My column yesterday prompted more emails from readers than any other article I have written. I usually get 10 or 20 letters or emails. I got hundreds about this one and they’re still coming. I expected to get a few from Republicans praising me (they would ignore the positive things I say about Democrats in general and Obama in particular) and a few from Democrats attacking me (these would be spluttering and furious: “are you kidding me? are you kidding me?”, and so on). And so I did. But these were outnumbered–vastly outnumbered–by emails from ex- or wavering Democrats who say they feel disappointed or betrayed by the party’s spokesmen and advocates. Who knew this strand of opinion even existed? Later today I’ll post one or two examples, together with responses to critics who made good points and some further thoughts on the subject.

This article is not the first to note the cultural contradiction in American liberalism, but just now the point bears restating. The election may turn on it.

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

Even allowing for the fact that one does not expect soaring oratory from John McCain, his closing speech to the convention was disappointing. He had a hard act to follow after Sarah Palin, but that is no excuse because there was no need to match that for excitement. Instead he had to do two main things, in my view, each of them readily achievable. First and most important, he had to affirm the party’s appeal for votes to the wide middle of the US electorate. Second, he needed to offer some specific domestic policies, and contrast them favourably with the Democratic agenda. He gestured vaguely in both directions, but nothing more.

The speech concentrated mainly on his biography—again. One hesitates to say this because McCain is an authentic hero; his bravery is something that very few of us, least of all this writer, could ever aspire to match; and knowing what inner resources he brings to his candidacy is of course an essential part of his appeal—but how many times does this story need to be told? This week his audience has heard it over and over again. Endless repetition must eventually dull its impact. His heroism and his capacity for sacrifice in the service of his country are unquestioned. By the end of the week, it could have been left at that.

Reaching out to the centre should have been regarded as a priority because of the Palin nomination. For the moment, that looks like a great success: she gave an amazing speech and, to the consternation of the Democrats and a large part of the US media, triumphantly vindicated McCain’s decision to select her. But Palin is a social conservative. Yes, maybe she can bring in centrists as well: that possibility makes her an instant force to be reckoned with in American politics. But right now it is no more than a possibility. She has energised the base—that much is certain—but her views on abortion and other social issues will alarm many centrists who might have been leaning to McCain. Having delighted the base, he needed to rebalance the ticket by moving deftly to the centre himself. Securing the base was necessary but not sufficient: the Republicans cannot win without independents.

Mr McCain, one imagines, would prefer victory to glorious defeat. Yet his centrist gestures were confined mostly to underlining his maverick instincts, his taste for bipartisanship, his willingness to go against party orthodoxy, and his appealingly frank criticisms of what the Republicans had achieved, or failed to, during the Bush years. All that was fine, as far as it went, but much too general. Give us examples. Offer some reassurance that this will not be the right-wing ticket that the Palin nomination suggests it could be. Yes, that would have risked disappointing the hall, but the hall has been very well catered to this week and it was a risk worth taking.

More detail was needed in its own right, too, not just to rebalance the ticket. Once Palin blew the doors off the convention on Wednesday, bringing the torrent of derision over her nomination to an abrupt halt, lack of specific proposals in the Republican platform became the principal line of criticism—and unlike the response to the VP pick, this was a well-aimed attack. In his own superb speech at the end of the Democrats’ convention, Obama took pains to list a series of specific policies. McCain needed to match that or better. He not only failed to do so, but he made the gap all the more obtrusive with the part of his speech that mentioned by name families and individuals that were struggling for one reason or another. McCain said he would honour them and work for them. Good, but how, exactly?

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that McCain’s biggest mistake in this campaign has been in failing to develop a market-friendly proposal for universal health care. Mitt Romney did it in Massachusetts so do not tell me a Republican cannot go there. That plus Palin would have given him a shot at the base and at independents too. It would have cemented his appeal to middle America, which is much preoccupied with the worsening failure of the US health care system. Not to mention, it would have been the right thing to propose on the merits. If he had done this, I think I would be betting on McCain-Palin right now. Ceding the issue to the Democrats, in my view, was a mistake in every way. And I groaned to hear his attack on Obama’s health plan, falling back on the old “socialised medicine” line, which is a travesty.

