Meghan McCain is not my hero

But when she's right, she's right:

"Christine O'Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how [little] experience you have.

"It scares me for a lot of reasons, and I just know in my group of friends, it just turns people off, because she's seen as a nutjob."

That's what she said yesterday on ABC's "This Week." It's clear that Meghan McCain's got bigger (and more independent) balls than does Karl Rove, who last month tried to say the same thing before clamming up and scurrying back to the partisan fringe.

You go, girl.

Bums out, bimbos in?

Former Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth is challenging Sen. John McCain for the U.S. Senate seat that McCain has held since 1987.

Although I have no dog in this Republican primary fight, I do believe that incumbent McCain a) has out-served his usefulness and b) has become the equivalent of an antenna flag, a sort of PINO (principled in name only).

Hayworth, however, represents the worst kind of alternative. A darling of Faux News and other right-fringe media, he refers to himself as "The Consistent Conservative." Truth is, the only thing he does consistently is act like a bimbo.

Anyone familiar with Hayworth knows that. Defying convention -- run to the base in the primary, run to the center in the general -- McCain is appealing to independents and (for example) making light of Hayworth's reputation as a "birther."

To that end, a group calling itself "Friends of John McCain" has released this ad:



McCain, I predict, will distance himself from the spot, which takes a bit too long to make its points, the moment he realizes that he needs every wingnut he can get. He shouldn't, but he probably will.

If Hayworth ends up winning (perish the thought) it'd be a big victory for Nutjob Nation. And that easily could happen -- I mean, fellow Bimbo Brigade member Scott Brown won recently in Massachusetts and Arizona's 5th District sent Hayworth to Washington six times.

I agree that it's high time to till the political soil and plant a new crop of citizens who truly represent the interests of the People. But with the sprouting of figures like Palin, Brown and Hayworth, it looks like we're sowing some damned ugly weeds.

Same shoe, other foot

Here, presented without preamble, is some of what Rep. Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, said during an interview last week:

"The Tea Party people are kind of, without robes and hoods, they have really shown a very hardcore angry side of America that is against any type of diversity. And we saw opposition to African Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn't just, you know, a clone of George Wallace's fan club. And I'm afraid they've taken over the Republican Party."

"I think [the GOP is] afraid of it. When I saw John McCain stand behind Sarah Palin, he looked more like a captured soldier in North Vietnam than he did a United States Senator. It was very sad, and I tell you, his wife, Cindy, she was about ready to just drop dead. I mean, Sarah Palin dressed like Elvis in the comeback event in Hawaii."

See, extremism and red-meat rhetoric can come from the Left as well as the Right.

Cohen observes what I observe. He colorfully (and quite correctly) points out the presence of a hostile lunatic fringe within the anti-Obama crowd. He's dead-on about McCain bowing to Elvis and the Republican Party's fear of a backward, mindless minority.

When he demeans a Navy pilot's captivity or draws parallels between the Tea Party and the Ku Klux Klan or George Wallace, however, he shows himself to be just as irrational as right-wingers who cry "Socialism!" every time a hat hits the ground.

Steve Cohen is nothing more than an ignorant ideologue of a different stripe.

The rumpled Right probably should dismiss his comments as idiotic and leave it at that -- but no, they're indignant as hell, calling it "hate speech."

Hate speech? This from a political movement that tolerates caricatures of the 44th president as Adolf Hitler or a monkey?

Pull-eeze.

Oh, I see how it is -- it's free speech when I say it, but it's hate speech when it comes from my political adversary.

As if we needed any more evidence that partisans and ideologues will be the death of the Revolution, there it is.

Deemed duped

The Democrats are adept at squandering every advantage, going so far as to eat their young -- that's not exactly a news flash -- but I've also noticed that the Republicans are especially good at bleeding off credibility they can't spare.

Let's review.

Sen. John McCain, while campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly criticized Democratic Party frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama for being unacceptably young and inexperienced -- and then he chose Caribou Barbie as his vice-presidential running mate.

Pfft.

