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Joe Klein
TIME.com
We have “only one President at a time,” Barack Obama said in his debut press conference as President-elect. Normally, that would be a safe assumption — but we’re learning not to assume anything as the charcoal-dreary economic winter approaches. By mid-November, with the financial crisis growing worse by the day, it had become obvious that one President was no longer enough (at least not the President we had). So, in the days before Thanksgiving, Obama began to move — if not to take charge outright, then at least to preview what things will be like when he does take over in January. He became a more public presence, taking questions from the press three days in a row. He named his economic team. He promised an enormous stimulus package that would somehow create 2.5 million new jobs, and began to maneuver the new Congress toward having the bill ready for him to sign — in a dramatic ceremony, no doubt — as soon as he assumes office.
Joe Klein
TIME.com
Lord, things are moving fast…and also not. The stock market is moving south–fast. The number of jobless claims are moving north–fast. Economic panic is in the air…and the atmosphere is Washington is changing faster than a speeding ballot (ouch, sorry). There is a stirring in the Congress, too, where nothing of substance has happened in a long, long time. Today the hopelessly dopey auto makers received a couple of stark warnings: First, California’s crusading Henry Waxman replaced the eternal John Dingell, patron saint of the gas-guzzlers, as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is great news for those who are looking forward to the greening of Detroit. Then Nancy Pelosi called out the Big Three, saying no bailout without a plan. Now, no one really believes the Democrats will wit(h)hold money from the automakers–but the Big 3 would have to be stupider than idiotic not to understand that higher gas mileage standards and a whole bunch of other requirements are coming down the pike. They have very few, if any, defenders left in your nation’s capital and that’s real progress.
Joe Klein
TIME.com
Eleven months ago, I attended a John Edwards speech in the little town of Algona, Iowa. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Edwards had drawn a large crowd of mostly uncommitted voters to a local factory that made wind-turbine components. Two things soon became apparent as I interviewed a dozen or so Algonans before the speech. The first was that there were a fair number of Republicans present, a phenomenon I was beginning to notice all over Iowa. They were not yet committed to voting Democratic, but they mentioned their disappointment in George W. Bush, their frustration with the war in Iraq and their dismay with the right-wing religious drift of the state Republican Party. The last time I’d seen so many crossovers was in 1980, when Democrats — angry at Jimmy Carter and their party’s leftward drift — made their presence felt at Republican meetings, heralding the onset of the Reagan era.
Joe Klein
TIME.com
In the days before the great election of 2008, your nation’s capital was consumed by a single question: If Barack Obama wins, what’s in it for me? A week before the balloting, I sat in the dining room of one of Washington’s finest hotels and, eavesdropping madly, realized that my neighbors at every one of the adjoining tables were consumed by the vagaries of appointive politics — as I was, after my guest arrived.
The game of turbocharged, Cabinet-level musical chairs is the autumnal version of the summer speculation about vice-presidential picks: lots of fun, but not very nourishing, and I’m not going to indulge in it here (O.K., maybe a little). There are bigger fish to fry, like what’s the new President — Obama is universally, prematurely, assumed the victor — actually going to do?
It was possible, in this rotisserie of naked self-promotion, to discern some larger themes. For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt, the next President will face the prospect of neither peace nor prosperity — and there seems a consensus that, as much as Obama (or John McCain, for that matter) wants to play in the world, the financial crisis will demand most of his time and political capital. From that assumption flows another.
For the sake of continuity and the absence of drama, it might not be a bad idea for Obama — if elected — to stick with the current national-security players in the battle against Islamic extremism.
Joe Klein
TIME.com
Barack Obama has prospered in this presidential campaign because of the steadiness of his temperament and the judicious quality of his decision-making. They are his best-known qualities. The most important decision he has made — the selection of a running mate — was done carefully, with an exhaustive attention to detail and contemplation of all the possible angles. Two months later, as John McCain’s peremptory selection of Governor Sarah Palin has come to seem a liability, it could be argued that Obama’s quiet selection of Joe Biden defined the public’s choice in the general-election campaign.
But not every decision can be made so carefully. There are a thousand instinctive, instantaneous decisions that a presidential candidate has to make in the course of a campaign — like whether to speak his mind to a General Petraeus — and this has been a more difficult journey for Obama, since he’s far more comfortable when he’s able to think things through. “He has learned to trust his gut,” an Obama adviser told me. “He wasn’t so confident in his instincts last year. It’s been the biggest change I’ve seen in him.”
Joe Klein
Time.com
“This really gets down to the fundamental difference in our philosophies,” John McCain said, quite accurately, in the heat of the third presidential debate. “If you notice … Senator Obama wants government to do the job. He wants government to do the job. I want you, Joe, to do the job,” referring to a plumber Barack Obama had met on the campaign trail.
