated with establishment Republicanism, because she is the foremost public ally and backer of the consummate insider, establishment Republican.  Furthermore, one of the likely reasons for McCain’s jarring response to the financial crisis–the suspension/cancel the debate/go to the debate soap opera–was to distract attention from his running mate’s disastrous interview.  Finally, and this is really the most important part, the selection of Palin itself was a foreshadowing to how McCain would respond to the crisis, because it was typical of his seat-of-the-pants, stunt-oriented style of planning and preparation.  Palin herself is not, or is no longer, the biggest drag on the ticket, but the selection of her is indicative of the serious flaws in the McCain campaign and in McCain as a candidate that have dragged him down (and dragged her down along with him). 

Ah, but Ruffini will tell you that she is part of “the grassroots conservative / outsider / Mark Levin circle,” which is roughly as credible as her story about telling Congress no thanks to a certain bridge.  Of course, criticism of McCain for his blunders has been plentiful on the right from the same treacherous pundits who also dared to criticize Palin (Will’s crack about McCain’s characteristic substitution of vehemence for coherence was a particularly good line).  They can see McCain’s flaws just as well as Palin’s, and they don’t think it is their task to stay quiet and pretend that everything is fine or tie themselves in knots making ridiculous justifications for poor performance.  Indeed, what movement conservatives ought to find so annoying about these establishment pundits who are now becoming critical of McCain/Palin is that they did not speak up earlier and more forcefully when Mr. Bush was leading them all off a cliff with those “good instincts” they are always praising.  Instead, in perfect knee-jerk reflex mode, they will rally around Palin and make all the same mistakes.

I was critical of McCain when Ross, Brooks, and others were praising him. ~Mark Levin

The first part is certainly true, and I recall that Levin was among the most hostile critics of McCain at NRO, but this line of defense, echoed by some of the other targets of Ross’ criticism, is a rather odd one.  The argument goes something like this: “We never wanted McCain and thought he would be awful, but once he was the nominee we got behind him, while the people who argued for him or sympathized more with him are breaking with him or attacking him at this late stage.”  As a description of what has happened, this seems fair and largely accurate, though I am taxing my memory trying to come up with any occasions when Ross heaped praise on McCain.  I was in the same room at CPAC when I believe he said that he would vote for him, but that was about the extent of the “praise” I have heard from him. 

What is odd about Levin’s defense is that you would think that the most vocal anti-McCain critics would be feeling vindicated by the man’s shambolic campaign, while you might expect various “reformist” conservatives to make Gerson-like excuses for him (the short version of which is that McCain had to cope with reality and was overwhelmed).  Here is why, on the whole, the reverse is happening: McCain’s mainstream conservative critics never expected anything good from him in terms of policy, and have rallied to him primarily to stop Obama and so they seem most intent on encouraging the campaign to obsess about Obama’s character and associations.  Meanwhile the “reformists” held out some hope that McCain’s reform mantra would turn into a coherent policy message that would address present challenges, and they are therefore annoyed or perhaps even embarrassed by the triviality and aimlessness of the campaign.  The “reformists” are much more likely to hold McCain responsible for squandering what they saw as a real opportunity, while his long-time critics had no illusions about McCain and cannot be disappointed in him.  Regardless, they are preoccupied with vilifying informing voters about Obama. 

In the end, McCain confirmed many of his own critics’ arguments with his message-free, incoherent, largely negative campaign, but he is doomed to disappoint them as well because he will never be willing to go quite as far as they want him to in attacking Obama.  If former admirers have turned to criticism or even decided to back his opponent, this is a measure of how badly McCain has failed, even if their expectations of him were far too high.  He has alienated some of the people who are normally most sympathetic to him and his kind of Republicanism and he has been winning the half-hearted support of those who never wanted him and who tolerate him only because it is necessary.

In recent days, I have been more sanguine about the partial nationalization proposal, considering it to be a somewhat improved approach given that the awful legislation has passed anyway, but Jeffrey Miron outlines why I should not have been:

Government injection of cash, however, does little to improve transparency. A bank with complicated, depreciated assets is in much the same position after the government gives it cash as it was before, since outside investors will still have limited information about the solvency of any individual bank.

Perhaps the new cash will spur the sale of bad assets, or nudge banks to reveal their balance sheets, but that is far from obvious. Banks, moreover, might remain cautious even with this increased liquidity simply because of uncertainty about the economy. Thus it is hard to know whether cash injections will actually spur bank lending.

In any event, government ownership of banks has frightening long-term implications, whether or not it alleviates the credit crunch.

Government ownership means that political forces will determine who wins and who loses in the banking sector. The government, for example, will push banks to aid borrowers with poor credit histories, to subsidize politically connected industries, and to lend in the districts of powerful members of Congress. All of this is horrible for economic efficiency.

Government pressure will be difficult for banks to resist, since the government can both threaten to withdraw its ownership stake or promise further injections whenever it wants to modify bank behavior. Banks will respond by accommodating government objectives in exchange for continued financial support. This is crony capitalism, pure and simple.

So my basic objections to concentration of power and collusion remain much what they were before.  I would not go so far as Miron in advocating a purely do-nothing approach, but on reflection it is clear this implementation necessarily has the flaws that made the bailout so objectionable.  Yves Smith has more on how Paulson delivered the staged ultimatum–that seems the best description for it–to the nine CEOs, and in another post she confirms that, despite the government’s claims that the banks must start lending this money, they are not going to be required to do anything with it.  As Smith explains, this was more of the administration’s corner-cutting, incompetence and outrageous power-grabbing at its finest: 

To make the point more clearly: the public at large was taken not just once, but twice, It was hosed in the unduly generous terms given to nine banks (the lack of writedown of assets to realistic values, the failure to wipe out current equity holders and subject debt holders to a haircut, the merely symbolic limits on executive pay). But it also got a less obvious shellacking in the way legal and regulatory processes were trampled. Given the Treasury and Fed’s combined banking authority, and the dubious valuations of many types of assets on these firms’ books, the powers that be could easily have compelled any bank to accept a much less favorable deal, or frankly any deal they wanted them to take. And it would not have taken all that much additional effort (although it might have taken some planning, which is a persistent shortcoming of this Administration). 

But Paulson instead went through a bizarre, public exercise in sham corecion (and real sidestepping of even minimal normal forms) so as to avoid a candid discussion of how lousy the banks’ balance sheets really were. And the ruse, like the TARP itself, was another demonstration that the Treasury considers itself to be outside the law.