Speaking of the former Mayor of Wasilla, during a public appearance in which she sneered about Pres. Obama's use of a TelePrompTer, we caught her peeking at crib notes scribbled on the palm of her hand.

Pfft.

And now the minority party is shame-shaming the Dems for using something called "deem and pass" -- a procedural maneuver that relieves legislators of the burden of casting yea-nay votes on controversial measures -- to aid passage of health-care reform. Looking past Republicans' camera-ready displays of righteous populism, however, we see that the GOP has, over the years, employed "deeming" nearly three times as often as Democrats have.

Pfft.

All this from the party that lost one election and now deems the result "tyranny."

Sssssss...

Republicans deploy their smoke screens daily, intent on distracting the People from substantive issues -- and yet so many of us buy what they're selling, the whole vaporous bill of goods.

Look, I don't respect any elected official who dives for cover at the first sign of political difficulty, but that's not the point here -- it's not even part of the point. If it were, we'd get just as riled if deeming were used to help pass, say, gun-rights legislation.

You know damned well we wouldn't. Whatever it takes, right?

When distractions are introduced into a debate, both the message and the messenger lose credibility. And when we adopt an irrelevant party line to validate our own position, we've been had.

We admit to being the soft-headed fools they think we are.

The way I see it, the only plausible explanation for Republicans constantly trying to divert our attention with chaff like "scheme and deem" and "socialized medicine" is that they don't have enough juice to win on substance -- and that's no news flash, either.

It's not about deeming. The process isn't corrupt -- the messengers are corrupt and, whenever we allow them to dupe us, so are we.

All around & back again

Yesterday afternoon our town's police nabbed, named and charged an 18-year-old kid in connection with the arson and break-ins at the high school. Reportedly he had a younger accomplice, a student at the school, who faces expulsion as well as criminal charges.

The rash of bomb threats, according to media accounts, was perpetrated by two others, also current students, both girls. They haven't been named and, as juveniles, won't be.

Fry 'em all, dammit. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) We plan go to tonight's town meeting anyway, even though this episode presumably has come to a close.

After catching local TV news coverage of those happenings, I watched Pres. Barack Obama field questions from lawmakers and economists at the end of yesterday's "fiscal responsibility summit." My first reaction was that it's refreshing to have an engaged, articulate President who displays an IQ above the freezing point of water.

He also had the confidence to grant the floor first to Sen. John McCain, who probably meant to challenge (respectfully) the President's agenda, but who ended up practically endorsing the election results:

"Your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One. I don't think there is any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money."

Now there's a guy with a big ol' basketful of symbols and a severe shortage of substance -- I mean, a third-grader could come up with a "more graphic demonstration" of government waste. Had McCain won in November, I can imagine him suggesting that homeowners could fend off foreclosure by riding bicycles, turning off lights and taking short showers.

Despite my staunch opposition to some of Pres. Obama's policies, it's clear to me that the American electorate (such as it is) chose the more able leader.

It could be worse, of course -- much worse, and I'm not talking about John McCain. This is what his former running mate said in a recent interview:

"Obviously something big took place in the media. We’re going to seek and we're going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin's because of what it is that she represents. Very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with, this go around."

Another Republican trying to pass off symbols as substance. Another elected official blaming the big, bad media for political failure and personal incompetence -- a sure sign, as Jack Cafferty said last week of Sen. Roland Burris, that "you're out of bullets."

A few simple-minded conservatives can't help singing right along with Palin, whining that there was no justification for turning her into a political piñata -- and I say that the media, collectively, actually short-armed its coverage. She deserved far more scrutiny and parody than she got, but we can be thankful, at least, that this vacuous vamp was exposed in plenty of time to sabotage the ticket.

I've had it up to here with symbols. I'm tired of hearing that so-and-so's speech was "short on details" when the loyal opposition has nothing substantive or credible to offer. Tossing rotten chestnuts and clinging to infected ideologies, regardless of source or subject, won't get the job done.

