Respected Republican Senator Claims Palin Not Ready To Be President

Sen. Hagel doubts Palin's ready

BY JOSEPH MORTON | September 18, 2008 | OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is the nation's most prominent Republican officeholder to publicly question whether Sarah Palin has the experience to serve as president.

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said Wednesday in an interview. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

Palin was elected governor of Alaska in 2006 and before that was the mayor of a small town.

Democrats have raised questions about Palin since Sen. John McCain picked her as his vice presidential running mate. Most national Republican officeholders have rallied to Palin's candidacy.

Palin has cited the proximity of Alaska to Russia as evidence of her international experience.

Hagel scoffed at that notion.

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

Hagel said today in a conference call he had received no reaction from fellow Republicans on his Palin comments.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he hoped Hagel would trust McCain's judgment, considering he supported the Arizona senator for president in 2000.

Grassley said Palin has more executive experience than the men in the race. He said he wasn't surprised, however, that Hagel would depart from the party line.

A senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hagel has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and had considered making his own run for president. He skipped the Republican National Convention in favor of a trip to Central and South America.

Hagel, who says he has no plans to endorse either presidential candidate, traveled with Democratic nominee Barack Obama to the Middle East in July.

In criticizing Palin, Hagel broke with other Nebraska Republicans, including Gov. Dave Heineman, who have praised the selection.

Tom Kise, a McCain campaign spokesman, responded to Hagel's comments by questioning Obama's experience.

Kise pointed to statements that Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden, made during the Democrats' primary fight. At that time, Biden was seeking the nomination and questioned whether Obama was prepared to be president.

"It's much more alarming that Barack Obama's own vice presidential nominee doesn't think he has the experience or the judgment for the job," Kise said.

Palin herself addressed the question of her foreign policy experience in a recent interview with ABC News.

"We've got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time," she said. "It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody's big, fat résumé, maybe, that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state."

"I'm ready," Palin said. "I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink."

Hagel offered a couple of caveats on his assessment of Palin: Experience is not the only qualification for elected officials — judgment and character are indispensable.

Washington experience isn't the only kind of experience, Hagel said, and he noted that many White House occupants have been governors with no time inside the Beltway.

"But I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world," Hagel said. "I think that's just a requirement."

So is Palin qualified to be president?

"I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States," Hagel said.

Hagel said voters ultimately will decide between McCain and Obama, and he hopes that the debates will refocus both campaigns on the important issues of the day, including the economy, energy policy and international relations.

One recent squabble between the campaigns revolved around whether Obama was being sexist toward Palin when he used a turn of phrase about putting lipstick on a pig.

That kind of back-and-forth is not what the American people want or need, Hagel said.

"It's terrible," he said. "It debases the system."

How Racism Works

A letter to the editor of the Forth Worth Star Telegram...

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the “Keating 5”? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

Palin Comparison

This column isn't about the Republican v-p pick ... but 5 kids?!

by Lisa Van Dusen

It's an occupational hazard these days that if you mention the name of the Republican candidate for vice-president of the United States in the course of an average column, you're going to be bombarded by dozens of e-reasons to regret it.

In the 24 hours after the last piece I wrote about -- let's call her Sandra Balin -- I was accused of being a socialist, a communist, a fascist, a feminist, an anti-feminist, a liberal, an elitist and, best of all, jealous.

(Republican John McCain wanted me first but I was deemed overqualified to be leader of the free world because of my elitist refusal to drop my "ing"s).

When I first heard weeks ago that one of the dark horse candidates for McCain's running mate was the governor of Alaska and that she had five kids, I, like a lot of political junkies who follow these things with an obsessive eye to even distant specks on the political horizon, had never heard of her.

I just assumed Sandra Balin was in her 60s and that her children were mostly grown because, as a slacker mom who stayed at home for seven years with one daughter, it never crossed my mind that any woman with that many young children and in full possession of her senses would even contemplate being a governor.

I believe women should have the freedom to make their own choices, whether that means being a governor, an at-home mom, a working mom, or a mom period. So, I would never criticize Sandra Balin for choosing to work and raise children at the same time.

But like a lot of women and a lot of working mothers, I just genuinely wonder how Sandra Balin swings it with that many kids and with that job.

