Margaret Soltan passes along a complaint from a student about university presidents making a lot of money and claiming that their pay ought to be on par with those of CEOs of businesses.

In regards to administrative salaries, I was appalled to hear the defense of President Baker’s salary was to compare his position to the salaries of CEOs in the private sector. As far as I’m concerned, if salary is an issue, then he is welcome to leave and find himself a well-paying company to lead. I want someone heading our school who is here because he is passionate about the students he is serving. Also, concerning the salaries of CEOs in the public sector, are we not all aware that the CEOs of General Motors and Chrysler have agreed to a $1 salary while receiving government aid? In addition, Steve Jobs has been on a $1 salary for several years, even before the recent economic trouble. I’m not asking the same of President Baker, but to say that he takes a salary of $328,000 with allowances over $60,000 to “do public service”? I would rather see a few new faculty hired with money saved from administration cuts than hear another lame justification about how Baker’s salary is “peanuts” compared to top CEOs.

As a former faculty member who was thrilled when my salary was increased from $30,000 to $38,000 a decade ago, I’m not all that sympathetic to the plight of university presidents.  Indeed, as I’ve noted in this space more than once, most of them are educrats with bogus degrees in “higher education leadership” or some similar non-academic discipline and little or no classroom experience.

That said, they do in fact have jobs similar in many respects to private sector CEOs.  In particular, even at “state supported” public universities, they spend a great deal of time engaged in fundraising.  Indeed, many are hired and fired based on their ability to bring in the cash to bolster endowments, capital building campaigns, and the like.

I know nothing and have no opinion about the particular case the student is complaining about.  In general, though, if a given president can bring in, say, $5 million a year more than another guy for $368,000 a year, his salary would be a bargain, indeed. Perhaps it would be better to instead pay a base salary of, say, $100,000 plus some cut of the increase in fundraising.  Or perhaps not.

Roland Burris now admits the he concealed the extent of his contact with ousted governor Rod Blagojevich.

Raising fresh questions about his appointment to Congress, Sen. Roland Burris admitted in a document released Saturday that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s brother asked him for campaign fundraising help before the governor named Burris as Illinois’ junior senator. The disclosure reflects a major omission from Burris’ testimony in January when an Illinois House impeachment committee specifically asked if he had ever spoken to Robert Blagojevich or other aides to the now-deposed governor about the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

State Rep. Jim Durkin, the impeachment committee’s ranking Republican, told The Associated Press that he and House Republican Leader Tom Cross will ask Sunday for an outside investigation into whether Burris perjured himself.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also said he was reviewing the disclosure, the latest twist for Senate Democrats in Washington who only consented to seat Burris on the condition that there were no “pay to play” promises exchanged in the appointment.

Burris said he voluntarily gave the committee a Feb. 4 affidavit disclosing the contact with Robert Blagojevich because “there were several facts that I was not given the opportunity to make during my testimony to the impeachment committee.”  The affidavit, released by Burris’ office after it was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, said Robert Blagojevich called him three times — once in October and twice after the November election — to seek his fundraising assistance.  Robert Blagojevich’s attorney said his client believes one of the conversations was recorded by the FBI.

Burris, a Democrat like the former governor, said he told Robert Blagojevich he would not raise money because it would look like he was trying to win favor from the governor for his appointment. But he said he did ask the governor’s brother “what was going on with the selection of a successor” to Obama in the Senate and “he said he had heard my name mentioned in the discussions.”

It’s the second time Burris has changed his story. In an unsolicited affidavit to the impeachment committee on Jan. 6, Burris said he had only one limited conversation with the governor before accepting the Senate appointment.

I supported the seating of Burris when it looked like the Senate was going to illegally deny it to him, on the basis that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.   That presumption now appears to be in question.

If Burris’ current story is true, the only thing he obviously did that was improper is witholding this information from investigators.  Being asked to hold a fundraiser isn’t a problem.  I’m not sure that even holding said fundraiser is illegal; lord knows that sort of thing is common in politics.   But the great Watergate lesson remains unheeded:  The coverup is worse than the crime.

A series of media reports questions whether former New York Senator and Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton gave special treatment to donors to Bill Clinton’s charity.  AP’s Sharon Theimer has what appears to be the lead story.

