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Vice President Joe Biden told NBC's David Gregory that he questioned former Vice President Dick Cheney's judgement for criticizing President Barack Obama policies on national security. Biden seemed to pull his punches when asked about Cheney's motives. "Never question another man's motive," warned Biden.

There's an interesting and little talked about article this weekend from the National Journal which sets out the lucrative relationships some of John McCain's campaign advisers, in their alter-egos as super-lobbyists, have with some very questionable oligarchs in Russia and elsewhere - leading to some serious questions about McCain's judgement and the company he keeps.

There's Christian Ferry, McCain's deputy campaign manager, who also works for the lobbying firm of McCain's campaign manager and longtime GOP apparatchik Rick Davis.

In Montenegro, Davis Manafort helped push a referendum on independence from Serbia that narrowly passed by popular vote in May 2006. In Ukraine, Ferry was part of a Davis Manafort team that advised Victor Yanukovich, the country's then-prime minister, whose pro-Russian party made gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections. (In 2004, Yanukovich lost to the U.S.-backed candidate, Victor Yushchenko, in a hotly contested presidential race.)

Sources say that Davis Manafort received multimillion-dollar fees from each country. "Ferry was on the ground in both countries and talked about it a great deal," said one source with knowledge of the McCain campaign and of the firm's electoral work in Ukraine. The source added that Ferry acted as "Rick's implementer."

These overseas efforts underscore not only how closely Ferry's career has been linked to Davis but also the extent to which the upper ranks of the McCain campaign include lobbyists and consultants who worked for foreign clients.

And then there's Randy Scheunemann, who has lobbied for Georgia (as we know), Latvia, Macedonia and Taiwan.

And Charles Black, who has worked for the "corruption-plagued nation of Equatorial Guinea and a Moscow think tank run by Leonid Reiman". The latter used to be Vladimir "K.G.B. Eyes" Putin's telecoms minister and has been linked to allegations of money laundering by German authorities. Black, of course, was also one of the folks who arranged Rev. Sun Myung Moon's coronation as "King of America".

And Davis himself, who involved McCain with Raffaello Follieri, "who in September pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to money laundering and defrauding investors of more than $2 million" in what was a part of what has become known as the Vati-Con Scandal. Davis also got McCain sit-down meetings with Oleg Deripaska, whose fortune has been pegged at $28 billion and who was a close ally of that same Vladimir Putin's.

For someone who claims to be a maverick, McCain has an awful lot of people around him who have done the bidding of foreign governments or other foreign interests," says Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.

But that doesn't really get to the heart of the problem.

Continue reading »

    The London Times'  US editor, Gerard Baker - as reliable a Republican booster as it is possible to find - reports that senior GOP greyhairs are worried.

While Republican delegates here rave about Sarah Palin, and angrily denounce the salubrious media coverage of her daughter’s pregnancy, a number of the party’s elders are in a state of high anxiety.

... Some Republicans are plainly upset that in an election campaign which Senator McCain himself has said turns on the central issue of national security, he has chosen someone as a potential successor in a crisis who, whatever her other talents, has no background in international affairs.

One senior Republican, a former Bush Administration official, described himself to me this week as “personally disgusted” by the selection, one that betrayed a desire by Mr McCain for short-term political gain at the expense of the national interest - wholly counter to the senator’s message hitherto.

But the bigger worry among many Republicans here is not that Mrs Palin might win in November, and prove to be ill-equipped to lead the nation should she have to after next January, but that she might lose; that the cascading revelations about her will bring down the McCain campaign.

At issue is the judgment and attention shown by the McCain campaign in selecting her.

Quote of the day:

As David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush, put it during a discussion here about the campaign: “When someone takes the rent money and puts it on black at the roulette table, and it comes up black, we don’t say “Wow! What a terrific piece of judgment."

And when it comes up on Red 13? Well, then, you try to make the election about personalities. Or to be more precise, carefully groomed public personas. Because let's face it, little we know about the true personalities of Gambler McAngry or Sarah The Book-Banning Theocrat will endear them to the electorate.

Kyle Moore at Comments From Left Field writes:

Whether Palin was a good pick or not is not exactly relevant.  What is relevant is the nature of John McCain’s decision making in this instance.

Let that simmer with you for a moment.  At the first sign of trouble, McCain abandoned his game plan and went instead with a high risk maneuver that thus far seems to have some pay off, but is coming with a high cost.