Astonishing. It was a fine convention speech—but, reading the text, no better than very good. What was just sensational, far exceeding my expectations, was the delivery. After the thrashing she has received from press and television in the past few days, knowing what was at stake for the party and for John McCain as she stood at the podium, with a good part of the nation watching and waiting for her to trip, her composure and self-assurance were simply amazing. Who could fail to be moved by this? And it was even more impressive than it looked, because the waves of adulation from the audience kept interrupting her momentum: they did not know it, but at times the audience was making it harder for her. Yet she never looked hesitant or thrown. She paused when she had to and controlled the timing. She actually seemed comfortable. If ever there were a political natural, we saw one tonight.

It was not a safe speech, though at the beginning, when she was talking mainly about McCain, I thought it was going to be. She had a pair of difficult acts to follow, because both Mike Huckabee and (especially) Rudi Giuliani gave terrific barnstorming speeches before she came on. (Let‘s not dwell on Mitt Romney’s bizarre contribution.) She not only touched on her own biography, in ways sure to delight small-town Americans across the land, she also asserted her command, as the governor of an oil-producing state, of the energy debate. Had Democrats forgotten that this is a key issue in the election, and one on which they are trailing the Republicans in public opinion?

I was surprised that she dared to attack Obama-Biden on national security and foreign policy, where her credentials are weak: here she was saying, I’m not afraid of you. In fronting her own executive experience, comparing it favorably (and not without justification) with Obama’s, she dared to mock the Democratic nominee. That too was a risk, because mockery easily backfires—ask the Democrats about that tonight—and it paid off. All the barbs—“he has written two memoirs but not one piece of legislation,” and so on—went home.

Well, the Democrats have a problem. They had a few days of calling her a clueless redneck, a stewardess, a nonentity, and she has hurled that back in their bleeding gums. (If I were Joe Biden, I’d start practising for October 2nd right now.) Even before tonight’s speech, they had backed off the “no experience” strategy, because (as the Republicans intended) that was sending shrapnel in Obama’s direction. Their line right now is their default mode, that McCain-Palin is four more years of George Bush. But this too is a completely untenable strategy, since the Republican ticket now looks stunningly fresh to voters, as fresh in fact as Obama-Biden. Where they will have to end up is obvious: McCain-Palin is an extreme right-wing ticket. It is a team that will prosecute the culture war against all that is decent and civilized in the United States: that must be the line.

Aside from further surprises in her biography, this—not her supposed inexperience—is the vulnerability that Palin has brought to the McCain candidacy. We need to hear her questioned on those issues. How unbending a social conservative is she? So much as to frighten the independents McCain needs? McCain is not a culture warrior. That is not the campaign he wanted to fight. At the moment, however, this factor seems massively outweighed in electoral terms by the excitement she has brought to the campaign. The party cannot believe its luck. They want to win again, and suddenly they think they can.

What one next wants to know is how Americans at large react to what they saw tonight. I will be surprised if they were not very impressed.

Update: CNN on why the speech was a problem for McCain: “Well, he has to speak tomorrow night, and as we know, he is no governor of Alaska.” Flexibility you can believe in from the best political team on television.

The first full day of the Republican convention—the schedule was put back from Monday because of Hurricane Gustav—went off smoothly. President Bush was beamed in from the White House, and Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman were the other headliners. No sign yet of Sarah Palin, due to speak on Wednesday, and the subject of almost every conversation in the margins of the event. Whatever the rest of the country may think of her, whether she proves to be an asset or a liability to the McCain campaign, her selection has generated extraordinary excitement and enthusiasm here.

At the same time, though, her arrival on the ticket threw the first day’s pace off a little. With Palin nowhere to be seen, day one, as they say, buried the lede. The idea was to devote it to introducing John McCain, but is any American politician less in need of an introduction?

