As you probably know, demands by the United States that its forces and personnel be entirely exempt from Iraqi law has been a sticking-point in negotiations with Baghdad over a Status of Forces agreement to govern the U.S. presence in Iraq. But as the Progressive Policy Institute’s Jim Arkedis points out in a post at his fine new national security blog, allourmight.com, the problem also extends to private security contractors (PSCs), such as the famous private army run by the North Carolina-based company Blackwater Worldwide.
Arkedis unravels a new GAO report that seems to offer reassurance that PSCs are operating under the rule of law. But in the fine print, he discovers that PSCs continue to enjoy immunity from Iraqi law under an obscure order from the long-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Thus:

In laymen’s terms, nothing has changed – security contractors remain immune because the CPA order is considered Iraq law, and the CPA gave contractors a get-out-of-jail-free card in 2004.
Almost more disturbing is that the GAO leaves the distinct impression in the “highlights” that the situation is vastly improved. Most Congressional staffs only have time to read the executive summaries, and may never dig down to find the devil in the details.

When it comes to the challenge of restoring full Iraqi sovereignty, this is a devil indeed.

(Note: this is a portion of an item cross-posted from Beliefnet.com)
I’m less certain than Mara Vanderslice that John McCain’s recent pattern of decrying Barack Obama’s “messianism” is a deliberate effort to label him as the Antichrist. It’s not that I consider Team McCain incapable of “dog whistle” appeals to the Christian Right; their candidate has certainly mastered those dark arts in a variety of abstract references to his hatred of “judicial activism,” which to that audience means legalized abortion, gay partnership rights, and church-state separation. But unless John Hagee spent some time whispering in McCain’s ear during their brief public partnership, I wouldn’t guess he or his campaign advisors possess the kind of theological dexterity necessary to paint the 666 on Obama’s forehead. But maybe Mara’s right. We’ll see if McCain’s campaign continues using religiously-charged terms like “the anointed one” in references to their opponent.
The more obvious problem with McCain’s attacks on Obama’s charisma is simple hypocrisy. No recent presidential candidate in either party has done more to build a cult of personality around himself and his biography, from the arrogant assertion that he is uniquely a “straight-talker,” to the massive investment his campaigns past and present have made in the proposition that his courage and suffering as a POW should fully qualify him for the presidency and rebut any criticism. (Yes, I know he has a long record in Congress, but even many Republicans admit that record is something of an incoherent mess, particularly given his vast flip-flopping during the current campaign cycle).
McCain has also been an eager participant in the self-parodying WWRD (What Would Reagan Do?) idolatry so common among conservatives. And let’s don’t forget (which is easy to do given subsequent events) that during the brief moment of triumphalism before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, many conservatives engaged in an orgy of messianism about George W. Bush as a towering world-historical figure who was decisively and single-handedly smiting the forces of Islamofascism by deposing Saddam Hussein (another candidate for the Antichrist job in some Christian Right precincts) and creating a pro-American revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.
One party’s “messianism” is clearly another’s “charisma.”

Over the weekend, Barack Obama’s campaign notified the Credentials Committee that he wanted Michigan and Florida to have full voting rights at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
This was a totally predictable move, based on a desire to heal wounds in those two states now that their voting status at the Convention has no bearing on the nominating contest.
But it’s still amazing to realize that it was just two months ago when this issue was making front page headlines and roiling the party with passionate arguments about fairness, representative government, and even equal voting rights. It seems like eons ago, doesn’t it?
By comparison, there’s nearly three months left before election day, with a host of important intervening events, most notably the conventions, the presidential debates, a vast array of paid media, and perhaps (at least on the Democratic side) the most impressive get-out-the-vote operation in electoral history. Those Democrats who are currently panicking over the close polls should calm down for a while. At least there’s no longer much risk of over-confidence for Obama, eh?
Getting back to the FL/MI issue, some party stalwarts are worried about the residual effect of the latest decision, according to the New York Times‘ Katherine Seelye:

Mr. Obama’s “request” to restore full voting strength to Florida and Michigan is likely to cause heartburn for party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar.
By granting Mr. Obama’s request, the party will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the calendar next time because there will be no consequences.

