Not Sarah Palin

Did Governor Sarah Palin really not know the three signatories of NAFTA and that Africa is not a country but a continent? If so, I don't think she'd fare too well on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? much less as president of the leading nation on earth.

I've felt this way about her all along, from the moment I first heard her speak. Yes, I was impressed that she could wow a receptive audience with her idiosyncratic charm and pizazz while mouthing carefully crafted words or force-fed talking points. Yes, I really thought for a time that she would bring McCain the presidency. But I never believed that there was meaty substance behind the arresting style. I never believed that Sarah Palin had the right stuff to be Vice-President and literally a melanomic 72-year-old's heartbeat away from President of the United States of America.

Many others disagreed. Some were very smart and well-educated. They included Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Bill Kristol, and even Camille Paglia. I admit that this made me wonder whether I was blinded by my biases against Palin's staunch political and religious conservatism, hyper-folksiness, and overbearing self-righteousness. Was I just not seeing the presidential potential, the diamond-in-the-rough that others saw (or pretended to see) in Sarah Palin? Or was there nothing to see except by those desperate or otherwise compromised enough to see a mirage in the desert?

If the allegations I've been hearing about her lately on, of all places, Fox News, by, of all people, members of McCain's campaign staff are true, it appears as though my judgment was sound. Of course, some have argued that one doesn't need a stratospheric IQ, an Ivy League graduate degree, or even a rudimentary knowledge of geography, history, or international relations to be smart enough to learn what one needs to know when one needs to know it and to exercise enough good sense to effectively perform the duties of Vice-President or even President under even the most difficult circumstances. Moreover, maybe these disgruntled McCain staffers-- whom Palin has recently denounced as "immature," "cruel," "mean-spirited' "jerks"--now slamming Palin for her alleged ignorance and prima donnish behavior on the campaign trail are just using her as a scapegoat to cover up their own mistakes, failures, and incompetence.

I don't know for sure about any of this. All I know is that I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not and should not be "the future of the Republican Party" that some are hoping and saying she is. Actually, not long ago, I would have gladly let her become the GOP's future, because I hated the Republican Party and wanted to see it fail as miserably as possible. But I now believe that we need dialogue, struggle, and cooperation between the most capable politicians of both parties to make this country the best it can be and that the best person for president could someday well be a Republican. Just not Sarah Palin.

OUR Great Communicator

I thought John McCain gave a gracious concession speech last night. I thought Barack Obama gave a brilliant victory speech.

Nevertheless, I agree with the old maxim, "Actions speak louder than words." I agree with those who say that Obama's actions as president over the next four or eight years will define his presidency far more than will the sum total of his speeches and press conferences. I predict that his actions will serve him and this nation well, even though I realize that my predictions aren't worth much. After all, I predicted after the Republican convention that McCain would win the presidency. But we will ultimately have to wait and see what Obama does and how we the American people and the rest of the world respond.

Yet, I know that, whatever else happens, I will now look forward to presidential speeches and press conferences, and I will no longer feel embarrassed when our president meets with foreign leaders and represents us on the world stage. And I will no longer cringe over our president's mispronunciation of the word nuclear.

This may not seem very important. Who cares whether our president acts and sounds like a simpleminded ignoramus? Who cares whether foreign leaders and peoples laugh at him and look down on him and on us for electing him not just once but twice?

I do.

Now we at the so-called "left" and center of the political spectrum have our own "Great Communicator," and while that doesn't mean everything to me, it sure means something.

McCain concedes

Obama Declares Victory

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Ayers

I've begun listening to a Teaching Company course on Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life. The first lecture focused on the impact of great books on the character and life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a promising theologian who left academia to become a pastor who ministered to the people. But during World War II, he also joined an underground movement in Germany that sought to oppose and assassinate Adolph Hitler. He reasoned that the call to undermine and destroy the evil that was Hitler and to save Germany from destruction was higher than his duty, as a German citizen, to obey his country's unjust laws and evil leaders. He was eventually arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned for a year and a half before he was hanged naked by piano wire in particularly brutal fashion. While imprisoned, he was able to read the Bible, Plato, and Plutarch and write his Letters and Papers From Prison.

