Against Obama?

Alexander Cockburn, that silver-tongued rhetorician of the far, far left (so far left, in fact, that he occasionally goes full circle and finds common cause with the far, far right) has come out foursquare against Barack Obama. He urges instead a vote for Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, or, had she not recently revealed herself once again as a paranoid lunatic, Cynthia McKinney.

That, coupled with the recurring debates that spring up with my own readers over whether or not Ralph Nader and his mostly well-intentioned but also somewhat deluded followers are partly responsible for saddling us with eight years of Bushism, led me to revisit this classic George Orwell essay in which the author argues, convincingly, I think, that British pacifists at the time of World War II were, despite their claims to be struggling for a higher, nobler cause by refusing to support the war effort, were actually and substantively supporting Hitler.

"This is elementary common sense," writes Orwell. "If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other." He goes on to rubbish "the idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle" as "a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security."

Now perhaps you see it as a stretch too far to make an analogy between all-out war against imperial fascism and a quadrennial election campaign. But while nobody is claiming that the Bush-McCain axis represents a reincarnated Nazism (well, nobody, that is, except some of the same far leftists who see Obama as merely the flip side of the same totalitarian coin) or that we are in danger of having our democracy and freedom overthrown by invading armies, I think the principle holds just as true for the struggle we are currently engaged in.

What if you honestly, sincerely believe, as Nader claims to, that there is no real difference between the views represented - and the outcome of putting those views into practice - by John McCain and Barack Obama? Well, in the first place, you'd probably be somewhat deluded, or more likely, so taken with the vehemence of your own rhetoric that you have confounded it with reality. A 12-year-old - and I mean no disrespect to the 12-year-olds of the world - could examine the two candidates' platforms and voting histories and provide you with numerous examples of where they differ.

No, what you really mean is that Obama doesn't differ enough, that because he doesn't espouse the full range of leftist political doctrine, despite the fact that views such that extreme are not and never have been shared by more than a few percent of the American public, you are willing to declare a plague on both their houses and, by either voting for a doomed third party candidacy or withholding your vote altogether, help elect John McCain.

Very well; under the rules of our democracy, you have that right. But in exercising that right, I fear, you are exhibiting what Orwell called "a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen." Your "moral stance" does not exist in a vacuum. You can not, as the events of Florida in 2000 amply demonstrated, vote for Nader without simultaneously voting against Obama and for McCain. The only way in which such an action could have neutral consequences would be if you could guarantee that someone on the right would match your action by refusing to vote for McCain.

There is no such level playing field, as Orwell pointed out, just as there was no equivalent pacifist movement in the fascist countries to balance the efforts of British pacifists to undermine the war effort. "But we are not at war," you might argue, "nor are we about to be invaded by a neighboring empire." The latter may be true, but the former is not: we most certainly are at war, and while there's no guarantee that the same wouldn't be true had not Nader and his supporters helped put Bush into office in 2000, it's most likely that the disaster Iraq was to become would have unfolded very differently had some of Florida's 97,000 Nader voters been willing to swallow their pride and/or stubbornness long enough to put Al Gore into office instead of George Bush.

That alone should be enough to illustrate that protest votes, no matter how innocuous they may seem here in our cocoon of material and political security, can have grim and awful consequences for those not fortunate enough to live in a land where battles are largely limited to the symbolic. The mindless carnage - and I say that as someone who was at least partially open to the case for the war - visited upon the people of Iraq by Bush's incompetence was aided and abetted by Nader's claim that there was "no difference" between Bush and Gore, and by those who, for whatever their reasons, chose to believe him.

Is there ever a time, you understandably ask, when one can in good conscience support a minor party candidate, when one doesn't need to be hamstrung by the often unfair and inadequate two-party system? Yes, of course there is. And for all my anger at the disaster that was visited on the world by Nader helping Bush into office, it's only fair to say that 2000 might have legitimately seemed like such a time. After all, we had no way of knowing the kind of events that were going to unfold once Bush took office, nor did we have more than a hint of how extraordinarily unequal to them Bush would prove to be.

