2008 US Presidential Election - Page 77

just returned from a three-week trip to Iran. I seized the opportunity to travel there with a small group of New Zealanders, thinking it might be wise as an American citizen to keep a low profile and enjoy the "cover" provided by this non-American contingent of travelers.

Upon arrival, our concerns about being American were immediately dispelled. There was not a single incident of animosity. Rather, the vast majority of the Iranians we met expressed admiration for the American people and appreciated the fact that we chose to visit their country.

In one encounter, we met an elderly man who asked where we were from. When I told him America, his face broke into a huge grin, and he said, "Ah! We're enemies then!" A long, friendly conversation followed.

Overall, we found the people engaging; Persian history inspiring; the architecture, poetry, art and geography impressive; and the food excellent.

An important perspective to keep in mind as we decide what our relations with Iran will be, however, is that the Iranians have their own list of grievances about the West, and the United States in particular.

For starters, in 1953, a CIA-organized coup overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister, and reinstalled the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which guaranteed virtually free oil for companies from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Later, the United States and other Western countries and the Soviet Union encouraged and supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. This resulted in more than 1 million Iranian casualties and the destruction of the country's economic infrastructure.

In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial flight in its proper flight pattern, killing 290 people. The United States paid compensation to non-Iranian victims only and failed to apologize.

Then there is the U.S. role in the destabilization of the 600-mile border with Afghanistan that has created a serious drug and AIDS problem in Iran, and increasing evidence that the CIA is supporting anti-government indigenous groups on the Pakistani and Turkish borders with Iran. Iran's involvement with the border of Iraq is in its national interest, particularly because of the large contiguous Shiite population.

Many modern Iranians question why they are denied nuclear development when India, Pakistan and Israel gained access in the same illegal manner. Iranians feel threatened by neighboring countries, including Russia. Finally, the United States is holding five Iranian citizens with diplomatic status in Iraq despite the sovereign government of Iraq's demand for their release.

I do not intend to defend all of these perspectives posed by Iranians, but point them out to show a larger and more accurate picture of the issues at hand. Our government has got to take a responsible position. Lines of communication must be opened.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/189262

Why Voters Thought Obama Won

TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.

Something as simple as Obama mentioning that he’ll cut taxes for “95 percent of working families” is worth, I would guess, a point or so in the national polls. Obama had not been speaking enough about his middle class tax cut; there was some untapped potential there, and Obama may have gotten the message to sink in tonight.

By contrast, I don’t think McCain’s pressing Obama on earmarks was time well spent for him. One, it simply not something that voters care all that much about, given the other pressures the economy faces. But also, it is not something that voters particularly associate with Obama, as the McCain campaign had not really pressed this line of attack. If you’re going to introduce a new line of attack late in a campaign, it has better be a more effective one that earmarks. And then there was McCain's technocratic line about the virtues of lowering corporate taxes, one which might represent perfectly valid economic policy, but which was exactly the sort of patrician argument that lost George H.W. Bush the election in 1992.

Meanwhile, voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected.

These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points.

My other annoyance with the punditry is that they seem to weight all segments of the debate equally. There were eight segments in this debate: bailout, economy, spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, terrorism. The pundit consensus seems to be that Obama won the segments on the bailout, the economy, and Iraq, drew the segment on Afghanistan, and lost the other four. So, McCain wins 4-3, right? Except that, voters don’t weight these issues anywhere near evenly. In Peter Hart’s recent poll for NBC, 43 percent of voters listed the economy or the financial crisis as their top priority, 12 percent as Iraq, and 13 percent terrorism or other foreign policy issues. What happens if we give Obama two out of three economic voters (corresponding to the fact that he won two out of the three segments on the economy), and the Iraq voters, but give McCain all the “other foreign policy” voters?


Issue...........Priority......Obama.....McCain
Economy........43..............29..........14
Iraq................12 .............12............0
Foreign Policy.13............. 0 ...........13
==========================================
Total ............................ 41...........27

By this measure, Obama “won” by 14 points, which almost exactly his margin in the CNN poll.

McCain’s essential problem is that his fundamental strength – his experience -- is specifically not viewed by voters as carrying over to the economy. And the economy is pretty much all that voters care about these days.

EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

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