Pennsylvania Goes to Obama;
McCain Certain to Lose

Tom Ridge would have carried this state for McCain and he can’t win without it.

ProConPundit Nothing If Not Loyal

In my first presidential election in 1980, in the primary I took a Democratic ballot and voted for Ted Kennedy over Jimmy Carter. In my own youthful view, I thought Ted Kennedy was more conservative, more competent than Jimmy Carter. In the general election of 1980, I was one of 6.6% of the American people who voted for Illinois Congressman John Anderson over Reagan and Carter.

I have voted for losers (Bush I, Dole, Kerry) and winners (Bush I, Bush II) but, until today, I have never been hesitant in a voting booth as to who to vote for.
Part of me wanted to be on the right side of history–for once. I voted against Reagan and clearly history is on the side of his presidency, for its great achievements and in spite of its flaws. I have tended to think I was on the wrong side of history by twice voting against Bill Clinton even thoughI joined 57% of Americans in voting against him in 1992 and 50.8% of American in rejecting him in 1996.

I passed on the presidential pick and completed the rest of the ballot. Then I went back. I love Joe Biden and I do think Obama will win and yet, not only could I not vote for them, I could not even flirt with the idea. I had to vote for John McCain. He’s run a terrible campaign but I do admire him and, in the end, I’ll stick with him knowing history was moving in another direction.

McCain and ProConPundit In Touch With Reality

John McCain knows he has lost this race. He knew it at the Al Smith Dinner in Manhattan on October 16 when he said, "In the event that I am actually to pull out a victory."

There is a sense in which no Republican could have won. One of the reasons John McCain was nominated was because, among let’s face it–a lackluster field of candidates, McCain was believed to be more popular among moderates and independents.

He has run a dismal campaign. He ran a campaign from and for the far right. In his apparent psychological need to prove to the right that he was one of them, he has won the battle–and presumably lost the war.

He ran on experience and showed none. He had nothing to say about our economic crisis other than our economic fundamentals were fine. He pushed a lot of photo ops by hanging out in DC during the crisis but accomplished nothing.

On the largest amount of "socialism," "redistribution," that has ever happened in our nation’s history, we took $ 750 million dollars of working people’s money to bail out Wall Street. This bill was laden with pork and goodies and Mr. "No Pork Barrel Spending" McCain voted for it.

I’ll have more to say later about Sarah Palin and the train wreck that has been her rise to prominence. She solidified a right wing base that would have voted for McCain over Obama under any conditions. Other choices like Tom Ridge would have won Pennsylvania for McCain while Susan Collins, liberal Republican Senator from Maine, would have actually attracted Hillary Clinton supporters and brought a triple digit IQ to the GOP ticket.

WHAT A COUNTRY!

Election coverage from Undisclosed bunker of ProConPundit, Chicago, IL

As we begin this election night and the end to a long, long, and frankly, fantastic campaign, I have to say that it has not been as much fun without Tim Russert. He often quoted his dad who would often say, "WHAT A COUNTRY!" I think that’s a great mantra come what may this night. It’s been an amazing, fun, maddening, long-suffering campaign season. It’s not Ford vs. Carter or Bush vs. Gore–this is not a choice between dull and duller. It’s not Bush vs. Dukakis or Reagan vs. Mondale or Clinton vs. Dole–where we know what is going to happen and its all perfunctory. The night will likely be a sizable victory for Obama but we don’t know for sure and, in any case, we are, as Americans, moving in a new and better direction. All I can say is; "WHAT A COUNTRY!"

There He Goes Again: Biden Puts Foot In Mouth
McCain Suspends Campaign

to Visit Obama’s Dying Grandmother

It was only a matter of time. Please allow me to paraphrase Biden by speaking of him as he speaks of John McCain. I LOVE THE GUY BUT BLESS HIS HEART HE JUST DOESN’T GET IT. Joe Biden has delivered a great gift to the McCain campaign by scaring the hell out of America by warming that we will, set certain, have an international crisis visited upon us within the first six months of an Obama campaign. I have pasted below an ABC News article about his remarks. It’s truly UNBELIEVABLE that he would say such a thing. Part of it was self-promoting to re-assure us that he would be at Obama’s side. But he makes clear that because of Obama’s youth and inexperience he will be tested by foreign leaders. We’ll see how that sits with voters–if it’s actually given serious attention. So much of the media is in the tank for Obama that it may slide by.

Meanwhile, early erroneous reports were that Barack Obama is suspending his campaign to be at the bedside of his dying grandmother. Wrong. While it is true that his grandmother is dying, it is John McCain who will suspend his campaign to be with her. Kind of the way Sarah Palin connects with real people, who is better to relate to a dying person that the leader of a campaign on life support.


Biden to Supporters: "Gird Your Loins",

For the Next President

"It's Like Cleaning Augean Stables"

October 20, 2008 7:35 AM

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions."Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."Not only will the next administration have to deal with foreign affairs issues, Biden warned, but also with the current economic crisis.

"Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

The Delaware lawmaker managed to rake in an estimated $1 million total from his two money hauls at the downtown Sheraton, the same hotel where four years ago Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., clinched the Democratic nomination. Despite warning about the difficulties the next administration will face, Biden said the Democratic ticket is equipped to meet the challenges head on."I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it," the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. "This guy has it. But he's gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?' We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us."

