T.A. Frank: All Publications, Events and Press

A $1-Billion Bad Idea for Jordan Downs

Erin Drankoski — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:19:00 -0500

Bad ideas, if they were ever widely accepted, have a curious way of sticking around. That's because they give rise to institutions that have a momentum of their own. We've long known there are better ways to fix blighted neighborhoods than simply pressing "reset" -- that is, letting the government tear down old buildings and put up new ones. But we remain saddled with a system of public housing that keeps looking for ways of, well, pressing reset.

The Little Unions That Couldn't

Erin Drankoski — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:35:00 -0500

Gold Erring

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:17:00 -0400

How did we manage to have it all in the years after the Second World War--car, house, health care, affordable education, Social Security, rising wages, leisure--and where did it go? If anyone knows, please tell California. Things seemed to be going so well here a half century ago: unemployment rates just above 3 percent, swimming pools in every backyard, baseball teams poached from Brooklyn, matchless public schools and universities, and swift new highways. Good jobs were available to nearly anyone who came, and nearly everyone did.

It all seems awfully remote. Today's

Green Cards for Grads

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:07:00 -0400

I recently spent several days in Northern California and came down with a mild case of wealth poisoning. This often happens when I travel to places like San Francisco and Palo Alto. The greenness, tidiness, and modernity of the Bay Area start to chafe, like a Barbra Streisand interview, and I become homesick for the soothing grime of Los Angeles. The feeling is especially strong in Silicon Valley, which seems determined to show the world how rich you can get without having any fun.

Wind and Groaning in Los Angeles

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:47:00 -0400

Argentina Loses a Democratic Hero

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:11:00 -0400

Few outside of Argentina remember him, but a good man died yesterday. Raul Alfonsin was the first democratically elected president of the Argentine Republic after seven years of military rule in which over 10,000 Argentinians were "disappeared" by the military in a "Dirty War" against leftist guerrillas.

Is The Time Ripe for a Stronger Union Bill? | NPR

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:38:00 -0400

"This is an easy issue to demagogue," says T.A. Frank, a fellow at the New America Foundation and an editor at the Washington Monthly... Original article

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:30:00 -0400

Some presidents have first-rate minds, others have first-rate temperaments. Barack Obama had both. In the first months of Obama's presidency, every appearance he made reinforced the public's admiration. It was an Aaron Sorkin show brought to life, except with likable characters. The Obama family's Portuguese water dog, Rushbo, charmed visitors with his antics and yapping. Rahm Emmanuel amused everyone by graduating from the f-word to the c-word and even beyond. Obama oversaw ambitious and well-received spending on

The Sound of Silence

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:54:00 -0500

This week, Los Angeles reelected a mayor in a race so unheralded that, on voting day, it failed to make the front of The Los Angeles Times. (Turn to page A3, goo-goo geeks.) So somehow the city has wound up again with Antonio Villaraigosa, a handsome fellow who keeps asking city residents to "dream with me," perhaps out of worry that they might awaken. Well, no danger of that just yet: Turnout barely reached 15 percent.

Yes He Did!

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:42:00 -0500

For the record, "Yes we can" emerged as a slogan later and less deliberately than one might think. The year was 1972, three years after César Chávez had appeared on the cover of Time magazine and two years after he had led farmworkers to a major victory against grape producers in California. Chávez was in Arizona trying to reverse a law prohibiting strikes by farmworkers during harvest time. Supporters of Chávez told him the law couldn’t be repealed. "No se puede," they said. Dolores Huerta, a

Read Their Lips

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:32:00 -0500

Several years ago, I saw Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, tell an audience of conferencing Republicans that branding is important. If you're Coca-Cola, Norquist explained, your business will suffer if a customer ever finds a rat in a bottle of your soda. Similarly, the GOP will suffer if anything undermines its reputation as the party that lowers taxes. A Republican who ever supports a tax increase must be subject to "quality control", for such a creature is "the rat in the Coke bottle".

