At the very end of his otherwise pedestrian speech yesterday, Senator McCain said something that struck us as revealing. Probably everyone else knows this, but we didn’t. It sounded a little like a confession when Senator McCain said that he broke under torture:

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone.

Perhaps we haven’t been paying attention all this time, but we didn’t know until today that during this two-week long episode McCain says he twice attempted suicide and finally signed confessions given to him by the North Vietnamese. It is certainly unsurprising in light of all this that Senator McCain opposed waterboarding and some other coercive means of gathering information.

Inspired by the intriguing confession in McCain’s speech, we did a little further inquiry. We have a copy of Faith of My Fathers (a book with no table of contents or index, by the way), but hadn’t read it. We looked in on the episode that McCain referred to in his speech last night (pp.244-245):

Bob Craner tried to reassure me that I had resisted all that I was expected to resist. But I couldn’t shake it off. One night I either heard or dreamed I heard myself confessing over the loudspeakers, thanking the Vietnamese for receiving medical treatment I did not deserve. Most guys broke at one time or another. I doubt anyone gets over it entirely. There is never enough time and distance between the past and the present to allow one to forget his shame. I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day.

McCain’s book discusses his post-captivity physical therapy (p.345) but appears silent on whatever psychological treatment he received. It would be very interesting to know about this, but, as with Senator Kerry, this important subject apparently continues to be off-limits in political discourse. It is long past time to end this taboo.

Governor Palin had an audience of 37.2 million last night, second only to Senator Obama’s acceptance speech, and she didn’t blow it. In fact, as John Fund noted: “Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s official attack dog, could muster only this as commentary on Mrs. Palin’s performance: ‘People who like this sort of thing will find this…the sort of thing they like’.” That’s as near to praise for Sarah Palin as MSNBC is likely to get. We found this line from Governor Palin’s address particularly amusing, though it didn’t seem to be among the clips played by the media today:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.

Touché. One speech does not a campaign make, but this was a good start. As the Washington Post noted, “few believed she would emerge triumphant, which she did.” There are many more tests in the next two months and we’ll just have to see what happens.

There continues to be something surreal about this year’s presidential campaign. Senator Obama was marketed as a Messiah from the one side, and on the other, Governor Palin was instantly and inappropriately viewed as some sort of Savior or Demon, wildly the best choice by McCain, or the worst VP choice in American history. What’s going on that people experience such intensity of feeling about mere politicians?

Reuters reports that the assertions that oil prices were headed to infinity were a bit premature:

U.S. crude settled down $5.75 at $109.71 a barrel after trading as low as $105.46. London Brent crude settled down $1.07 at $108.34 a barrel. U.S. crude settled below its 200-day moving average price for the first time since May 2007, which is considered by many traders evidence that prices may fall further. Oil prices have tumbled nearly $40 a barrel since the July 11 record high of $147.27 as bullish sentiment has evaporated.

Our view is that oil prices are headed much lower. History suggests that is what will happen, and a number of analysts share that view. Also, a falling price environment should cause some OPEC members to cheat and produce above their agreed targets, which is apparently already happening. Finally, Saudi Arabia, in its role as the largest and swing producer in OPEC, was dissed big time just two months ago, and needs to reestablish the roots of its power. For these reasons and others, we wouldn’t be surprised to see oil prices decline even more than they already have since the peak.

UPDATE: a little more on this subject from the volatile Jim Cramer, who was ardently bullish for a while:

Two more hurricanes, a price that’s economic and down 40% in 8 weeks, a fuel that homeowners can switch to — is natural gas capable of collapsing even more than it has?…you must believe that natural gas can trade at the most outrageous discount in history, as it is if you use the old 6-to-1 ratio — it’s otherwise projecting $42 oil from the current $108! Even if you use what the bears on this site have been saying, a new 10-to-1 ratio because of the inability to switch, you have oil at $70. Can oil go to $70? Yes, if we can find more. Yes, if we weren’t running out. Yes, if driving doesn’t come back at $3 a gallon, where gasoline goes if oil cracks $100. Yes, if China collapses.