"There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, 'Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision'," Biden continued. "Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound."Biden emphasized that the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border is of particular concern, with Osama bin Laden "alive and well" and Pakistan "bristling with nuclear weapons.""You literally can see what these kids are up against, our kids in that region," Biden said in recalling when his helicopter was forced down due to a snowstorm there. "The place is crawling with al Qaeda. And it's real." "We do not have the military capacity, nor have we ever, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, to dictate outcomes," he cautioned. "It's so much more important than that. It's so much more complicated than that. And Barack gets it."After speaking for just over a quarter of an hour, Biden noticed the media presence in the back of the small ballroom. "I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here," he joked."All kidding aside, these guys have left us in a God-awful place," he then said of the Bush regime, promptly wrapping up his remarks. "We have the ability to straighten it out. It's gonna take a little bit of time, so I ask you to stay with us. Stay with us."

October Non-Surprise: Powell Endorses Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh_c5bbvmqc/

Yesterday, the man who Tucker Carlson said, "sold us the war" endorsed the man who opposed the war. Joe Scarborough called him "the most important military figure of this age." I prefer to think of him as the only general since Eisenhower to win a war–a Bush war in Iraq.

The youtube.com clip above is Powell’s remarks outside of Meet The Press. There and on MTP he spoke eloquently, at length, without notes as to why he supports Obama and how he has grown disturbed by McCain, his friend of 25 years.

I agree with Jack Kemp who said winning is just as important as being worthy of winning. He, of course, was more of a loser than a winner on the national stage but he knew something about not forgetting who you are. John McCain has lost that or, at least, forgotten it. The ProConPundit has spent much time and energy pushing and promoting McCain and, I might add, sticking by him when few did. I’ve earned the right to honestly be disgusted with him and nearly every damn move he’s made since he was nominated.

Many of you have e-mailed me because you think I’ve been conspicuously silent in recent times. I’ll have more to say–I always do about McCain. For now, I will deal with Colin Powell.

Rush Limbaugh and others have castigated Powell today. There is only one criticism I will make with respect to Colin Powell. Had he endorsed McCain, the same liberal crowd who is hailing him today for his objectivity would have bashed the hell out of him. They would have reminded us, as they have for years, that he failed the nation when he pushed the war for the Bush Administration while personally opposing it. It's true that there is a thin line between him being a hero and a rat to the left: endorsing Obama makes him a hero. Powell never failed the nation. He served the President well and gave his advice. As a military man, you follow orders.

Many on the right will criticize him for it. I found his words compelling. Limbaugh thinks his endorsement was entirely racial in nature. I don’t think it was entirely racial but if Obama was a white, impressive, first term senator from Illinois, I can’t really picture him endorsing him. But so what? That doesn’t take away from the criticism he has of McCain’s lack of vision, lack of laying down solid and believable plans, and running a pathetic and perversely negative campaign. I think Powell’s endorsement was as much generational as racial.

So the left accepts Powell conditionally and many on the right are disgusted with him. He is a self-described moderate Republican. If he had a tad more stature, he’d be a PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE! :-) Powell’s endorsement of Obama signals to moderates and independents and to those who are skeptical of Obama’s inexperience, that he is okay and that McCain is not. Won’t mean much to those on the right but among the people who will decide the election, it may.

Republicans will lose and will lose big. Barack Obama will name the next two supreme court judges. Roe v. Wade is here to stay folks–FOREVER. All this because John McCain decided to play to the base of his party and to the base instincts of our fears. (Those are 2 different things, by the way.)

I can’t believe I am recommending an article from the LEFT LEFT Huffington Post. It’s called, The Powell Endorsement and the End of the Republican Foreign Policy Establishment. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ilan-goldenberg/the-powell-endorsement-an_b_136313.html

I like it. Powell represents the type of Republican I am. I liked Ford over Carter, Bush over Dukakis. The Republican Party is increasingly becoming what Pope Benedict said the Catholic church should be: smaller and purer. The Pope has every right to declare that his church should be smaller rather than accept things it can’t accept. Political parties, as James Carville says, exist for one and one reason only: to win elections. Republicans will become Libertarians or Green Party folks who have great principles but can’t possibly win–unless they become in reality, beyond rhetoric, a big tent party.

Nothing Funny
W The Film

http://www.wthefilm.com/index2.html

Fighting depression and despondency over John McCain’s sure and certain loss, the ProConPundit was on vacation last week in Savannah, Georgia. I got back on Friday evening and was very much aware that it was opening night of the movie, W. I normally eschew Olive Stone movies because they tend to not bother letting the truth get in the way of a riveting story. I decided that I wanted to see W anyway because, unlike other Oliver Stone movies, the previews I saw seemed laugh out loud funny. Because it was a political movie and I think everyone is into politics like I am, I just presumed I would never be able to get into see the movie on opening night. I went to my Kenosha home and bought a ticket online for the 12 Noon showing Saturday of W at the Kenosha Tinseltown Theater. I was so proud of myself. I imagined walking ahead of the throngs of people to see the movie. Turns out I was wrong on two counts. First, I was one of 6 people who watched the movie and second, there was not one damn thing that was funny about the movie.