The tributes were well enough done. True, Bush’s reference to McCain’s spirit being more than a match for the “angry left” was a bit puzzling. (Does anybody even in this hall think that Obama represents the angry left?) But Thompson’s funny, punchy speech had everybody asking, why wasn’t he like that during the primaries? Aside from the sustained ovation for a fallen soldier, Thompson got the biggest cheer of the night. (“And we need a president who doesn’t think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade.”) His speech even had a morsel of policy content (taxes are a bad thing), which otherwise would have been entirely absent from the day. But there was nothing very surprising and, thanks to Palin, it all seemed a little beside the point.

Lieberman’s speech certainly ought to have seemed surprising, but his apostasy is old news. Eight years ago, this man was Al Gore’s running-mate; now here he was speaking up for the Republican nominee. He rested his case on the fact that McCain is an extraordinary man and these are extraordinarily dangerous times. But he said little to elaborate. He got a round of applause for Bill Clinton—no mean feat with this crowd—when he contrasted Clinton’s occasional willingness to work with Republicans with Obama’s record. And he got one big laugh: “If John McCain is just another partisan Republican, I am Michael Moore’s favourite Democrat.” If I had been just another of the partisan Republicans packing the hall, I might have been a little insulted by that, but the audience either failed to make the connection or was in a generous frame of mind.

Most Democrats by now detest Lieberman, of course, but one other thing he said might persuade those who don’t to get with the program. He not only praised McCain’s support for the surge of forces into Iraq (fair enough), but contrasted this with Obama’s “voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield”. That was tendentious at best, and the most aggressive attack on Obama of the day. Obama has never argued for funding to be cut off; he wanted a timeline for withdrawal attached to the funding. He did vote against a funding bill that failed to include such a provision; but then Lieberman himself, and most Republicans, also voted against a funding measure that did include such a provision. One way or another, almost everybody has voted against funding for the troops. Lieberman’s charge was unfair, and did not sit well with his appeal for one-nation bipartisanship.

And then again, there is Palin. Lieberman, widely thought to have been McCain’s first choice for VP (McCain is said to have switched because the base would not wear it), applauded the selection. “Governor Palin, like John McCain, is a reformer. She’s taken on the special interests and the political power-brokers in Alaska and reached across party lines to get things done. The truth is, she is a leader we can count on to help John shake up Washington. That’s why—that’s why I sincerely believe that the real ticket for change this year is the McCain-Palin ticket.” Lieberman and McCain see eye to eye on national security. But Lieberman is pro-choice on abortion, and a social liberal in other respects as well, whereas Palin is a social conservative. Genuine though his admiration for McCain may be, stretching his endorsement to the whole ticket seemed a stretch too far.

One last observation. Barring breakdowns later in the week, the Republicans have won the platform war hands down. The Democrats had their cheesy game-show set followed by the much-derided Greek column thing. The Republicans have a clean, reflective stage in front of an enormous high-definition screen, used so far to excellent effect. If I were with the DNC, I’d find out who was responsible and book them for 2012.

I was unsure how the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter would affect social conservatives’ view of the governor’s nomination for VP, but they seem to be taking it in their stride. If anything they are seeing it as a positive—more proof that Mrs Palin is a good and supportive mother. At any rate, they say, it is nobody’s business but the family’s.

The other good news for the McCain campaign is that many Democrats are mishandling the issue as badly as they mishandled the nomination in the first place. There is a tone of exultation over the Palin family’s difficulties that will strike many centrists, and decent people regardless of ideology, as repellent. Again, to his enormous credit, Obama himself was the exception. What a class act he is. He reminded reporters that he is the son of an unmarried mother, said the families of candidates and especially their children should be off-limits, and told the press to drop the story. It won’t of course: it will mine it for all it is worth. But Obama said the right thing and gave every sign of meaning it.

Continue reading "The Palin nomination" »

So John McCain is no longer a maverick. Here is one Democratic talking point that will need some work, and it is by no means the only one. In naming Sarah Palin – the young and only recently elected governor of Alaska, a small-town mayor before that – as his Republican running mate in the US presidential race, Mr McCain has taken an extraordinary risk. It was certainly the act of an unorthodox politician. Was it, though, the act of a reckless and stupid one? I think not.