The Little Unions That Couldn't

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:06:00 -0500

As Barack Obama prepares to get a stimulus plan launched this winter, carefully planting seeds of cross-party warmth and nurturing each rare shoot, he may wish to avoid unrelated matters that cause bitter partisan showdowns and lay waste to the whole damn thing. At least, that seems wisest when you're asking for a trillion or so in new spending. So people understood why Rahm Emanuel, during a meeting with the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council last November, dodged an inquiry about a contentious piece of legislation

New America Video: Community Banks to the Financial Rescue

Communications — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:10:00 -0500

Today, with the world's system of anonymous high finance in crisis, small-scale community banks, thrifts, and credit unions -- all regarded until recently as vestigial players in a new world of global consumer finance -- are setting an important example. If federal policies were in place to provide proper support to small-scale financial institutions, Washington could do a lot to alleviate the country's most serious economic problems.

Too Small To Fail

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:34:00 -0500

When Paul Hudson, the chairman and CEO of Broadway Federal Bank in Los Angeles, speaks of the current financial crisis, he sounds altogether placid. "It's going to be difficult, because everybody participated in this low-cost-credit, high-value-asset scenario," he says. "But I'm not overly stressed." It helps that his own bank is doing fine. Broadway Federal, founded in 1946 to provide loans to the growing African American community of Los Angeles, is a small institution with five branches located in middle-class, largely black neighborhoods of the

Let's Get Ethical

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:27:00 -0500

A few disclosures to the incoming Obama administration: As a 20-year-old, I received a ticket (fine greater than $50) for having jumped a subway turnstile in New York City. A few years later, I received another ticket (fine likewise greater than $50), this time for allowing my miniature dachshund to run off the leash in Riverside Park. I spent several years as a bass player in a rock band. And one of my earlier efforts in journalism, a poorly-received attempt at humour about some socialists who turned me into a Republican for an evening, led to a demonstration by the International Socialist Organisation outside the offices of my employer. I believe one of the chants was this: "TA Frank, he should go, kill and die for Texaco."

I recite this dull list of facts because each is an example of what I would need to reveal in order to be considered for a job in the Obama administration. And I imagine the above paragraph alone would be enough to bring the process to a premature halt. The New York Times says this year's questionnaire may be the "most extensive – some say invasive – application ever". And the increased levels of disclosure have been coupled with what Obama's transition guru John Podesta calls "the strictest ethics rules ever applied".

Sounds like fun. We're well on our way to the most boring group of applicants ever. (When even I look overly colourful, you know you're in a boring place.) On the one hand, I suppose this is all well and good, provided these boring people are good at their jobs and can save the nation from meltdown. That's high priority. But on the other, I hope Obama will pick a few eccentrics and rogues – not only because some jobs are best suited for eccentrics and rogues (Pat Moynihan was an entertaining UN ambassador), but also because scandal will befall someone in his administration anyway. It's unavoidable. Relentless disclosure of one's life has been standard in Washington since the end of Watergate and the passage of the Ethics in Government Act in 1978. With the exception of George Bush's White House, nearly every incoming administration has been described as having the most stringent vetting ever.

Disclosure of even minor traffic tickets – as well as the all-purpose request for information that "could be the possible source of embarrassment to you, or to the president" – has been standard for nearly 30 years now. Has it prevented scandals? Not at all. Even with copious vetting, every president from Carter though Bush has put forward some nominee who embarrassed him. In the case of Bush the Elder, one classic move was to make White House Counsel C Boyden Gray an ethics advisor, only to find that Gray had innumerable conflicts of interest himself.