The casting was superb. Josh Brolin played W and he was great. One of my favorite actresses, Ellen Burstyn played Barbara Bush and was fantastic. James Cromwell played President Bush–and from now on, whenever I say President Bush, I will be referring to the real President Bush who served as our 41st President from 1988 to 1992. Cromwell was a compelling Bush. Elizabeth Banks played an adorable and bright Laura Bush. Richard Dreyfuss portrayed an evil Dick Cheney. Karl Rove was depicted as nearly perverted by Toby Jones. Thandie Newton played an idiotic Condoleezza Rice. Jeffrey Wright played Colin Powell and Scott Glenn played a stunning Donald Rumsfeld.

So much of what is told in the movie are things that are only known by people who would have never divulged them. So I didn’t think it was terribly credible. It was basically the story of the rivalry between Bush father and son, W’s dream of being a president more like Reagan than like his father, and the struggle between allies of President Bush I and the neo-cons who have influenced, formed and informed the presidency of W.

One weird moment in the movie was a lunch meeting shortly after W realized that there were no WMD. He was furious and his closest advisors were trying to explain, regroup, and appease him. Rummy was pre-occupied to the point of obsession with the pecan pie that was served.

It was a good movie to see. Don’t think it’s gospel truth but enjoyable nonetheless. One thing it wasn’t: funny.

Something Funny

Forget Saturday Night Live. If you are looking for something funny this political season, Obama and McCain and the Al Smith Dinner last week beats all. For all of John McCain's insistence that Sarah Palin realtes to real Americans if not the Washington cocktail crowd, he certainly felt right at home with them--on location in Manhattan.

It was yet another example of John McCain using the Bob Dole playbook. He is the funniest guy alive when doing stand up among elite politicians and media types yet unable to relate to regular people.

There are two links below. The first is McCain and the other two are Obama. They are pricless...especially McCain's remarks to Hillary Clinton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irXS4Q7mUKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBQf4FJi-o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKaAQ-6BiU

Who Should You Vote For?
Take the ABC Match-O-Matic Quiz.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/MatchoMatic/fullpage?id=5542139

Chicago Sun-Times Endorses Obama

Unlike, the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune, this endorsement is not unusual.

Americans are ready to be one country. By the millions, they yearn to bridge their differences, to find common cause, to rise above ideology, race, class and religion.

They have grown weary of the culture wars and the personal attacks, tired of the exaggerated lines that divide. They dare to imagine a more constructive discourse, a debate marked by civility and respect even in disagreement, a politics that begins with listening to each other.

Nothing else so fully explains the meteoric rise of Sen. Barack Obama. If America had preferred a master of policy for its next president, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have won the Democratic nomination. If America valued experience in public life above all else, Sen. John McCain would be trouncing Sen. Obama in the polls.

But it is Sen. Obama who won his party’s nomination, and it is he who leads in the polls. Americans across the land want to pull together, and in Sen. Obama they see a man of exceptional gifts who just might show them how.

Our endorsement for president of the United States goes to Sen. Barack Obama, Chicago’s adopted son. He has the unique background, superior intellect, sound judgment and first-rate temperament to lead our nation in difficult times.

Through the eyes of others

Sen. Obama’s strengths begin with the unusual circumstances of his childhood, a biracial and cross-cultural upbringing that imbued in him a remarkable ability to see the world through the eyes of others. A now familiar story is told of how the young Barack, as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, would go around the table listening to all views on an issue. Then he would gesture toward the quietest person in the room and ask, “Bob, what do you think?” He called the shots, but was confident enough to hear out those with whom he might disagree.

Sen. Obama’s remarkable talent for hearing all the disparate voices of America was perhaps nowhere more evident than on March 18 at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, when he delivered an instantly historic speech on race relations. As millions of Americans watched and nodded, he boldly challenged whites and blacks to see the truth in the other’s perspective.

Guided by these same cross-cultural instincts, Sen. Obama climbed the ladder of Chicago Democratic politics — from community organizer to state senator to U.S. senator — while dodging the tag of “machine-made.” We watched in admiration, here in Chicago, as he developed alliances with the old Harold Washington coalition, but also with party stalwarts such as State Sen. Emil Jones. He mostly steered clear of unwise political entanglements, and when he did use poor judgment, he learned from his mistake. The senator no doubt learned to appreciate the enormous importance of transparency in politics when he was dogged by questions about his relationship with Tony Rezko, the political fixer. When he finally sat down with the Sun-Times and answered every question, the Rezko story lost its steam.

Right on the issues

We agree with Sen. Obama on many of the most pressing issues of the day.

He is right when he says America must be open to talking to its adversaries. He is right when he says America must lose the swagger abroad and repair its standing in the world. He is right when he says America must stand with Israel.

Sen. Obama is right in his prescriptions for the economy, though they need expansion and vetting. He is right in his compassionate but fiscally prudent plan — unlike Sen. McCain’s plan — to help millions of homeowners avoid foreclosure.

And Sen. Obama is right on energy policy. We support his proposals to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil by a host of means — domestic drilling and nuclear energy, to be sure, but also an unprecedented national commitment to developing wind power, solar power and other forms of “clean” energy.

Tested in a marathon

It is a peculiar virtue of a marathon presidential campaign that the ordeal itself becomes a powerful test of who has the right stuff — and Sen. Obama has won that test hands down.

