The Baumgarten Report

Sarah Palin is back in Alaska, telling anyone with a microphone who will listen that the John McCain campaign staffers who are leaking information about how she was a rock around the neck of the campaign “jerks.”

And she implored the very news media she attacked as being unfriendly toward her during the campaign to do its job and out those who are making the statements.

Two conflicting observations about all this.

First, she has a point. Anonymous sources are difficult to respond to, and should only be used sparingly and when all else fails. It’s not particularly fair to confront Palin with the accusations without giving her opportunity to confront the source. Perhaps there are mitigating circumstances surrounding the character of the source or his or her relationship with Palin that might color her response.

On the other hand, it’s disconcerting to me that these stories of Palin not knowing that the United States, Canada and Mexico make up NAFTA and that she didn’t know that Africa was a continent and incorrectly thought South Africa was a part of the “country” of Africa (like South Carolina or the south of France?) were not reported until after the election.

The Fox News Channel, which has been on the forefront of breaking this story, acknowledged in its reporting that they knew of these allegations before the election, but that the still unnamed sources swore them to secrecy until it was over.

Reporters on this one should have been more aggressive in verifying the allegations and getting them out to their readers, listeners and viewers before the election was held. The failure to do so makes them appear to be tools of the McCain campaign.

In this era of fractured partisan politics it was heartening to hear a Republican and a Democratic strategist agree over why the John McCain presidential campaign failed.

Democrat Hank Sheinkopf and Republican Steve Goldberg both believe McCain lacked a simple, direct message to present to the American people. While Barack Obama was clear, concise and consistent.

Both agree that McCain allowed the party to dictate how he conducted himself and that hurt him in the long run. The race, Goldberg suggests, might have been closer had McCain been permitted to be himself.

The two were my guests today on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com.

Goldberg says McCain failed to define himself. Sheinkopf said Obama told the truth to the American people, while McCain, he believes, “didn’t want to tell the truth.”

Veracity, they agreed, is what a voting public, dissatisfied with the current administration and even more discontented over the performance of Congress, sought.

Both believe Obama faces immense obstacles. But both believe that and failing he has in delivering promises can be attributed for a long time to the state of the nation when President Bush left office.

All he has to do, says Sheinkopf, is be successful in several key areas to be considered an effective president.

During Friday’s News Talk Online on Paltalk.com with guests Mary Walter from Fox News Talk and WACK News Director Rus Jeffrey there was mention by the latter of a study which showed that MSNBC’s news coverage is biased against John McCain.

The report by the Pew Research Center’s Project For Excellence In Journalism is linked HERE. It’s an important study, and helps us sort whether it’s a question of viewer bias clouding perception or reality.

The findings clearly are an indictment of MSNBC’s coverage. But, interestingly, they find no such political leanings by the cable network’s sister network NBC. In fact, the study finds that at NBC, ABC and CBS, reporting tends to be “more neutral.”

CNN, it found, was “somewhere in the middle of the cable spectrum” but “generally more negative (toward McCain) than the press overall.”

While many viewers find that unsurprising, equally expected were the findings with regard to Fox, which the Pew report concludes has been “more negative than the norm” toward Barack Obama.

McConnell

There are those who argue that the United States will be less secure if Barack Obama is elected president of the United States because our enemies will view him as weak and vulnerable and exploit that.

Others argue that the possibility of renewed terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is minimized with an Obama presidency because he understands diplomacy and will take steps to lower the anger level against the United States around the world. They say that John McCain is more likely to provoke a terrorist attack.

Then there are those who believe that, despite his other failings and his low approval ratings, one thing Pres. Bush has done for us is keep the fight “over there.” There have been no additional terrorist attacks (though some plots have been thwarted) they argue since September 11, 2001. Whoever is the next president, they say, needs to continue that policy of taking the fight to the terrorists.

But the nation’s intel chief says, it doesn’t really matter who the next president of the United States is. He is going to be tested by terrorists. Tested, very likely, on home soil.

In a Nashville speech, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell projects the next president, whether he be Barack Obama or John McCain, faces a volatile future. Sounding a bit like Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, McConnell, noted that the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. came early in the George W. Bush administration. He predicts whoever is elected on Tuesday will face an early surprise. During what he calls a “period of most vulnerability.”

Conservative Florida web and radio commentator Rich Swier says there are four factors that could result in John McCain carrying Florida, a key battleground state in the presidential election.

Swier says a proposition on the ballot which defines marriage as between one man and one woman is drawing out a lot of conservative voters.

He also points to the large number of veterans in Florida, who, he says, as a group, favor McCain.

Swier also believes many Jews, concerned about Barack Obama’s relationship with Palestinian Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, who Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin described as “a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization,” during a speech in Bowling Green, Ohio. Khalidi, a leading scholar of Middle Eastern studies, denies he was ever a PLO spokesman.

Hispanic voters, as well, in southern Florida, are leaning, Swier says, toward McCain.

Swier’s comments came during an appearance today on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com.

Phillip Berg says he’s a lifelong registered Democrat and is more politically aligned with Barack Obama than with John McCain. But he says that if Obama fails to produce his birth certificate by next Tuesday, people shouldn’t vote for him.

Berg is the attorney who filed a federal lawsuit, dismissed Friday night, which demanded that Obama produce the birth certificate to the court. Berg is in the process of preparing an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Berg believes that Obama was actually born in Kenya, and therefore not qualified to be president of the United States. And he believes that there’s a good chance that the supremes will agree to hear his lawsuit and will rule before Election Day.

If they do, and find in his favor, it would create, if not the constitutional crisis he envisions, certainly a political crisis for the Democratic Party.

Berg, appearing on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com, is dismissive of independent fact checking organizations that claim they’ve inspected Obama’s birth certificate and find him to be a natural born citizen.

I may have alienated both Barack Obama and John McCain supporters during today’s News Talk Online on Paltalk.com. But I concluded that, not only are the claims that Obama’s tax plan makes him a socialist overblown, but there’s relatively little difference between his and McCain’s.

We played Obama’s discussion with “Joe The Plumber.” Then we went back to what McCain was saying in 2000 about taxation. I didn’t hear much of a difference between them.

So that begs the question. Which plan does McCain really support? The one he proposed eight years ago? Or the one that’s become a staple of this campaign?

He’s not the only one who has “flipped” or “evolved” on the issues, of course. The first and only goal is to get elected. Say whatever you think will propel you into office. Figure out the rest after Election Day.

As we went to air, the news of the plot to kill Obama and more than 100 black Americans broke. So I’d like to make mention of the fine job the ATF did in thwarting the plot.

It reminds us, as we were in 1995 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City that not all terrorists are foreign born.

So exclaimed a Republican friend of mine who is still upset over Barack Obama’s comments to “Joe The Plumber” in Ohio. In which he used the term “spread the wealth.”

“It’s socialism,” my buddy says. “Pure and simple.”

Is it? And does Obama’s position deviate drastically from John McCain’s?

We’ll discuss this issue, in depth, tomorrow (Monday) on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com.

Let’s start with watching, and listening, to what Obama said exactly to “Joe The Plumber.”

In context, I’m not so certain this sounds, as it does when one just hears a sound bite, like socialism. But you can judge for yourself.

As to my question about whether this is so different from McCain’s position on taxation. It may contrast greatly now. But not so very long ago, in 2000, McCain sounded, well, quite a bit like Obama:

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