In an ideal world, of course, the very act of disclosing all finances and potential conflicts of interest would go a long way towards satisfying the American people that their public servant in question was honourable. In the real world, however, it has wound up having the opposite effect. Disclosure just tends to feed more insistence on disclosure. That's because we tend to think the worst of our political opponents, so that the more we see the more suspicious we tend to get. This works the same way on both sides. I still find Dick Cheney's Halliburton connections to be rather malodorous, even though they've been disclosed. Republicans still find Democratic connections to Fannie Mae to be malodorous, even though they've been disclosed.

Certainly, some of the conflict of interest blowups we've seen over the years have been genuinely outrageous. More commonly, though, they've revolved around things like the peanut loan to Jimmy Carter. Do you happen to recall that in 1979 a special counsel was appointed to investigate the loans made to Jimmy Carter's peanut business by a bank once controlled by his friend Bert Lance, director of the office of management and budget? If you do, then you're probably Jimmy Carter or Bert Lance. But at the time, it seemed like a big deal for some long-forgotten reason. The trouble is that Washington DC is a small town, and conflicts of interest suffuse everything that happens there. No amount of disclosure is likely to change that.

Now look, I'm still a big believer in transparency and disclosure. I'd never suggest that the White House revert to backroom winks and handshakes when staffing up or that Congress ease up on its ethics rules. And Obama has done very well to vet his people fully rather than meet them once and look them up on Wikipedia. But let's not forget that the press is hungry for scandals no matter what, and if it can't get big stuff, it'll settle for small things. Embarrassment of some sort is inevitable, and Obama might as well make the best of it. So if a non-boring-but-checkered candidate comes across his desk – like, say, a Clinton – I hope Obama won't let the vetting break the deal if he really wants to hire the person in question. Like every president, he's screwed anyway, so he might as well enjoy the company he keeps.

Make That A Double

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:57:00 -0500

Insight on party decoration, gleaned at 6:30 p.m., 11/4/2008: Abundant balloons, in the absence of abundant human beings, is a real downer. When I arrived at a lobby restaurant in the downtown Los Angeles Marriott, Ohio had just been called for Barack Obama. The crowd of about 20 McCain-Palin supporters had gathered for an election-night party sponsored by an impressively lengthy line-up of Republican organizations in Los Angeles (the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, the Southern California Republican Club, the Korean American Republican Association, the San Fernando Valley Republican Club, and the Republican National Hispanic Assembly), but the event felt rather like a surprise bash for a birthday boy who didn't show. So the guests glumly nursed drinks, chewed on miniature burgers, and watched Brit Hume. "Based on his associations with people like Khalidi and Ayers," said Daniel Stroncak, a screenwriter and member of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, "Obama normally wouldn't even get the security clearance I had when I was in the military." And now, Stroncak noted with dismay, Obama was going to command the whole apparatus. "In four years, we'll make a correction," he said.

I'd driven down to the Marriott and shelled out for valet parking ($1.75 per 15 minutes, a pre-recession--dare I say Republican--price) as part of an election-eve mission to search for Republican life on a Democratic night in a Democratic town. I particularly wanted to get a sense of whether the great debate about conservative first principles was about to be re-launched. Clearly, however, the Marriott crowd wasn't going to be large enough give me much of an impression. Disappointed (although grateful for the complimentary miniature burger), I headed inland to the Pacific Palms Resort, a spiffy golf retreat about 20 miles inland in the City of Industry. Here, the crowd was a little more promising, with about a hundred people gathered at an establishment called Red, billed by the Republican Party of Los Angeles County as "The Hottest Restaurant & Coolest Bar." The event took place outdoors under heat lamps on a large stone terrace overlooking what seemed to be much of Los Angeles County. Once again, Fox was the preferred news outlet, and enormous screens were stationed all about, but the volume was nearly off.

