CNN reports:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain, was fired from the Arizona senator’s campaign last week for what one aide called “trashing” the campaign staff, three senior McCain advisers tell CNN. One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading “disinformation” about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials. “He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain’s campaign message,” said one of the aides.

Not that it would’ve mattered much in this atmosphere of economic uncertainty—and it certainly wouldn’t’ve mattered to more than a handful of DC people even in boom times—but I do wish John McCain had ditched this belligerent little man earlier during his campaign.

I saw Randy Scheunemann speak at two events and came away profoundly unimpressed each time. The man’s a shrill ideologue who, given his privileged position and long history of working with McCain, was probably responsible for the most unpalatable foreign policy positions articulated by the Republican side.

Here’s to hoping his career isn’t resurrected by a resurgent Palin in 2012.

Greg Pollowitz at the Corner:

Bill Clinton Helps Out… By letting America know that Senator Obama had no clue what to do when the financial crisis hit. At 3AM, how many people will a President Obama have time to chat with?

“You know what he did?” Clinton said, heralding Obama’s reaction to the financial crisis. “First he took a little heat for not saying much. I knew what he was doing. He talked to his advisers – he talked to my economic advisers, he called Hillary. He called me. He called Warren Buffet. He called all those people, you know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to understand.”

I have to say I’m with Bill on this one. I’m really sick of hip-shooting yahoos “making decisions” in places of power at times of crisis. Judging by how well John McCain’s campaign suspension stunt went over, I’d say that many people would agree with me.

Good on McCain, tamping down the misinformed excesses of the base base.

I don’t chime in too much when it comes to domestic politics and policy because I’m largely out of my depth. I’m a foreign policy guy by inclination, and I don’t have the iron constitution required to wade through the slimy panderings of political candidates in order to arrive at their ‘true’ position on taxation, health care, entitlement reform, etc. I also maintain that the president has maximum leeway to do as he pleases in foreign policy, so that’s the main criterion he should be judged on.

That said, with what has been happening during the last three weeks on Wall Street, I don’t think I’ve ever cared less whether Obama or McCain would commit troops to solve a humanitarian crisis in Congo. Or whether the candidates think Russia is an Evil Empire. Or whether they’d send troops to the Middle East to fight Iran if Israel was attacked. Since neither candidate was able to go beyond the standard populist bromides when talking about the financial crisis, hearing them talk about what they would do internationally sounded incredibly silly and irrelevant.

EDIT: I should note that I’m coming down with a cold and am in a foul mood. Reading around the web, it doesn’t seem that people were as down on the debate as I was.

I’ve always found it apt when the everyman supporters of a political movement are called “the base”. As a coastal elitist snob, I often heap scorn on the base elements of our society which also happen to be the bases of both parties—indeed, the bases of all successful parties in a democracy.

For a democracy to properly function, however, the base base must not be agitated with populism and demagoguery. If it is, ugliness ensues and democracy is threatened. Witness this WaPo report:

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Sow the seeds of discord, reap the whirlwind. Something like that.

Here, via Brad DeLong:

Some younger guy said he should be President, but some cranky older guy said that yet another guy named Petraeus should be President. Maybe the old guy was like Petraeus’s butler or something?

It was a draw, which is good for Obama at the perception level: McCain never successfully put it away against a competitor who’s widely considered to be a foreign policy neophyte.

Overall, McCain’s foreign policy vision was disquieting. His linking of Iran solely to Israel’s existence was pure demagoguery, his Iraq “victory” talk was nothing more than a drawn out soundbyte which betrayed serious delusions about Iraq’s future, and his defense of our pro-Musharraf Pakistan policy was at best unconvincing in the face of Obama’s cheap and disingenuous criticisms.

What surprised me most, however, was McCain’s incoherence on Georgia, an argument in which I thought he had the tactical (if not wholly practical) advantage over Obama. Obama’s reaction to the Georgia crisis as it was unfolding came off as McCain-lite—a muddled and uncertain saber-rattle. All McCain had to do last night was be forceful and single-minded to have Obama look out of his depth. Yet McCain bungled it:

I don’t believe we’re going to go back to the Cold War. I am sure that that will not happen. But I do believe that we need to bolster our friends and allies. And that wasn’t just about a problem between Georgia and Russia. It had everything to do with energy. There’s a pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Georgia through Turkey. And, of course, we know that the Russians control other sources of energy into Europe, which they have used from time to time. It’s not accidental that the presidents of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine flew to Georgia, flew to Tbilisi, where I have spent significant amount of time with a great young president, Misha Saakashvili. And they showed solidarity with them, but, also, they are very concerned about the Russian threats to regain their status of the old Russian to regain their status of the old Russian empire. Now, I think the Russians ought to understand that we will support — we, the United States — will support the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in the natural process, inclusion into NATO.