When I heard the part of the lecture addressing Bonhoeffer's opposition to Hitler, I thought of a discussion I heard on talk radio a few days previously about William Ayers. In the late 60's and early 70's, Ayers took part in protests of the Vietnam War that included bombings of the U.S, Capitol building, the N.Y City Police headquarters, and the Pentagon. Nobody was killed in those explosions, but some of his fellow protesters were killed by accidental explosions of the bombs they were working on. Ayers went on to become a respected education reformer in Chicago who served on a board with Barack Obama to distribute education grants, hosted a meeting for Obama's first run for office, and contributed a small sum to Obama's re-election to the Illinois State Senate. John McCain supporters have seized upon this modest association between the two men to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists." The implication is that Obama either likes terrorists or that he, at least, lacks the good judgment to shun them.

Defenders of Obama typically argue that his dealings with Ayers have been too insignificant to reflect badly on him. In other words, as bad as Ayers might be, Obama didn't have enough of an association with him to be tarred by it. But the talk show host the other night asked a provocative question. If Ayers did what he did because he believed that he had a higher calling to oppose our government's unjust and horrifically destructive war in Vietnam, is he someone who should be condemned and shunned as a terrorist, or should he be embraced as a true patriot? After all, in the Declaration of our nation's independence, Thomas Jefferson argued that the people have a right to oppose, by whatever means necessary, bad government. Isn't that what Ayers did decades ago?

Now it might be argued that Ayers used unnecessary as well as ineffectual means to oppose the Vietnam War. But if his motives were good, should we condemn him and Obama's relationship, such as it was, with him? I'm inclined to think that we shouldn't.

Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin

In the past two weeks [Palin] has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing.

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

--Peggy Noonan

Debate Revelations

I listened Wednesday night to the final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. I won't presume to say who won. I wasn't on the debate team in school, and I've never studied how debates are supposed to be judged. What objective standards are we supposed to use to score debates?

However, my subjective impression of the third debate, as it has been of the two previous ones, is that Obama came across as much more presidential in his nuanced understanding of the world, his unflappably calm and self-assured temperament, his pragmatism, his earnestness, and his charismatic vitality. By contrast, McCain came across as doddering, desperate, dismissive, sarcastic, nervous, awkward, overly ideological, and vapid.

I suspect that a growing majority of the American public perceive the two candidates largely the same way and that this, more than philosophical or policy differences, is what's giving Obama his daunting lead in the polls. It's not so much that we think Obama has the better preconceived plans for improving the economy and confronting the innumerable other challenges that face our nation as it is that we believe Obama has the superior intellectual and emotional resources to handle the rigors of the job and solve formidable problems as they arise.

I suspect that this is to what "we the people" are always paying the most attention. Yes, we listen to the candidates discuss and debate their political and economic philosophies and policies, but what we really want to know is who can step into the Oval Office and on to the world stage and best accomplish what a president of the world's most powerful nation needs to for the sake of the nation and the world. And political ideologies and policy proposals are far less predictive of this than are the elusive constellation of qualities that Barack Obama appears to have in abundance and John McCain does not.

Tim Dickinson Summarizes "Make-Believe Maverick"

I recently posted an entry about The Real John McCain in which I questioned his selfless service to this country and his suitability to be president. I quoted at some length from a Rolling Stone article titled Make-Believe Maverick authored by Tim Dickinson. I suggested that anyone who endorses McCain for president should read this article and research its allegations before they cast their vote for McCain in November.

I had planned to distill those allegations into a future post. I may still do it. But, in the meantime, I'd like to share with you a video synopsis by the article's author himself of some of its key points. I want to thank my dear friend Tom Armstrong for sending me the link to it.

Tim Dickinsom on John McCain

Hitchens on McCain

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.
--Christopher Hitchens

Quote of the Day

I think Obama's relatively weak but nonetheless real interactions with William Ayers are a legitimate campaign issue. But Obama's best response, after telling the facts of the relationship, is to point out who else supported him. Republican machers Walter and Leonora Annenberg gave the former terrorist $50 million. They also gave money to Rick Santorum, Strom Thurmond and Mitt Romney. Annenberg was Nixon's ambassador to Britain. If Obama is "palling around with terrorists," the Republican Annenbergs are funding them.

Yesterday, the McCain campain put out a press release boasting that Leonore Annenberg had just endorsed him for president. Why is McCain happy to accept the endorsement of a funder of terrorism?
--Andrew Sullivan

The Real John McCain?

I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political forms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. I was sixty two years old when I made the decision, and I thought it was my one shot at the prize.
--John McCain from Worth the Fighting For

Dennis Miller thinks John McCain is a "great man," and he's voting for him in the upcoming election. Not because of what McCain's done in the House or Senate, but because he's a "war hero" and a principled man who has selflessly loved and served his country his entire adult life.