I made my way to a quiet patio where the results of local races were being projected onto a screen. "I'm pretty upset," said Sylvia Ortega. "I don't understand why Hispanics go for Democrats. They've done nothing but hold us back, creating greater welfare states." Ortega was especially miffed at the Hispanic rejection of George W. Bush. "I love President Bush," Ortega said. "He has been very good to Hispanics, but they didn't appreciate his love." And she was also displeased with the media. "I really didn't appreciate the way they treated Joe the Plumber," she said, adding that she was worried for Joe's safety. Still, Ortega was a Mitt Romney fan, and I assured her that a Romney run was one of the more certain events of 2012. (I didn't mention that liberals are grateful for this, too.) She seemed unconsoled.

Others had slightly more self-critical assessments of the GOP, but confidence in the brand still seemed high. "We need to get back to our core beliefs," said Nick Rosales, who was running for the city council of Azusa. "That means fiscal responsibility and family and values." Victor Valenzuela, a former state assembly candidate, had a similar prescription. "I look at this as comparable to '76 and '92," he said, referring to the defeats of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. "It's an opportunity." To the extent that there was disagreement, it centered on how to handle the liberal media. Had McCain been seduced into thinking the press was his friend? Or had he merely fumbled in his handling of the enemy? It wasn't exactly a revisiting of first principles. No one was suggesting moderation, and most foresaw a fairly prompt comeback.

Sunniest of all was Dilan Desai, age 11, a fervent McCain supporter who had been volunteering on weekday evenings and weekends for the campaign. "They said, yes, we'll try him out," explained his father, Henry Desai, who noted that he'd insisted on homework being completed first. Dilan said that his main task had been to place calls to undecided voters. "I would tell them that Obama would raise their taxes while McCain would keep them lower," Dilan told me. "And that Obama would withdraw from Iraq while McCain would fight on to victory." That was a pretty clean pitch, and it occurred to me that Dilan had probably won McCain more non-evangelical votes than Sarah Palin. He told me he hopes to run for Senate and eventually for the presidency, and he intends to turn California from blue to red.

When Obama appeared on screen to make his acceptance speech, about 20 people gathered around a plasma screen on a stone terrace. Some left in disgust. "Hope and change, hope and change, hope and change," muttered one. But most of the viewers stayed, several of them smoking cigars that had been provided at a nearby table. There were no catcalls, but there were many long sighs.

Straight Talk

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:49:00 -0400

The interior of the "Yes on 8" bus looks disappointingly similar to that of a Greyhound bus, apart from some perfunctory "Yes on 8" banners affixed to every other window. But the exterior, a celebration of heterosexual marriage, is more distinctive. Occupying the most prominent spot on the side of the bus is a larger-than-life white couple, a bride and groom, enjoying a wedding kiss. Next to them is a pair of greatly magnified golden rings. Farther down the flank of the bus is a happy black family. All the images are united by a slogan: "Say 'I do!' to traditional marriage." It's an exterior that was made with love--heterosexual, of course.

The Yes-on-8 bus--let's call it the Straight Talk Express--has been wending its way through California, traversing areas both red and blue, with stops for a couple of events a day. I caught up with it last Friday at a noontime rally in South Los Angeles, where a crowd of about 200 people was being urged by a speaker to "civilly, lovingly, go out and educate our friends, family, and neighbors" on why they should support Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that would amend California's constitution to define marriage as a union of man and woman.

Hosting the event from a makeshift stage was Ron Prentice, chairman of ProtectMarriage.com, the umbrella group behind the campaign for Proposition 8. "This isn't about love between two adults," he reminded the crowd. "This is about the next generation." Prentice, a gray-haired but fit-looking man, is the founder and head of the California Family Council, an organization tied to James Dobson's Focus on the Family. And for this campaign, he's working closely with Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint, two of the state's most formidable political strategists. So far, Schubert and Flint and the rest of the Yes on 8 crowd have enjoyed surprising success. A few months ago, the proposition appeared to be headed for an easy defeat. Today, experts give it near-even odds of passing.