But no such uncertainty exists this time. Economically, militarily, even philosophically, the United States - and by extension, much of the world, since America's is a far-reaching shadow - faces greater challenges and dangers than at any point in my life. I grew up in a time when the memories and traumas of the Great Depression and the Second World War were still very fresh, to the point where they colored the thinking and actions of my parents' generation in every way imaginable. My own generation and the generations that followed it have never had to confront difficulties on that scale, but something tells me that we may be approaching just such a moment.

No, Obama isn't the messiah, nor is he anywhere near flawless on many of the issues that strike me as important. And as with all politicians, there is always the risk that he will turn out to be something quite different from what he presents himself as, or that he will be unable to govern with the same vigor and clarity with which he has campaigned, or that his prescriptions for America will turn out to have been wrong after all. But while we can agonize over such possibilities - and given the magnitude of the disaster visited upon us and democracy by the Bush presidency, we'd hardly be human if we didn't - what's at stake today is too vital. We can not afford the luxury of wallowing in nihilism or quixotic protest votes. John McCain may be a perfectly nice, decent man at heart, but in the course of his campaign has repeatedly shown himself to be befuddled, incompetent, and willing to say or do almost anything to gain an office which he clearly does not deserve, and the same is even truer of the vice-president he has attempted to saddle us with.

If you disagree with the above, if you feel that Bush/Cheney/McCain-Palin have served us well and will continue to do so, then by all means vote for them. I respect your opinion even if I disagree with it. But if you claim to be opposed to them but are not voting today for Barack Obama, then you are deluding yourself and risk performing a great disservice to our country and the world. He may not share your views on everything, you may dislike the guy for one or many reasons, but there is no evading the fact that there is one way and one way only to ensure that John McCain and Sarah Palin will not rule this country for the next four years, and the specter of George Bush and the havoc he has wreaked will be put into a grave with a stake through its misbegotten heart, and that is to elect Barack Obama president. You may wish you had a greater range of choices, but you do not. You may spend the next four years protesting that President Obama is too far to the left for you or not far enough, and it is both your right and duty to do so if that turns out to be the case.

But right now there is is one overriding purpose that should transcend all doubts and quibbles: we must restore dignity, decency, honor and respectability to the highest office in the land, and while no man or woman can ever be perfectly suited to that position or perfectly conform to our individual views of how that office should be conducted, not in decades - again, perhaps not in my lifetime - has the choice between two candidates been so clear and obvious. Please join me today in helping to elect Barack Obama president.

Obama: Too Wimpy To Be President?

The way things are going, you have to ask yourself if Barack Obama really wants to be President. Coming off a triumphant and nearly flawless convention, three to six points ahead in the opinion polls, facing an apparently weak opponent who wasn't particularly loved even by his own party, Obama was blindsided when McCain, who turned out to be far less moribund or dull-witted than he'd appeared, completely outmaneuvered him with his wily pick of the Alaskan pit bull for VP.

Since then the tables have turned completely, and it's Obama who looks like he's sleepwalking into oblivion. Oh sure, he's still putting forth solid, sensible proposals couched in crystal-clear and at times downright elegant language, but suddenly nobody is listening. They're too busy watching Obama get pummeled and pushed and bullied every which way from Sunday by a doddering old wreck and his strident female sidekick.

When it comes to making a scripted presentation to a stadium or lecture hall full of adoring followers, there's no one in the business who comes close to Obama (though Palin shows signs of giving him a run for his money). But in the rough and tumble cut and thrust of everyday politicking, Obama is like a deer caught in the headlights, the skinny kid on the playground who bullies naturally gravitate to, and who tries, usually with humiliating results, to reason his his way out of his predicament.