Even that last point is possible.

Before we make our point, here’s a bit from the New Republic:

At the end of 2005, a close friend called to say that he begun writing speeches and talking points for a certain gubernatorial candidate. “Remind me,” I asked. “Who is Sarah Palin?” I was dismayed at my friend’s choice of political entree. Why was he wasting his time on a relative nobody, trying to beat an incumbent governor (and former three term senator) in the Republican primary? It was utter folly. “Wait until the big money starts coming in for Murkowski,” I said. “Wait until the party machinery goes to work on Palin. They will eat her for lunch.”

Murkowski, for his part, expressed a similar view. “If I decide to,” he said, “I will run and I will win. It’s that simple.” The folly, of course, turned out to be my own (and Murkowski’s), as Palin slaughtered the incumbent in the primary–posting a 30 point margin of victory–and went on to win the general (over a former Democratic governor) without seeming to break a sweat. She then quickly fulfilled an implicit campaign promise by slapping down ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips in negotiations over a proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline, even though they, too, by all accounts, were well prepared to dine on her tender little frame. Not bad for a lightweight.

Listening to the Democratic leadership respond to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, one hears echoes of the Alaska Republican leadership from just a few years ago. Barack Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, put it this way: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Former mayor? If you’re going to skip over her job as governor and, before that, her job heading the commission that oversees production of the largest petroleum reserves in America, why not “former high school student”? Bah, what does it matter: She’s just a small town mayor, just a hockey mom, just a beauty pageant queen. Palin has never shunned these belittling monikers, in part, I imagine, because the camouflage has served her so well.

We don’t know the reality of the Palin situation, whether she will be an effective running mate for Senator McCain come election day. No one does. However, we observe that there are all sorts of intense emotions, pro and con, regarding Palin, from people who know almost nothing about her, and that’s just from the GOP. It is of course entirely legitimate and appropriate for commentators to offer instant analyses of McCain’s choice of Palin, but the passion of these views often seems strange — more like projection than analysis.

Clive Crook makes our point: it “comes down to how Palin fares in speeches and interviews from now on — and above all in the debate with Biden on October 2nd. If Biden makes her look a fool, McCain’s gamble will have failed, and I don’t see how he can recover. If she impresses, McCain will likely be in a much stronger position.” Why do so many commentators (enthusiastically, instantly) jump to a conclusion when there is so much evidence yet to be considered?

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev defined Russia’s foreign policy (via Stratfor):

First, Russia recognizes the primacy of the fundamental principles of international law, which define the relations between civilized peoples. We will build our relations with other countries within the framework of these principles and this concept of international law.

Second, the world should be multipolar. A single-pole world is unacceptable. Domination is something we cannot allow. We cannot accept a world order in which one country makes all the decisions, even as serious and influential a country as the United States of America. Such a world is unstable and threatened by conflict.

Third, Russia does not want confrontation with any other country. Russia has no intention of isolating itself. We will develop friendly relations with Europe, the United States, and other countries, as much as is possible.

Fourth, protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be, is an unquestionable priority for our country. Our foreign policy decisions will be based on this need. We will also protect the interests of our business community abroad. It should be clear to all that we will respond to any aggressive acts committed against us.

Finally, fifth, as is the case of other countries, there are regions in which Russia has privileged interests. These regions are home to countries with which we share special historical relations and are bound together as friends and good neighbors. We will pay particular attention to our work in these regions and build friendly ties with these countries, our close neighbors. These are the principles I will follow in carrying out our foreign policy.

Sounds like a swell policy, particularly points four and five. Then again, we’re not living next door to Russia in Ukraine, with its 18% Russian population.

At the moment, solar energy appears to be a bit unreliable. The sunspots are gone, at least for now (Science Daily):

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted. The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year — which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 — has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

Perhaps we’re entering a Maunder Minimum. Light a coal fire and keep warm.

