When news broke Monday afternoon that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford went off the grid the previous Thursday and that neither his wife nor his staff knew where they were, I was interested but not particularly motivated to write about it.  It was essentially a gossip story that would have been purely speculative and there was the chance that something tragic had happened and I’d have felt like a real jerk for wisecracking about it.

Soon, the story evolved into Sanford’s having gone off to hike the Appalachian Trail with some weird, unsourced rumors that he was doing so bereft of clothing.  I continued largely ignoring the story.

Well, now that he is back on the grid — purportedly after a solo trip to the densely urban Buenos Aires for an exotic drive down the coastline — and has announced a press conference for this afternoon, I’m compelled to write something.

I’ve seen suggestions on Twitter and elsewhere that this is a liberal mainstream media hounding a conservative Republican widely considered a viable contender for the 2012 presidential nomination.  Sorry, folks:  This is real news.

I share Annie Lowrey’s assessment that the story is “bizarre” and that Sanford’s actions were “so vastly irresponsible — not just weird, but irresponsible — for a major public official to do that, in my mind, it disqualifies him for the job.”  I also echo Steven Taylor’s judgment that “I have no problem if a governor or other public official wants a vacation. If his family is okay with the notion of him going off by himself without contact, that’s their business, although I personally find that odd.  However, if one holds an office of public trust, especially a chief executive position, then one should make arrangements for one’s absence, even if it is done in a way as to avoid media attention. To do otherwise strikes me as irresponsible.”

“Bizarre.  Weird.  Irresponsible.”  That’s not exactly an ideal campaign slogan.

See also:  “The Missing Governor: A Timeline” at TPM. and “Mark Sanford’s press conference: A viewer’s guide” at Politico.

UPDATE:   Ugh.  It gets much worse:  Add “Adulterer” to the tagline.

Gov. Mark Sanford says he is publicly apologizing for letting down South Carolinians after admitting he was having an affair during a press conference at the statehouse in Columbia Wednesday. Apologizing to his wife, sons and all of South Carolina, Sanford says he has engaged in a relationship with a “dear friend” from Argentina.

Sanford confessed the relationship between him and the unidentified woman began very innocently through emails, and says over the past year developed into much more than a simple friendship.  Since the development of the relationship, Sanford says he has seen the woman three times.

“I hurt you all, I hurt my wife, I hurt my boys,” said Sanford, with tears in his eyes.  “All I can say is ‘I apologize.’”

Sanford says his family has been struggling with his unfaithfulness for the last five months, noting his wife, Jenny Sanford, and sons knew about his trip to Argentina before he left the country.  “I’ve spent the last five days crying in Argentina,” said Sanford.  Despite his unfaithfulness, Sanford stands by his relationship with his wife, saying they are not “formally separate,” but are rather trying to “work through something.”

Sanford also noted during the Wednesday’s press conference he will be stepping down as the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association.

John Hawkins offers the unsolicited advice that he might as well step down as governor while he’s at it. He adds, “Sanford was a rising star in the Republican party and it was really sad to see him throw away his promising political career this way.”

Indeed. I’d add: At least we’re finding out now rather than in the midst of the presidential race.

Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama.  He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then

Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama’s less obviously deluded supporters fall along the same continuum. Take a look at the woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks collected at the beginning of “Obama’s Whitewash,” the third excerpt here, and the comments here. Moreover, this kind of reaction — an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere — is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.

People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors — yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?

This, incidentally, from a man who can scarcely imagine voting for a Republican.

James Benjamin goes further:

Although I seriously doubt that Obama is the next Hitler, his followers are every bit as authoritarian as those who followed Bush (or Schwarzenegger, as I seem to recall) just a few years ago, and that’s something a despot, a strongman would want.

[...]

I would not be at all surprised if either Obama himself were revealed to be some sort of wild card authoritarian in his own right, and/or numerous of his followers were wild card authoritarians – i.e., those who can pose as “leftists” but once in a position of power begin to crack down on dissent much like the right-wingers we all know and loathe. Obama’s own embrace of warmongers, neoliberals, and of course of the awful FISA bill that is likely destined to pass does not bode well for those who wish to continue arguing that he is “progressive” (whatever that is supposed to mean any more). The behavior by groups of Obama fanatics on some of the community blogs (lots of bully tactics as I recall) and the apparent efforts by Obama partisans to shut down individually run anti-Obama blogs is a relatively mild expression of that authoritarianism; we should keep in mind that we’re still early in the game.