From the moment he announced his candidacy, on a cold Saturday in Springfield in February 2007, he has demonstrated extraordinary leadership skills, grace under fire, laudable restraint and a sincere respect for the intelligence of the voter. He has surrounded himself with excellence — imagine such competence moving into the West Wing — and built what is perhaps the most effective ground organization in the history of presidential campaigns.

Sen. Obama writes his own best speeches. He refuses to play the “gotcha” game. He runs his own campaign — it does not run him.

He has kept his cool while his opponent runs hot and cold. He shook off the advice from his senior advisers to “go negative” when the polls were more grim, the way President Kennedy coolly rejected the overly bellicose advice of his generals in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of Sen. John McCain.

Sen. McCain is an American hero. His courage as a prison of war and his 26 years on Capitol Hill command our respect. Anybody who happened to notice him struggle to shake hands with moderator Bob Schieffer at the end of the third debate had to be moved.

But somewhere along the line, McCain stopped being McCain. The maverick who always thought for himself turned his thinking over to others. He cared too much about winning.

He reversed his position on major social issues to curry favor with the Republican base. He pulled silly surprises from a hat, such as “suspending” his campaign. Most egregiously for a man of advanced age who knew how important this decision could be, he chose the unqualified Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice president.

Right for the times

Often in America’s most difficult days, the nation has been blessed with extraordinary leaders who seemed just right for the times. We have in mind George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The times again demand an extraordinary leader. Our next president will take the oath of office in a country that is at war, heavily in debt, deeply divided and sliding into a recession. He will have to make hard choices — the money won’t be there for all his ambitious plans — and he will have to work with a Congress so lopsidedly Democratic that it may be veto-proof.

Here in Chicago, we have been watching Barack Obama and sizing him up for some time. We knew him well before he introduced himself to the nation with his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

We saw the strength of character, the steady temperament, the intellect, the compassion, the ability to see through others’ eyes.

The very title of Sen. Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, foretold what America will need in the circumstances under which the next president takes office.

Success will require audacity, in all the best meanings of the word: nerve, spunk, grit and, especially, boldness.

And success will require a president and a people ready to embrace hope, in all the best meanings of that word: A conviction that what we want and need can be had.

Barack Obama believes in the audacity of hope. He inspires it in others. He inspires it in us.

Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States of America.

The Son of William F. Buckley, Jr. Endorses Obama

Christopher Buckley isn't Ronald Reagan, Jr. He isn't spending his life working out his daddy issues by being against everything his father was for. He also isn't like Michael Reagan: a nit wit who rides his late father's coat tails. Christopher Buckley is accomplished in his own right and a bona fide conservative...who has endorsed the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate for President.


Forgive Me Pup: I'm Voting For Obama

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Chicago Tribune Endorses Obama

Founded in 1847:

Tribune Has NEVER BEFORE endorsed a Democrat.

However this election turns out, it will dramatically advance America's slow progress toward equality and inclusion. It took Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary courage in the Civil War to get us here. It took an epic battle to secure women the right to vote. It took the perseverance of the civil rights movement. Now we have an election in which we will choose the first African-American president . . . or the first female vice president.

In recent weeks it has been easy to lose sight of this history in the making. Americans are focused on the greatest threat to the world economic system in 80 years. They feel a personal vulnerability the likes of which they haven't experienced since Sept. 11, 2001. It's a different kind of vulnerability. Unlike Sept. 11, the economic threat hasn't forged a common bond in this nation. It has fed anger, fear and mistrust.

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States.

On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.

Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.

This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause--the Republican Party. The Tribune's first great leader, Joseph Medill, was a founder of the GOP. The editorial page has been a proponent of conservative principles. It believes that government has to serve people honestly and efficiently.

With that in mind, in 1872 we endorsed Horace Greeley, who ran as an independent against the corrupt administration of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. (Greeley was later endorsed by the Democrats.) In 1912 we endorsed Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate against Republican President William Howard Taft.

The Tribune's decisions then were driven by outrage at inept and corrupt business and political leaders.

We see parallels today.

The Republican Party, the party of limited government, has lost its way. The government ran a $237 billion surplus in 2000, the year before Bush took office -- and recorded a $455 billion deficit in 2008. The Republicans lost control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2006 because, as we said at the time, they gave the nation rampant spending and Capitol Hill corruption. They abandoned their principles. They paid the price.

We might have counted on John McCain to correct his party's course. We like McCain. We endorsed him in the Republican primary in Illinois. In part because of his persuasion and resolve, the U.S. stands to win an unconditional victory in Iraq.

It is, though, hard to figure John McCain these days. He argued that President Bush's tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, but he now supports them. He promises a balanced budget by the end of his first term, but his tax cut plan would add an estimated $4.2 trillion in debt over 10 years. He has responded to the economic crisis with an angry, populist message and a misguided, $300 billion proposal to buy up bad mortgages.

McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate--but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin's exposure to the public. But it's clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment's notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

Obama chose a more experienced and more thoughtful running mate--he put governing before politicking. Sen. Joe Biden doesn't bring many votes to Obama, but he would help him from day one to lead he country.

McCain calls Obama a typical liberal politician. Granted, it's disappointing that Obama's mix of tax cuts for most people and increases for the wealthy would create an estimated $2.9 trillion in federal debt. He has made more promises on spending than McCain has. We wish one of these candidates had given good, hard specific information on how he would bring the federal budget into line. Neither one has.