Just ask Americans who followed experts' advice to "stay in the market" -- and whose retirement savings now are worth less than 50 cents for every dollar invested 16 months ago. Even those with 12-year-old money are right back where they started, or worse.

If "free trade is fair trade," then someone needs to give me a better explanation of how that philosophy squares with our crushing trade deficit. If wholesale deregulation is so bloody brilliant, then how did our markets' biggest players (and more every day) end up in the toilet? If government handouts to individual citizens are profane but government bailouts for failed corporations are sacred, please tell me again -- exactly which brand of capitalist whimsy is that?

If organized labor is committed to "improving the lives of working men and women," just how are those lives improved when plants close and jobs evaporate, due in large part to unions' terminal greed? And with a national landscape that includes food lines in Wilmington, Ohio and 24% graduation rates in Detroit, how can any politician or captain of industry have the unmitigated balls to whine, to pander, to traffic in symbols?

The words of Henry David Thoreau:

"No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

"For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

"In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

"Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. 'Tell the tailors,' said he, 'to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.'

"His companion's prayer is forgotten."

Policy differences aside, I see this President as one our nation's "sane moments" -- which means, by intelligent contrast, that purely partisan or contrarian opposition is implicitly insane. To be sure, anything resembling unquestioning, categorical support of the administration's agenda is likewise addled.

I call bullshit on make-believe political rhetoric that gives short shrift to the facts, the case that is. I don't care if it comes from McCain or Obama, Schumer or Gramm, Limbaugh or Franken. It's time for The People to set fire to these folks' carefully tended ideological gardens -- along with our own -- and drag the powerful into our world.

First, however, we must start telling the truth about what we see -- if we don't, we're no better than they are.

It's Election Day

Today, December 15th, is the day that Barack Obama will be elected the 44th President of the United States.

As set forth in the Constitution, when we went to the polls on November 4th, we chose our states' electors. Today those electors will cast their (ideally representative) votes for President and Vice President.

There's no suspense here, of course. For the record, I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of holding indirect elections in the modern age, nor will I discuss some states' punishment of so-called "faithless electors."

This is how Americans choose a president. Citizens are best served by examining our own role in the process -- engage, register, turn out, vote, repeat.

According to statistics compiled and reported by Michael McDonald of George Mason University, voter turnout on November 4th was 61.6%, the highest national rate since 1968. State-by-state, rates ranged from just over half of eligible voters to almost 78%.

Kudos to the civic-minded citizens of Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Maine. Shame on the slackers in West Virginia, Hawaii, Utah, Texas and Arkansas. Here in Ohio, my neighbors and I beat the national turnout rate, with 66.9% of us going to the polls.

The numbers are interesting, mildly encouraging and, for McCain-Palin supporters especially, instructive. The GOP, however, doesn't seem to be paying attention.

Yesterday the Republican National Committee released a YouTube video entitled "Questions Remain." Reprising the guilt-by-association approach that sealed its fate in November, the RNC now attempts to link President-elect Obama to disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Questions remain? Sure -- just not the ones that Republicans are asking.

Maybe party leaders should ask themselves why they insist on appealing to a base that didn't (and couldn't) deliver enough votes to prevent a thumping six weeks ago. Perhaps it'd be worth wondering why the marginal, mind-numbing Sarah Palin, whose nomination contributed greatly to the ticket's doom, continues to be considered a rising star in a party that should be moving in the opposite direction.

Is Mort Kondracke right?

"How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda. ...Step One is to fire Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP."

Is the party willing to quicken its pace to keep up with a changing electorate? Might it be politically more productive to focus attention where the people live, not merely where 1980s-era votes are assured? Is the GOP capable of speaking to the interests of independent Americans, on whom its success depends?

And finally (for now), isn't it just a wee bit late to launch an attack ad?

Personally, I don't believe that the party has the self-awareness to conduct a proper interrogation -- it's been breathing its own fumes for far too long. Denial, like Kool-Aid, runs deep in the elephants' habitat.

Questions do, indeed, remain. Until Republicans ask (and answer) the hard questions, they're riding the express train to the political wilderness.