No doubt Miller speaks for many McCain supporters. But I wonder how many of them have read Tim Dickinson's Rolling Stone article Make-Believe Maverick. If what that article says about McCain is true, is McCain even close to being the selfless hero and man of principle he and his campaign make him out to be? Or has he been a spoiled, undisciplined, impulsive, tantrum-throwing, narcissistic, self-serving, and venal individual from childhood on?

McCain said during his nomination speech that his POW experience radically transformed him into a man who has put country and principle above himself ever since. But Dickinson's article recounts the following, which, if true, casts McCain's alleged "transformation" in a very different light.

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

According to Dramesi, McCain was no more heroic or exceptional as a POW than anyone else. McCain told the North Vietnamese soon after his capture that his father was an Navy admiral so that they would tend to his wounds. He then disclosed to them a variety of other information about his and Navy operations in general, and he turned down a typical offer for early release because, had he accepted it, he would have had to make disloyal statements about America that could have subjected him to condemnation and even court martial when he returned home. As another fellow POW said, "Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to 'admit' that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was 'lenient and humane.' So I, like numerous others, refused the offer."

The article proceeds to cite many other incidents and details about McCain before and after his POW experience that make him sound to me like one of the last politicians I would want as president. I don't know if all of these things are true, and I suspect that, even if they are, there are also positive things to say about John McCain that Dickinson's article doesn't. But I believe that anyone who supports McCain and, like Dennis Miller, considers him to be a great hero owes it to himself and this nation to read the article and then do some fact-checking before casting his vote for McCain in November.

And if anyone can show me where anything in Make-Believe Maverick is false, I encourage them to do it. So far, I've seen many scathing denunciations of Dickinson's 'contemptible hit-piece,' but I've seen no refutation of what he cites as facts.

Quote of the Day

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

--George Will

McCain's Outrageous Accusation

I don't know if he's said it before, but I heard John McCain say yesterday words to the effect that Barack Obama doesn't care about this country; he only cares about being elected president. Whether you're a McCain supporter or not, do you believe that he should be making such assertions? Or do you agree with me that this egregiously steps over the line of legitimate political discourse?

I've never heard Obama make such claims about McCain. Have you? And if he ever were to do it, I can imagine that there would be a firestorm of protest.

McCain supporters might argue that Obama doesn't do it only because he knows that people wouldn't buy it and that this, in turn, would hurt him. But I'd like to propose another explanation. I propose that Obama doesn't do it because he's principled enough to criticize visible performance and ideas and not to cast ugly and unproven aspersions on unseen motives.

As much as I don't want McCain to be our next president, I had a modicum of respect for him. But much of that is now gone. I suspect that if he were to know this, he wouldn't give a damn about me or my lack of respect for him. But if enough Americans lost respect for him over things like this and let him know it, he just might care enough to clean up his act, even if he did it only for the sake of expedience and not because it reflected a change in the quality of his underlying integrity or lack thereof.

I think a prominent reporter should put him on the spot and ask him about this statement.

Alas, A Star Is Born

I don't care much for Sarah Palin, and I care even less for her politics. But I have to hand it to her. She gave a helluva speech last night. Sure, one could question or disagree with much of what she said. Sure, she almost certainly wrote few if any of the words she spoke. Sure, she probably received all kinds of prepping from speechmeisters. Nevertheless, she stepped up on that podium under pressure most of us can't even begin to comprehend and that would have reduced me to a quivering mass of human jello and she delivered a masterful, star-making performance. And although Joe Biden has probably forgotten more about foreign and domestic policy than Sarah Palin will ever know, I have no doubt that she has the talent to be expertly coached into appearing to the superficial public eye as though she knows this stuff even better than Biden does when she debates him in October, and she'll earn kudos for being as aggressive as possible while Biden will be chastised for picking on a woman if he doesn't exercise straightjacketed restraint.

I already believed that McCain would win the election. Now I feel certain of it. There are just too many people in this country who love the political pablum Palin served them on a glittering platter last night, and now they'll believe that she has the testicular fortitude to help John McCain transform America into a Reaganite's wet dream or to do it by herself should she need to take over as president.

Having It Both Ways

For two days, the chorus from Republicans on TV news and in the halls of the convention has been resounding: Back off and let the Palin family be. "That's out of bounds," said Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty. "There's no need to be intrusive and pry into that."