We do, though, think Obama would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect.

We know first-hand that Obama seeks out and listens carefully and respectfully to people who disagree with him. He builds consensus. He was most effective in the Illinois legislature when he worked with Republicans on welfare, ethics and criminal justice reform.

He worked to expand the number of charter schools in Illinois--not popular with some Democratic constituencies.

He took up ethics reform in the U.S. Senate--not popular with Washington politicians.

His economic policy team is peppered with advisers who support free trade. He has been called a "University of Chicago Democrat"--a reference to the famed free-market Chicago school of economics, which puts faith in markets.

Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S.

He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions.

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren't a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

Try to remember the magic that we shared
In time your broken heart will mend
I never used you, you knew I really cared
I hate to see it have to end
But it's over
Sad eyes, turn the other way
I don't wanna see you cry
Sad eyes, you knew there'd come a day
When we would have to say 'goodbye'

It’s over. Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. It’s over. It pains me to say it. As much as I believe anything, I believe John McCain would be–as we have never needed before-- a great president. It’s over. Obama is ahead beyond the margin of error in every state that John Kerry won in 2004. In the rarest turn of events, Indiana and North Carolina, reliably Republican, are within Obama’s reach. Virginia and Florida were carried by Bush and those are also within Obama’s reach. There are a few things, not to be dismissed but also not likely, that could bring about a defeat for Obama:

1. Polls do not take into account the number of white people who will not vote for a black. If McCain is behind within the margin of error or under 10 points, this could be a factor.
2. The Clinton’s do not want Obama to win. I would not underestimate their dirty tricks in the weeks ahead.
3. Jeremiah Wright, Fr. Pfelger and "I’ve never been proud to be an American before." These themes will be highlighted in the weeks ahead.
4. Another Georgia-Russia type incident that underscores McCain’s experience.
5. Mac Attack. McCain never does so well as when he is down for the count. Against all odds, McCain could stage a comeback.

A McCain comeback is what I am hoping for. So far, my predictions have been right-on. I predicted McCain would be the nominee when no one else did. I predicted Sarah Palin would be his running mate along with three other, preferable choices. I hope I am wrong in this prediction.

You Can Call Me Joe
Palin Wins Battle, McCain Loses War


Sarah Palin is a remarkable women, brilliant in her shrewdness. She began by introducing herself to Joe Biden, on microphone, saying, "It’s so nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?" You could have blown the ProCon one over with a feather. What a statement. She communicated to a nation how much of a Washington outsider she was. There isn’t a waiter in Washington, DC that could have met him for the first time or dared to have asked him if he could call him Joe. It was great.

For the record, Gwen Ifill is a left wing pig. She’s writing a book predicated on Obama’s victory and didn’t think she should recuse herself from creating the questions for this debate.

Lets talk pluses/minuses
Joe Biden

+ Pluses
He knows his stuff.
He loves this country.
Barack Obama will be a better, more competent President for having Joe Biden at his side.

-Minuses

He CONTINUALLY began his remarks saying, "Gwen." It looked as though he was having an INSIDE THE BELTWAY conversation with his pal, Gwen Ifill. By contrast, Palin spoke directly to the American people.

In the split screen that I watched, every time Sarah Palin was speaking, Biden was doing his impression of Al Gore in the 2000 debates. Instead of sighing, Biden had an impatient grin on his face as though he was suffering through his step-daughter’s piano recital, all the while emotionally rolling his eyes toward kindred spirit Gwen Ifill.

Biden lied repeatedly. Several times he SPECIFICALLY stated things McCain voted for which McCain, in fact, voted against. Likewise, he stated things McCain was opposed to that he actually supported.

Sarah Palin

+Pluses

She connected with America. She showed common sense and poise, and given her very limited experience on the national stage, carried herself very well.

She pounded Biden and Obama.

She had passion and vision for a McCain presidency.

She surpassed expectations. Expectations were that she stumble and combust. She didn’t.

-Minuses

While conservatives love her–and I’ll have more to say about that later, she did nothing to establish to anyone outside of the Republican base, and frankly within it to a degree, that she is prepared to be the Vice-President of the United States.

Its cute that she can wink and flirt and change the subject. The fact is she should be able to answer any damn question anyone asks of her. Please, lets take the gloves off. Hello? This is the United States of America. We are running someone for Vice-President that won’t hold a press conference and won’t be interviewed unless forced to. Conservatives: hear me out. I agree that the media is against her. I also agree that in a two hour interview with Katie Couric, the only parts of that interview promoted widely were the least favorable to Palin. I agree, no contest.

At the same time, it is shameful and disgraceful that during a time of national economic crisis, John McCain would join Sarah Palin in a follow-up interview with Katie Couric not to talk about anything important. Instead McCain went off on Couric for the gotcha questions foisted upon Palin. Again, I agree that the media hates her. Even given that, it is not a gotcha question to ask the would be Vice-President about specific supreme court rulings she disagrees with, let alone asking her what newspapers she reads. It was embarrassing.

When asked during the debate about gays and lesbians, Palin was noticeably uncomfortable. I’m sorry. It’s 2008. Gays and lesbians are here to stay. The ProConPundit doesn’t support gay marriage but does support domestic partnerships/civil unions. She is way too young to be so uptight about this issue. Not for nothing, the church that she belongs to has support groups for people trying to overcome homosexuality. That workshop takes place in the classroom next to the people who think the world is flat. When asked about gays and lesbians, she said, "We have diversity in our family. Lots of different people." Please, give me a break. She’s whacked.