Well, yeah, but remember this important fact about the calendar: If Obama wins in November, and escapes a major primary challenge in 2012, then he will be in a position to do whatever he wants to do to the prmary/caucus timetable, with “no consequences.” Indeed, it would represent one of those rare moments when major changes in the entire system for nominating Democratic presidential candidates could become entirely possible.
But if eons have passed since June, and we’re light years from November, then 2012 can be barely imagined.

In case anyone doubts Senator John McCain’s proclivity for callous narcissism and his campaign’s inclination toward vicious hackery, I refer you to the statement, via HuffPo, of Kathy Hilton, mother of the McCain-dissed Paris Hilton.

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

And in case you wisely tuned out the buzz surrounding the McCain ad that prompted the response, McCain said he was ‘proud’ of the ad, which trashed two fellow Republicans in a silly, ineffectual attempt to diminish the gravitas of Senator Obama by unconvincingly associating him with two ‘Hollywood train wrecks.’ “All I can say is we’re proud of that commercial,” the GOP nominee-apparent told a town hall meeting.
Yes, the ad insults two Republicans. Ms. Hilton’s parents reportedly contributed $4,600 to the McCain campaign, no less. Ms. Spears has been captured on videotape touting her support for President Bush. Such is the gratitude and loyalty they get from the leader of their party.
The mean-spirited ad reveals McCain’s callousness in 3-D. Yes, many feel that Spears and Hilton have often behaved like superficial, immature air-heads. But would it be too much to ask that an aspiring leader of the free world show a little more dignity and compassion toward them and others who may have psychological problems or substance-abuse issues?
It may be that McCain and his team didn’t know they were trashing fellow Republicans. If so, that would be very sloppy research and compelling further proof that McCain is sorely lacking in management skills and as a judge of character and abilities of those who he would select to run the government. In any event, McCain’s misguided hubris about the celebrity ad provides yet another indication of his lousy judgment.
It’s McCain’s campaign that is the real train wreck, and the most charitable explanation is that the engineer is asleep at the switch.

Sooner or later, all presidential campaigns go negative, the good guys, as well as the bad guys. The “we’re better than that” conceit is a self-delusion shared by losing campaigns everywhere.
Of course there are two basic ways to go negative — with lies and sleaze, or with integrity and class. Dems should always chose the latter option, and usually do.
The key decision associated with going negative is timing. The McCain campaign has made their decision. As Michael Kranish observes in the lede of his article “McCain ads go negative early on Obama” in the Thursday edition of The Boston Globe:

By launching a series of TV ads that ridicule Senator Barack Obama and question his readiness to be president, Senator John McCain has made a strategic decision to go directly negative much earlier than usual in the presidential race.

Actually, it’s been going on a little longer, as Kranish notes,

The Wisconsin Advertising Project, which monitors campaign ad spending nationwide, reported yesterday that of the $48 million worth of ads the two campaigns have aired since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, 90 percent of Obama’s ads have been positive and mostly about himself, while about one-third of McCain’s commercials referred to Obama negatively.

Obama has to go negative and he will. The only question is will it be too late to help him win? Who Obama should not be on the morning after election day is the loser who sniffs before TV reporters “At least we kept on the high road. I’m proud of my campaign.”
The high road strategy makes sense for the candidate who is protecting a lead in the primary season, because party unity among contenders’ supporters is paramount. But it makes little sense in the general election campaign when surrounded by snarling jackals. If anyone in Obama’s campaign has doubts that McCain’s strategists will go as low as is neccessary to win, Daily Kos writer Dengre has a sobering reality check.
No, I don’t think Obama should personally get into it with McCain’s mud-slingers. But he would do well to heed Ed Kilgore’s advice, in his Friday post,

…Obama really does need to spend less time on broad-based indictments of “Washington” or “lobbyists” or “politics as usual,” and spend a lot more time talking about his actual opponent, the actual opposing party, and the actual incumbent that links them.