Jesse Taylor believes this line of reasoning has guano-level sanity and snarks, “While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.”

Obama is quite possibly the most charismatic politician of my lifetime.  Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had superb oratorical skills and charismatic personalities but neither made crowds swoon to the extent Obama does.  John Kennedy was murdered before I was born and it’s hard for me to assess him apart from the strange fascination and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination plot.  Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower and, certainly, Franklin Roosevelt had it.

Like Silber, it worries me when people get so emotionally involved in their leaders.  I’m not concerned that Obama is going to annex Canada and start the ethnic cleansing of white working class Appalachians and people named Larry;  Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were evil men, not good ones who went mad with too much power.

Then again, I don’t think that George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger (or even Rudy Giuliani) are “authoritarians,” “despots,” or “strongmen,” either.  Executives naturally believe in the rightness of their cause and seek to push the envelope of their power when they’re being thwarted by inconvenient institutions.  Some do so more than others.

The problem with cults of personality in the American experience is it that it furthers our tendency to trust government to take care of us.  FDR was well meaning in constructing the New Deal and the vast machinery of government bureaucracy needed to support it to combat the unique challenges of the Great Depression; unfortunately, the solution long outlasted the crisis.  Similarly, I believe torture, rendition, habeus corpus suspension, the Department of Homeland Security, and the other over-reactions to the 9/11 attacks were well intentioned measures to make us safer.

Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, have a streak of crusading righteousness in them that leads to a dismissiveness to criticism.  Some of our best and some of our worst presidents have had it.   Fortunately, we have a set of institutions — separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism — and a political culture that make realizing authoritarian ideals difficult.

via memeorandum

Steve Tuttle takes to the pages of Newsweek to proclaim the ascendency of Appalachia as the decider of the next president.

“Hick.” “Hillbilly.” “Redneck.” “Inbred.” “Cracker.” “Ridge Runner.” I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the ’80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a rube when I brought along my sky-blue JCPenney suit—with reversible vest—and my stack of Willie and Waylon albums, and entered a world that was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to my fancy William & Mary roommates from the private schools. Imagine my surprise at their surprise when, thinking nothing of it, I casually mentioned that I missed my mom’s home-cooked squirrel.

Well, look who’s laughing now. In this strangest of political seasons, Appalachia, the last forgotten place in America, suddenly matters. Never mind Florida and Michigan. In a close election come November, the difference between President McCain and President Obama could come down to me and my people: a bunch of ornery, racist, coal-minin’, banjo-pickin’, Scots-Irish hillbillies clinging to our guns and religion on the side of some Godforsaken, moonshine-soaked ridge in West Virginia. The Democrats comically pandered to all these stereotypes during this spring’s primaries, when the 23 million people of Appalachia—that 1,000-mile mountainous stretch from southern New York to the middle of Alabama—briefly hijacked the presidential race. Scrounging for every last vote, the candidates went out of their way to look country. Hillary got all twangy. Barack tasted beer.

West Virginian Don Surber figures this is old news, noting that, “If Al Gore, boy genius, had taken Arkansas or Tennessee or West Virginia, Florida would not have mattered.”  Tennessean Glenn Reynolds adds, “Apparently, the vote for me, you ignorant rednecks approach isn’t working that well.”

Of course, as Clark Stooksbury points out, “I’m not sure how dumb hillbillies decided the 2000 race when every single state mattered–had George Bush lost one more state anywhere, he would not have been president. If you compare the 1996 and 2000 electoral maps, you see that Gore lost a lot of states, with more than 100 electoral votes, that Clinton carried in 1996.”

True that. A lot of states are likely to be in play this go-round.  All of them matter.  Indeed, for all we know, it could come down to Georgia and how many votes Bob Barr siphons off from John McCain.

Barack Obama has ostensibly* passed the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. The media have declared him the winner. He’s declared himself the nominee. Hillary Clinton hasn’t acknowledged either reality, yet, but seems resigned to it.

Obama Claims Victory

Sen. Barack Obama achieved the 2,118 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president last night and made history by becoming the first African American to win a major party’s presidential nomination, according to the ABC News scorecard.