I have long defended John McCain in the experience over change argument. In judgement, arguably the most important judgement a nominee can make, he blew it. He made a choice that would appease conservatives, who would have voted for him anyway, instead of choosing someone who would appeal to the moderates and independents who will decide this election.

The People’s House Carried The Wishes of the People

BAILOUT BILL
Democratic 140 YEAS 95 NAYS
Republican 65 YEAS 133 NAYS
205 YEAS/ 228 NEAS

Today the People’s House defeated Corporate Welfare. House Republicans are being demonized for putting the brakes on the bailout. The House Democrats could have passed the bill on their own. The bill failed 228 to 205 with 95 Democrats voting against it. The demagoguery of the House GOP by for their part in not passing this bill is ridiculous.

Leadership and "straight talk" have been in short supply on this issue. The American people are livid at the thought of bailing out Wall Street AT ALL let alone without fully understanding, or at least better understanding, the ramifications of this bailout. CEO golden parachutes, ownership, return on this investment, etc., are among things that give us pause. Politicians, the Bush Administration, and the media all pushed this thing saying it had to be done today in order to protect the markets. This was the equivalent of telling the terrorists what day we will leave Iraq. They should have sent out a message that a bailout would be worked out and it would take a week or so to put together. I know that sounds simplistic but its equally simplistic to think the American people would swallow this horrific throwing away of our hard earned dollars to bail out scoundrels.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are both despicable and ought to be put out of office. Their behavior in this crisis has been staggering. Chris Dodd was on the Sunday morning shows blathering about how he and Harry had to stay up until 11 p.m. the night before working. Give me a break. Her speech blaming Republicans for this crisis was incomplete, if not inaccurate, and not a good way to garner Republican votes. Barney Frank has criticized House GOP members for not voting for the bailout when 10 Democrats on the banking committee he chairs voted against it. He is a liar and a pig.

President Bush once again has let us down in a crisis. He’s done a poor job of leading and a poor job of communicating.

John McCain exercised good judgement by returning to Washington to be a part of the process but misread what was going on in speaking as though he had helped forge a deal that didn’t exist. McCain did help to get the original bill improved. Personally, I think McCain would have been better off being against the bill. I appreciate the urgency of the matter but he’s Mr. Reformer, Mr. No Ear-Marks and No Pork. That was WAY TOO MUCH loosey-goosey and fast shuffle with this thing. AT LEAST McCAIN SHOWED UP.

Barack Obama, just as when he was in the Illinois Senate, voted "Present." He is staying as far out of the fray as he possibly can. When asked, he wags his finger and lectures us about what he expects to see in a bill.

Tough Times for Americans
& McCain Candidacy

The ProConPundit has been noticeably silent of late mostly because I am disgusted. Unless something changes and changes quick, Barack Obama will be elected–by default–as our next president.

John McCain is swimming upstream to begin with. It’s the end of two terms of a very unpopular President amidst constantly increasing precarious times. The mood of the country is clearly to make a change. If the Democratic nominee were anyone other than Barack Obama, McCain would not stand a chance. Obama’s inexperience, failure to connect with working class Americans, far left record (factually the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate) and skin color put him in a less viable position than any other Democrat.

Still, McCain has done a poor job of late. The perception of his handling of the bailout mess, the ability of the Democrats to tie the crisis to the Bush Administration coupled with McCain’s stupid linking of himself too often to Bush, and the Palin pick, are all crippling McCain among moderates and independents. The Palin pick was a brilliant move to keep conservatives happy. Ultimately, any vice-presidential pick probably doesn’t make that much difference. As of today, such INCREDIBLY reliable Republican states as North Carolina and Indiana are up for grabs. That might suggest having such a conservative as Palin on the ticket is not reassuring enough.
As much as I didn’t like Mitt Romney, he would certainly be a reassuring presence on a McCain ticket given the economic mess.

Check out these articles. The first two are by David Brooks. He and George Will would be my favorite conservatives. They are thoughtful and brilliant and, what I consider, authentic classic conservatives. Brooks first article sheds some light on McCain. The second critiques Sarah Palin.

The third article is by Kathleen Parker. She is a conservative columnist.. She originally favored Palin and now thinks Palin should drop out of the race. That’s crazy. The upheaval and aspersions that would cast would completely kill McCain’s chances. They are interesting articles, nonetheless.


Thinking About McCain
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 25, 2008

I’ve been covering John McCain steadily for a decade. A few years ago, I worked on a book, which I foolishly never completed, on the U.S. Senate with McCain as the central character. So when I step back and think of McCain, even in the heat of this campaign, I still think of him first in the real world of governing, not in the show-business world of the election.I think first of the personal qualities. He was an unfailingly candid man. When other politicians described a meeting, they always ended up the heroes of the story. But McCain would always describe the meeting straight, emphasizing his own failings with more vigor than his accomplishments.

He is, for a politician, a humble man. The most important legacy of his prisoner-of-war days is that he witnessed others behaving more heroically than he did. This experience has given him a basic honesty when appraising himself.