Americans like a little testosterone in their Presidents, and Obama is showing none. Joe Sixpack can be forgiven for asking how a President Obama would stand up to the Russians or Islamic terrorism if he turns to jelly in the face of insults from an inarticulate old man and a glib but ultimately silly woman. Even I, though I still want Obama to win, can't help wondering if he's up to the job.

This whole ridiculous lipstick-on-a-pig business (a phrase, by the way, that McCain used himself last year, and that Vice-President Cheney used at least three times during the 2004 campaign), for example: it's the perfect opportunity for Obama to stand up tall, and with an appropriate measure of disgust, say to the American people, "They (McCain and Palin) must think you're really stupid." He used that phrase once in reference to McCain's newfound strategy of selling himself as an agent of change, but he should make it his mantra, repeating it every time some Republican operative or talk show host tries to hijack the discussion into the realm of preposterous namecalling and accusations, every time McCain or his minions trot out yet another lie about taxes or national defense or "change."

Instead he staggers from one onslaught to the next, barely able to mount a credible defense, let alone the sort of scorched-earth offense he needs to lay on the bald-faced liars running the Republican campaign. Why isn't he? Either he's being very badly advised or he simply lacks the character.

Obviously I'm hoping for the former but fearing the latter. Could it be that Obama so resolutely plays Mr. Nicey-Nice-Above-The-Fray because he's wary of coming across to his white supporters as an Angry Black Man? Possibly, but if so he's already taken it way too far. Or maybe his mother taught him never to pick on girls, which might explain why he circles warily but speechlessly around The Palin while she's busily running off with his female voters. Or - and here's a touchy subject - could it be his experience with affirmative action, and its implicit lesson that adequate is a reasonable substitute for excellent?

Obama has refused to discuss whether he was a beneficiary of affirmative action, but given the period when he went to college and the college he attended (Harvard has been especially assiduous in its pursuit of minority students, perhaps in hopes of defusing its longstanding reputation as a bastion of white male elitism) make it fairly likely. The bitter irony is that, as demonstrated daily by his obvious erudition, he had no need of affirmative action programs, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have been part of one, nor that he didn't absorb one of affirmative action's most pernicious lessons: that second or third best is more than good enough when combined with the "right" skin color.

I'd hate for any of this to be true, and love for Obama to prove me wrong by coming out kicking and screaming and cussing and punching on tomorrow morning's news. But I hope for the best while fearing the worst: that once again the Democrats will hand the country over to the radical right not through a paucity of ideas but from a failure of nerve. If nothing else - if Obama just can't bring himself to say something mean about his opponents - get Hillary Clinton on the case. Promise her Secretary of State or whatever else her little heart desires, but turn her loose on McCain and Palin and I guarantee you'll see some results. You might also get people wondering, "Tell me again why we nominated him instead of her," but that's the chance the Democrats have got to take. Unless of course they - and you - are quite happy with the way things are.

Take That, You Damn Community Organizers!

Back when I lived in the mountains of Northern California, our little 12 volt black and white TV only picked up one channel with any regularity, and among the shows I most avidly watched were Green Acres and The Dukes Of Hazzard.

No one needs to justify a liking for such brilliant windows into the American soul, but if I ever felt guilty about being parked in front of the TV when there was wood to chop or varmints to roust, I told myself that I was gaining insight into the ways and wherefores of my neighbors. Toss in a dash of Hee Haw, Petticoat Junction, a hefty measure of Hank Williams Jr.'s "Country Boy Will Survive", and you had your finger on the pulse of Greater Laytonville (pop. 995 or 1,036, the highway sign declared, depending which side of town you were entering from) and the back side of Iron Peak.

Well, not completely, but it was a start. I say this only to explain why VP candidate Sarah Palin and her remarkable entourage/family/posse don't appear nearly as strange to me as they do to some of my fellow cosmopolitan elitists. I lived side-by-side with people very much like them for better than ten years, and came to like and respect quite a few of them. Ever since then I've felt uncomfortable using words like "redneck" or "white trash," because they seem just as thoughtless and abusive as racial slurs like "nigger."