Make it stop

The Sarah Palin Denial Tour got underway last Tuesday night, when she arrived at the sparsely attended election-night event toting her own concession speech. Talk about a diva.

Typical of Sen. John McCain's ill-qualified pick, she demonstrated once again that she can't breathe the air at that level. Fortunately, Sen. McCain's staff, in a rare fit of common sense, ordered The Alaska Millstone to be seen and not heard.

Once aboard the plane back to Anchorage, however, Gov. Palin unleashed herself on us and hasn't stopped since. Unfettered by professional counsel, America's most famous urchin has been free to speak her, um, mind. Right now she's in Miami, splitting time between a Republican governors' conference and a gross, self-centered media tour.

I have no idea what she's contributing to the former, but in what I've seen of the latter, this is the same clucking, clueless candidate who laid a clutch of eggs in Katie Couric's lap. When she's not speaking in non sequitur, she's bouncing between expressing lip-service support of the President-elect and inexplicably resurrecting his "associations" to Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.

Memo to the Governor: The campaign is over. You lost the election. Either show some class, or go away.

Gov. Palin's public twitching ceased to be shocking months ago -- now I'm actually embarrassed for her, along with her party and her country. If she doesn't have the decency to leave the national stage voluntarily, some GOP enforcer needs to drag her back behind the curtain. Remember, people: Country First.

She'll have plenty of time between now and 2012 to get ready for her next run. And shocking as it may be to regular readers of this blog, I enthusiastically support her candidacy -- I sincerely believe she can show us that she's fit for office.

In fact, I've even designed her campaign's first bumper stickers. I mean, it's never too early to get the ball rolling.


Footnote: During the campaign, Gov. Palin's Secret Service code name was "Denali" -- an appropriate nod to The Last Frontier and, coincidentally or not, an anagram for "denial."

Chestnuts & myths

Over the course of the campaign and since the election, I've heard some pretty bizarre statements accepted as fact -- some amusing, some disturbing, most the result of Kool-Aid consumption.

'This election marks the end of racism in America.'
Let's get this out of the way, right up front: Racist hatred is alive and well in America. The election of a black president, for all its historic cachet, doesn't -- and can't -- put an end to human ignorance.

When I hear my wife talk about some of her customers referring to "President N****r," when I see one of my spawns' teenage friends glorifying Nazi genocide on his MySpace site, when I read page after arrogant page of not-so-veiled white-supremacy ramblings in Internet forums, I know better.

The result of last Tuesday's presidential election is a milepost, not a destination. The way it was achieved can serve as a model for Americans of all races, but the gains can't be sustained without commitment.

Most important, the election of Barack Obama is a "no excuses" moment, one that can change the tone of our national conversation about race. With effort and example it will, I hope, drive racism further toward the fringes of our society -- where evil belongs.

'Barack Obama isn't my president.'
Hearing "President-elect Obama" may be like fingernails on chalkboard for those who didn't want him to win -- but this was a presidential election, not a membership drive.

Some will resist the transition from opposing his candidacy to respecting the office he'll hold, but it's never too early to get over it. Now, in fact, would be a good time to start.

Speaking out in thoughtful opposition to specific policies, when warranted, is in the best interest of our nation -- praying for the total failure of the Obama presidency is not. We'd best act like we know the difference.

'Barack Obama isn't my Commander-in-Chief.'
Unless you're a member of our military forces, no, he's not -- and neither is George W. Bush. The President of the United States isn't Commander-in-Chief of American civilians. I have no idea how stuff like this gets started.

'The Republican Party must become more conservative.'
That might be true, if only the GOP could remember the meaning of "conservative": less government, civic responsibility, civil liberties and power in the hands of The People.

Legislating socialized capitalism is inconsistent with American conservatism. Regulating who may and may not marry is a manifestation of big government, as is interfering in citizens' personal reproductive choices and imposing moral restrictions on scientific research. Belittling community service is a painful departure from advocating the most fundamental principle of an engaged citizenry. Wielding love-of-country as a political bludgeon doesn't serve The People -- it divides and betrays us.