After the rally, I spoke to Prentice outside the Straight Talk and asked how the bus tour had come about. "Our campaign management team has never seen this strong of a grassroots response on any issue," he told me. "So the thought was, if we're going to have that strong kind of a grassroots effort, we might as well go thank them in person." That seemed very polite. As I left, I thanked Prentice, who likewise thanked me. I was soon stopped by another gray-haired man, equally polite, who asked for my affiliation and name and then broke into a broad smile. "Hi T.A., I'm Mark Jansson, and I'm just delighted that you talked to Ron," he said, shaking my hand. I handed him my card. "That's great," he affirmed. "I appreciate that very much. Thanks for coming out. I appreciate it."

For culture warriors on the Yes side of Prop 8, such elaborate courtesy appears to be the prevailing stylistic approach. Perhaps that's because pretty much everyone today has family and friends who are gay. Or perhaps it's because if your goal is to forcibly annul about 11,000 marriages, you're better off doing it with a smile. Beneath the surface, though, the campaign has hardly been so genteel. Last Thursday, the Associated Press reported that businesses that have donated to "No on 8" have received letters from ProtectMarriage.com. "Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error," it says. "The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published." Among the four signers of this letter are Ron Prentice and Mark Jansson.

That good manners should conceal a bare-knuckled approach in the shadows is hardly surprising, because the debate over same-sex marriage doesn't really revolve around reasoning, but around premises. If you consider homosexuality to be sinful and socially corrosive, then it follows that same-sex marriage earns your disapproval. On the other hand, if you consider homosexuality to be no different from heterosexuality in moral terms, then you'll find it hard to reason your way to a ban on same-sex marriage. The tension for proponents of Proposition 8 is that they believe homosexuality to be immoral, but they know it's politically counterproductive in California to say so. So the challenge becomes how to say it without saying it.

This tension was especially pronounced when less-polished speakers--like, say, Marvin Perkins, a forty-ish African American introduced as a "community leader"--took the microphone at the rally. "They're trying to compare this to the black struggle for civil rights and to interracial marriage," Perkins told the crowd. "And it's like, there were no civil unions for black and white couples, so, you know, you don't have a leg to stand on." If such reasoning caused some puzzlement--was he saying that civil unions would be sufficient for mixed-race couples?--Perkins had another argument for the crowd to consider. "I was talking to a gay friend of mine, and I said, 'What's the story? Come on. You have civil unions. Why are you pushing this?' And they said, 'Marvin, it's simply recruiting. We love to recruit.'" It struck me as a testament to Marvin's magnetism that he was able to elicit such candor from his close gay friends about the recruiting conspiracy.

As curious a scene as the South Los Angeles rally was, however, it still seemed pretty tame compared to what else has been going on in the Yes on 8 campaign. Last week, The Los Angeles Times carried a report of a mega-church from the town of La Mesa (not far from San Diego), where several dozen supporters of Proposition 8 have been fasting and praying for two weeks, subsisting on VitaminWater and Jamba Juice smoothies. "I am asking for rains of revival to open up over California," one told the Times. Other churches, though not quite at the Jamba stage, have still been strikingly adamant about the task at hand. In Fresno, Father Geoffrey Farrow was stripped by the Catholic Church of his post, salary, and benefits after voicing opposition to the ban on same-sex marriage.

And, not surprisingly, the religious right has been at the heart of the Yes effort. Among the notable players have been Michigan multimillionaire Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, a major funder of the religious right, who has donated $450,000 to the campaign. (She is the mother of Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Worldwide.) Also on board is bestselling author and pastor Rick Warren, who emailed parishioners to let them know that God, presumably following the news, "has spoken clearly" in favor of Proposition 8. Mormon involvement has been particularly notable. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that up to 40 percent of the $25.5 million raised for Proposition 8 has come from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church also appears to be taking a leading role in the ground game. At Friday's rally, the ladies in charge of the booth selling signs and tee-shirts were LDS, as were numerous audience members. Still, perhaps to guard against anti-LDS prejudice, the church is by all appearances trying to play its role quietly. Only later did I discover, for instance, that Marvin Perkins, the "community leader," is also something more unusual: an African-American Mormon--and one who appears to be very active in church outreach.