The presumptive Democratic nominee locked up the nomination even before the votes were counted in the party’s final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana last night. Obama went on to easily win Montana last night by a margin of 57 percent to Sent. Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent. But Clinton, D-NY, snatched one last upset victory in South Dakota, with a 55-44 percent win. Nevertheless, Obama picked up enough delegates from those states to pad his margin of victory and was expected see additional superdelegates rally to his side today.

Making history by becoming the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee, Obama, D-Ill., emerges victorious from one of the longest and most closely fought Democratic nomination fights in recent history.

“Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Obama told cheering supporters at an arena in St. Paul, Minn.

He graciously praised Clinton, despite the sometimes bitter exchanges the two had during the campaign. “Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign, not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she’s a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight,” Obama said. “Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete” with her, he said.

Were I a lit major, I’d find lots of symbolism in this:

Later, the candidates played some phone tag, ABC’s Sunlen Miller reports. A little after 11 pm, Obama left Clinton a message on an aide’s cell phone, congratulating Clinton on her South Dakota win and asking that she return the call. ABC’s Eloise Harper reports that some time later, Clinton returned Obama’s call. The two spoke very briefly and then the cell phone call dropped out. Clinton called him back and got his voice mail.

Clinton Keeping Options Open

For her part, Clinton refused to concede the race tonight. “This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight,” she told supporters in New York.

She does her best decision-making at 3 a.m., as we all know.

“In the coming days, I’ll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way,” she said as supporters chanted “Denver, Denver!” pointing to the party’s convention in August.

Bringing the Party Back Together

Divisive as this race has been, mostly because Clinton continued a scorched earth campaign months after it was all but certain that Obama would prevail, I continue to believe that most Democrats will rally behind their nominee. It’s going to be a long five months to Election Day.

Still, let’s just say that white, religious folk in Appalachia aren’t the only ones who are bitter. Armando, one of the blogosphere’s most die-hard Clinton supporters, has graciously thrown in the towel. His commenters? Not so much.

From the other side, both Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias have some harsh words for the Clintons.

More so than getting the Clintonistas on board, Obama’s biggest problem may be ridiculously high expectations. Sober journalists are asking questions like, “Can Obama make [the] American dream come true?” That’s a bit much to ask, methinks.

On the the General Election

Barack Obama is ever-so-slightly ahead in the national head-to-head polls with John McCain and should get a big bounce from last night. Barring major developments, that lead will grow as Hillary supporters make their way through the stages of grief and reach Acceptance.

Clinton’s dogged campaign provides something of a roadmap for Team McCain. Certainly, she’s provided plenty of footage for Republican television spots. It may well be that the weak points Clinton identified, which didn’t quite work with a Democratic nominating electorate, will go over better in a general election campaign.

It’s worth noting, too, that Clinton continued to win states right up until the last night despite the media having (rightfully) declared her campaign dead weeks ago. For all his oratorical skill, he’s a flawed candidate.

So, of course, is McCain. McCain publicly admitted that he would be too old to run for president in 2008 and yet here he is. The contrasts with the young, vigorous Obama will be stark. And any Democrat would be favored over any Republican this year, given the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq War. High gas and food prices, while having virtually nothing to do with Bush, let alone McCain, will also make things harder.

Still, McCain has a puncher’s chance. He’s not the orator Obama is but he’s good in debates and in front of crowds. His geezerly fifty years of public service is an asset as well as a liability. He’s got five months to convince people that he’s the better choice.

________________

*I have no doubt that Obama will win this thing and should win it given that he is ahead by any reasonable, objective measure. I merely note that, while Obama is leading Clinton among pledged delegates with no more contests remaining, he is only past the 2118 threshold by virtue of the inclusion of 394 superdelegates whose promise to vote for Obama is absolutely unbinding. Indeed, a handful of that number had previously pledged to vote for Clinton.

While much has been made of Barack Obama’s problems with white working class voters, especially in Appalachia, a more problematic trend may be signs of trouble with Jewish voters, a strong if relatively small part of the Democratic base.

Today’s NYT features Jodi Kantor’s story, “Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama.”

On Thursday, Mr. Obama will court Jewish voters with an appearance at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla. A longtime Democratic constituency with a consistently high turnout rate, Jews are important to his general election hopes, particularly in New York, which he expects to win; in California and New Jersey, which he must keep out of Republican hands; and, most crucially, here in Florida, where Jews make up around 5 percent of voters. This is the most haunted state on the electoral college map for Democrats, the one they lost by hundreds of votes and a Supreme Court decision in 2000, and again in 2004.