At pains to show how much he knew, McCain was scattershot and unconvincing. Which is it, Senator? Is it that we must stand by fledgling democracies no matter what, as the neoconservatives demand? Is it a wholly energy-centered (and quite frankly insane) gambit which demands we try to snake a pipeline from the Caspian between a hostile Iran and an increasingly hostile Russia at the expense of both powers? Or is it that Russia is acting on old Imperial impulses and must be stopped for some reason?

It’s a shame that McCain didn’t turn to friends like Chuck Hagel and Tony Cordesman, and went to unqualified ideologues like Randy Scheunemann instead. He certainly had the opportunity to be the foreign policy “adult” this election.

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Christopher Hitchens’ claim that an Obama presidency will mean “more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less”, says:

I can face the idea of a president Obama taking on and finally defeating Osama. In fact, that’s the major reason why I favor his candidacy… . Obama will try to correct the massive stretegic error of the Iraq invasion and pivot Western allies toward a greater focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that Obama will be able to do this with much less global p.r. blowback than McCain and that the support president Obama will get from our European allies will dwarf McCain’s.

First of all, I should point out that I, too, would welcome a President Obama “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” For what it’s worth, I could face a Honeydew-Beaker Administration “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” (Hey, I wouldn’t even mind if it happened in the next 3-4 months, under Bush, but I get the feeling that happenstance might upset someone…)

What I really wanted to draw attention to is Sullivan’s assumption that Obama will be able to formally and officially expand the Afghanistan problem into an Afghanistan-Pakistan problem with “much less global p.r. blowback than McCain.” Au contraire. I expect there will be more blowback against Obama.

Right now, he can ride high on a wave of global public support, but those thronging masses in Berlin and elsewhere are supporting him because they expect something in return: a massive rupture with Bush-era foreign policy. Since this is inchoate mob opinion we’re talking about here, it wouldn’t do to overanalyze it; basically they want more talk, fewer bombs, and they think he’s the one who’s going to give that to them. Americans, on the other hand, seem more inclined to take him at his word on his promises to get tough with Pakistan (though they still favor McCain on national security issues).

Something tells me that, if it comes to a choice between upsetting Americans’ expectations, and upsetting the world’s, the President of the United States is going to side with…well, the United States. And this is going to cut across a number of issues besides Afghanistan/Pakistan, as Slate pointed out awhile back:

If his diplomats or military advisers told him that the Iranians perceived his willingness to talk as a sign of weakness, he might reconsider his pledge to meet with the Iranian president as quickly as he now promises. Maybe when presented with confidential data gathered by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, he would be less keen to drop all the measures taken by Bush and criticized by the opposition. Maybe his belief that “the United States needs to lead the world in ending this genocide” in Darfur would put him at odds with reality or with some members of the international community. In each of these cases, Obama would suffer the consequences of high expectations. He would be trapped between the desire to preserve his high standing in the world and the need to act in ways that would erode that standing. Of course—his advisers would argue—it is better to have this political goodwill in the first place. But even if that were true, political goodwill should always be handled delicately. Starting modestly and building up is also an option, sometimes a better one if you aim to keep expectations realistic. (This, I think, is the way John McCain would play his cards internationally.)

It’s undeniable that the “get tough on Pakistan” rhetoric is good for Obama’s short-term political interests. The world simply isn’t listening as closely to the candidates’ statements as are Americans, so it’s easier for them to bask in the unadulterated glow of St. Barack. But if Obama wins in November, he may soon come to realize that hell hath no fury like a Berliner scorned.

I’ve intentionally restrained myself from posting more about this silliness, but I have to say I don’t really see how this explanation improves the situation:

“Keep in mind, technically, had I meant it this way, [Palin] would be the lipstick. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig, just following the logic of this illogical situation,” Obama said.

Someone needs to tell the Obama camp just to shrug off these kinds of tempests in a teapot and focus on policies and issues and such.

One of Kerry’s biggest weaknesses in 2004 was his abject failure at controlling the news cycle. Just when the media was beginning to tire of covering the Swift Boat Vets story, the Kerry campaign responded with comically incompetent attempts to manipulate public opinion, like this Byzantine chart, thus pouring new life into coverage of the Swift Boat accusations and terminally distracting his campaign.

Unless Obama wants to repeat Kerry’s performance, he needs to just shut up about these faux-controversies.