McCain and his strategists understand that, to work, a negative meme has to be launched early and hammered throughout the campaign. Then, in the closing days of the general election, McCain can affect a ‘high road’ persona, the dirty work having been done.
So far Obama’s attacks against McCain have been a little too tame. The Obama campaign needs to define the precise meme they want to hang on McCain and implement a strategy to make it stick. Easier said than done, but a challenge that has to be made — and soon — for Democrats to take the white house.

At FiveThirtyEight today, Nate Silver unveils the mysteries of the Gallup Tracking poll cross-tabs, and provides a fascinating comparison of Barack Obama’s recent standing in various demographic categories to John Kerry’s 2004 performance (as measured by exit polls).
Turns out Obama’s doing better than Kerry in every category other than one: self-identified Democrats, where he trails Kerry by nine percentage points. Obama, on the other hand, beats Kerry among self-identified Republicans by fourteen percentage points.
Aside from issues related to the changing partisan composition of the electorate since 2004 (a sizable drop in GOP identification, with modest gains for Democrats and a big increase in indies), this particular finding should be regarded as transitional, since the dynamics of a general election campaign will almost certainly boost Obama among Democrats and McCain among Republicans. But it’s still interesting.
The most impressive Kerry-to-Obama gains are among Hispanics (up 28%, though exit poll underestimation of Kerry’s Hispanic percentages is a factor there), and voters under 30 (up 21%).

Jon Chait’s L.A. Times column yesterday suggested that Barack Obama needs to spend some time away from uplifting, positive campaign events, and go after John McCain with hammer and tongs. Indeed, said Chait, McCain’s stubborn resilience in the polls is probably attributable to the entire focus of the campaign on Obama, which enables the vulnerable Republican to feed doubts, however clumsily, about his opponent with little to lose:

A recent poll found that half the voters are focused on what kind of president Obama would make, while only a quarter are focused on McCain. Obama has attracted more media attention — and more criticism: A Center for Media and Public Affairs study found that, over the last six weeks, the major news networks have expressed proportionately more negative assessments of Obama than McCain.
McCain may be committing lots of blunders, but the blunders aren’t hurting him because the spotlight is on Obama. McCain is getting attention for his attacks on Obama, especially his frequent insinuations that Obama lacks patriotism.