A leading Democrat observed: “Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven…To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention.” Actually, Gustav hasn’t worked out badly for the GOP at all, at least so far. Katrina was another story, and the media narrative has become a legend in part at odds with the facts:

It is worth remembering that many of the problems of Katrina were not the fault of the federal government. People had ample time and warning to Get Out! before the hurricane struck. President Bush called Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco well before the storm hit and asked her to force a mandatory evacuation of low lying areas, but Blanco dallied. Indeed, days after the storm hit she still tried to keep the feds away, and inexplicably refused to authorize aid from others for New Orleans.

We continue to wonder if Governor Blanco’s disastrous response to Katrina was possibly part of a Democratic strategy to make the Bush administration look bad (”All the National Guardsman are in Iraq so they can’t help,” etc.) — a plan that spun wildly out of control because the storm turned out to be so bad. How else to explain that, days after the hurricane struck, Mayor Nagin was more than willing to give control of New Orleans to the federal government, but Governor Blanco said she still “needed 24 hours to make a decision.” Maybe complete incompetence would also be an adequate explanation.

As for Gustav, the divine intervention eliminated both Messrs. Bush and Cheney from speaking roles at the convention, producing a “huge sigh of relief by most party strategists.” The media were deprived of the split screen pictures they wanted to show — happy revelers and the drenched, homeless poor. Louisiana’s GOP Governor Bobby Jindal got to show that he is on the ball and up to the task. FEMA and the Bush administration seem to be “100% better prepared” this time around. And Senator McCain got to look somber and adult and overact for the media: “We are facing a great national challenge’.” All in all, not a bad outcome so far.

Maureen Dowd has a very entertaining piece in the NYT about the chick flick she is watching. She doesn’t like it at all, but can’t turn away:

It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on “Meet the Press” triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on “Meet the Press” a lot. Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes “The Brady Bunch” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.

Instead, they embrace 72-year-old John McCain and 44-year-old Sarah Palin, whose average age is 58, a mere two years older than the average age of the Obama-Biden ticket. Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge, because they expect Republicans to put an underqualified “babe,” as Rush Limbaugh calls her, on the ticket. They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W., and then letting them learn on the job…

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter. And she was tougher on the basketball court than the ethereal Obama, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.”

The legacy of Geraldine Ferraro was supposed to be that no one would ever go on a blind date with history again. But that crazy maverick and gambler McCain does it, and conservatives and evangelicals rally around him in admiration of his refreshingly cynical choice of Sarah, an evangelical Protestant and anti-abortion crusader who became a hero when she decided to have her baby, who has Down syndrome, and when she urged schools to debate creationism as well as that stuffy old evolution thing.

Palinistas, as they are called, love Sarah’s spunky, relentlessly quirky “Northern Exposure” story from being a Miss Alaska runner-up, and winning Miss Congeniality, to being mayor and hockey mom in Wasilla, a rural Alaskan town of 6,715, to being governor for two years to being the first woman ever to run on a national Republican ticket. (Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It’s a little insulting.)…

As she once told Vogue, she’s learned the hard way to deal with press comments about her looks. “I wish they’d stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots,” she said. “A reporter once asked me about it during the campaign, and I assured him I was trying to be as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses.”…

The movie ends with the former beauty queen shaking out her pinned-up hair, taking off her glasses, slipping on ruby red peep-toe platform heels that reveal a pink French-style pedicure, and facing down Vladimir Putin in an island in the Bering Strait. Putting away her breast pump, she points her rifle and informs him frostily that she has some expertise in Russia because it’s close to Alaska. “Back off, Commie dude,” she says. “I’m a much better shot than Cheney.”

Question: is the scriptwriter and director of this film Karl Rove? (One observes a lot of orchestration in the background. For example, Mr. Limbaugh was evidently given advance notice of the VP selection, or at least seemed to claim as much; clearly the Palin selection was the last and best opportunity for the Republican talker to suspend his feud with Senator McCain and get with the program until November. Mr. Limbaugh’s instant, over-the-top, wild enthusiasm for Governor Palin seemed orchestrated and explicitly designed to help heal the breach between McCain and the GOP base. A scripted event perhaps — but by whom?)