Meanwhile, opposition to Prop 8 has been far less organized. "Incompetent" has been a frequently employed adjective among bloggers assessing its efforts, particularly in terms of messaging. "I had considered giving money," writes one, but, "what the 'No' folks need is a better narrative." And it hasn't helped that San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, came through for the Yes forces with the single most effective sound bite of the campaign. "The door's wide open now," Newsom boasted to a crowd in May, after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. "It's going to happen, whether you like it or not." Proposition 8 supporters have spent around $10 million on television spots highlighting Newsom's taunts.

As the rally wound down, Mark Jansson took the microphone and reminded the crowd of the warm feelings behind Proposition 8. "We want to love our neighbors," Jansson said. "We don't want to be told how to treat everybody. We want to do that of our own free will." Afterwards when I spoke to some of those in the audience, sentiments were expressed a little more plainly. Monica Gates, a 34-year-old who was eating lunch at a picnic table with her sister (who did not wish to give her name), described herself as a Christian ("Evangelist Christian," her sister clarified) and a Bush supporter, and she said that the country urgently needed to return to God. "We were talking about how in the Bible, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah," Gates told me. "I don't know if you're familiar with the story. There was a lot of immorality going on there, and it just seems like our country's headed right in that direction." After what I'd been hearing from the Yes on 8 professionals, I preferred Gates' candor. In any case, with the polls dead-even and little indication as to how they'll break, both of us have good reason to be alarmed.

2,126 'Buts,' and 55 'Reagans'

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:11:00 -0400

With the arrival on the scene of a strange Alaskan who seems willing to say anything, I find myself looking in strange places for solace. News sites don't help, nor do blogs. They offer the reverse of being haunted by a relationship you once had: being haunted by a future relationship you don't want to have. I'm being forced to get to know someone whom I less and less enjoy knowing. My latest attempt to escape the northern chill was spent surfing a site called Speech Wars, created by Ben Reis in Jerusalem. The idea is that users can type in a word and get a count of how many times Barack Obama or John McCain has said it in speeches delivered between April of 2004 and early August of 2008.

One thing I discovered is that Obama simply talks a lot more than John McCain--either that or he uses more conjunctions. I know this because I typed in the word "and," which I expect is pretty much tied to word count, and Obama said "and" 14,820 times, while John McCain said it only 10,214 times. What about "but," you ask? The taciturn McCain said it 1,304 times, while the chatty Obama said it 2,126 times. Then, of course, there's "if," which McCain said 513 times and Obama said 1,111 times. That's about 30,000 public ifs, ands, and buts.

A few other findings: McCain mentioned "Bush" only 52 times, while Obama uttered "Bush" 223 times. (I wonder why.) McCain said the word "Reagan" 55 times, while Obama said it only ten. McCain mentioned "Kennedy" ten times, while Obama did so 82 times. And so forth. As for terms like "terrorist," "Iran," and "Iraq," they produced pretty even results among the two candidates. The most extreme difference was on the word "dream," which McCain said only 19 times compared to Obama's whopping 196.

Sadly, I just wasn't able to link the candidates to very interesting words. Neither candidate has said "pizzazz," or "foxy," or "dude." If you like sports, McCain said "football" four times, while Obama said it once. "Basketball" got one mention from Obama, zero from McCain. But neither of those would be as interesting as "tennis," "lacrosse," or "cricket," each of which has been mysteriously overlooked by the candidates. So my mood slumped further.

I did, by the way, look up one final sport: hockey. It yielded zero results. But Speech Wars' database hasn't been updated since August. And things have since changed, my friends. Oh, boy, have they ever changed.

