An endorsement that might matter

Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama over the weekend isn't entirely unexpected, but it could be one of the more significant developments of this last month of the presidential campaign. Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former national security advisor, former secretary of state, was one of the most broadly respected men in America. His autobiography was a bestseller.

Had he run for president in 2000, he might have won. His support was that broad, and the public's respect for him was that strong. But Powell did not have the "fire in the belly" — the willingness to trudge tirelessly for two years or more, begging for money and pleading for votes. So instead, he signed on as George W. Bush's secretary of state. The most famous moment of his tenure came when the Bush administration sent him to the United Nations to argue that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Powell made the argument powerfully, and his credibility helped tip public opinion and world opinion on the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Only later did Powell discover that he had been hung out to dry by the war hawks in the White House. When troops found no weapons of mass destruction and later when secret intelligence was revealed that showed that Iraq had long ago abandoned its WMD program, Powell looked like an unethical sycophant and felt like an ignorant fool. The Bushies had stolen from Powell his most precious possessions — his good name, his integrity, his honor.

If Powell has been oddly quiet since 2003, it's likely because he feels embarrassed that he let himself be used by the White House to justify its invasion of Iraq. Unlike dozens of other retired generals, Powell has not spoken up about Iraq strategies or tactics. He has not written another book. He has not been a talking head on all the cable news shows. He has kept his own counsel and has avoided the spotlight.

That reticence makes his endorsement all the more powerful. By endorsing Obama, Powell is making amends for allowing himself and his good name to be used by the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. Obama is the anti-Bush and, thereby, the anti-McCain.

Endorsements, as I said repeatedly during my three decades of endorsing candidates in newspaper editorials, rarely persuade anyone. But Powell's endorsement might be worth more than most. Although his integrity took a beating five years ago, many Americans still have great respect for Powell. The independent voters who urged his presidential candidacy a decade ago might still be willing to listen to what the general has to say.

We can do without Joe the Plumber

Thanks to television and political strategists, American political campaigns are increasingly driven by pseudo-issues. Joe the Plumber is the latest false issue that is dominating campaign rhetoric, despite the fact that Joe Wurzelbacher's situation is more urban legend than fact.

John McCain brought up Wurzelbacher in the final presidential debate as he went after Barack Obama's tax plan. Wurzelbacher was caught on camera telling Obama at a campaign stop that he wanted to buy the plumbing company he worked for, but Obama's tax plan would punish him by raising his taxes if he did so. Obama brushed off the accusation, offering a generality about tax fairness and "spreading" the money and tax burden.

McCain's take is that Obama would raise the taxes of "wealthy" Americans, which includes many working-class business owners like Joe the Plumber, and he has hammered this theme in campaign commercials and speeches.

There are a few problems with this scenario. First, Joe the Plumber, it turns out, isn't a licensed plumber, so he can't buy the company and can't even legally work as a plumber without a license. Second, it turns out Joe isn't keen on paying his current taxes. The state has a tax lien on his house because of unpaid back taxes. Third, his complaint that Obama would raise his taxes would apply only if he earns more than $250,000 a year as a business owner. It is true that many small businesses pay taxes as individual income, and some small businesses would be affected by the Obama tax plan, but most small business owners don't net $250,000 in a year. They wish they could.

So Joe the Plumber, which has become the buzz of the campaign this week, is a false issue.

Political candidates, like writers, have discovered that arguments come alive when they can be exemplified by one person's plight. So candidates like to cite this unemployed steelworker or that single mother or some bakeshop owner to illustrate their political arguments. Al Gore was so adept at this, he drove me to distraction.

But these individualized illustrations run the risk of skewing the truth and misleading listeners. After the past week, more Americans probably know the details of Joe the Plumber's life than know the difference between the McCain and Obama tax proposals.

Americans should have a long enough attention span for the candidates to debate their tax differences. McCain wants to keep the Bush-era income tax rate reductions and lower some other tax rates that mostly benefit wealthier Americans. Obama wants to raise taxes on higher-income Americans (over $250,000) while keeping tax cuts for less-affluent taxpayers. Arguments can be made for either plan — without confusing the issue with talk about a scofflaw's dream of buying out his boss.