The instant reaction among Democrats was astonishment. Quickly that gave way to outrage. James Carville, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, said he was “vexed, completely vexed” by the choice. Paul Begala, another friend of the Clintons, in almost his first sentence on the matter, sneeringly attributed Mrs Palin’s poise to her time as a beauty queen. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Democratic caucus, said: “On his 72nd birthday, this is the guy’s judgment of who he wants one heartbeat from the presidency? Please.” The prevailing attitude was a hair’s breadth from laughter at the bimbo from a state that does not count.

Will these people never learn? Let me try to walk the experts, with their many years of experience, through this thing.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

Those who came to Invesco Field on Thursday witnessed something they are unlikely ever to forget. Barack Obama gave an electrifying speech that silences—for the moment at least—doubts in the Democratic party that they have backed the right candidate. He commanded this vast sports stadium with calm authority, there were no false notes, and the attention of his audience never wavered. His listeners were enthralled, and they left believing they will win in November. After this, they were asking, how could the country fail to elect their man president?

The event started slowly, with enormous lines at security, a dreary succession of second-rate speakers, and a clutch of by-the-numbers political videos. Al Gore, Sheryl Crow, and Stevie Wonder raised the standard only a little, with dull renditions of their greatest hits, and the thought that this entire mega-production was going to backfire was impossible to suppress. Who in the world thought that the Greek temple stage-set was right? If the designer’s brief had been “low-budget hubris”, it worked; by any other standard it was a calamity. With the Republicans calling Mr Obama a vapid celebrity, this was outright self-parody. Yet none of it mattered when Mr Obama started to speak.

He began with a brief but seemingly sincere tribute to Hillary Clinton—who had given a well-received speech earlier in the convention. He wove vignettes of ordinary people’s struggles during the past eight years—the human element said to be missing from his campaign of late—into a statement of his own political philosophy. You cannot connect with people in a space of this size, but this was the next best thing. Part of his speech then crisply listed specific policy proposals, addressing the charge that he is too vague. He directly rebutted John McCain’s insinuation that he fails to put the country first: “We all put the country first,” he said with a touch of anger, to one of the loudest cheers of the night.

He attacked his opponent, but there was nothing vicious or vindictive in his criticisms. He said Mr McCain was for the wrong policies not because he did not care about people, but because he did not understand them and was out of touch. He gently contrasted his own modest upbringing with Mr McCain’s wealth. In that way, Mr Obama stayed true to the positive tone of his campaign, yet wounded his adversary as well. He closed by reiterating his earlier theme that this is not red America or blue America but the United States of America—in other words, with a renewed appeal to tolerance, moderation, and patriotism. More deafening cheers.

The costs of the policies he listed do not add up, of course: affordable college, affordable health care for all, subsidies for clean energy and every other good thing, and tax cuts for 95 percent of households. This is not exactly the count-every-dime accounting he claimed. Yet the measured force of Mr Obama in full flight is not to be denied. In modern American politics, he is peerless. How it looked on television will matter most for his campaign, but in the stadium it was a triumph.

An article of faith for almost all the Democrats at the Denver convention is that the country’s much-diminished trade-union movement needs to be revived. Membership has fallen to less than 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. This decline is a main reason, it is argued, for stagnating middle-class wages. Public policy, say the Democrats, can help.

The rallying-point is the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a measure co-sponsored by Barack Obama and already passed by the house of representatives. Mr Obama promises to sign it into law as president, if the senate moves it forward and it reaches his desk. Politically and on its merits, however, this is an ill-advised piece of legislation.

EFCA’s most sought-after provision is a “card-check” rule that would oblige employers to recognise a union and bargain with it if half the workforce signed cards saying that they were in favour. Labour law varies from state to state but the current procedure usually requires a secret ballot, which protects workers from intimidation. John McCain has opposed the change and advocates a Secret Ballot Protection Act instead.