Secretary of State appointee Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation, an Associated Press review of her official correspondence found. The overlap of names on former President Bill Clinton’s foundation donor list and business interests whose issues she championed raises new questions about potential ethics conflicts between her official actions and her husband’s fundraising. The AP obtained three of the senator’s government letters under the Freedom of Information Act.

[...]

The letters and donations involve pharmaceutical companies and telecommunications and energy interests. An aide to the senator said she made no secret of her involvement in many of the issues. Bill Clinton’s foundation declined to say when it received the donations or precisely how much was contributed.

The story details specific interventions on behalf of PAETEC Communications, Merck pharmaceuticals, Bar Laboratories, and KeySpan Corp (now National Grid). All paid to join Bill’s Clinton Global Initiative and got intervention by Hillary Clinton. Given the amounts involved ($10,000 to $20,000 a year) and the sequences (sometimes HRC action preceded them joining CGI) the overlap of a handful of names is hardly proof of misfeasance. It does, however, highlight the inevitable “appearance of impropriety” issues when a husband and wife are both involved in extremely high level activities, especially those which overlap.

The WSJ editorial page warns,

Here is the spectacle of a former President circling the globe to raise at least $492 million over 10 years for his foundation — much of it from assorted rogues, dictators and favor-seekers. We are supposed to believe that none of this — and none of his future fund-raising — will have any influence on Mrs. Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State.

The silence over this is itself remarkable. When Henry Kissinger was invited merely to co-chair the 9/11 Commission, the political left went bonkers about his foreign clients. In this case we have a Secretary of State nominee whose husband may have raised more than $60 million from various Middle East grandees, and Washington reacts with a yawn. Maybe someone will even ask about it at her nomination hearing today.

That’s not unreasonable. While I have no love lost for the Clintons, especially Bill, what I’ve read of his Global Initiative and related related post-White House endeavors his been glowingly positive. There is, however, a certain awkwardness to having him go around with a tin cup in hand and having not only his considerable personal charm but also the specter of his wife’s high office as negotiating tools.

We’re simply in uncharted territory here. We’ve simply never had a former First Lady with anything like Mrs. Clinton’s political power. The closest we’ve had is Eleanor Roosevelt; and Franklin was dead and buried by that point.

The conservative Media Research Center has created the “Free Speech Alliance”–an organization dedicated to fighting the revival of the Fairness Doctrine.

The Media Research Center today officially announced the Free Speech Alliance, a gathering of a multitude of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens dedicated to ensuring that the Censorship Doctrine, mis-named the “Fairness” Doctrine, is never again reinstated.

This move appears to have genuinely puzzled virtually every left-wing blog I read, due largely to the fact that there doesn’t appear to be anybody in the Democratic Party who is at all interested in reviving this doctrine at all.

To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama’s position–and it turns out that he doesn’t want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement.

Personally, given the staggering losses that the Republican Party saw in 2006 and 2008, I think the reason for creating this organization is obvious. It’s been created for the same reason why Division I basketball teams play Division II teams early in the season: it’s an easy win. And that easy win lets the D-I teams puff up their Win-Loss records so they look better when they seek alumni fundraising. (”Support us! We’re already 5-0!”)

Given the current political climate, conservative wins in the next two years are going to be few and far between. So conservative lobbying organizations are going to need a lot of funds to get anything accomplished. But it’s hard to raise money when it looks like you’re losing all the time. The solution? Raise money by fighting a policy that nobody supports! The continued lack of a Fairness Doctrine is the MRC’s ticket to “proving” that their being effective with their donations. All they have to do is harp in their fundraising letters that they’re being “successful” in fighting the Fairness Doctrine, and voila! Instant comparative advantage!

Kathleen Parker is getting quite a response to her WaPo piece “Giving Up on God.”

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

Andrew Sullivan agrees wholeheartedly and contends the party’s control by the “Christianists” is the reason they so blindly followed Bush.

You have to see the link between the fundamentalist psyche and the suspension of critical judgment in the Republican party for the past eight years. A non-born-again president would never have been allowed to get away with it.

Jonah Goldberg says “This act is getting really old.”

I don’t know what’s more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said.

In this one, I’m much closer to Goldberg than to Parker.   As with nonsense about how liberals are modern-day Fascists, this business about “oogedy-boogedy” is decidedly unhelpful in shaping the debate.