Safire the Republican was less than moved by the Obama acceptance speech:

By choosing the venue of a vast outdoor stadium as John Kennedy did for his “new frontier” acceptance, and by speaking on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” address, Barack Obama — whose claim to fame is an ability to move audiences with his words — deliberately invited comparison with two of the most memorable speeches of our recent history. What a mistake…

Obama’s handlers offered the political version of “American Idol” — the audacity of hype. On the 50-yard line of the football field, at a reported cost of $6 million, they erected a plywood Parthenon, its fake Grecian columns suggesting the White House. At the end, not a traditional balloon drop in a contained hall — enjoyable hoopla — but a fireworks display in the heavens over a mass of humanity in a blizzard of confetti, all too like the collectivist fantasy that opened and closed the Beijing Olympics.

To present what? In a speech aptly titled “The American Promise,” Obama promised to “end this war in Iraq responsibly,” even as it is already ending responsibly. He promised in a militant phrase not merely to end but to “finish the fight” (meaning to win) in Afghanistan. In one catchall sentence, Obama promised to defeat “terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease.” Because the charge that he would raise taxes obviously nettles him, he promised to “eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses” run by obedient high-tech executives, and to “cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families.”

Unmoved too was Broder the Democrat:

There was no theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to linger in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did.

If this were just an off night by a speaker we know can soar, it would be no more than a blip on the screen. Obama picked a bad night to be ordinary, given the huge crowd that filled the Denver Broncos stadium and the elaborate Grecian setting constructed for his performance. But John McCain is hardly a major threat as a speaker, so what’s the difference?

Here’s why I think it matters. One of the major questions about Obama, of whom so little is known, is whether he is really serious about challenging the partisan gridlock in Washington or whether his election would simply bring on the regular wish list of liberal policies.

Messrs. Safire and Broder were unimpressed. But how is it possible to be unimpressed with over-the-top statements like this one from Senator Obama’s acceptance speech:

for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

All politicians bloviate, but promising to end America’s dangerous 70% dependence on oil imports in a decade is in a category of its own. (That statement of Senator Obama is as ridiculous as that bit about tire pressure.) Moreover, it recalls President Kennedy’s promise to land a man on the moon on a similar timetable. The difference is that JFK actually meant what he said. Whether such things matter anymore remains to be seen.

We were told the choice of Joe Biden by Obama to be VP showed a “lack of confidence.” Now we are told that McCain’s picking Palin shows he is “desperate.” Politico:

We knew McCain is a politician who relishes improvisation, and likes to go with his gut. But it is remarkable that someone who has repeatedly emphasized experience in this campaign named an inexperienced governor he barely knew to be his No. 2. Whatever you think of the pick, here are six things it tells us about McCain:

1. He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters — and too close for comfort in several states like Indiana and Montana the GOP usually wins pretty easily in presidential races. On top of that, voters seem very inclined to elect Democrats in general this election — and very sick of the Bush years. McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide. That is the private view of Democrats and Republicans alike.

“Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests.” Why should we do so? Why have we been so shielded by the authors of the Politico piece from this “private view of Democrats and Republicans alike”, which would itself be a very interesting piece? Or have we just missed this big story?

The first statement from the Democratic presidential campaign characterized the Governor of Alaska as too inexperienced to be Vice President (a subsequent statement was a little more measured in its tone):

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Logic says that this line of attack on McCain/Palin has strict limits, since it calls attention to Senator Obama’s own lack of experience. But this isn’t all about logic.

As a fit and attractive middle-aged man with a pleasant demeanor and “rich baritone, the regal bearing, the excellent drape of his Burberry suits,” Senator Obama often gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his lack of experience. Hillary Clinton found that out the hard way, and Sarah Palin may as well. It may not be fair, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Hillary Clinton’s comeback began in early March when, according to the New Republic, she “channeled her inner Margaret Thatcher” and became “the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution.” It was arguably at this point that she began to look credibly Presidential. Whether Sarah Palin is an asset or a liability to the McCain campaign may turn on whether she can demonstrate a toughness similar to that of Senator Clinton.