The unions have a point when they complain of intimidation by employers. EFCA would stiffen penalties for firms that bully union sympathisers, which is both desirable and good politics. But the card-check initiative is what the party is emphasising, and otherwise pro-union voters are bound to have mixed feelings about it.

A secret ballot protects workers who want union recognition as well as those who do not. That is why opposing it arouses suspicion. Membership has fallen at least partly because workers themselves doubt that unions best serve their interests, and with reason. Opposition to secret ballots does not reassure them. It is a self-serving demand, and plays badly with the centrists the Democrats need to bring in. It is bad politics, therefore, as well as bad law.

A broader question is whether weak unions are part of what ails the middle-income workforce. Their decline probably explains some of the wage slowdown—although the most striking aspect of the country’s growing inequality is the astonishing growth in the very highest incomes, an unrelated issue. The right kind of unionism can raise wages and advance workers’ interests while improving a company’s competitiveness. The wrong kind, as the UK knows only too well, can cripple industries and indeed whole economies.

The secret of success, arguably, is a culture of accommodation and non-confrontation. Unions can make it easier for firms to work in closer partnership with their employees, to their mutual advantage. But if the relationship is framed as nothing but a contest over rents—a zero-sum game, with no holds barred—the drawbacks seem likely to predominate. What may concern centrist voters is that Democrats are apt to press the unions’ case in precisely this spirit of confrontation. Anti-business sentiment is a dominant note at the convention. EFCA’s most enthusiastic advocates would like nothing better than to grind the faces of the bosses. You do not have to be a boss to be wary of that.

[This article appeared in the FT yesterday. The last paragraph was cut for space except for its first sentence, which on its own is either mystifying or absurd, according to taste–as emails to me have pointed out. So, with apologies if you have seen the edited piece already, I thought I would post what I filed.]

Taken together, the speeches by Bill and Hillary Clinton eventually gave Barack Obama everything he wanted from them. Their support came late, and the delay and equivocation have surely exacted a price: the sagging momentum of Obama’s campaign of late owes something to the Clintons’ ongoing grievances. Finally, though, they gave him the backing he needed.

Both of the Clintons gave outstanding, memorable speeches, and they formed two parts of a single whole. As I said yesterday, Hillary’s attack on the Bush administration and John McCain—underlining what was at stake in this election—carried sustained force and conviction. In the plainest terms, she told her supporters to vote for Obama. Up to then, many were still wavering, and some were determined to abstain or worse. For the first time, she denied them permission to do so. Nonetheless, the case she made rested on what was wrong with Bush and McCain, rather than on what was right about the Democratic nominee. She held something back.

The next night, Bill made good the deficit. People say he is still angry over the way the Obama campaign accused him of exploiting race, impugned his record as president (not as “transformative” as Ronald Reagan), and disrespected his wife (failing even to consult her on the vice-presidential nomination). If those really are his feelings, he disguised them brilliantly. There was no trace of recrimination, and his finely crafted speech dwelt almost exclusively on Obama’s fitness for office. In one surprising stroke, he even congratulated Obama on his choice of Joe Biden as running-mate—a consolation prize Hillary seems to have wanted. Obama’s first big decision, Bill said, was to nominate his vice-president, “and he hit it out of the park.” That was extraordinary.

These excellent performances do somewhat diminish the new team. Biden’s speech, following quickly after Bill’s, was lame by comparison. The delivery was faltering, and the substance routine. Yes, Biden showed he has the common touch, which many find lacking in Obama—but if the electorate sees Barack as aloof and cerebral, choosing a likeable deputy does not put that right. And the fact that the Clintons so dominated the first three days of the convention, making it their show as much as Obama’s, was less than ideal.

Still, unless they swerve again over the coming weeks, the Clintons cannot be accused of letting the party down. This serves their interests, of course: it keeps alive Hillary’s hopes of another run at the presidency should Obama lose in November, and it restores Bill’s own standing in the party. Whatever their motives, however, and despite the fact that the Clintons are a hard act to follow, Obama must be pleased. They most likely succeeded, after all, in uniting the party around him. Better late than never.