What does that say about how he’ll behave in the realm of foreign policy?  Will he abandon any semblance of a safe and tested plan in favor of a high risk move that will put us and our families in danger?  What about terrorism?  In a McCain administration, I think that this indicates that instead of pursuing a smart and tough anti-terrorism policy, he would engage in a reckless and reactionary response that would only make us less safe and likely put us in another war.

We can discuss the lack of qualifications for Sarah Palin, and there are plenty, but the biggest problem is that it indicates that John McCain’s temperament and judgment is far below the standards necessary to serve in the Oval Office.

Kyle's one of the smartest unsung observers of U.S. politics in the blogosphere and he's hit a nerve for McCain here. Once the initial rush of stories about Palin subsides, people will be left wondering why McCain tapped her.

Even some of her own Alaskan Republican colleagues admit she's not ready for the Veep slot.

State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to tell her the news.

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

It seems to have been one or all of three: 1) a vain attempt to convince Hillary supporters that the should think with their vaginas in the same way men like McCain think with their penises, 2) to shore up McCain's standing with the abortion/hangin'/guns loving and science/polar bear cub hating base, 3) an act of supreme desperation brought on by the Democratic Convention.

None of those possibilities will especially inspire confidence in him as President. But unless McCain comes right out and admit which it was then Americans have to think that, when the going gets tough, McCain will once again pull one of the flakies he's infamous for. Does anyone want to vote for a man who - when facing down Putin, Ahmadinejad or Bin Laden - is likely to just roll the dice and pull a judgment call of Palin quality out of the bag?

Despite Condi Rice's prevarications, it's now looking certain that the US will be forced to accept Iraqi demands that any new "status of forces" deal be for only 3 years and to stipulate all US troops out of Iraqi urban areas by 2009. A draft of the agreement is being circulated to Iraqi political leaders for their approval and it says that while there will be no firm schedule for a U.S. withdrawal, they want U.S. combat troops to go home by the end of 2011.

Obama already has his statement out, and it's a doozy. (H/T Spencer Ackerman):

"I am glad that the Administration has finally shifted to accepting a timetable for the removal of our combat troops from Iraq. Success in Iraq depends on an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future, and a timetable is the best way to press the Iraqis to do just that. I welcome the growing convergence around this pragmatic and responsible position.

"This agreement is still draft and vital pieces of it must be finalized, so I will reserve final judgment on the agreement until it is complete. The agreement needs to be carefully reviewed, and must include immunity for U.S. troops and Defense Department personnel from Iraqi jurisdiction. I continue to believe that in consultation with our commanders and the Iraqi government, we can safely redeploy at a pace that removes our combat brigades in 16 months, with a residual force to target remnants of al Qaeda; to protect our service members and diplomats; and to train Iraq's Security Forces if the Iraqis make political progress.

"Senator McCain has stubbornly focused on maintaining an indefinite U.S presence in Iraq, but events have made his bluster and record increasingly out of touch with reality. While Senator McCain continues to offer unconditional military and economic support for Iraq, I strongly believe that we need to use our leverage with the Iraqi government to ensure a political settlement. In addition to a timetable, we should only train Iraqi Security Forces if Iraq's leaders reconcile their differences, and we must insist that Iraq invests its $79 billion surplus on rebuilding its own country. It's time to succeed in Iraq and to honor the sacrifice of our servicemen and women by leaving Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi government.

"Ending the war in Iraq responsibly is in the broader strategic interests of the United States. It's long past time to drawdown our troop presence and to stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq so that we can increase resources for the mission in Afghanistan, rebuild our military, and invest in our struggling economy at home," said Senator Obama.

Spencer's bang on when he says this hits all the right notes.

First, it makes the point that the administration came around to the wisdom of Obama's position after exhausting the alternatives. Second, it portrays Obama's position as the consensus view. Third, it puts McCain on the horns of a dilemma: Either endorse Obama's consensus position -- and thereby flip-flop and concede his opponent's judgment is superior -- or be out of the responsible mainstream. Third-and-a-half, if McCain stays consistent, the Obama line draws a wedge between Bush and McCain.

But there's a fourth reason, and it's the most crucial of all. Did you notice how Obama is talking about "success in Iraq"? He's taking that concept and giving it a common-sense meaning: getting out responsibly -- that is, leveraging withdrawal into a diplomatic strategy with the Iraqi government and the region -- is what success means.

A definition of success that actually works and a plan that even the Bush administration has come around to, albeit very reluctantly. That shows both leadership and judgement.