Goldberg is quite right here:

For the record, I have no problem with arguments about how the GOP has become too religious. I ended my book with pretty much that argument. I opposed Mike Huckabee vociferously because he seemed the quintessential rightwing progressive imbued with a rightwing social gospel. These are all good arguments to make and they have good responses to them. But please drop the nonsense about how the G-O-D people  or the Palin people are low brows and beasts. There are low brows and beasts everywhere, on every side of the ideological spectrum.

Indeed.  Sadly, Parker gets is right too late in her column:

It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts.

I fully concur that trying to build a majority coalition around Christian Conservatives is a losing proposition.  As I noted a couple weeks ago on OTB Radio, targeting one’s public policy so as to appeal to “every last Pentacostal” is a mistake.  At the same time, however, there’s no conceivable center-right majority that excludes people of faith.  (Indeed, one can argue that conservatism without religion isn’t conservatism at all; but that’s another debate.)  The key is to appeal to social values voters without repelling Chamber of Commerce and libertarian Republicans and sympathetic moderates.

Daniel Larison, meanwhile, thinks religious conservatives get too much blame but for a different reason:

Despite their numbers, and in large part because of their reliability as Republican voters, evangelicals and social conservatives draw very little water in the GOP. Each cycle GOP leaders see how little it will take to get these voters to turn out for their candidates, and what that amount of lip service is each cycle they try to reduce it. The voters continue to turn out, despite having less and less reason to do so, and for their trouble they are accused of the errors that the party leaders made and into which the establishment dragged them.

I disagree.  All of the Republican Party’s major leaders are from the social conservative wing of the party and that wing dominates grassroots recruitment, get-out-the-vote drives, fundraising, and so forth.   It’s true that they don’t have much to show for their power in terms of public policy outcomes.  But that’s a function of institutional checks and balances (the filibuster in the Senate, the fealty to stare decisis in the courts, and so forth) than the voting behavior of Republican officeholders.

Really, though, that’s part of the point.  We’re simply never going to outlaw abortion again.  The culture and the medicine (RU486, morning after pills, etc.) have moved beyond that. We’re not going to have prayer in the public schools.  We’re not going to outlaw divorce or return to a mythical time where there’s no sex outside of marriage.

That said, Parker’s notion that religion must be “returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs” is as offensive as it is absurd.  Religious folk have every bit as much right as anyone else to speak their minds and to try to shift public policy towards their preferences.  For that matter, Christian belief is as valid a motivation as partisanship or ideology or habit or self-interest for forming positions on the candidates and the issues.

The GOP’s goal shouldn’t be to drive out the social conservatives but rather to bring in others.

Steve Benen reports feeling schadenfreude at the news that James Dobson’s Focus of the Family has announced that it is cutting 202 jobs, the deepest cuts in the organizations 32-year history, fresh off of having spent $539,000 to help pass an anti-gay marriage referendum in Colorado.  He cites Jim Newell’s snark:

Sure, you have no income now because James Dobson burnt all of your company’s money on a state ballot proposition. But imagine the alternative! Would you want to be employed knowing that several hundred miles away, in another state, pairs of consenting adults that already have been living together, people whom you’ve never met and will never meet, were applying for state licenses (pieces of paper, really) that offered them some new tax and medical options??

Or, put another way, “Would you want to be employed at an activist institution that didn’t do its job?”

Look, I’m no fan of Dobson and see no reason why gays shouldn’t be able to marry one another.  But, surely, organizations that exist solely to do political activism in support of ideological causes ought to deploy their resources on the most high profile issues related to said cause.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

Beyond that, unless the 202 people in question were working for an average annual salary of $2661.31, not having fought Proposition 8 wouldn’t have saved their jobs.  Indeed, I’d guess that fundraising around Prop. 8 yielded a net plus in revenue for Dobson’s group.

Today’s meeting of the Republican Governors’ Association has, not surprisingly, been greeted with speculation that the party’s 2012 presidential nominee is likely in the room.

Facing the prospect of being out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time since 1992, Republicans are looking to their governors to fill the leadership vacuum. Speculation has centered on the telegenic Palin despite her tumultuous two months on the national political scene. She likely would have competition for a possible 2012 bid from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — all in attendance at the three-day meeting.

