Big Week

June 21. My favorite day of the year, because it's the longest day of the year. Actually, the 20th is the longest day, but the 21st is the first full day of summer.

In any event, it was quite a week for Presidential politics. With the ghost of Tim Russert inspiring our brightest minds to share eloquent memories of his life in an ongoing media celebration, the two candidates went at each other, scoring points and taking hits. Since I haven't written all week, I'll try to recap in entertaining fashion.

Gore
Barack Obama rolled out another rock concert style event in Detroit, this time starring Al Gore. Gore's rousing endorsement of Obama continued to make older Democrats shake their heads as they wondered why this Al Gore, this 'Inconvenient Truth' Al Gore, relaxed, witty and purposeful, couldn't have run for President in 2000. In any event, Obama scored big on the enthusiasm meter.

Oops
What we didn't see happen at that same event was that two Muslim American women were denied seats behind Obama because they were wearing traditional Muslim headscarves. One volunteer actually said to them they couldn't be seen in the camera shots because of the '...political climate'. On Thursday, Obama personally called them and apologized. Apology accepted. Issue may linger.

Habeas Schmabeas
Obama drew criticism from McCain on Obama's endorsement of the Supreme Court's ruling last week, allowing Gitmo detainees to challenge their detention in American courts. Obama went on to further say that he thought a captured Osama Bin Laden should be tried, not summarily executed. McCain, predictably, called this approach 'naive' and characterized Obama as soft on terrorism.

Reversals
Thanks to the dastardly, but brilliant, Karl Rove spin machine, Republicans have entered a phrase into the political lexicon that has done more to limit political discourse than any other phrase since Reagan's "There you go again" chide of Jimmy Carter. It's 'flip flop'. This derrogation summons the image of a helpless fish thrashing about on a boat deck, and doomed John Kerry's candidacy in 2004. The sub-text of flip flop, of course, is political expediency. Unfortunately, it has now come to mean any change in position, for whatever reason. This interpretation has discouraged many a politician from legitimately changing a stance on an issue based on new information or new understanding. For example, I have flip flopped on the issue of the boogeyman. I once thought he existed under my bed. I have now come to believe that he does not. I suppose I'm a flip flopper. A fellow named Abraham Lincoln also flip flopped on the issue of slavery. Lucky for us. Anyway, you'll never hear me use the term 'flip flop' unless referring to footwear. I will use 'reversal'.

This week both candidates reversed themselves on different issues. Both reversals could hurt them in the 'flip flop' (damn!) department, but help them in the long run. John McCain has decided that he now supports lifting the federal moratorium for off-shore oil drilling along US coastlines. This simply means that states can decide for themselves if they want to set up rigs. The experts disagree on how quickly this exploration could yield enough oil to ease our energy crunch. Most estimates put it at 5 years, minimum. The companion idea to this is that it would scare oil producing nations to lower costs or increase production. That's debatable, as well. What isn't debatable is that McCain's reversal is a political pander. It's not. We have an energy crisis and he wants all options on the table. Fair enough. The bad news for Mac is that it once more aligns him with George Bush on policy.

Barack Obama reversed himself when he announced he would opt out of the public financing pledge he signed last year. This is a true reversal and McCain has been correct to characterize it as 'breaking his word' to the American people. Unfortunately, when a one legged man complains that his two legged opponent didn't cut off a leg to make the butt kicking contest fairer, it sounds a little like sour grapes. Especially, when the one legged man borrowed money for a prothsesis by saying he would remain a one legged man.

Obama has taken some short term heat for the decision, which is fair. But detractors can't have it both ways. They can't say he's naive and untested and not tough enough, and then when he makes a savvy, pragmatic decision to advantage himself in a fight, they say he's just another politician.

Advantage?
Generally, most observers would agree that John McCain had a slightly better week. Fewer controveries, lots of policy statements. Plenty of openings to attack Obama. My own observation is that McCain should be troubled by one thing: None of Obama's controversy has stuck. He takes his hits and moves on. If he has to apologize, he does. The public likes that. I'm not into polls, especially this early, but major polls show that Obama got a huge bounce from his primary victory and now leads in swing states like Pennsylvania. As I say, this means little now; but it does energize the Obama campaign and could deflate McCain supporters enough to affect fundraising and general perception. We'll see.

Ok that's enough for now. Summer's officially started.

Time to put on my flip flops.

Whose reversal will hurt them (or help them) the most? Talk about this or anything else by clicking on 'comments' below, bypassing the Google sign up and hitting the anonymous or nickname button.