The job, in this case, was finding health insurance. And in years past, McCain would have had the better of this argument — it is the classic division between liberals and conservatives. But 2008 has proved to be a new and frightening moment for the American electorate, and having the government help in finding, and funding, health care doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore.
McCain had a feisty debate, with some high points and a bit too much anger to make Americans feel very comfortable in his presence, but to a very great extent, his fate — like this election — was out of his control. This is simply not a good year to say, “Joe, take care of your health care yourself.” It seems an impossible year for McCain’s Reagan Republican philosophy.
McCain entered the third debate with Obama a chastened man. Half the Republican savants seemed to have given up on him; the other half were offering bad advice. Worse, he seemed to have realized — finally — the permanent threat to his reputation that his campaign had become. The moment of truth may have occurred at an Oct. 6 rally. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” McCain asked. “A terrorist!” a man bellowed. McCain seemed to wince, roll his eyes, retreat.
He didn’t admonish the man, but the incident was unsettling, and several days later, at a town-hall meeting in Minnesota, he did begin to push back against the ugliness of his crowds. A woman said, “I can’t trust Obama. He’s an Arab,” and McCain replied, “No, ma’am. No, ma’am, he’s not. He’s a decent family man — citizen — that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Joe Klein
Time.com
We are witnessing something remarkable here: Obama’s race is receding as he becomes more familiar. His steadiness has trumped his skin color; he is being judged on the content of his character. But there is a real challenge — and opportunity — inherent in his success. Obama has taken some inspired risks in this campaign. His willingness to propose more governmental control of the health-care market is a prime example. But he has also been very cautious, a typical politician in many ways. The most obvious is in his resolute unwillingness to deliver bad news or make any significant demands on the public. Neither he nor McCain had anything but platitudes to offer when asked what sacrifices they would ask of the American people. Worse, when Brokaw asked if he thought the economy was going to get worse before it gets better, Obama flatly said, “No. I’m confident about the economy.”
That was, no doubt, the politic answer. But not the correct one. Obama was underestimating the public’s capacity to hear the truth — which is odd, since the national desire for substance, the unwillingness to be diverted by “lipstick on a pig” trivialities, has been so striking in this campaign. Everyone knows this recession is going to hurt, that there will be a price for our profligacy and that some hard shoveling will be necessary to get out of this hole. Indeed, that knowledge is what has made Obama’s success possible. But if he wants to do more than merely succeed, if he wants to govern successfully, he is going to have to trust the people as much as they are beginning to trust him. After years of happy talk from politicians, that is the change we really need.
Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME Columnist
A few hours before the house of Representatives smacked down the financial-bailout package, I watched John McCain — eyes flashing, jaw clenched, oozing sarcasm and disdain — on the attack in Ohio: “Senator Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was ‘monitoring the situation.’ That’s not leadership; that’s watching from the sidelines.” And I thought of Karl Rove. Back in 2003, at the height of Howard Dean mania, Rove was skeptical about Dean’s staying power as a candidate: “When was the last time Americans elected an angry President?”
Much has been written about McCain’s mercurial temperament during the past few weeks. An election campaign that was supposed to be all about Barack Obama has turned out to be all about John McCain. In the process, the other side of the equation — Obama’s steadiness throughout — has been pretty much overlooked. Just after the House shot down the bailout, Obama took to the stage in Colorado, and the contrast with McCain couldn’t have been greater: “Now is not the time for fear, now is not the time for panic,” he said. “We may not be able to do everything overnight…But I want you to understand, I know we can do it…Things are never smooth in Congress. It will get done.”
Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME Columnist
Politics has always been lousy with blather and chicanery. But there are rules and traditions too. In the early weeks of the general-election campaign, a consensus has grown in the political community — a consensus that ranges from practitioners like Karl Rove to commentators like, well, me — that John McCain has allowed his campaign to slip the normal bounds of political propriety.
The situation has gotten so intense that we in the media have slipped our normal rules as well. Usually when a candidate tells something less than the truth, we mince words. We use euphemisms like mendacity and inaccuracy … or, as the Associated Press put it, “McCain’s claims skirt facts.”
But increasing numbers of otherwise sober observers, even such august institutions as the New York Times editorial board, are calling John McCain a liar. You might well ask, What has McCain done to deserve this? What unwritten rules did he break? Are his transgressions of degree or of kind?
Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist
Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade. She has boosted John McCain’s candidacy and overwhelmed the presidential process in a way that no vice-presidential pick has since Thomas Eagleton did the precise opposite — sinking his sponsor, George McGovern, in 1972.
Obviously, something beyond politics is happening here. We don’t really know Palin as a politician yet, whether she is wise or foolhardy, substantive or empty. Our fascination with her — and it is a nonpartisan phenomenon — is driven by something more primal. The Palin surge illuminates the mythic power of the Republican Party’s message since the advent of Ronald Reagan.
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