The President will be going to Copenhagen for a "climate change summit"

Why?

It's not like we don't have pressing issues in the United States that need immediate attention, like double-digit unemployment and the dithering over Afghanistan. But it seems running multiple pots on the stove and finishing nothing is the "Chicago Way". Maybe the way to avoid wasting a crisis is to never resolve any of them.

And what is the President going to do in Copenhagen? He doesn't have signed "cap and trade" legislation to present to the "international community".  He has only his presence and his promises.  Are they worth the thousands of tons of carbon emissions Air Force One is going to produce crisscrossing the Atlantic?

Moreover, why is President Obama endorsing the climate change gurus right when their underpinning---the East Anglia CRU data---now has all the credibility of Mike Huckabee's Arkansas parole board?

I've thought about the proper parallel and it seems to be this is going to go down as the OJ Simpson case of scientific research.  Everyone of course "knew" OJ killed his ex-wife. But when the L.A. prosecutors delivered their case, we we presented with tapes demonstrating a key witness appeared biased against blacks, and of course, the infamous "bloody glove" demonstration.  The evidence presented was simply so compromized that Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey had a field day.

I dunno about you , but "hide the decline" seems like an awful lot like a  bloody glove to me, and if it doesn't fit, you must acquit.    For President Obama to go to Copenhagen now to endorse a treaty based on this underpinning would be like President Clinton using Mark Fuhrman as the model for international criminal justice procedures--after OJ's acquittal.

I'm a skeptic about AGW, not a denier.  I believe a) the world has gotten warmer over the past few decades (at least until 2000) and b) humans had some impact on it. But the world got a lot warmer in the past when we weren't doing much of anything, considering that 10,000 years ago my keyboard here in CT would be under a kilometer of ice.  So whether the human impact is all than substantial is unclear to me. And you don't improve your argument for spending trillions of dollars by throwing out your original research.

After all, if I can't produce an original note ---or an authentic copy with a convincing "lost note" affidavit-- in court, I can't complete a foreclosure. And if I can't prove I ever had the note I've got huge problems.  So why are we willing to extend greater leniency to those who want to reorder western civilization than those who just want to foreclose on a condo in West Hartford?

Michael Barone and Megan McArdle have noted the "garbage in, garbage out" issue of the CRU models.  Isn;t this like the Chinese whiz kid who solved all the problems of pricing derivatives? Worked great on Wall Street , didn't it.  Do we really want to promulgate another economic collapse based on faulty mathematics?

If there ever was a time for an American President to stand up, demand a "do over"and make sure he got this right, the time is now. Endorsing any product emanating from Copenhagen will just result in a humiliating Congressional defeat for the President if he has the temerity to submit it for approval. It's not like the environment is that pressing an issue for the ordinary voter of late.

I'm not usually a fan of the President, but that's one "carbon footprint" he should not step in.

Unless he is just doing this for a foreign sideshow. Unfortunately, the audience isn;t buying it anymore.

Maybe the Republicans ought to save the President from his own folly and demand this whole sorry spectacle be called off until the scientific community gets its house back into order.

I have long ago stopped worrying about the massive activity gap that surrounds the two candidates for President. Obama is getting a lot more attention that McCain, but as we saw, with Wright, Ayers, and "bitter/cling," it's not invariably good attention.

It's probably not a wise use of the McCain campaign's time to try and dominate the news cycle and the public consciousness in the same way Obama does, but rather to ensure that in an election that can easily be summed up as Obama vs. Not Obama, Not Obama wins the narrative.

Politico captures this dynamic pretty well today, with John McCain's invisibility stacked up against Barack Obama's cultural ubiquity:

"There has never been a major party candidate less relevant in an election than John McCain," said Democratic strategist James Carville. "It's all about Obama."

And:

Longtime Democratic consultant Doug Schoen said that for many voters questions about Obama’s identity, faith and patriotism are metaphors for a broader doubt and uncertainty about somebody who, until four years ago, was an unknown even in much of the political community.

“It's Obama against Obama—and Obama’s narrowly winning,’ Schoen said. “He’s only five points ahead running against a shadow when he should be up 15.”

“If he's acceptable, he's president. It’s that simple.”

This means a few things. First off, the RNC should be making the Democratic Primary their targeting map for the fall. John McCain's relative strengths and weaknesses with various segments of the electorate will matter little. They will be subsumed by attitudes towards Obama. Ironically, McCain's pattern of relative support across the country may be just as if not more conservative than George W. Bush's, despite his long-standing issues with the conservative base. Everything will be purely a reaction to Obama. McCain will get what cultural conservatives are left in the Democratic Party, and Obama will get more of the transplanted exurbanites who handed Bush victories in places like Loudoun County, Virginia.

The 2008 election will polarize around Obama in the same way that 2004 polarized around Bush. That's because Obama is a cultural icon. But so are Tom Cruise and Britney Spears. The danger to this celebrity strategy is that it's rendering Obama's trump card -- partisan contrast and "Bush's third term" -- irrelevant. Once someone is knocked off a pedastal as high as Obama's is, the fall is so hard that it doesn't matter that "the other guy is worse."