His mood darkened as the Iraq war deteriorated, but his accomplishments mounted. I don’t think any senator had as impressive a few years as McCain did during this span of time.

He lobbied relentlessly for a change of strategy in Iraq, holding off the tide that would have had us accept defeat and leave Iraq to its genocide. He negotiated a complicated immigration bill with Ted Kennedy. He helped organize the Gang of 14 and helped save the Senate from polarized Armageddon over judicial nominations.

He voted against opportunist bills like the pork-laden energy package and the prescription drug plan. He led a crusade against Jack Abramoff and the sleaze-meisters in his own party and exposed corrupt Pentagon contracts.

I could fill this column with his accomplishments during this period, and not even mention the insights. At a defense conference in Munich, I saw him diagnose and confront Russian hegemony. Week after week, I saw him dissent from G.O.P. colleagues as their party lost its way.

Some people who cover the campaign seem to have no knowledge of anything but the campaign, but I can’t get these events — which were real and required the constant application of judgment, honor and courage — out of my head.

Do I wish he was running a different campaign? Yes.

It’s not that he has changed his political personality that bothers me. I’ve come to accept that in this media-circus environment, you simply cannot run for president as a candid, normal person.

Nor is it, primarily, the dishonest ads he is running. My friends in the Obama cheering section get huffy about them, while filtering from their consciousness all the dishonest ads Obama has run — the demagogic DHL ad, the insulting computer ad, the cynical Rush Limbaugh ad, the misleading Social Security ad and so on. If one candidate has sunk lower than the other at this point, I’ve lost track.

No, what disappoints me about the McCain campaign is it has no central argument. I had hoped that he would create a grand narrative explaining how the United States is fundamentally unprepared for the 21st century and how McCain’s worldview is different.

McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. Without a groundbreaking argument about why he is different, he’s had to rely on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat. He has no frame to organize his response when financial and other crises pop up.

He has no overarching argument in part because of his Senate training and the tendency to take issues on one at a time — in part, because of the foolish decision to run a traditional right-left campaign against Obama and, in part, because McCain has never really resolved the contradiction between the Barry Goldwater and Teddy Roosevelt sides of his worldview. One day he’s a small-government Western conservative; the next he’s a Bull Moose progressive. The two don’t add up — as we’ve seen in his uneven reaction to the financial crisis.

Nonetheless, when people try to tell me that the McCain on the campaign trail is the real McCain and the one who came before was fake, I just say, baloney. I saw him. A half-century of evidence is there.

If McCain is elected, he will retain his instinct for the hard challenge. With that Greatest Generation style of his, he will run the least partisan administration in recent times. He is not a sophisticated conceptual thinker, but he is a good judge of character. He is not an organized administrator, but he has become a practiced legislative craftsman. He is, above all — and this is completely impossible to convey in the midst of a campaign — a serious man prone to serious things.

Amid the stupidity of this season, it seemed worth stepping back to recall the fundamentals — about McCain today and Obama on some other day in the near future.


Why Experience Matters
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 15, 2008

Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in the heat of this election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The narrow question is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president? Most conservatives say yes, on the grounds that something that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators, like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in different ways that she is unready.

The issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there. This argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a leader and what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.

There was a time when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.

But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools. The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity.

The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.

This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the belief that time in government destroys character but contact with grass-roots America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has produced Sarah Palin.

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.

And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word "experience" 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that "the people" will take on and destroy "the establishment" is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

Palin Problem
She’s out of her league.
By Kathleen Parker
Sept. 24, 2008

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.

Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: "Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this."

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: "I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?"

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

— Kathleen Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist

Sara, You're the Poet in my Heart

Wait a minute baby...
Stay with me awhile
Said you'd give me light
But you never told be about the fire
Drowning in the sea of love
Where everyone would love to drown
And now it's gone
It doesn't matter anymore
When you build your house
Call me home

Thank you, Fleetwood Mac, for this song, "Sara", which I find helpful in summing up my complex reaction to Sarah Palin. Its about time there was a Fleetwood Mac song for Republicans. I never much cared for "Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow!"

Are you invigorated, excited, confused, befuddled, angry about Sarah Palin? Here’s what I have come up with.

1. It’s the most significant vice-presidential pick since Henry Wallace. FDR picked Henry Wallace in 1940. It was significant because it was the first time the presidential nominee picked his running mate. At the very beginning, the VP was the person who ran for President and came in second. George Washington didn't pick John Adams as his VP, he beat him for President. Imagine: Reagan-Carter, Clinton-Bush or Bush-Gore! Later, the running mate was selected by the party. All right, historical moment over. The selection of Palin by McCain was brilliant strategy in that it:
A. Energizes the GOP base.
B. Sparks enthusiasm and interest in the entire race while reinvigorating (or invigorating) his campaign.
C. Enables GOP to be able to potentially deliver the first woman to the vice-presidency and, possibly, the presidency.
D. Working class voters all over America are looking for someone to identify with. Some of them were among the folks in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania who voted for Hillary, but they are everywhere and don’t feel connected to Obama, they admire McCain but don’t identify with him, either.
E. Perhaps, most significantly, the selection of her has absolutely driven the Obama campaign and liberal media CRAZY. Obama is falling all over himself saying foolish things and giving more credibility to his opponent’s running mate than I have ever seen anyone do. David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager is usually one cool, calm, and sharp communicator. He, too, has been making an ass out of himself raising his voice and flapping his hands perplexed over the moose wrestling hottie from Alaska.