Alaska’s once-again full time governor, Sarah Palin, for one is trying to tamp down talk that she’ll be among the contenders.

In a series of national television interviews, Palin did not rule out seeking the presidency, saying, “It’s crazy to close a door before you know what’s even open in front of you.”

Asked about the 2012 talk at a news conference Thursday morning, Palin said, “I, like all of our governors, we’re focused on the future. The future for us is not the 2012 presidential race. It’s next year and our next budget, and the next reforms in our states and in 2010 we’re going to have 36 governors’ positions open across the U.S. That’s what we’re focused on.”

The most sensible reaction:

“Anybody here tonight that has thought about the 2012 presidential election needs to keep their eye on the ball,” Barbour, a former Republican Party chairman, told a reception for the governors and their supporters. “We don’t need to talk about 2012.”

Although, sadly, fundraising probably needs to start no later than February.

Barack Obama, flush with cash, is buying 30 minute spots — so far on ABC and NBC — that will air on the anniversary of Black Tuesday. James Hibberd and Paul J. Gough:

The Obama campaign is producing a nationwide pitch to voters that will air on at least two broadcast networks. The ad will run Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. — less than a week before the general election.

The direct purchase of such a large block of national airtime right before an election used to be more commonplace before campaigns began to focus their endgame strategies exclusively on battleground states. Such a move is not without precedent in modern presidential politics, however — Ross Perot did a similar purchase in 1992.

The special is a smart move for the Obama campaign, said Larry Sabato, a political analyst and director of the Center of Politics at the University of Virginia. “Obama’s theme is not just change but unity, so he’s appealing to the whole nation rather than a handful of tossup states,” Sabato said. “He wants to win the popular vote by a good margin, which will enable him to govern.”

And he’s got the cash for it, Sabato said. “This is another indication, if there needs to be any more, that Barack Obama’s got more money than (available) television time to buy,” said Evan Tracey, COO of the Campaign Media Analysis Group in Arlington, Va.

While he’s blowing McCain’s doors off in fundraising, the fact of the matter is that Obama Plus DNC is roughly equal to McCain Plus RNC; the difference is in autonomy, not financing.

Regardless, this is an interesting play by Team Obama. I’m not sure who the audience is for a 30 minute infomercial — I’m a political junkie and am unlikely to watch — but time’s running out to spend the money, so why not? We’ll see whether he throws in a set of Ginsu knives to go along with the no cost health care (paid for by only the top 5 percent!) and magic energy pony.

Hurricane Gustav is barreling down on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who has dubbed this “the mother of all storms,” has once again ordered the evacuation of New Orleans.  Aside from the obvious humanitarian and logistical issues, this is also a huge wild card going into the GOP convention.

President Bush is unlikely to make it to the Republican National Convention, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) may deliver his acceptance speech via satellite because of the historically huge hurricane threatening New Orleans, top officials said.

[...]

Officials insisted that the convention, scheduled to open here on Monday, will go on — albeit in a more limited and sedate form — even if Hurricane Gustav stays on its projected path. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday after federal officials said Gustav could grow to a catastrophic Category 5 and hit Monday afternoon somewhere between eastern Texas and western Mississippi.

McCain made plans to travel to a threatened area of the Gulf Coast on Sunday, accompanied by his wife, Cindy, and running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. They planned to meet Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) in Jackson, Miss., aides said. McCain was scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech Thursday but now may do so from the devastation zone if the storm hits the U.S. coast with the ferocity feared by forecasters.

[...]

Officials of the convention, the Republican Party, the White House and the McCain campaign were all scrambling this weekend to rewrite more than a year of planning for what they had hoped would be a joyful four days starting Monday.

McCain told Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” in an interview taped for broadcast Sunday that the convention could be rescheduled. “It just wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster,” McCain said. “So we’re monitoring it from day to day, and I’m saying a few prayers, too.”

Realistically, the convention can’t be rescheduled. Or, at least, they’re not going to be able to hold anything like the massive, organized convention they otherwise would have between now and the election. It’s just not logistically possible: Even if they could get a space for it, getting enough hotel rooms, booking that many airplane flights, getting the network coverage set up, getting food catered, and so forth for something on that scale in short order is next to impossible.