“The fate of the world for the next four years,” mused Rabbi Ruvi New as his Sunday morning Kabbalah & Coffee class dispersed in East Boca Raton. “It’s all going to boil down to a few old Jews in Century Village,” he added, referring to a nearby retirement community.

Jews, of course, are just one of the many constituencies Mr. Obama must persuade: Latinos, women, working-class whites and independents are vital as well. Thanks in part to enthusiasm from younger Jews, he won 45 percent of the Jewish vote in the primaries (not counting the disputed ones in Florida and Michigan), a respectable showing against a New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. But in recent presidential elections, Jews have drifted somewhat to the right. Because Mr. Obama is relatively new on the national stage, his résumé of Senate votes in support of Israel is short, as is his list of high-profile visits to synagogues and delis. So far, his overtures to Jews have been limited; aside from a few speeches and interviews, he has left most of it to surrogates.

And, frankly, a lot of bizarre rumors linger.

Because of a dispute over moving the date of the state’s primary, Mr. Obama and the other Democratic candidates did not campaign in Florida. In his absence, novel and exotic rumors about Mr. Obama have flourished. Among many older Jews, and some younger ones, as well, he has become a conduit for Jewish anxiety about Israel, Iran, anti-Semitism and race.

Mr. Obama is Arab, Jack Stern’s friends told him in Aventura. (He’s not.)

He is a part of Chicago’s large Palestinian community, suspects Mindy Chotiner of Delray. (Wrong again.)

Mr. Wright is the godfather of Mr. Obama’s children, asserted Violet Darling in Boca Raton. (No, he’s not.)

Al Qaeda is backing him, said Helena Lefkowicz of Fort Lauderdale (Incorrect.)

Michelle Obama has proven so hostile and argumentative that the campaign is keeping her silent, said Joyce Rozen of Pompano Beach. (Mrs. Obama campaigns frequently, drawing crowds in her own right.)

Mr. Obama might fill his administration with followers of Louis Farrakhan, worried Sherry Ziegler. (Extremely unlikely, given his denunciation of Mr. Farrakhan.)

How widespread these beliefs are is hard to measure. But it goes well beyond that.

But the resistance toward Mr. Obama appears to be rooted in something more than factual misperception; even those with an accurate understanding of Mr. Obama share the hesitations. In dozens of interviews, South Florida Jews questioned his commitment to Israel — even some who knew he earns high marks from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which lobbies the United States government on behalf of Israel.

“You watch George Bush for a day, and you know where he stands,” said Rabbi Jonathan Berkun of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center.

Many here suspect Mr. Obama of being too cozy with Palestinians, while others accuse him of having Muslim ties, even though they know that his father was born Muslim and became an atheist, and that Mr. Obama embraced Christianity as a young man. In Judaism, religion is a fixed identity across generations.

“His father was a Muslim and you can’t take that out of him,” said Ms. Chotiner, 51, who said she would still vote for Mr. Obama, out of Democratic loyalty. “Do I have very strong reservations? Yes, I do,” she said.

Several interviewees said they had reservations about Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate with Iran — whose nuclear ambitions and Holocaust-denying president trigger even starker fears among Jews than intifada uprisings and suicide bombings. American Jews are by no means uniformly opposed to negotiations with Iran, the leaders of several Jewish groups said, but there is no consensus, and everyone fears that the wrong choice could lead to calamity. Israelis fear Iran “could be the first suicide nation, a nation that would destroy itself to destroy the Jewish nation,” Mr. [Alan] Dershowitz said.

While most of this report is anecdotal, there are some data supporting the trend. The latest Rasmussen poll in Florida shows McCain beating Obama 50-40. More interestingly, “Just 57% of Florida Democrats say they will vote for Obama while 27% plan to vote for McCain. The two candidates are essentially even among unaffiliated voters.” To be sure, part of this is a function of Hillary Clinton supporters who haven’t accepted that Obama will be the nominee yet, combined with some bitterness over how the DNC has treated the state. Regardless, Obama has to view this with some concern.

Dave Schuler, Alex Knapp, Dodd Harris and I talked about this phenomenon in passing on last night’s edition of OTB Radio, mostly inspired by a RealClearPolitics piece by former NYC mayor Ed Koch, a liberal Democrat who backed President Bush in 2004 “saying at the time that I did not agree with him on a single domestic issue, but I did believe he was the only one running who appreciated the threat of Islamic terrorism to American values and Western civilization and was prepared to wage a war to defend those values.” Despite Bush’s horrendous approval ratings, Koch argues history will vindicate him precisely because of his stance on terrorism and, in particular, his staunch support of Israel.