Being the mother of five children means you're surrounded by people all day long asking you questions. So does being a governor, only the people are taller, they have fewer questions about the location of the juice boxes and more of their questions arrive by BlackBerry.

When women ask how Sandra Balin does it, they know that even with one or two or three kids, there are awful moments when all the prioritizing goes out the window and one role or the other suddenly demands an exclusive commitment (limb broken in playground accident vs. boardroom presentation in 10 minutes). A lot of women who had the choice have changed jobs or traded ambition for peace of mind to avoid those moments.

Her answer to Charlie Gibson about how she does it was, "The same way the other governors have done it when they've either had a baby in office or raised a family. Granted, they're men, but do it the same way that they do it." According to the National Governor's Association Web site, the only current governors, other than the Mormon governor of Utah, who have more than four children are Togiola Tulafono, the governor of American Samoa and Benigno Fitial, governor of the Northern Mariana Islands, each of whom has six.

(We don't really know how they do it because they haven't done Meet The Press lately, either).

If Sandra Balin becomes vice-president, she'll have even fewer models to cite. But having seen a video of her recently holding her baby, Trig, in one arm while BlackBerrying with the other hand, I'd say never underestimate her ability to juggle. Just don't ask her how she does it.

Obama gets the 'quote of the day'

Responding to McCain's proposal for a commission to examine the economic crisis -

"This isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess," Obama said. "What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election."

When the 'wanna be reformer' needs reforming...

God and Lipstick on a Pig

"John just doesn't get it!"

Political Perspective From Sarah and Hillary

A Splendid Bit of Relief from the North

You think Canadian elections are bad?

By LISA VAN DUSEN | September 14, 2008

About the only thing crazier than selling an idea to American voters as, "It's what they do in France" would be pitching an election issue as, "It's what they do in Canada."

Between our crackpot gun laws, our suspiciously free health care system and our girliness about the death penalty, there are zip codes in the United States where "Canadian" is interchangeable with "communist" and to talk any other game would be like putting lipstick on a big slab of Canadian bacon.

But as Barack Obama and John McCain pant incredulously toward the finish line of a race so long it feels like it started before the last election which, in many ways, it did, they should take time to glance northward and get a load of what a civilized campaign looks like.

If a Canadian campaign is like a decathlon, then a U.S. campaign is like a war or, in the case of the last two, a civil war. Because the president of the United States gets to play pin the tail on the Axis of Evil map and invade other countries whenever he wants, making the title a prize awarded only to the victor of a gruelling, harrowing and often surreal trial of superhuman endurance is necessary to deter the squeamish and weed out the weak.

Being prime minister of Canada has more to do with listening to Pierre Trudeau stories at G8 welcoming receptions and not saying the wrong thing about Quebec, so the stakes aren't quite as high, which is why, if it weren't for the economic impact of all the advertising dollars, media overtime and padded catering bills lost, it might all be better settled with an arm-wrestling round-robin. The Canadian Arm Wrestling Federation, whose constitution, btw, could use a notwithstanding clause, (http://www.angelfire.com/sports/ARMWRESTLING/) could officiate.

(From what I've seen in the first week, my money would be on Stephane Dion getting whupped by everyone, including Elizabeth May, then whining interminably to the ref about it.)

Because we have one-tenth the population, that's one-tenth the number of babies to kiss and hands to shake, so one-tenth the amount of time needed to campaign; our two months to their 20.

Except that ours only have to be 36 days and -- other than the eight-week 2006 campaign that included a festive holiday season intermission -- Canada has stuck to that for the past few campaigns.

But compared to an American campaign, even eight weeks is like a day at a spa.

(Having said that, I logged one of those 60-day ones as a 21-year-old junior press aide and it nearly killed me. I broke down halfway through and slid slowly to the floor in the lobby of my sixth Peter Pan Motel, whining like Stephane Dion at an arm wrestling round-robin about just wanting a detachable hanger and a regulation-sized bar of soap. Campaigning, like grief and LSD, is one of those experiences that bring out different things in different people and sometimes you don't know what that'll look like until it's too late.)

By the time the U.S. campaign staggers into its bloodiest stretch in mid-October, Canadians will have already made up their minds. Meanwhile, what the overlap will underscore is that campaigns, even seemingly endless U.S. campaigns, really only happen in the last five weeks anyway.