The final debate offers sharper exchanges and grins

Last night brought us the closest things voters have seen this presidential campaign season to a real debate. The exchanges were sometimes sharp and often pointed. John McCain took the offensive, accusing Barack Obama of wanting to raise taxes, of having clandestine relationships with aging radicals and of being dishonest. Most of these accusations don't seem to be resonating with voters; they sound contrived, trite and hackneyed. Perhaps McCain's most effective jab had to do with Obama's reversal of his commitment to use public financing for his general election campaign. Able to raise millions more in private donations, Obama decided to renege on his earlier vow to use public financing — a procedure he has championed — and overwhelm the less-well-funded McCain campaign. Obama had no real rebuttal for the charges.

But Obama remained cool and unflustered throughout the debate. He looked confident and presidential. In contrast, McCain often looked agitated, even angry, as he lashed out at Obama, who was sitting just an arm's length away. Obama, who responded with a bemused grin several times during McCain's verbal attacks, risked committing Al Gore's exasperated and audible sighs from the 2000 presidential debates. Those sighs, meant to repudiate George W. Bush's comments, cast Gore as sophistic and arrogant. Obama's bemused grin was not as negative as Gore's sighs, but it could come across as arrogance.

McCain might have come out ahead in this final debate, but not by much, if any.

But let's go back to a little-commented-upon moment in the vice presidential debate. In discussing judicial appointments, Joe Biden bragged that he initiated a new era in judicial appointments when he opposed Judge Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, not because Bork was not qualified, not because he was inexperienced or unprepared but because Biden disagreed with the nominee's judicial philosophy.

In citing Bork, Biden opened a Pandora's Box that Sarah "You Betcha" Palin failed to exploit. The Bork reference seemed to go right over her head. Did she not know who Bork is? Was she too young to remember the "Borking" of President Reagan's Supreme Court nominee? Whatever, the reason, Palin let Biden get away with his boast about what he had done to alter judicial nominations forever.

A sharper debater would have challenged Biden's boast. "Bork" has become a verb (included in the Oxford English Dictionary) that describes the unfair and unreasonable destruction of an appointee for partisan reasons. Had Palin been more aware, she might have pointed out the many references to Biden's hypocrisy as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on Bork and others. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his autobiography, describes Biden's charm in promising the nominee that he would be nice to him and wouldn't allow any attacks on his character, but when the hearings began and the cameras started rolling, Biden led the personal attacks. Then after the hearings recessed, Biden would be all charm again, excusing his behavior as just what he has to do as chairman, no offense intended, you know.

Biden left himself vulnerable by bragging that he had invented Borking. Maybe he knew that was before Palin's time and she wouldn't know what he was talking about.

Presidential debate, one last time

Tonight's presidential debate will be voters' last look at the two candidates on one stage, but I doubt that it will have a profound impact on voter opinions. The first two debates were fundamentally a draw — neither candidate struck a decisive blow or swallowed his entire foot. Each represented himself well and did little to turn away supporters or attract new fans.

Chances are, tonight's debate will have the same results. Before the second debate, I feared that the event at Belmont University could turn nasty. John McCain had been urged to "take the gloves off." But he remained civil while still getting in a few digs at his opponent. That angered some of his supporters who thought he was too easy on Barack Obama. This attitude was exemplified twice in the past week, when McCain corrected a supporter at a town-hall-style meeting when she called Obama "an Arab" and again when a supporter condemned Obama. To his credit, McCain told his supporters that Obama is a good person with whom he disagrees on policy matters. The supporters didn't care for that level of maturity and perspective, and boos were heard in the arena.

The polls have Obama surging ahead, largely as a result of the sour economy. No matter what the cause of an economic downturn, the party in the White House gets the blame. McCain is suffering from his connection to the Grand Old Party and President Bush while Obama benefits by representing the other side. With three weeks to go before election day, things can change dramatically. A whole new issue, as unexpected as the economic meltdown of the past month, could steal the headlines and alter the electoral dynamics. But without such a dramatic change, Obama has the advantage, through circumstances not of his own making.