Chait goes on to suggest that Obama may be making the same mistake as John Kerry made in 2004, eschewing negative campaigning on the theory that voters had already reached judgment on the Republican Party and its candidate.
I generally agree with Jon’s prescription, but have a somewhat different take on the Kerry precedent, and on the factors that may be leading Obama to resist a more sharply partisan campaign.
The relentlessly positive 2004 Democratic convention that Jon cites was less the product of a flawed grand strategy than of an overreaction to some focus groups that showed undecided voters harshly rejecting partisan appeals. (As Jon notes, and as Drew Westen emphasized in The Political Brain, such reports represent what voters would like to think about themselves, not how they actual react). The instructions to convention message staff to ruthlessly stamp out references to the GOP, or even to Bush, in everyone’s speeches, came down quite late. (As one of the unhappy enforcers of that edict in a rehearsal room, I subversively let a few partisan notes make it onto the teleprompter, but not enough to annoy, much less swat, a gnat.)
A somewhat different misjudgment–though it’s hard to say it really had an effect on the outcome–was made by Team Kerry in the homestretch of the campaign, reflecting the virtually universal belief of political scientists that late undecided voters (whose “wrong track” sentiments were extremely high) would break against the incumbent. That’s why last-minute polls showing a dead heat cheered the Kerry campaign, and also why they bought the early exit polls showing a victory in all the key states.
Having absorbed the lesson, I don’t think the Obama campaign is making the same mistake, but they have their own reasons for downplaying partisan attacks that connect the dots between McCain, Bush and the GOP. For one thing, Obama has always disparaged excessive partisanship and other examples of “politics as usual.” For another, he’s still hoping to win a small but significant slice of self-identified Republicans, not to mention winning genuine independents, who are often lukewarm towards partisan Kabuki Theater. And let’s don’t forget there are elements of Team Obama, with significant support in the netroots, who think it’s important that the candidate repudiate Democratic as well as Republican malefactors in Washington, and the Clinton as well as the Bush legacy.
This last consideration is reminiscent of the decision made by Al Gore in 2000 to detach himself from his own Democratic administration, and campaign against “the powerful,” as defined by a list of unpopular corporate actors. I’m sure it made sense at the time, particularly given Gore’s conviction that he had to separate himself from Bill Clinton. But it also tended to make voters think they were choosing between Al Gore and the pharmaceutical companies rather than Al Gore and George W. Bush. Eventually a lot of voters listened to the Bush’s campaign’s disingenuous claims that they, too, wanted a Patient’s Bill of Rights and a Rx drug benefit, and by failing to connect the dots between his shadowy enemies and his actual opponent, the reborn neo-populist Gore ironically succeeded in blurring the lines between the parties more than Bill Clinton ever had. (Yes, yes, I know he actually won, but I’m one of those who thought he could have won by a margin that would not have enabled Katherine Harris and the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the popular judgment). With Gore spending much of his time shadow-boxing unpopular corporate villains, Bush, the chosen vehicle of an unholy alliance of theocons and K Street greedheads, got away far more than he should have with projecting himself as a “reformer with results” who simply offered a different “change agenda.”
Barack Obama may be in danger of repeating Gore’s even more than Kerry’s mistakes. As Jon Chait suggests, John McCain’s entire candidacy is based on a dubious effort to maintain his brief 2000 “maverick” image after having shamelessly pandered to the conservative ascendency of his party, while actually championing one of its worst legacies, the Iraq War. He presents a big fat target for a negative but entirely fair and fact-filled campaign. Everything I know about the Obama campaign suggests that it’s not at all averse to the occasional, strategic, cut-and-parry attack on McCain. But Obama really does need to spend less time on broad-based indictments of “Washington” or “lobbyists” or “politics as usual,” and spend a lot more time talking about his actual opponent, the actual opposing party, and the actual incumbent that links them.

Patrick Healy’s article, “Obama Camp Sees Potential in G.O.P. Discontent” in today’s New York Times has one of the more eloquent plugs for the Democratic Presumptive yet uttered. And it comes from a pedigreed Republican, Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of one of the better GOP presidents.

Obama seems like a leader who can deal with challenges that are highly complex, nuanced and interconnected,” Ms. Eisenhower said, “and he has the language and communication skills and temperament to engage a set of world leaders who are his generation

In brutally-stark contrast to his opponent, I would add. Healy notes also that GOP campaign consultant Mike Murphy expects Obama to get more Republican votes than did Kerry.
Healy goes on to discuss pro-Obama stirrings among “whispering Republicans.” He cites the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll in which Obama got about 9 percent of self-identified Republicans (Kerry got 6 percent at mid-summer, ’04).
Democrats hoping to take a significant bite out of the GOP demographic, however, will not get much encouragement from the historical record. As Emory University political scientist Alan I. Abramowitz pointed out in a recent post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball,

…In contrast to the fluidity and unpredictability that has characterized the nomination contests in both parties, the voting patterns in November will be highly predictable and consistent with those seen in other recent general elections — close to 90 percent of all votes will be cast by party identifiers for their own party’s presidential candidate. Whichever party turns out more of its own supporters on Election Day is likely to emerge as the winner.

Still, we can hope that November ’08 breaks the tradition, at least enough to make a difference in one or two swing states. It’s been a long time since a Republican president blundered America into an elective war, and I’m sure there are growing numbers of conservatives out there who are tired of seeing their taxes squandered on the open-ended occupation of Iraq.