Which might be a little unfortunate at the moment, since it would be only too convenient to dredge up just such words to deride and dismiss the Palinistas. But I'd hate myself in the morning, and what's worse, I'd be stooping to the same level they did in attempting to whip up hatred and suspicion against big city slickers who read books and, like, know stuff. Not to mention those dreaded "community organizers."

To be fair, the term "community organizer" has been known to raise my own hackles from time to time, especially when appropriated, as it often is, by unprincipled scam artists of the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson ilk. If I were advising Obama, I'd tell him to think up another name for his work on Chicago's South Side, because to quite a few people, "community organizer" is always going to come off as a synonym for "rabble rouser."

Never mind that COs come in all shapes, sizes and political motivations. Someone ringing doorbells for the Natural Born American Yahoo Party or organizing a book drive for the PTA is every bit as much a community organizer as that shady beardo soliciting donations for the Communist Front to Overthrow Everything. It's just one of those phrases that's gotten stuck with a negative connotation, like "peace" or "liberal" or "tolerance and understanding."

Anyway, back to Hooterville, which is apparently where the newly energized GOP expects to find the constituency to propel it into power for another four years. As I said, I found many of my rural neighbors to be charming, down to earth, and wise in many ways of the world, and by that I don't just mean how to gut and skin deer and bear or where to lay culverts to keep dirt roads from washing out in the winter monsoons.

Once I got over my initial big city suspicions about them (and they over their country suspicions of me), we could sit and talk for hours about everything from local politics to global cosmology. We didn't always agree - far from it - but we were often able to have a good laugh about our differences.

But there was the occasional time when it stopped being funny. Like when the lady who owned the local bar - it being the only one around, she had more congregants than all the town's churches combined - was stymied in her attempt to build an asphalt batch plant on her back 40, which just happened to be smack dab in the center - such as it was - of town and next door to the high school. Not only did she shut down the bar for the day, leaving an entire community bereft and adrift, but rampaged around town with her gun muttering dark threats about anyone and everyone who might cross her.

Nobody did, and as everyone hastened to point out, she was a good old girl about 99% of the time. Just had her tetchy spells every now and again. Or the town's logging supplies baron, who despite having strong and not always well thought out views on everything, especially when it came to the desirability of cutting down trees, was an incredibly generous and community-minded fellow. Hell, he once tossed $20 in my tip basket when I was playing piano at a local restaurant, and as those of you who've heard me play can attest, that's real charity in action.

But he was also the one who spearheaded the campaign that was to briefly make Laytonville an object of international mockery when he tried to have Dr. Seuss' The Lorax removed from the elementary school reading list because it allegedly painted loggers in an uncomplimentary light. The town meeting that ensued was like having the Republican and Democratic conventions conducted simultaneously in the same rec room.

Sarah Palin would be right at home in Laytonville, and if the town should ever grow big enough to have a mayor, she'd be elected in a landslide, because not only does she share the views of the local matriarchs and patriarchs, she's a heck of a lot better looking. And if I still lived there, I'd give her a good-natured ribbing from time to time, but otherwise would probably get along with her just fine.

But if you were to propose to me that she, or any of the other colorful local characters were the second most qualified person to be President of the United States, I'd assume you'd gone clear out of your ever-loving mind. And yet, this is essentially what John McCain has just said to the country. Okay, what he's really saying is, "I've made a cold-blooded calculation that nominating this woman will give me the best chance of winning the election, and if I should croak and leave the rest of you stuck with her as President, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles," which shouldn't be too shocking coming from a politician whose primary, if not sole purpose in life is to win elections and wield power.

Only trouble is that McCain has constructed an entire career out of pretending NOT to be that kind of politician, only to blow that carefully crafted image to smithereens at the final hurdle. It's hard to imagine that six months ago, when I was more concerned about what I saw as the Democrats' overly leftist tendencies, I could have seen myself voting for him.