Beyond that, one wonders what the impact is on campaign finance law.  As I understand it, the end of the conventions marks the legal start of the general election season.  If the convention were to be postponed, would it also extend the primary season fundraising and spending period?

On the other hand, if they go on with the show, but in a more somber and low key manner, what impact does that have on the race?  Does it reduce McCain’s expected bounce?   Or does delivering a speech by satellite from a disaster area make McCain look more “presidential”?

There are also the optics.  This has already brought back the specter of what was perceived as the poor response of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina.  Does this redouble that perception?  Or does another shot at “doing it right” help erase it?

Regardless, this highlights a point that all of us at OTB have been making for months:  External events totally outside the control of the two campaigns will have a tremendous bearing on what happens on Election Day.

Andrew Malcolm has dissected John McCain’s schedule and concluded that he’s spending all his time scrounging for money rather than reaching out to voters.

Just 3 1/2 months out from the presidential election, McCain’s national campaign schedule is being driven by the quest for money, not by the hunt for votes in 50 individual state elections. All right, every campaign says it’s gonna compete everywhere. But they don’t.  He’s always looking for votes wherever he goes. But wherever he goes is determined not by potential votes but by where his finance folks have found enough donate-able money to set up fundraisers.

For McCain for now his itinerary is built on the quest for dollar$, not votes. That helps explain the widespread sense of unease among many Republicans nationally who do not deny he’s working very hard.  But they fear he wasted his three-month general election head start not defining himself and not driving home the all-important central message of why he wants to be president.

Do you know what McCain’s central message is? Do you know what his opponent’s central theme is? See the difference?

The worry that Barack Obama’s huge fundraising advantage has caused McCain to scramble to catch up is legitimate.  McCain’s setting fundraising records and Obama’s still outraising him 2-to-1.  This is mostly offset by much greater revenue flow and cash on hand by the RNC vice the DNC, but it’s a real issue.   Obama may well have the luxury of spending money trying to win — or at least force McCain to spend resources defending — states where Democrats typically don’t bother campaigning.

The second argument — that Obama is doing a better job communicating his message — strikes me as silly, though.  Obamas message is “The Change You’ve Been Hoping For” or some variant on that.  Less poetically, it’s “I’m not George W. Bush!”  McCain’s message is “It’s a dangerous world and you need a guy who’s demonstrated he can deal with danger to lead you.”  Less pithy, to be sure, but it’s clear enough.

That McCain hasn’t closed the deal on this is hardly surprising.  He’s a Republican and there’s a picture of him hugging the woefully unpopular President Bush out there.  Further, while he’s different than Bush on a whole variety of issues, he wants to continue trying to win in Iraq, easily the least popular of the unpopular Bush’s unpopular policies.  That’s not a messaging problem, though, but a product problem.

Beyond that, as I’ve maintained for months, McCain is overplaying the Vietnam POW card.  While the image of him standing tall against torture in defense of his country and his honor is at the core of his message, he’s not going to win the presidency based on how courageous he was when his opponent was nine.   He needs to be more foreward looking.  As Stacy McCain (no relation) –observes that, “Appealing to patriotic geriatrics is all fine and good, but it’s hard to staff a campaign from the hip-replacement/coronary-stent crowd. McCain’s inability — or unwillingness — to consider the interests and concerns of younger voters is a major weakness, and not one that can be corrected in July.”  And Stacy’s no spring chicken, I might add.

Amazingly, though, with all his disadvantages and all his opponent’s advantages — both in terms of personal qualities and external circumstances — he’s just barely behind.  The RealClearPolitics average has him trailing by a mere 4.1 points.  That the most exciting candidate in nearly half a century, running against an old man who doesn’t inspire his own party base and faced with an electorate itching to throw said party out on its backside, isn’t simply running away with the race at this point is astounding.   Then again, everybody was writing John McCain off last summer, too.

Photo: Robert Spencer for The New York Times

John McCain and the Republicans are in much better financial shape than we thought, breaking his May record of $21 million with a $22 million haul in June.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain raised more than $22 million in June, his best fundraising performance of the year, and ended the month with nearly $27 million cash on hand.