Yet Wednesday found the following scenes unfolding:

_Sarah Palin's pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old daughter and probable future son-in-law stood in a nationally televised, politically packaged airport receiving line to meet and greet the Republican candidate for president.

_The extremely cute and bubbly Piper Palin, 7, made her debut on her mother's behalf, appearing in a video on John McCain's daughter's blog. "Vote for my mommy and John McCain," she said, giggling as Meghan McCain grinned.

_Bristol Palin and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Levi Johnston, sat and held hands as they watched the Alaska governor deliver an acceptance speech that, in its opening minutes, focused heavily on her family and children. Later, the family — including Johnston — ascended the stage, basked in an extended ovation and waved.

Huh? The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit.

If you doubt this scenario, consider this: On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States — because he got his girlfriend pregnant. TV cameras were lined up in advance. The mind boggles.

"Either the children are out of bounds, and you don't put them in the photo ops, or you don't complain when somebody wants to talk about them. You can't have it both ways," said John Matviko, a professor at West Liberty State College in West Virginia and editor of "The American President in Popular Culture."

"Right now, it looks like they're being used by the campaign more than the media are using them," he said.
--Ted Anthony, AP National Writer

Sarah's Choice

Sarah Palin, McCain's VP pick, is being lauded by many pro-birth conservatives for having decided not to have an abortion even though she knew early in her pregnancy that she was carrying a fetus with Down syndrome. And if she had her way, no woman would have the legal right to make the choice she had the right to make. All would be required to have the child.

I'm inclined to say that Palin shouldn't be admired and praised for her choice, but criticized if not condemned for it, and condemned all the more for wanting to take the choice away from everyone else. Life is difficult enough, especially in the social Darwinist world the Republicans glorify, for even those of average or superior intelligence. Why knowingly bring a mentally handicapped child into this, as conservative "stand-up comedian, political/sports commentator, and television/radio personality" Dennis Miller puts it, "Serengeti Plain" of a world if one can prevent it early on?

To "spare the life" of a precious child? "Spare" it from what? From a life of tremendous struggle against all-but-impossible odds in an ever-more complicated and rapidly changing world? From the "wide gate" to hell in which fundamentalist Christians like Palin and John McCain believe?

And you want to know something really ironic about all of this? Sarah Palin and her husband are not fabulously wealthy individuals. I suspect that they're a lot better off financially than most of us, but not rich enough to be able to pay out of their own pockets for all of the special services their Down syndrome child will require over the course of his life. So, who do you think will pick up the tab? The federal government, of course. That means all of us. The same federal government that politicians like McCain and Palin are so hellbent on shrinking, and the same American people that these politicians say they want to tax less.

Are the American people so stupid or blind that they can't understand or see this? Yes, I think they are. And so all-too-many of them will vote for John McCain partly because he chose Sarah Palin who made a legal choice to bring a mentally handicapped child into this cruel world to suffer the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and face the high probability of burning in screaming agony forever and ever in the world to come.

Unfair Advantage?

Does the Democratic convention always come before the Republican convention? If it does, why is this? I believe that whichever party stages its convention last has a huge advantage. Its convention can steal the thunder of the other party's convention and replace it with its own.

And, in this year's case, John McCain was able to choose a female running mate after he saw Obama's choice on the other side. If the Republican convention had come first and McCain would have had to choose his running mate first, Obama could have made his VP choice accordingly.

I still believe that, as much as I've come to dislike Hillary, Obama should have chosen her. I now feel convinced that McCain will win and that we'll have at least "four more years" of disastrous Republican foreign and domestic policy.

I believe that the parties should alternate in who goes first with their convention. In 2012, the Republicans should go first.

McCain's Warmongering and Fearmongering?

Andrew Sullivan believes that if John McCain is elected president, he will not make America more secure against terrorism and war. Contrary to what current polls indicate about American public opinion, Sullivan believes that McCain would endanger us with a foreign policy that exacerbates the serious problems we already face. Here is Sullivan's critique:

My main worry with John McCain is foreign policy. What do I worry about? That everything that has been awry with this administration would be made worse by his. Seeing the world as a series of enemies to be attacked rather than as a series of relationships to be managed and a series of foes to be undermined has proven of limited use. Even the successful removal of the Taliban has led, six years later, to a long and grueling counter-insurgency with no end in sight and a reconstituted al Qaeda in a nuclear-armed, unstable state. The invasion of Iraq - in the abstract, a noble cause against an evil enemy - has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions, the price of $3 trillion ... all for a less despotic Shiite government in league with Iran, making contracts with China. And that's if it turns out as a success. Along the way, the US has lost a vast amount of its moral standing and its legitimacy as a global power-broker. Insofar as neoconservatives do not understand this, and cannot understand this, they are a clear and present danger to the security of the West. Their unwillingness to understand how the US might be perceived in the world, how a hegemon needs to exhibit more humility and dexterity to maintain its power, makes them - and McCain - extremely dangerous stewards of American foreign policy in an era of global terror. They are diplomatically and strategically autistic.