I’m dubious of Koch’s claims on a variety of fronts. But there is likely a strong contingent of “Ed Koch Democrats” out there who vote with a keen eye toward America’s policy toward Israel. That both baffles and concerns me but it’s a reality.

Hillary Clinton made a wee gaffe campaigning in West Virginia yesterday, which London Telegraph correspondent Alex Spillius is taking as a sign she’s about to drop out.

Speaking to voters in the Appalachian state, she said: “All the kitchen table issues that everybody talks to me about are ones that the next president can actually do something about, if he actually cares about it.” Realising her faux pas, she added: “More likely if she cares about it!”

Obviously, not much here. It’s rather natural to refer to presidents as “he,” given each of the 42 inhabitants of the office has in fact been a man. For that matter, Hillary’s old enough to have been trained in grammar in the days when “he” was considered gender neutral when referring to hypotheticals.

The rest of Spillius’ argument is more persuasive:

Her financial problems, if nothing else, may force her to bow out after ending on a high note in West Virginia, where she is expected to beat Senator Barack Obama by a landslide in Tuesday’s primary contest.

[...]

Though Mrs Clinton continues to make her case as the best next president of the US, she has noticeably softened her tone on Mr Obama in the past few days, after weeks of direct attacks on his readiness for the White House. She also much less regularly peppers her speeches with the phrase “When I am president…” – another sign that her inner conviction is fading.

We shall see. I’m still not convinced that she’ll bow out gracefully.

Glenn Reynolds argues in a column in today’s NY Daily News that we’d be safer if only more of us carried guns.

In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school’s vice principal took a .45 fromhis truck and ran to the scene. In February’s Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.

Police can’t be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it’s usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they’re armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.

“Gun-free zones” are premised on a fantasy: That murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That’s an insult. Sometimes, it’s a deadly one.

David Kopel has a similar piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Last year the Virginia legislature defeated a bill that would have ended the “gun-free zones” in Virginia’s public universities. At the time, a Virginia Tech associate vice president praised the General Assembly’s action “because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.” In an August 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times, he declared: “Guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”

Actually, Virginia Tech’s policy only made the killer safer, for it was only the law-abiding victims, and not the criminal, who were prevented from having guns. Virginia Tech’s policy bans all guns on campus (except for police and the university’s own security guards); even faculty members are prohibited from keeping guns in their cars.

It’s virtually axiomatic that, in the incredibly rare scenario when a psychopath comes to shoot up a room, that potential victims would be safer if some were armed and trained to use their weapon effectively. On the other hand, it seems rather obvious that having millions of normally law abiding people carrying guns on their person at all times would increase the incidences of rage shootings that wouldn’t occur if those people had to take the time to retrieve a weapon and hunt down the victim, since they’d likely return to their senses in the meantime.

What seems obvious, though, isn’t always true. Despite a trend in the past twenty years or so towards concealed carry and open carry laws being enacted in most states, there’s no evidence of an increase in violence to others by those not otherwise engaged in criminal behavior.

The New Republic, which laid the foundation for “Macaca-gate” with an April piece on “George Allen’s Race Problem – Pin Prick,” is back at with a pair of articles on Allen and his Democratic challenger, James Webb.

The first, Michelle Cottle’s “GEORGE ALLEN’S NIGHTMARE – Webb Feat,” is a clever lefthanded mash note about how Webb (in the words of the emailed promo) “may be too authentic for his own good.”

Watching James H. Webb run to replace Republican George Allen as the junior senator from Virginia, there’s no mistaking the first-time candidate for the sort of “career politician” so often derided by voters. A military hero, Reagan-era secretary of the Navy, and author of widely praised war novels, Webb has exactly the kind of CV that makes Republicans (of which he was one until recently) very, very nervous. But, despite a rough-and-tumble background and good-ole-boy roots–Webb’s most recent book is a nonfiction look at his Scots-Irish heritage and Appalachian ancestors–he lacks the wisecracking, back-slapping persona generally associated with Southern pols. Friends say he’s a great storyteller, but, as a public orator, Webb is neither conversational nor inspirational, imbuing speeches with all the pizzazz of a military briefing. (As Webb laid out his Iraq vision for the Kiwanians, one older gent seated near the dais kept involuntarily resting his eyes.) To Webb’s advantage, his ruddy cheeks, feisty red hair (neatly trimmed, of course), and fit (if not exactly towering) physique belie his 60 years. But there is something a little too reserved and guarded about the pale blue eyes, making him seem vaguely ill-at-ease when working a crowd or enduring a press Q&A. Try as he might, confronted with a roomful of strangers–be they voters or potential donors–Webb can’t help but look as though he’d rather be bow hunting.