After all the money spent in the primaries, after all the polls and concessions and debates and, now, after the conventions and the wheeling out of the running mates, all of it will conceivably -- if it doesn't come down to 5,000 lawyers invading one county in southern Ohio -- be settled in a Canadian campaign.

In the case of this U.S. campaign, the long lead time has served to both familiarize voters with an unknown Barack Obama and reassure them about the stamina of a septuagenarian John McCain.

At the same time, the relative hiccup of the final two months between the conventions and Election Day on Nov. 4 works to the advantage of the new unknown, Sarah Palin, since there's only so much familiarizing that can go on during a relative hiccup.

Given what the battlefield will look like by Oct. 15, maybe the only October surprise that could trump Bush's perp-walking Osama bin Laden out of his spider hole would be the promise of new, shorter Canadian-style campaigns.

Just don't say it was our idea.

Blizzard of Lies

By PAUL KRUGMAN September 12, 2008 | Op-Ed Columnist |New York Times

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.

So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.

Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

McCain Trashes Palin's Qualifications to be President

Obama Lays Out His Vision for America at Presidential Forum

Letterman's Fabulous Interview With Obama

Hey Barack ... Here Is Your Stump Speech On Palin, Courtesy Of Matt Damon

On the Anniversary of 9/11: McCain and His Republican Party Should Be Ashamed

'Having Failed to Beat Them, He's Now Joined Them'

McCain picks up some Democrat Change

by Lisa Van Dusen

If you search the Wikipedia page on John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, the word "change" doesn't appear a single time (as of Sept. 9 ... by the time you read this, that may have been, um, changed).

Back then, after eight years of Bill Clinton, McCain ran as his maverick self against (wink, wink) K Street lobbyists and special interests, but it was a campaign based on personality and unfettered media availability, not on the classic change message of "throw the bums out."

If McCain wasn't demanding change after eight years of Democratic rule in Washington, why is he suddenly running, after eight years of Republican rule in Washington, on change? If he thinks the Republicans are the bums who need to be thrown out, shouldn't he be running as a Democrat?

Welcome to the Through the Looking-Glass politics of the same GOP tactics that pulled out every stop to get the man who would become the least popular, most disastrous president in memory into the White House not once but twice.

It's a world in which Christians are really closet Muslims, family values are subject to situational redefinition, your opponent's theme can be swiped like a licence plate and the bums are always the other guys, even when they're really you.

McCain didn't always operate this way, but the transition has been so remarkably smooth, you'd think he'd been bitten by a radioactive spider that imbued him with super powers of integrity amnesia, principle subsuming and, especially, theme-swiping.

FAMILIAR PLAYBOOK

Ironically, it's the same Rovian playbook that so famously slimed McCain off the map in the notorious 2000 South Carolina primary that's been pulled out of the bottom drawer for the brutal final stretch of this campaign.

McCain has been in Washington for more than a quarter-century, with more than three-quarters of that time served as a member of the party running the country. He's now saying he's the McChanger -- not so much with a straight face, but with that cat-that-ate-the-canary grin -- because Sarah Palin, like Barack Obama, looks and acts like nobody else who has ever been on a national ticket.

In Palin's case, the reasons for that have less to do with an unprecedented historic breakthrough than with a historically unprecedented low bar and for some of the people she scares, that's why she scares them. The choice also betrays a weirdly 1960s, Mad Men cynicism among that GOP brain trust: "We'll match 'em gimmick for gimmick ... they have a black guy, we'll get a woman!" Sarah Palin's not a threat to the old boys' network, she's an instrument of it.

But to the same illusionists who brought you the 2000 recounts victory, the phantom WMDs and "We do not torture," the only measure of truth is how many people you can convince that what they're seeing is real until you've got what you want. Then you shrug, step gingerly over the wreckage and move on.

For the man who wrote Character is Destiny, questions like why he went from wanting Joe Lieberman (a pro-choice, pro-gay rights rogue Democrat who got an "F" on his NRA report card) to picking Palin (a rifle-wielding, pray-out-the-gay, pro-life-in-cases-of-rape-and-incest conservative's conservative) within a matter of days may weigh more heavily after November.