2. I think the media has been unfair to Palin, They, and the Democrats have been "Clarence Thomasing" her–discounting her as a woman because she isn’t a liberal woman. MSNBC has gone completely off the rails but I stopped watching MSNBC before the conventions.

3. I do think Obama intentionally used the lipstick remark as a jab. It was clear by the crowd’s response to his use of the "lipstick on a pig" remark that they thought that’s what he meant. God knows they could not possibly have been smarter than him. Other surrogates of Obama also used the "lipstick on a pig" remark, so it was clearly a co-ordinated effort or talking point.

4. That said, while I guess it makes hey for the McCain camp to grind the Obama camp over the "lipstick on a pig" remark, for the first time ever I find myself agreeing with salon.com’s Joan Walsh. She is a big time, self-described liberal and feminist. She disagrees with most of what Palin believes but admires her as a feminist. Walsh believes that the McCain hoopla over lipstickgate casts Palin as a victim. Sarah Palin is not a weak, pathetic, victim. She is running to be Vice-President of the United States. She doesn’t need defending and if she does, she should do it herself.

5. That brings me to the matter of her not being interviewed. Shit or get off the pot. Let’s not play games, McCain. You picked her. All of your people, including Ridge, Romney, Lieberman and Lindsay Graham have all taken to the air waves to declare how qualified she is to be Vice-President, even as they waited to see if their noses would grow. We shouldn’t have to wait 5 minutes for her to be interviewed. The notion that she can "bypass Meet The Press and go directly to the voters" is bullshit. She keeps repeating her same lines about putting the jet on ebay and voting against the bridge to nowhere (after she voted for it).

The momentum is not going to stay with her unless she can pay her dues and prove herself as a national leader. I am getting tired of all of the hoopla criticizing her and defending her. She needs to stand on her own and the topic needs to change to more important things.

Sara, you're the poet in my heart
Never change, never stop

The War to End All Wars: 2012

Here is the Question:

What effect will Sarah Palin have upon the Clinton’s support

of Barack Obama in the election?

Here are three theories:
1. Michele Johnson– The Clinton’s will now really and truly work as hard as they can to get Obama elected so that Sarah Palin will not end up becoming the first woman Vice-President or President.
2. Paul Kroeger– We are witnessing the end of the era of the Clinton’s, whether or not they realize it.
3. ProConPundit– The Clinton’s will manage to actively, tacitly, and half-heartedly support Obama while secretly (or not so secretly) hoping he loses. They will campaign for him in a way that will ALWAYS cast doubts over their support which will redound to doubts about Obama. They do not want Sarah Palin to be the first woman President, certainly. However, if Obama is elected, she will never be elected President. He will either serve two terms and a Republican will beat him in 2012. 2016 is too far away. Hillary prefers electing McCain and resurrecting her Methodist prayer warriors to pray for McCain’s good health for four years. McCain would only serve one term and Hillary would face off against Palin in 2012.

If Obama loses, you think he’ll run again in 2012? Forget about it. For one thing, no losing Democratic nominee has been nominated again since Stevenson in 1956. Democrats eviscerate their losers. Besides, if he loses, the Clinton’s will do EVERYTHING imaginable to discredit him. Whether he ends up dead like Vince Foster, cocaine planted in his pocket or Terry McAuliffe planted in his bed, this is Obama’s only grab for the brass ring.

Nothing Lackluster About End of Speech

Not so much insomnia but haunting. The end of John McCain’s speech referred to his time in the "Hanoi Hilton." He’s not bragging. He’s talking of something that few of us have gone through and fewer still can imagine.

He is not a great orator of a time. He is, win or lose, an American hero and patriot.

God bless John McCain and God bless America.

Now let’s win one-- not for the Gipper–but for our future.

McCain’s Speech of a Lifetime is Lackluster

GOP Strategist Mike Murphy who managed McCain’s 2000 campaign and the ProConPundit lobbied the McCain camp to have McCain not do a traditional convention speech. He excels at town hall meetings. Our argument, made more credibly by Murphy was that McCain’s acceptance speech needed to be a town hall format and not him giving a speech. The concession was creating a runway where McCain could speak at a more in-the-round environment. It missed the mark.

I love this guy and admire him. His speech was poor. His code references to being against abortion were the things that garnered the most amount of applause. The ProConPundit is unabashedly and unapologetically prolife but it’s a poor impression of the GOP if that is one of few things that excites people.

What a difference a week makes. Thank God for Sarah Palin.

McCain’s Closest Allies Are Horrible Speakers Cindy McCain Should Never,
Ever Speak in Public Again

I think Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole inaugurated the stupid notion that Americans need to hear from the nominee’s spouse. Hillary and Liddy did it well. Cindy McCain is DREADFUL. If she is sincere, she has a horrible time expressing it. She comes across as a bleach blonde bimbo and a phoney. She should NEVER, EVER speak again in public. SHE IS SICKENING.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Tom Ridge, former PA Governor and first Secretary of Homeland Security are great men, great Americans, fine patriots and extremely loyal to John McCain. Their speeches were horrible and redeemed the fact that Mac did not pick them for VP, despite my urging.