There is speculation that Senator McCain may pick Alaska’s governor for his running mate. Here is an example of the coverage from an AP story as presented on Yahoo:

As the political community turned desperate for any clues about the potential running mate of Republican Presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speculation moved toward several dark horse candidates including Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the so-called “hockey mom” credited with reforms of her tiny, out-of-the-way state.

Close, but no cigar. Alaska is certainly out of the way, and has a rather small population, but it’s hardly tiny. Whether picking the unusual and accomplished Governor Palin for VP would be a wise choice is a matter of debate at this point.

Senator Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC drew rave reviews from America’s leading political commentators. It featured this line which caught our attention:

I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.

He’s got a point. The near-religious adulation accorded to a fellow with a thin résumé is most understandable in the context of the will to believe, the ardent desire of so many for a Messiah to save them. In a country that has seen numerous religious revivals and spasms of romanticism like Prohibition, underestimating the power of such yearnings is a mistake.

We haven’t to date learned much about the Black Sea, and nothing at all of the Montreux Convention or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but, sadly, that may be about to change. Stratfor has some details:

Vladimir Putin called attention to the Black Sea as a potential flash point in the confrontation between Russia and the West. He warned that there could be direct confrontations between Russian and NATO ships should NATO or its member nations increase their presence there. According to NATO there are currently four NATO ships in the Black Sea for a previously scheduled exercise called Active Endeavor. Putin explicitly warned, however, that there could be additional vessels belonging to NATO countries in the Black Sea that are not under NATO command.

It is hard to get ships into the Black Sea unnoticed. The ships have to pass through the Bosporus, a fairly narrow strait in Turkey, and it is possible to sit in cafes watching the ships sail by. Putting a task force into the Black Sea, even at night, would be noticed, and the Russians would certainly know the ships are there.

As a complicating factor, there is the Montreux Convention, a treaty that limits access to the Black Sea by warships. The deputy chief of the Russian general staff very carefully invoked the Montreux Convention, pointing out that Turkey, the controlling country, must be notified 15 days in advance of any transit of the Bosporus, that warships can’t remain in the Black Sea for more than 21 days and that only a limited number of warships were permitted there at any one time. The Russians have been reaching out in multiple diplomatic channels to the Turks to make sure that they are prepared to play their role in upholding the convention. The Turkish position on the current crisis is not clear, but becoming crucial; both the United States and Russia are working on Turkey, which is not a position Turkey cares to be in at the moment. Turkey wants this crisis to go away.

It is not going away. With the Russians holding position in Georgia, it is now clear that the West will not easily back down. The Russians certainly aren’t going to back down. The next move is NATO’s, but the alliance is incapable of moving, since there is no consensus. Therefore, the next move is for Washington to lead another coalition of the willing. It is coming down to a simple question. Does the United States have the appetite for another military confrontation (short of war, we would think) in which case it will use its remaining asset, the U.S. Navy, to sail into the Black Sea?

(The answer is no, in our opinion, unless the administration has lost its mind.) Meanwhile, the NYT reported on a Russian diplomatic “setback” related to its invasion of Georgia:

Russia suffered a significant setback here on Thursday, as members of a regional security group in which the Kremlin plays an important role offered little support for Moscow’s military action in Georgia…Although the Central Asia states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan all fall within what Moscow considers its sphere of influence, and all seem to accept Russian hegemony to a certain degree, they nevertheless strive to limit Moscow’s reach and preserve their own independence of action.

Let’s see just how long that “independence of action” lasts in this new world of Russia’s reasserting its imperial sphere of influence. As in 2001, the world seems to be changing in ways that almost no one predicted even a couple of months ago, with players and a vocabulary we have yet to learn enough about.