His willingness to risk saddling us with a right wing, religious demagogue - he is 72, after all, and not in the best of health - was more than enough to write him off all by itself, but if there were any doubt remaining, his sanctimonious yet deeply and fundamentally dishonest acceptance speech will have put paid to that.

"Change is coming," he declares? Hello, John, you and your party have been in charge for the last eight years and you've succeeded in nearly bankrupting the country. You're going to cut spending and balance the budget? Of course you are, just like you've been doing for the past... oh wait, biggest budget deficits in history, massive increases in public spending... Don't get me wrong; I'd like a tax cut as much as anyone. But as any of you who's ever had a credit card or a mortgage can attest, it's nice to get an increased credit limit, and even nicer to be told you don't have to make any payments for a year or two, but sooner or later you have to start paying off your bills or you go broke.

Not in McCain World, apparently, which is apparently the same la-la land occupied by Bush World, and which is powered by what the first, not quite so incompetent Bush correctly derided as "voodoo economics." Many if not most of our current financial troubles can be traced directly to the Republican policies of the past eight years: the plummeting value of the dollar which has made everything, particularly oil, appear to be far more expensive than it is, is a direct result of Bush attempting to run the country via a series of increasingly dodgy sub-prime loans.

McCain's only strength is, or at least appeared to be, with regard to the war. However you felt about the war at the beginning - I was neutral, perhaps very slightly in favor, but in retrospect think I should have opposed it, at least until such time as we had an administration capable of running it - it's both cowardly and irresponsible to suggest leaving the Iraqis to their own devices now that we've dismantled their country for them. But while Obama has moved toward the center - maybe not quite enough, but at least in the right direction - on this issue, McCain is resorting to cheap appeals to faux-patriotism and hey, did I mention that I was a POW?

That's not to say he doesn't also have some sound and reasoned things to say about how to oppose terrorism and Islamism, but unfortunately, I just don't believe or trust him anymore. I'm also afraid of his legendary temper. It's one thing to go off half-cocked in the Senate, where you've got 99 other Senators to act as a counterweight, but quite another when you've got your finger on the nuclear trigger.

So, blogger comes out in favor of Obama. Not exactly earth-shaking news, though it might come as such to those who for whatever reasons have come to perceive me as some sort of neo-con race-baiting lackey of Fox News and the Michael Savage show. My friend Ben Weasel, a fervent McCain supporter, warns that Obama will be a "disaster," and I'm not so sure of my opinions that I'd deny this was possible. If he's as left wing as he once appeared to be, we could have another Jimmy Carter on our hands, compared to which I'd almost welcome a President Palin. If he's as pragmatic and as reasoned as he's appeared to be lately, we could have another JFK.

Bristol Honey, Would You Do Mummy A Favor And Go Get Knocked Up?

The news that your unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant is not usually greeted with unalloyed delight, especially when you're a politician running for office on a platform of fundamentalist Christianity and traditional family values. But Bristol Palin's just-announced pregnancy could be, if you'll pardon the expression, a godsend, as it would appear to put paid to the weekend's rumors that her mother, VP candidate Sarah Palin, faked her own pregnancy to cover up a previous indiscretion on Bristol's part.

If the chronology being put forth by the Palin campaign is correct, it would be a near-impossibility for Bristol, supposedly five months pregnant, to have also been the mother of baby Trig, born in mid-April. Still, there does seem to be something a little strange about this particular family drama, particularly the fact that Governor Sarah was never seen looking notably pregnant and seems to have been barely if at all inconvenienced by giving birth.

Nonetheless, barring further information (which, given the hyperactivity of the interblogs these past couple days, is not at all unlikely), I'll have to conclude that the faked pregnancy story, while a good soap opera or movie premise, is not true, and let Governor Sarah get on with explaining why her much-vaunted executive experience doesn't seem to have come in very handy in constraining her own home-grown teenage pregnancy epidemic. I mean, how does a teenager from an even semi-functional family manage to get knocked up these days (spare me the obvious comments)? Is this the 1950s or something? Or merely a rather stark reminder of what the fundamentalist campaign to bring back the 1950s looks like in real life?