Campaign manager Rick Davis said Thursday that McCain and the national Republican Party together entered July with about $95 million in the bank. The Republican National Committee, which has been raising money jointly with McCain, collected nearly $26 million in June and had nearly $69 million on hand, officials said.

The campaign’s fundraising has given McCain the ability to spend more on television advertising than Democrat Barack Obama in key battleground states. Davis said about half of its income had been spent on television advertising.

[...]

The McCain and Obama campaigns have significantly different fundraising calculations to make. McCain has agreed to take public financing in the fall, limiting him to about $84 million in spending for campaign activities. That means he will have to rely on the Republican Party to spend more to help his bid.

Obama has chosen to reject the public funds, the first major party candidate to do so in the general election in three decades. Obama is counting on raising far more than the $84 million he would be allotted by the taxpayer-financed presidential fund. While McCain must spend any money he raises now by the end of August, Obama does not. The Democratic senator could save that money to boost his general election spending.

“They have to determine whether they will husband their primary dollars to be used in the general election, or spend down their primary dollars to keep pace with our spending,” Davis said.

It’s a very bizarre strategy on Davis’ part to be bragging about McCain’s fundraising and ability to spend money. Wouldn’t they be better off continue to play up the fact that McCain is limited to $84 million but Obama isn’t because he broke his word? And, for that matter, poormouthing yourself while talking up the opponent’s advantages is a time honored tactic in the expectations game.

Photo credit: LA Times

Happy Independence Day!

I don’t know about my OTB colleagues but I’ll be taking the rest of the day off, honoring the sacrifices made by the Founders by sitting around watching television, grilling and consuming meat products, and drinking beer with family and friends.

Some things to keep you occupied until my return:

• “Putting The Country First” – John McCain’s essay for Parade magazine.* A lot of highfalutin sentiment but the most important point is this: “Today, politics is derided for its self-interest, combativeness, duplicity, and triviality. But such failings are not unique to our age. Both Adams and Jefferson lamented them in their own time. But that’s the great beauty of our form of government, which they helped to create; it accounts for the vices of human nature as much as it hopes for our virtues.”

• “Declaration of Independence: A Fisking” – Two years ago, I published this tongue-in-cheek essay on the premise of reacting to the document as if I were there on that historic day greeted with the document for the first time. It still stands up pretty well, I think, at least if you’ve been reading blogs for a number of years and are familiar with the various tropes and rhetorical devices which have developed in the medium. A couple of the references, notably George III as “the decider,” will become obscured over time.

• Jimi Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner – Jeralyn Merritt has the famous video from Woodstock.

If you’ve got a 4th of July post at your place, feel free to send a trackback and link to it.

_________________

*I looked for a message from Barack Obama on his website and the only thing I found was a fundraising pitch titled “Donate to Declare Your Independence.”

The Senate easily invoked cloture yesterday, ending a threatened filibuster of a major overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The revised bill is expected to pass today.

This may be the most important bill we pass this year,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), an architect of the bill crafted over four months of negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House.

The bill would require that the secret FISA court approve procedures for intercepting foreign nationals’ e-mails and telephone calls. Spying on U.S. citizens, including those overseas, would require individual warrants from the same court.

It also would establish the FISA law, and the secret court it created, as the final legal authority on government spying. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, have cited the exclusivity provision as the main reason they supported the bill. They said it is a rejection of President Bush’s stance that his wartime powers gave him authority to approve the defunct warrantless wiretapping program.

So far, so good. The sticking point, though, is that the bill would give retroactive immunity from civil suits to telecommunications companies that complied with Bush Administration requests to assist in electronic surveillance absent FISA warrants. As FDL’s Ian Welsh notes, “Obama and McCain were both absent, as was Clinton.” The only others not voting were Robert Byrd and Teddy Kennedy, both of whom are recovering from serious medical conditions. One presumes the others were off campaigning or fundraising — and wanting to escape and on the record vote.

This didn’t prevent Obama and Clinton from being criticized. Carrie Budoff Brown, reporting for The Politico:

Disappointed over his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the online activists feel jilted and betrayed and have taken to questioning his progressive credentials. One prominent blogger, Atrios, has even given him the moniker “Wanker of the Day.”

“He broke faith,” said Matt Stoller, a political consultant and blogger at OpenLeft.com. “Obama pledged to filibuster, and he is part of that old politics, in this case, that he said he wasn’t. It will spur us to challenge him.”