Russia has reasserted itself in all sorts of ways of late. Stratfor has a list:

Russia is prepared to completely break ties with the Western military alliance. According to Medvedev, even if NATO chooses to cut ties with Russia, “nothing terrible will happen” to Moscow. Second, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that World Trade Organization membership no longer interests Moscow. He added that Russia would soon be pulling out of several WTO-related agreements, thereby paving the way for Russia to formally withdraw its membership bid after more than a decade of negotiations. Third, the Russian Duma and Federal Council unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution calling for the recognition of the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia…

Azerbaijan shipped approximately 200,000 barrels of crude to Iran on Monday. This is no ordinary economic transaction; Azerbaijan is the origin of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that circumvents Russia and transports Caspian oil to the West. A recent pipeline explosion combined with Russian military action in Georgia effectively have knocked the pipeline offline, leaving Baku with no choice but to look south and sell to Iran to maintain some level of oil income. This energy deal runs completely counter to U.S. strategy to keep Iran in a financial stranglehold. Through both direct and indirect means, Russia has simultaneously thrown a monkey wrench into the West’s plans to evade Russian energy bullying tactics while undermining Washington’s pressure policies against Iran.

The in-your-face attitude of the new Russia does not appear to help the narrative of the Democratic candidate for President. At least that is what the McCain campaign apparently believes, since its new foreign policy attack ad against Senator Obama now characterizes him as “dangerously unprepared to be President.”

The Washington Post asks why the presidential contest is so tight that the race is essentially tied today:

As the Democrats kicked off a convention designed to unite support behind Obama, interviews with several dozen delegates pointed to an undercurrent of anxiety among many from key swing states who will be charged with leading the push in their communities. They expressed doubts bordering on bewilderment: Why, in a year that had been shaping up as a watershed for Democrats, amid an economic downturn and an unpopular Republican presidency, is the race so tight? The sentiment is strongest among former supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, though it is not limited to them.

GOP mega-cheerleader Hugh Hewitt thinks he has a couple of explanations, and maybe they are valid. But we’re not sure you even have to delve far into Senator Obama’s ideology to see an adequate explanation for his weakness as a candidate. His youth and inexperience suffice to explain his weakness. (Of course if Senator Obama does very well in the debates and Senator McCain does poorly, it is possible for him to win the election. That aside, a media frenzy and fad created by an ad man has a short half life.)

Think about this: most people have someone whom they know or with whom they work, a relative perhaps, who has a thicker résumé and a longer list of achievements than the Democratic presidential candidate. Consider this: if history were different and Senator Obama had decided this year to run to become governor of Illinois, would he have been given rock-star status? Could his Republican opponent have run against him as “too inexperienced” to govern the Prairie State?

The WSJ reflects on the closeness of Senator Clinton’s loss:

Though she lost the delegate battle on the February 5 Super Tuesday primary, she won big in California and New Jersey. A month later she won the crucial battleground state of Ohio by 10 and Texas by 4. She took Pennsylvania by 10. West Virginia, historic ground for Democrats, was a Hillary rout.

Her support, especially in such blue-collar redoubts as Youngstown and southern Ohio, was as enthusiastic as any we have witnessed in modern politics. Lower-middle-class women especially saw her as a pathbreaker, refuting the notion that her symbolic candidacy was limited to upscale professional women. She earned 18 million votes. Joe Biden won something like 9,000.

Perhaps Senator Obama will be the next President, or perhaps he will be in 2012. But is it not at all possible that he may come to be seen, in retrospect, as a flash in the pan — a brief moment of hype and grandiosity that, as time passed, seemed less and less significant until, years later, no one could quite remember just what the fuss was all about?

Oil prices were up a bit today on news about some storm somewhere, but the fundamentals appear to have changed, at least for now. Marketwatch:

Oil prices also saw pressure after Friday’s news that OPEC production was running well above official quotas set for the cartel’s members, according to Meir. Petrologistics said OPEC will produce 32.95 million barrels a day in August, up 450,000 barrels from a revised 32.5 million barrels a day in July, according to a Reuters report.

“We could see further weakness gnaw at the markets over the next few weeks, as weaker demand aggravates the excess supply problem,” Meir told clients. He thinks it’s unlikely that OPEC will take action to roll back any of the excess supplies.