It Didn't Take Long

Something like 24 hours, if that, before rumors about VP candidate Sarah Palin's allegedly faked pregnancy started sweeping across the internet. So far none of the mainstream media seem to be touching it, but unless some substantive evidence comes up to disprove the story, it can't be long before it surfaces.

Supposedly the five-month old baby born with Down Syndrome actually belongs to her teenage daughter, who disappeared from public view during the final five months during Governor Sarah's alleged pregnancy, and photos taken of the governor when she would have been seven months pregnant, seem to reveal little or no evidence of a baby bulge.

There is more supporting evidence (or insinuation, if you prefer): here's just a couple of the thousands of blog entries that have already popped up on the subject: Fame Crawler and the Daily Kos.

What are the chances of it being true, and if so, what effect is it likely to have on the campaign? Well, if it's not true, it should be fairly easy to put paid to the rumors with DNA evidence and/or testimony from the attending physician, though the Palin campaign might shrink from dignifying the allegations by responding to them at all. If there is anything to it, well, it might or might not derail her campaign. Think, for example, of all the cocaine-snorting charges hurled at George Bush during the 2000 election: while they provided further ammunition for Bush-haters, they didn't seem to deter his fans to any great degree.

And while Palin could be attacked on family-values and hypocrisy grounds - if she can't even keep her 16-year-old daughter on the straight and narrow, where does she come off trying to lay down fundamentalist anti-abortion policy for every woman in the land? - she could also win some sympathy votes. Most families at one time or another have had some sort of secret scandal, and while the Palin story, should it be true, is a bit more Southern, er, Northern Gothic than most, quite a few parents might see an element of nobility in a mother going to such lengths to protect her daughter's reputation and future. If, on the other hand, it can be spun as Governor Palin's attempt to protect her own reputation and future... Well, obviously it can go either way. In any event, the "official" campaign of 2008 seems to be getting off the sort of whiz-bang start that may not have been seen since the days of "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" (Grover Cleveland, 1884). Good news for the media and American Government teachers trying to elicit interest from bored teenagers; maybe not so good for those hoping for a sober and dignified discussion of the issues. Either way, I suspect it's going to be the most interesting election we've had in a long time.

(Not So) Beautiful Losers

Up until Obama gave his acceptance speech Thursday night, I'd been mentally composing a diatribe about how the Democrats seemed to place more of a premium on looking good in defeat than on actually gaining and wielding power. You're familiar with the syndrome, I'm sure, especially if you live in or near one of our latte-sipping capitals: people looking up from their copy of the Times or the New Yorker to deliver a pursed-lip sneer at "that idiot Bush" or "those red state morons" when in fact they are more interested in validating their own cultural and moral superiority than in actually doing the hardscrabble work necessary to effect an actual change in the way government works (or, as increasingly seems to be the case, fails to).

We saw Al Gore and John Kerry in turn throw away what should have been easy victories because of their petulant "I can do it myself, Mommy" refusal to wield the slightly tacky but still powerful weapon that was Bill Clinton, and by their slightly wonky, cerebrally aloof manner that alienated millions of potential Democratic voters who might have sensed that George W. Bush had little if anything in common with their interests, but nonetheless related to him because he came across like a normal human being instead of a computer-generated composite candidate.

I'm still concerned that Obama will manage to blow the election in a not dissimilar manner, even though - or perhaps because - he comes across as being at least twice as smart and ten times more eloquent than the disastrous Gore-Kerry diumvirate. Even though I don't particularly care for Hillary Clinton, I was astounded when Obama chose, with all due respect, an old hack like Joe Biden as his VP candidate when putting Hillary on the ticket would have virtually guaranteed him victory in November. That plus a summer of waffling and a few too many platitudes had me convinced that we had yet another presidential contender who was more concerned about looking good in defeat than doing what it took to win.