With two Roman Catholic governors, Kathleen Sebelius and Tim Kaine, reportedly on Barack Obama’s short-list for the vice presidential nomination, it was inevitable that comparisons would be made about their relationship with their church. Catholic historian Michael Sean Winters has an article up on the New Republic site that argues Sebelius would have a harder time appealing to her co-religionists than Kaine.
Winters offers two reasons for that judgment: (1) Sebelius has been publicly rebuked and asked to refrain from taking communion by her bishop after she vetoed a bill restricting abortion providers in Kansas, making her an obvious target for a revival of the “wafer war” quasi-excommunications by conservative bishops that dogged John Kerry in 2004; and (2) aside from getting along with his bishop, Kaine, unlike Sebelius, has made his Catholicism a central feature of his political persona.
I’m not an expert on Catholicism, but do know something about John Kerry’s experience and about Catholic opinion. And based on that, I’d say Winters’ second point is more compelling than his first. Kerry’s “religion problem” mainly flowed from his admitted reluctance to talk about his faith and its relevance to his public life. In combination with his conflicts with conservative bishops, his reticence made him seem a nominal Catholic or even a bad Catholic, even though he was actually a lot more religiously observant than George W. Bush. And that in turn probably reduced his appeal to Catholics qua Catholics.
As Winters says, Sebelius could have the same problem. But if, on the other hand, she did find a way to articulate her faith in a convincing way, her conflict with the local hierarchy might actually help make her a champion to the significant majority of Catholics who don’t agree with the church’s position on abortion, and who may soon be itching to rebel against conservative threats to massively expand the “wafer wars” by witholding communion from regular church-goers who think or vote “wrong.”
Conversely, while Kaine’s proud Catholicism (not to mention his missionary service and his Spanish-languge fluency) is undoubtedly a political asset, his lack of friction with the church is partly attributable to views on abortion and LGBT rights that are offensive to some Catholics and many non-Catholics, and moreover, aren’t very consistent with those of Barack Obama.
I’m not “endorsing” either candidate or anyone else (though it should be noted that another apparent short-lister, Joe Biden, is a Catholic with long experience of navigating ecclesiastical shoals). But if Obama’s interested in appealing to Catholics by his choice of running-mate, it’s not just a simple matter of picking the candidate least objectionable to the more conservative ranks of the hierarchy. A clear majority of American Catholics are “objectionable” to these bishops, and that’s important to keep in mind.

A post from Ed yesterday noted that the recent complaining about Barack Obama’s “presumptuous” transition planning would be better directed to the signs of disorganization and infighting being exhibited by John McCain’s staff and advisors. In the Politico today, Kenneth P. Vogel runs down the list of policy issues on which McCain and his advisors have been at odds, though the story gets a little confusing thanks to McCain’s various flip-flops. Here’s the nut graph:

McCain has staked out an eclectic and occasionally politically inconvenient hodgepodge of policy positions that has bucked the Republican line on some issues, backed it on others and — on still others — gone from bucking it to backing it. Keeping him on message would be a challenge for the most unified chorus of advisers — and Team McCain is hardly that.

Vogel tries to do the “on the other hand” thing by searching for similar divisions in the Obama ranks, without a whole lot of success.
The most intriguing set of conflicts within Team McCain involves “senior advisor” Carly Fiorina, the very former HP exec who has occasionally made lists of potential running-mates for the GOP candidate:

Fiorina also has found herself at ideological odds with McCain on key issues.
McCain stumbled when asked about her suggestion this month that insurance companies should cover birth control prescriptions. In recent years, McCain has voted against requiring such coverage. The campaign subsequently clarified that McCain opposes all insurance mandates and contended that Fiorina’s comments were consistent with that stance.
And Fiorina this month suggested that McCain might be open to new taxes on the wealthy, which conflicts with McCain’s own pledges not to consider any new taxes.
This week, though, McCain signaled he might be willing to consider raising payroll taxes for Social Security. Then on Tuesday, he sternly said, “No,” when asked at a Nevada event if he would raise taxes as president.

All in all, it looks like McCain has definitively distinguished himself from George W. Bush in one respect: the famous discipline of W.’s retinue is nowhere to be found in Team McCain.