“OPEC production was running well above official quotas set for the cartel’s members.” That’s very interesting. We expect to see more cheating in the future, but we’ll just have to see if that happens.

With the Olympics a soon to be distant memory, all of a sudden we are seeing articles questioning China’s future. WSJ:

The precedents for China aren’t encouraging. Many developing countries in Latin America and the Middle East stagnated after periods of rapid growth. Economists sometimes call this the “middle-income trap” because so many countries have failed to achieve the consistent growth that would deliver higher prosperity.

China is at the crucial boundary, no longer poor but still far from rich. It ranks 100th in the world in terms of income per person, edging out Namibia but lagging behind Colombia. President Hu Jintao frequently calls this a “crucial period” for overhauls.

In the next few years, China will cross the threshold to a majority-urban society. Since urban workers earn more than three times as much as rural ones, the annual migration of more than 10 million farmers into cities has steadily boosted the economy. But the urban-rural balance will eventually stabilize. Then people will have to find other ways to raise their incomes, such as learning new skills.

In addition, a smaller number of workers will have to support an increasing number of elderly. The United Nations projects that China’s working-age population will account for a decreasing share of the total after 2010, and will start shrinking in absolute terms after 2015 — the long-delayed effect of the strict family-planning policies that came in the 1970s. The “demographic dividend” from a young and growing work force may have been responsible for a quarter of China’s growth to date…

Though some possess a fantasy vision of China, we think there is a significant probability over the next year that the real, but glossed over, problems of China’s economy begin to become obvious.

Francis Fukuyama said this in 1992: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Now he says this, via WaPo:

Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China were particularly dangerous because they were built on powerful ideas with potentially universal appeal, which is why we found Soviet arms and advisers showing up in places such as Nicaragua and Angola. But this sort of ideological tyrant no longer bestrides the world stage. Despite recent authoritarian advances, liberal democracy remains the strongest, most broadly appealing idea out there. Most autocrats, including Putin and Chávez, still feel that they have to conform to the outward rituals of democracy even as they gut its substance. Even China’s Hu Jintao felt compelled to talk about democracy in the run-up to Beijing’s Olympic Games. And Musharraf proved enough of a democrat to let himself be driven from office by the threat of impeachment.

If today’s autocrats are willing to bow to democracy, they are eager to grovel to capitalism. It’s hard to see how we can be entering a new cold war when China and Russia have both happily accepted the capitalist half of the partnership between capitalism and democracy. (Mao and Stalin, by contrast, pursued self-defeating, autarkic economic policies.) The Chinese Communist Party’s leadership recognizes that its legitimacy depends on continued breakneck growth. In Russia, the economic motivation for embracing capitalism is much more personal: Putin and much of the Russian elite have benefited enormously from their control of natural resources and other assets.

Democracy’s only real competitor in the realm of ideas today is radical Islamism. Indeed, one of the world’s most dangerous nation-states today is Iran, run by extremist Shiite mullahs. But as Peter Bergen pointed out in these pages last week, Sunni radicalism has been remarkably ineffective in actually taking control of a nation-state, due to its propensity to devour its own potential supporters. Some disenfranchised Muslims thrill to the rantings of Osama bin Laden or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the appeal of this kind of medieval Islamism is strictly limited.

In lieu of big ideas, Russia and China are driven by nationalism, which takes quite different forms in each country. Russia, unfortunately, has settled on a version of national identity that is incompatible with the freedom of the countries on its borders; I’m afraid that Georgia will not be the last former Soviet republic to suffer from Moscow’s sense of wounded pride. But today’s Russia is still very different from the former Soviet Union. Putin has been called a modern-day czar, which is far closer to the mark than misguided comparisons to Stalin or Hitler.

Question: what happens if, as is quite possible, China’s economy enters some sort of recession or Russia’s fortunes fade as oil prices tumble in the overdue correction to the world economy? What happens if capitalism loses its allure to these two regimes? What kind of “ideological” resurgence might emerge?