Obama's rousing football stadium performance went some way toward allaying my concerns, though I in no way thought it the masterpiece of oratory that the MSNBC and CNN talking heads seem to think it was. Are none of them old enough to have seen a Kennedy speech, I wondered (that's JFK, not Bobby, who in my opinion suffered from Obama-itis himself)? My criterion: if I'm watching something on TV, be it a political speech, a movie, a football game, whatever, and find myself gradually starting to poke around on the internet instead of paying full attention, then something's lacking. Granted, when as a young boy I listened to Kennedy speak, he didn't have to compete with the internet or much else in that pre-multimedia age. But what made his rhetoric so riveting was the way he could artfully blend the profound and the profane, mixing high concept political philosophy with down and dirty ward politics. Obama comes closer to that level of discourse than any politician I've seen since the days of JFK, but he's not there yet, and bear in mind that Kennedy barely won the election (some say it was just as surely stolen as was Bush's 2000 triumph) against an opponent considerably less attractive (though perhaps with a bit more substance) than John McCain.

Still, the Obama show was as impressive a spectacle as anyone has seen in American politics in recent memory, if ever, and if they'd gone whole hog and hired the Chinese architects of the Olympics opening ceremony to orchestrate it, the election might have been all wrapped up by Friday morning. Until, that is, wily John McCain took advantage of Obama's nixing-Hillary blunder to slip a fast one past the Democrats by nominating a VP out of far right field and instantly wipe about 90% of the orgy of wasn't-Obama-wonderful musings right off the media map.

True to form, Democrats laughed and sneered at the seemingly oddball choice of Sarah Palin, and you can't entirely blame them. While Obama's rally offered at least a whiff of Triumph Of The Will, McCain's unveiling of Palin was pure, unabashed Babbitry. To see McCain awkwardly pawing at the undeniably milfish governor was a bit like nervously watching grandpa at a wedding when he's had more than his customary glass of wine and has possibly forgotten to take his meds: part cringeworthy, part appalled fascination at the prospect of what he might say or do next.

But Palin herself, though far to the right of mainstream America, has a powerful presence that, even if it only energizes the previously uninspired or disenchanted evangelicals, is going to considerably strengthen the McCain ticket. Even though I strongly disagree with her on the great majority of issues, I found her very likable, and imagine she would be a heck of a lot more fun to hang out with than Joe Biden or perhaps even Obama himself. George Bush won his elections, despite also being ideologically out of step with most Americans, on similar grounds, even though his clownish wisecracks and self-deprecating humor never completely disguised the bullying frat boy that was also a part of his persona. Unless Palin does or says something incredibly stupid in the coming campaign (or if the thousands of researchers and bloggers already engaged in frantic archeological excavations of her entire life and career come up with some real scandal), she'll be a more formidable candidate than Bush ever was, to the point where Republican partisans might start to wonder why McCain is heading the ticket instead of her.

The election is still Obama's to lose, but none of this drama would have had to happen if he'd taken the obvious and common sense step of appointing Hillary as his running mate. Hey, JFK by all accounts could barely stand Lyndon Johnson, but he knew that all his high-faluting ideas about New Frontiers and torches being passed to a new generation would amount to zilch if he didn't first accomplish the task of winning the election. I'm not advocating an all-out Macchiavellian approach here, just a little old-fashioned pragmatism. Hell, I don't even know if Obama would turn out to be a great Kennedy-esque President, or a disastrous Carter-esque one (at this point I'd settle, albeit reluctantly, for a reprise of Bill Clinton), but in light of the crises and challenges facing the world today, I think taking a chance on Obama seems immeasurably more appealing than continuing with the dreary rendezvous with catastrophe that the Bush interregnum has proved to be. Now it just remains to be seen whether Obama wants it bad enough to make it happen.