The conservative "brand" has been corrupted by moralizing that's irrelevant to governing. Today's faux conservatism is the bastard child of evangelical Christianity and misguided patriotism, and last week it was assigned a seat perilously close to the margins of American politics.

The People have spoken. We'll see if the GOP was listening.

'Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican Party.'
Can you even imagine? Let's hope she's not -- if she is, we're all in deep, deep trouble.

'Joe the Plumber is the future of the Republican Party.'
The GOP's use of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was perhaps the most glaring example of how out-of-touch the party is with the American electorate.

Ostensibly, Republicans held up "Joe the Plumber" as Everyman, hoping to attract votes-of-affinity from working-class Americans. And it might've been a good play -- 25 years ago, when Everyman looked more like Joe. The GOP showed itself to be shamefully ignorant of how much our society has changed.

'Barack Obama's election is a win for liberals.'
This canard is yet another sign that Republicans and conservatives have drifted off-course -- way off. They pitch every election, every issue, as a battle against liberals, when it's really a fight for moderates.

Moderates and independents, which dominate the electorate, chose Barack Obama and rejected the alternative. Contentions to the contrary simply aren't credible.

'The media are in the tank for Barack Obama.'
Coverage of the Obama campaign was, in general, more favorable than coverage of the McCain campaign -- I won't dispute that, because I haven't seen an objective analysis that concludes otherwise.

That proves a liberal media bias, right?

Not necessarily.

First of all, the Obama Story was more compelling to most Americans than the McCain Story -- and the media are in the storytelling business, not the news business. And hard as it may be for some to accept, Barack Obama got better press because he ran a better campaign.

He generated more positive stories because his opponent insisted on running a more negative campaign. Characterizations of the Democrat as "steady" and the Republican as "erratic" were reflections of the candidates' public conduct, not the result of bias. We saw more of McCain-Palin's statements exposed as false or hyperbolic because, according to independent analysis, Obama-Biden didn't take as many liberties with the facts.

Blaming the media for their coverage of McCain-Palin's ineptitude is like blaming the beer for a DUI charge.

Conservatives also might want to consider an attitude adjustment -- unrelenting antagonism only perpetuates an adversarial relationship with the press. Benjamin Franklin advised against seeking a quarrel with "a man who buys his ink by the barrel," and yet conservatives wonder why they can't get "fair and balanced" coverage without creating their own provincial outlets.

The media are today's public square, at once the channel for and the source of free speech. Conservatives will be better served if they stop seeking attention by setting fire to the green.

Tuesday, by the numbers

Opinions vary on the value of exit polls. I'm no expert in statistical analysis, but I believe that these polls offer an interesting window on why voters made the choices they did, and I want to highlight just a few points.

Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain appear to have done equally well with their respective partisans, so at first glance this would appear to be a wash. In terms of votes, however, Sen. Obama clearly won this battle -- 89% of 39% trumps 90% of 32%.

Independents, as usual, were the key, and Sen. Obama won this group by a large margin. By bringing home loyal Democrats and a majority of independents, he basically cruised to a popular-vote victory.

Looking at ideology gives us another hint at why the Democratic nominee won on Tuesday.

As expected, Sen. Obama dominated the liberal bloc and, notably, he out-polled Sen. McCain among all-important moderates by a 3-to-2 margin.

What I find especially significant is that Sen. Obama managed to pull 20% of self-described conservatives -- that's a stunner, at least to me. It tells me that Sen. McCain's attempt to create a liberal-conservative contrast was an abysmal failure, and it speaks volumes about the withering brand of the Republican Party.

Given the critical importance of Second Amendment rights, I also wanted to find out how gun owners voted on Tuesday.

Before judging these numbers, I decided to look at the 2000 Bush-Gore exit polls for some context. What I found surprised me.

In 2000, 48% of those surveyed lived in a gun-owning household, a number that dropped to 42% this year. Result: The NRA (et al) lost 12.5% of its voice at the polls in 2008, despite unprecedented efforts to convince gun owners that Sen. Obama would be the most anti-guns president in American history.