It’s a shame the gallant, handsome war hero he-man genius boy is so shy, eh? I mean, otherwise, he’d wipe the floor with his dimwitted, racist, son-of-a-football-coach buffoon opponent, right? Goodness, one might mistake Cottle for an enthusiastic campaign staffer except that her bosses on the Webb team would likely tone down the gushing a mite.

The next paragraph, though, is the killer:

Webb’s ambivalent stump style is all the more vivid when contrasted with the master glad-handing of his opponent, Senator George Allen. Quick with a joke and an easy grin, Allen has spent over two decades honing his goodole-boy shtick–not to mention his fund-raising talents–to the point where he was, until recently, seen as a shoo-in for reelection and a serious presidential contender for 2008. Then came Macaca-gate, a historically idiotic blunder in which, at a lily-white rally in southwest Virginia, Allen singled out a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent for ridicule, twice calling the young man “Macaca”–a term that, in certain Francophone countries (including Tunisia, from which Allen’s mother hails), is a derogatory epithet for dark-skinned folk. Thanks to botched damage-control by Team Allen, the flub quickly became national news, the senator’s poll numbers began sinking, and Virginians suddenly had themselves a real race. In a high-stakes election year that has Democrats dreaming about the six-seat gain needed to retake the Senate, Virginia voters–and candidate Webb–are increasingly being sized up for their potential to deliver that magical margin of victory.

Now, I don’t dispute the idiotic nature of the blunder and, especially, the botched damage control. But could there be a more one-sided portrayal of the incident than “at a lily-white rally in southwest Virginia, Allen singled out a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent for ridicule, twice calling the young man “Macaca”–a term that, in certain Francophone countries (including Tunisia, from which Allen’s mother hails), is a derogatory epithet for dark-skinned folk”? By “Macaca’s” own account, Allen staffers and the Senator himself had been quite friendly to him even though they understood that he was assigned to follow them around with a videocamera. Yet, the reader is led to believe that there’s not a scintilla of doubt that Allen and his audience of French-speaking southwest Virginia rube audience love to ridicule dark skinned people (who just happen to work for the opposition candidate).

In case TNR readers didn’t get the message about what a racist yahoo Allen is, Noam Scheiber hammers the point home in “How George Allen missed the memo on Republicans and race.” The intro:

George Allen’s macaca riff may have exposed him as a racist bully. But the reason it caused such an uproar probably has less to do with Allen himself than with today’s GOP. To put it bluntly, the GOP doesn’t really do race-baiting any more, at least nothing like it used to. Republicans more or less stopped bashing Democrats as the party of welfare queens and violent criminals some time in the mid-’90s, just before they started attacking Democrats as the party of adulterous presidents and monogamous gays.

A few paragraphs later, we get this:

How did Allen miss the memo about Republicans and race? One possibility, which I’m not prepared to dismiss, is that Allen is a bona fide bigot. True, by 2003, Allen had begun to launder his dubious record on race with a series of good deeds, like taking a civil rights “pilgrimage” to Birmingham and co-sponsoring an apology for the Senate’s historical failure to pass anti-lynching legislation. But that was a good five or six years after the rest of the party had changed course. In any case, it doesn’t appear to have stuck.

Now, TNR is a left-of-center publication and their preference for Webb over Allen is not unexpected. They’re an opinion journal, not a newsgathering one. Still, they are the most prestigious magazine of their stripe, with a long and distinguished history. And thev’re angered many Democrats over the years by taking surprisingly independent stances. Such hack work, then, is quite surprising coming from them.

UPDATE: Jon Henke, a well regarded blogger now working for the Webb campaign as New Media Coordinator, has details on a race-baiting Monkey Fest rally organized for tonight by the Webb team.

The Raising Kaine website also has this delightful video which gives the impression that Allen is, quite literally, a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Lovely stuff. It’s a good thing Webb is so authentic, eh?