T.A. Frank on Al Jazeera English | 'Media Coverage of Controversial Obama book'

Communications — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:41:00 -0400

T.A. Frank discusses media bias and coverage of the controversial book, Obama Nation. LINK to video

Obama's Celebrity is a Good Target

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:49:00 -0400

John McCain's television ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears will be chronicled by no sane historian, and even those of us who have seen it must curse the expense of time and neurons involved in viewing it or reading about it or, God forbid, writing about it. (There goes my memory of the subjunctive of "être", for example, dislodged to make room for McCain's latest.) But those of us determined to follow this race without fail - at work, at home, in our beds, in our showers - can say we saw something this week, and that was the coalescing of McCain's anti-Obama message.

The GOP has auditioned many negative adjectives for Obama: effete, liberal, radical, Weathermen-loving, flip-floppy. But few have stuck. With the introduction of "hubris" and its variants, however, the GOP seems finally to have broken through. When The Late Show with David Letterman unveiled the "Top 10 signs Barack Obama is overconfident" - among which "Proposed bill to change Oklahoma to 'Oklobama'" was one - it was an official blessing of the message. That the progressive blogosphere is widely disgusted makes it that much sweeter for conservatives.

This leaves the two campaigns in a curious place. Obama has a useful positive message about himself (idealist changer), but lacks a persuasive negative one about McCain ("Bush's third term" doesn't seem to be sticking). McCain now has a useful negative message about Obama (vacuous megalomaniac), but lacks a positive one about himself (jihad-crusher doesn't seem to inspire). So a lot hinges on who has the most valuable half and who remedies his message deficit first.

Certainly, even if Obama doesn't come up with a new anti-McCain message, he still has cause for optimism. Nailing down the positive half of your sales pitch is a good thing. That's a lot better than the circumstances of 2004, when George Bush had both a sturdy positive message (I'm a plain and resolute fighter) and a punishing negative message (John Kerry's an effete flip-flopper), while John Kerry lacked either. Considering that Kerry still ran a close race, this bodes well for Obama.

It helps that we're even sicker of the current White House. And - who knows? - perhaps the third-term-of-Bush line will finally start to draw some blood. But I suspect Obama will have to come up with something stronger. If it's true that close races hinge on character, then taunts like "another Bush term" don't have much power to wound, since they're really about policy, not personality.

As for McCain, even if he doesn't come up with a new pro-McCain message, he still has plenty to be happy about. People say this election is mainly a referendum on Obama, so defining Obama is of higher priority. With men like Steve Schmidt and outside advisers like Karl Rove, McCain is blessed with a highly sleazy and effective team that seems to have gotten the job done in the past week or two. They understand is that a political caricature can be wildly exaggerated, but an effective one requires a foundation of truth. To depict Obama's occasional cockiness as insane self-love is a perfect marriage of exaggeration and character attack.

As for settling on a sunnier pitch for McCain, the team is still working on it but is helped by having a candidate the public already likes. The press still likes McCain, too, even as he has aimed his blows lower and lower.

McCain has one more thing to celebrate: If his negative message against Obama sticks, then it follows Karl Rove's unwritten rule of attacking an opponent's greatest strength. It recasts Obama's hopeful audacity as empty vainglory. That's pretty effective stuff.

So Obama might be wise to play by the same rules. McCain's great strength, according to polls, is his foreign policy experience. Fortunately for Obama (if less fortunately for the rest of us), the truth is that McCain's foreign policy is a bit like McCain the man - characterised by a willingness, all things being equal, to choose a fight. That is to say, it's a bit terrifying. So going after McCain's global belligerence could fulfil two imperatives at once: it could attack McCain on his perceived strength, and it could remind us of the benefit of a breather before we launch a third war with, say, Iran.

Buck Turgidson is one of the most inspired characters in Dr. Strangelove - "Mr President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops" - but he's best kept out of the White House. I suspect Obama might gain some ground by echoing this point. But even if it backfires, we'll at least have been warned.