McCain's response to the calamities of the past eight years has been to compound them all.

It has been to propose a "surge" in Afghanistan, to aggressively embrace open-ended commitment to Iraq (if the Iraqis can be pressured hard enough), and to launch one new hot war against Iran and another cold one - and hot, by proxies - against Russia. And the way in which the question is debated - around asinine concepts of "toughness" or "sissiness" - leads to facile decisions. It also leads to ads like this one: fear-mongering as an argument. It should be noted that Obama's statement that Iran is "not a serious threat" is so out of context as to be a lie. He said it was "not a serious threat compared to the Soviet Union." That is a critical, historical point - a way of actually looking at foreign policy outside a box crafted by morons.

Aside from the reference to "morons," I believe that Sullivan makes some incisive points. I believe that he's also spot on in his criticism of a fearmongering John McCain ad that distorts Obama's position on communicating with hostile leaders. In contrast with McCain's misrepresentation, here is what Obama actually said on the matter:

Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean, think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union [italics are mine]. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us [italics mine]. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.' And ultimately, that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Sullivan asks, "What does McCain disagree with in that?" I ask, What do YOU disagree with in that?

Second Thoughts

Last Friday I posted an entry I wish I hadn't. I implied that John McCain is a "gigolo" and that this is one reason why we shouldn't vote for him.

I wish I hadn't posted this because I believe that what we should be talking about is who would make the better president, and I don't believe that McCain's marriage or wealth is sufficiently relevant to this issue to be part of the discussion. God knows that Democrats and Republicans alike will make all kinds of questionable allegations and insinuations in the weeks to come about McCain's ill-gotten wealth, Obama's "effeminate" "elitism," and so on and so forth. But I don't want my blog to be part of this. If I say anything more about McCain or Obama, I want to say things that I think are truly germane to consideration of who would make the best president of the United States in these very challenging times.

I thought about deleting Friday's entry, but I decided to keep it as a vivid example of what I want to stay away from from now on.

John McCain: American Gigolo?

What's most notable about John McCain's confusion over the number of homes he owns isn't merely that it demonstrates that, after running his campaign based on depicting Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist and himself as the all-American Everyman, McCain lives a life that is about as far removed from the Average American as one can get, and has done so for decades. What's notable is how McCain was able to live that way. McCain himself isn't actually rich. He just lives off the inherited wealth of his much younger former mistress and now-second-wife -- for whom he dumped his older and disfigured first wife -- and who then used her family's money to fund McCain's political career and keep him living in extreme luxury (after insisting that he sign a prenuptial agreement, which would make McCain the first U.S. President to have one).
--Glenn Greenwald

A Question for Senator McCain

John McCain says that if he's elected president, he "knows" how to get Osama bin Laden and that he'll follow him to the "gates of hell" to do it. That sounds like an ironclad promise to me. So, I wish someone would ask McCain in a very high-profile television moment whether he'll promise that if he's elected president and bin Laden isn't captured or killed by the end of McCain's first term, he will not seek reelection to a second term.

It's very easy to talk tough and sound resolved to do something. But is McCain willing to put his proverbial money where his mouth is and show us that he's not just another political gasbag who'll promise us the moon in order to get elected because he knows that he won't have to deliver the goods? If he really does know how to get bin Laden and he's absolutely determined to get him, it seems to me that it shouldn't take him longer than four years.

So, since I'm pretty darn sure that no one will ask him the question, I guess it falls on me to do it. So here goes.

Senator McCain, do you promise here and now that if you're elected president and Osama bin Laden isn't captured or killed by the end of your first term, you will not run for reelection to a second term?

Too Certain of Himself?

Some are criticizing Obama for his reflective responses to Rick Warren's questions Saturday and praising McCain for his dogmatic answers to the same questions. But here is Andrew Sullivan's take on the issue, and I agree with him:

The assumption of Obama's critics is that a president should always reduce complex issues to simple black and white truisms, unfounded in reality. That's why they supported Bush. And that's why they're supporting McCain.