Ironically, if this election were being decided on the issue both candidates thought a year ago would be paramount, McCain might be surging ahead. Obama built his campaign and his early victories on his opposition to the Iraq War. He backed Hillary Clinton into a corner over her initial support of a war resolution. He said we never should have started the war. He promised to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. He opposed last year's troop surge.

But something unexpected happened: U.S. fortunes in Iraq turned around. Death tolls declined. Whole neighborhoods and whole cities in Iraq became safe again. U.S. troops and the Iraqi government gained popularity. A new counter-insurgency strategy and the insertion of 30,000 new troops turned the corner in Iraq. War news fell out of the headlines.

Recent polls show the Iraq War is having little impact on voters' decisions. If the war were paramount, McCain could be saying "I told you so" and riding a wave of military success. Obama would be forced to justify his intentions to pull out of Iraq without achieving the success that has now been found.

But the Iraq War, the overriding issue of the early primaries, is an afterthought today, three weeks before the election. All voters really care about now is the economy.

A civil but uninspiring debate

Last night's presidential debate was more civil than I had expected, more civil than we had been led to believe it might be. McCain, who had hinted the "gloves" would "come off," didn't throw any roundhouse punches, just a few jabs at "that one," the opponent whose name he couldn't bear to say.

For voters, there was little new. Some of the statements were nearly verbatim repetitions of what they had said in the first debate. McCain offered a new proposal to have the Treasury buy up troubled mortgages and then renegotiate the mortgages at the new, reduced value of the property. But the Obama camp is saying today that the McCain proposal is not really new; it's a part of the $700 billion bailout ... er, rescue ... that Congress has already passed.

What has to be disappointing for voters is that neither candidate seems capable or willing to acknowledge just how much the economy has changed since they developed their official economic platforms months ago. The Dow was down 508 points Tuesday and is down nearly a third this year. But when asked in this debate and in the previous one what they would be willing to give up in their ambitious spending plans, both candidates seemed flummoxed. Oh, they'll cut earmarks and pork barrel spending, but they won't postpone health care or tax cuts or entitlement reform.

When asked what they would ask Americans to sacrifice, McCain didn't seem to understand the question and went off on his riff about earmarks. Obama had one of his better moments, criticizing George W. Bush for failing to ask for sacrifices after 9/11, telling Americans instead to "go shopping." But he gave no real specifics about what sacrifices he would expect now.

Overall, Obama seemed to come out ahead in this debate, partly because of the so-called "town hall" format that had the candidates leaning on stools and strolling around the stage. This is the format that was supposed to favor McCain's more casual, "my friends" style. McCain rarely sat during the debate, standing stiffly or walking around as Obama spoke. He seemed to be trying to prove he was just as young and fit as Obama. But he's not. He's 72 and has numerous infirmities owing to his war injuries and torture in a Vietnamese prison. He walks with a slight limp, and he can't raise his arms above his shoulders. That combination makes him look old and stiff, especially in a debate format that has him limping about the stage and waving his arms in shortened arcs.

The likely big loser in tonight's debate

I'll watch tonight's presidential debate with some reluctance. I'm afraid it's going to get nasty. Followers of my previous blog know that I had written months ago that if McCain and Obama won their parties' nominations, we might witness something rarely seen in presidential politics in my lifetime — a civil campaign.

Looks like I was wrong. Both candidates have abandoned civility in favor of the tried-and-true attacks on opponents' veracity, integrity, philosophy, morality, judgment, political records and private lives. The rhetoric on the campaign trail has grown more harsh in the past week, and this promises to carry over into tonight's debate.

Neither candidate can come out ahead. If Obama turns into an attack dog, he repudiates the clean, respectful image he has touted since his campaign began. If McCain turns into a snarling Doberman, he risks playing into critics' contention that he is impulsive, self-righteous and a little bit mean. Both candidates need to avoid these pitfalls, but both are probably being advised that they can't afford to play Mr. Nice Guy.

The biggest loser will be the American voter. The first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate drew huge audiences. Americans will likely tune in tonight to help make up their minds for their task four weeks from today. If the debate turns out to be little more than "you're a jerk" and "you're another one," the American people lose. And our best opportunity for a clean, insightful, principled presidential campaign will be lost.