A round-up of this morning's must-read stories--by guest Filterer Brian No.
Political Meme of the Day #1: Obama finally starts to fight back on energy policy. But after flip-flops and political posturing by both candidates, are their plans any good?
MCCAIN AT NUCLEAR PLANT HIGHLIGHTS ENERGY ISSUE
(Mary Ann Giordano and Larry Rohter, New York Times)
Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil.”
OBAMA PUMPED UP OVER ATTACK ON HIS ENERGY STRATEGY
(Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
Obama pushed back hard Tuesday, accusing his rival's campaign of lying about the scope of his energy plan. The Democratic candidate has also called for developing renewable fuels, curbing dependence on foreign oil and increasing production of plug-in hybrid cars.
CRUDE CAMPAIGNING
(Ruth Marcus, Washington Post)
You could write the formula with mathematical precision. The higher the price of oil and the lower the number of days until the election, the shriller the rhetoric, the grander the promises and the dumber the policy. If this is the state of the discussion in August, what will October bring?
Political Meme of the Day #2: Why is Obama not doing better?
OBAMA STALLS IN PUBLIC POLLING
(David Paul Kuhn, Politico.com)
That gap between expectations and reality comes as Democrats enjoy the most favorable political winds since at least 1976. At least eight in ten Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track. The Republican president is historically unpopular. From stunning Democratic gains in party registration to the high levels of economic anxiety, Obama by most every measure should have a healthy lead. Yet in poll after poll, Obama conspicuously fails to cross the 50-percent threshold.
OBAMA MAY BE RUNNING OFF WITH TOO MANY METAPHORS
(George Will, Chicago Tribune)
But polls taken since his trip abroad do not indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this presidential campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength in every region and at every level, he is dramatically underperforming. Surely this fact is related to anxieties about his thin résumé regarding national security matters. But the fact also might be related to fatigue from too much of Obama's eloquence, which is beginning to sound formulaic and perfunctory.
OBAMA’S PITCH TO HIT
(Harold Meyerson, Washington Post)
It was one thing for Obama to lose the white working-class vote to Hillary Clinton, whose fundamental economic policies weren't all that different from his own. But to have as much trouble with that constituency against John McCain, even allowing for the reluctance of many white Americans to make a black man president, bespeaks Obama's ongoing difficulty in persuading voters that he's on their side in matters economic and that John McCain isn't.
OBAMA HASN’T CLOSED THE DEAL YET
(Clarence Page, RealClearPolitics.com)
Yet after running as much as nine points ahead of McCain in major polls, Obama's lead has mostly evaporated, especially in key Midwestern industrial swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Why? I think a big reason is McCain's refusal to be scary or outrageous enough. He has maintained enough of his maverick image to resist Democratic efforts to re-brand him as Bush's third term.
Other must-reads:
BIG-DOLLAR DONORS ARE MAJOR FORCE IN OBAMA CAMPAIGN
(Michael Luo and Christopher Drew, New York Times)
In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far. But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.
BUNDLER COLLECTS FROM UNLIKELY DONORS
(Matthew Mosk, Washington Post)
Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit -- who now serves as a consultant to his company -- Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election.
BARACK OBAMA’S LOST YEARS
(Stanley Kurtz, Weekly Standard)
Any rounded treatment of Obama's early political career has got to give prominence to the issue of race. Obama has recently made efforts to preemptively blunt discussion of the race issue, warning that his critics will highlight the fact that he is African American. Yet the question of race plays so large a role in Obama's own thought and action that it is all but impossible to discuss his political trajectory without acknowledging the extent to which it engrosses him.