The FISA debate marks the presumptive Democratic nominee’s first serious break from the liberal Netroots in the general election. He is still their candidate, but the FISA issue has reignited skepticism among major bloggers, who had largely pushed aside doubts about Obama when Edwards, their favored candidate, ended his bid in February.

Welsh says “This is a sad day, especially for those of us who believed Obama when he said he would support a filibuster against retroactive immunity.” More importantly, he correctly notes that yesterday’s was “the real vote” and that voting against the final bill, while it might fool “the rubes,” is meaningless.

Greg Sargent presents Obama’s explanation for why he reneged on his promise to “support a filibuster of an earlier version of the bill,” namely that, “My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.” That’s a statement that will play well with most Americans, I think, even if it upsets the netroots.

And, indeed, Obama has correctly gauged that the latter is of peripheral consequence.

Still, the disillusionment goes only so far. The liberal blogosphere’s most recognizable name, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos, said Monday on MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann”: “Let’s be honest, it is either Obama or John McCain. So we really don’t have much of a choice.” At stake for Obama in the FISA vote is the intensity of support for Obama, Moulitsas said.

“I don’t want to hear him talk about leadership. I don’t want to hear him talk about defending the Constitution. I want to see him do it,” he said. “If he does, it will increase the intensity and level of support he gets from base Democrats. If he doesn’t, we may worry he is just another one of these spineless Democrats who are more afraid of controversy in doing the right thing than they are in actually doing the right thing.”

The intensity of outrage over telecom immunity continues to puzzle me. The core issue is finding a balance between 4th Amendment freedoms and the collection of intelligence necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. Ultimately, that means finding a way to get swift but real judicial oversight, preferably by people with a serious understanding of intelligence collection, to guard against executive zeal. The ability to retroactively sue phone companies, who complied with what they either thought were legitimate requests from the government to help go after the bad guys or simply feared alienating their regulatory overlords, has always struck me as a tertiary issue.

John McCain is “closing the cash gap” with Barack Obama, Jeanne Cummings reports for The Politico.

For the first time in the campaign, Republican John McCain in May raised about the same amount of money, $22 million, as Democrat Barack Obama.

McCain also closed the gap in the amount of cash in the bank the two parties’ presumptive nominees have at their respective disposals as they enter the first phase of the general election. McCain reported having about $32 million in cash for primary related expenses at the end of May. Obama reported having $43 million in hand at the start of June—but about $10 million of that is dedicated to the general election.

Obama’s fundraising in May marked a sharp fall-off after months of record-breaking donations. Even in difficult times, such as when he suffered a key loss in Pennsylvania in April, Obama brought in a steady flow of cash that usually topped $30 million a month.

The surprising cash parity between McCain and Obama means the candidates begin the general more evenly matched than many experts expected, although things could change quickly given Obama’s ability to raise money quickly through small online contributions.

This actually isn’t that “surprising” at all. Obama and Hillary Clinton set records for fundraising during their epic primary battle, to be sure, tapping both an intense desire by Democratic partisans to take back the White House and intraparty motivation to beat the other candidate. Now, Obama has clinched the nomination and the fact that he has gobs of cash on hand and should be able to outspend McCain by an at least three-to-one margin in the general election has been widely reported. So, of course, his donations are going to slow down for a bit.

By contrast, the Republican Party is not only in a deep malaise but spent the primary season either split between a number of candidates or with a presumptive nominee and no urgency to give money. Now that the McCain-Obama matchup is set and Republicans are starting to get motivated by the fact that they’re behind in the polls and are in danger of being seriously outspent, the sulking is over and the party faithful are gearing up to beat Obama. So, of course his fundraising totals were going to surge.

This, incidentally, is why I thought and continue to think that McCain was a fool to agree to public financing and the $84 million limit that comes with it. Even though Obama would likely outraise him, it’s almost inconceivable that McCain couldn’t do much better than $84 million. The only real advantages to accepting public funds are that he can spend less time raising money and he gets the “but Obama lied” issue, such as it is. I don’t think that’s a good trade-off.

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Congress tried to reform our system of financing political campaigns. They attempted to “get the money out of politics.” They failed, miserably. So, too, did a long line of successive attempts.