Maybe that's what he means when he says he's now the candidate of change; that those days of watching the other guys have all the fun are gone and that having failed to beat them, he's now joined them.

Food for Thought

Obama's woes have nothing to do with 'lipstick'

Howard Fineman on the candidate's pride, strategy and stump speak | MSNBC | Wed., Sept. 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - No, Barack Obama was not making fun of Sarah Palin when he talked about some Republican putting “lipstick on a pig.”

He was trying to be colloquial, and John McCain’s campaign knew as much – even as it was going theatrically ballistic.

That’s not to say that Obama hasn’t made mistakes. In fact, he’s made – and is making – a lot.

For two years, Obama played the golf course of presidential politics with the ice-cold self-assuredness of a Tiger Woods. But since securing the Democratic nomination, he’s made a series of strategic errors that could jeopardize his chances in November.

After traveling with him on the trail, watching him in Denver and talking to Democratic operatives and insiders, here’s my list of his errant shots:

Declining to take federal financing for the general election
This mistake is two-pronged. Obama stands accused of flip-flopping on the matter, saying in 2007 that he’d accept those funds and the cash limits that come along with it. In relying solely on private money, Obama appears to have ceded some higher ground to McCain, who, with his public funding, appears slightly more immune to interest groups. On a more practical level, Obama will have to leave the campaign trail more often to headline fundraising events. He’ll likely spend more time than he should in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and less than he needs in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

Declining McCain’s offer to hold ten town hall debates
When Obama was leading the race in leaps and bounds, he blew off this GOP proposal. Too bad. Had Obama locked in that deal, he would now be able to confront McCain face-to-face about some of the Republicans’ more aggressive – if not to say cynically manipulative – recent television advertising claims. An Obama-McCain series would also have drawn attention away from Gov. Palin, the autumn cover girl.

Failing to go all the way with the Clintons
Yes, I know, Bill and Hillary got prime speaking roles in Denver. And yes, I know, the Clintons are difficult to deal with and probably hope Obama fails. Still, it’s Obama’s task to latch on to them, even against their will. But he was too proud. Although he’s going to see the former president this week, Obama should have broken bread with Bill months ago. Obama needs the Clintons to defend and work for him. They are not eager to do so, but it was still Obama’s task to trap them into displays of political enthusiasm. It’s just my guess, but I think Mr. Clinton would have been open to the wooing – if for no other reason than to recapture his reputation as an avatar of the civil rights cause. Obama also neglected to court Clinton fundraisers and supporters in places like Los Angeles. All they want from Obama is a phone call. They would swoon.

The 22-state strategy
For months, the Obama campaign invested advertising time and organizing money in an impressive array of red states that haven’t been on the Democrats’ radar in recent elections. This made for great press clippings. But, for the most part, it was a waste of assets. Except for perhaps Virginia, most out-of-the-way states do not seem likely to end up in Obama’s fold. He’d be more successful focusing on traditional battlegrounds.

Failing to state a sweeping, but concrete, policy idea
It is not enough to be for change – everybody is, or is trying to be. To make it stick, Obama needed, and needs, to put forth an easy-to-grasp grand proposal, one that would encapsulate what his central message. That tagline? That he is dedicated, body and soul, to advancing the economic interests of hard-working, average Americans. He has the makings of such a proposal – his tax cuts for low and middle-income families. But he has yet to package that, or anything else, in an easy-to-grasp, hard-number plan for voters. Instead, he’s got more of a laundry list than an actual rallying cry.

Remaining trapped in professor-observer speak
When you listen to Obama, it sometimes feels like you’re hearing a smart but distant analysis of the political scene. He sounds like a writer or teacher, but not the leader of a political crusade. Obama has been far too “meta” – a detached commentator on his own situation and his own country. Voters want an action plan, not an exegesis.

Failing to attack McCain early
Obama was wary of attacking a man who had suffered so much during the Vietnam War – an understandable emotion. But that wariness, combined with Obama’s natural inclination to be seen as the nice guy (one who lets others do the knifing) lead to an unfortunate result. It gave two free months for McCain to build up a head of steam as a war hero, as opposed to what Obama needed to paint him as publically: a man beholden to corporate interests and a likely clone of George W. Bush.