John McCain, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, earned the enmity of a large swath of his party, myself included, by his co-sponsorship and championing of what, after seven years of defeats, eventually passed into law as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as “McCain-Feingold.” Despite rather obvious restrictions of First Amendment freedoms, the Supreme Court upheld it by a 5-4 margin in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.

Our long national nightmare may soon be over.

McCain is embroiled in charges that he’s violated his own law, the drumbeat of which has been anew with the attention of Josh Marshall and others, while his main opponent in the Fall, Barack Obama, has opted out of the system entirely.

I addressed the McCain charges back in February and nothing substantive has changed. He’s caught in a legal web of his own spinning and is prevented from getting a ruling from the FEC by the refusal of Democrats in Congress to vote on members, thus creating a lack of quorum. Whether this will change with the recent withdrawal of one of the more controversial commissioner nominees remains to be seen.

The reason this controversy is resurfacing, however, is yesterday’s announcement that Obama would opt out of public financing, preferring to take his chances with his tremendous fundraising machine. Given that Obama had promised to abide by federal limits if his Republican opponent did the same and that McCain has held up his end of the bargain, McCain is naturally trying to make hay of the situation. His opponents, naturally, want to change the story.

Obama’s move, while almost certain to have zero impact on the minds of the voters five months from now, has the editorial boards fuming:

“The Politics of Spare Change – Even $85 million wasn’t enough to get Barack Obama to keep his promise.” [WaPo]

. . . given Mr. Obama’s earlier pledge to “aggressively pursue” an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take.

Public Funding on the Ropes [NYT]

The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.

Analysis: Obama chose winning over his word [AP]

Barack Obama chose winning over his word.

The Democrat once made a conditional agreement to accept taxpayer money from the public financing system, and accompanying spending limits, if his Republican opponent did, too.

No more.

WaPo Fact Checker Michael Dobbs gives Obama “Three Pinocchios” out of four.

If anyone who isn’t a die-hard supporter of either candidate still cares about either of these controversies on the 4th of July, let alone Election Day, I’ll be very, very surprised.

Regardless, Dave Wissing is right: “we are that much closer to my hope and wish for the complete and total destruction of the idea that the Federal Government should be financing a Presidential campaign in any form whatsoever.” As he notes, in 2000, the Republican bowed out of the system for the primaries and in 2004 both major party candidates did. Now, for the first time, someone has eschewed pubic funding altogether.

Unless radical changes take place, it’s hard to imagine either major party candidate participating in 2008. Indeed, his pledge notwithstanding, Obama would have been a fool to agree to limit himself to $84 million when he can probably raise three, four, or even five times that amount on his own. And, certainly, it’s going to be hard for conservatives to argue that it’s a bad thing that he’s relying on his own money and leaving $42 million in matching funds in the public treasury.

Indeed, when word came out in April that McCain was “moving toward accepting public financing,” I was annoyed.

Frankly, he’d save the taxpayers $42 million if he just quit the race now. Barack Obama’s probably got $84 million laying around the office in checks he hasn’t bothered to deposit. McCain will likely be at a financial disadvantage either way but it would be political suicide to unilaterally disarm.

Sure, this is a bad year to run as a Republican and McCain isn’t the most popular guy at CPAC. But it’s bizarre that he’s hamstringing himself in this way. Whining about how Obama promised to do the same is going to be small consolation when he’s getting swamped in the ad wars.

Now, I wouldn’t quite go this far:

“It’ll be like George Steinbrenner’s Yankees in the ’90s — an All-Star at every position — against the ’90s Kansas City Royals, barely able to meet their payroll,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

But, while $84 million seems like a lot to you and me,

“The reality is that the amount of money that comes from the government is not enough to run a modern presidential campaign,” said Larry Makinson, a consultant to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks campaign donations.

At some point, there’s information saturation. People will certainly know who John McCain is come November 4th. It’s not like he won’t be able to hire the best pollsters, strategists, and advance teams. But Obama will be able to advertise more frequently in more media markets. If a state is anywhere near competitive, he’ll be able to afford to run spots there to see what happens. McCain will have to pick his battles.

That’s not an insurmountable obstacle. But it’s a handicap he doesn’t need in a race where his opponent is already a heavy favorite.