Does all of this mean that Obama is somehow doomed? Of course not. He is a quick study and a fast learner, and the team of McCain and Palin is capable of making their own set of mistakes.

But if I were an Obama partisan I would be worried that his mistakes have a common thread - pride.

Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It’s understandable. Obama has his own crowd – from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.

“He’s an arrogant S.O.B.,” one of the latter told me today. “He wants to do it his way, and his way alone.” But politics doesn’t work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help.

Obama to McCain: "Enough is Enough"

Too Cool to Fight

Washington Post | Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Thank God for Sarah Palin. Without her jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood, and her personal attacks on Barack Obama, the Democratic base might never be consolidated. This much is certain: Obama could never do it.

Not, anyway, the Obama who appeared Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. That Obama was cool, diffident, above it all -- unflustered, unflappable, unexcitable and downright unexciting. These "uns" ran on, a torrent of cool that frosted my flat-panel TV and had me wondering if, as a kid, Obama ever got a shot in the mouth on the playground, he'd glare at the bully -- and convene a meeting.

Stephanopoulos vainly tried for some genuine reaction. In choosing Palin, did John McCain get someone who met the minimum test of being "capable of being president"? Everyone in America knows the answer to that. They know McCain picked someone so unqualified she has been hiding from the media because a question to her is like kryptonite to what's-his-name. But did Obama say anything like that? Here are his exact words: "Well, you know, I'll let you ask John McCain when he's on ABC." Boy, Palin will never get over that.

And how about this silly business that she's qualified for the presidency because she's commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard? Another softball. Another slow one, right down the middle. Obama reared back . . . and told Stephanopoulos that those questions should come from the media: "It's going to be your job and. . . ." Pathetic.

What Obama does not understand is that he is being Swift-boated. The term does not apply to a mere smear. It is bolder, more outrageous than that. It means going straight at your opponent's strength and maligning it. This is what was done in 2004 to John Kerry, who had commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam. Kerry had won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star and emerged from the war a certified hero. It was that record that his opponents attacked, a tactic Kerry thought so ludicrous that he at first ignored it. The record shows that he lost the election.

Now Obama's opponents are going straight for his strength. At least twice at the GOP convention, speakers mocked Obama's service as a community organizer. "He worked as a community organizer," Rudy Giuliani said. "He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics."

And then Palin herself followed up with one of her aw-shucks low blows: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

In the biographies of both presidential candidates are episodes of pure wonderment. No man can read about McCain's time as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and not wonder, "Could I do that?" For most of us, the answer -- the truthful answer -- is no.

For Obama, that episode has nothing to do with physical courage but much to do with moral commitment. At age 22 -- a graduate of Columbia University and already making good money as a financial researcher, he walked away to work with the unemployed and alienated in Chicago. Obama, who later went to Harvard Law School, knew precisely what a valuable commodity he was and how much money he could have made. He turned away from all that -- or, at least, postponed it, and not because community organizing was the route to political success. (Just name one.) Once again, ask yourself if you would have done it.

So, Stephanopoulos asked, what was Obama thinking when Giuliani mocked him for doing something Giuliani -- the most ambitious of men -- would never have done?

"It's a real puzzling thing," Obama said matter-of-factly. And then he went on to recount his experience as a community organizer, ending with the observation that "I would think that that's an area where Democrats and Republicans would agree."

Oy!

It is true that on the stump, Obama goes on the attack. But those are fragments -- maybe 15 seconds on the evening news. It is with extended interviews, such as the Sunday shows, that we get to visit with the man -- and that man, for all his splendid virtues, seems to lack fight. Maybe he's worried about how America would receive an angry black man or maybe he's just too cool to ever get hot, but the result is that we have little insight into his passions: What, above all, does he care about? The answer, at least to the Sunday TV viewer, was nothing much.

'Chickenshit' MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

By Howard Kurtz | Monday, September 8, 2008 | Washington Post Staff Writer

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign

Let's hear it for more corporate censorship! Another victory for the mindless Fox News assholes, and all of their clones!

Another sad day in the History of America.

Another loss of nuanced and intelligent reporting - Edward R. Murrow is turning over in his grave.

Not a day for pride!

zjm