What's more, while gun-owning households split virtually the same way in 2008 as they did in 2000, no-guns households gained considerable ground, from 58%-39% for Gore-Lieberman to 65%-33% for Obama-Biden.

Do the math -- the Democratic candidate's margin among no-guns households ballooned from 19% to a whopping 32%, even without considering the losses suffered by gun owners.

If that's not handwriting on the wall, I don't know what is. We have much work to do.

Here we stand

Today, the sun rose on a different America. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on where one stands.

For the incurably simple-minded, this presidential election has ushered-in TEOTWAWKI. They insist that Obama-Biden will be the immediate ruination of our nation, labeling anyone who didn't vote for McCain-Palin stupid, un-American and worse.

My first reaction to that kind of ignorance is that I can't imagine anything so stupid and un-American as insulting the will of The People.

What's lost on these folks is that the fear-and-loathing tactic played a large part in costing McCain-Palin the election -- at the very least, it didn't work. It certainly didn't earn my vote yesterday, and it won't win my support now.

Passionate devotees of President-elect Barack Obama, on the other hand, see yesterday's victory as nothing short of complete salvation, the righting of everything that's wrong with America. They're being just as irrational as their glass-empty counterparts on the right, of course. The reality of presiding over an entire nation will set in soon enough.

No, the truth lies somewhere in between. Both at its best and at its worst, Obama-Biden is a mixed bag.

This morning, the Republican Party must begin to come to grips with the fundamental reason why it lost the presidency and considerable legislative ground: It got caught up in fighting the last political war. Now the party's challenge is to gain a foothold on the new American landscape and fight like hell on that ground, not in some conservative fantasy that no longer exists.

Of greatest concern to me is the threat that the next administration -- along with a like-minded Congress and two or more Supreme Court appointments -- poses to individual citizens' rights under the Second Amendment. The fractious RKBA community doesn't have a second to waste assembling its trademark circular firing squad. Obama-Biden won, in a walk, and it is what it is. We fight where we stand.

And fight we will. Μολὼν λαβέ.

In closing, two thoughts. Speaking as a gray-haired white guy who, as a child, saw firsthand racist evil in the segregated South of the 1960s, I share the pride and joy of every American who celebrates the historic nature of what Barack Obama has accomplished.

And finally, to every American voter who made independent, informed choices -- irrespective of what those choices were -- you have my respect. Sheep, be they red or blue, do not.

We, The People, go forward from here.

Awake to history

The People have spoken. For better or worse, the echo of our collective democratic voice will ring for generations.

It's a night thick with history, and countless others will write about it with more eloquence and insight than I ever could. I can speak only in my voice, from my perspective.

While I didn't support Sen. Barack Obama, I have the highest respect for his victory. My concerns about the policies he advocates are very real now, but I won't hesitate to assert that Americans elected the better leader.

Sen. John McCain ran a gallant campaign but ultimately a bumbling one. Now the Republican Party has four years to embrace change -- not the cliché campaign slogan, but the new American landscape it can no longer deny exists.

The candidates' concession and acceptance speeches provided a final contrast. In defeat, Sen. McCain spoke to a less-than-capacity crowd of 1,500 gathered on the lawn outside an Arizona hotel. Despite the nominee's sincerity, followers booed his gracious acknowledgment of Sen. Obama and Sen. Joe Biden -- and some even jeered his expression of gratitude to running mate Gov. Sarah Palin.

Sen. Obama held his victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park, delivering measured remarks to an estimated 200,000 people. When he congratulated Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin on their campaign, his supporters cheered.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a clue. It's not just the expected difference between winning and losing -- it's the difference between what worked and what failed, one campaign that set its tone at the top and another that never found its voice.

To wrap up this post, I'll share something I observed in my community this evening. Instead of watching wall-to-wall election-night coverage, my wife and I got haircuts (seriously) at a local shop owned by a friend of ours. We left the house about 15 minutes after the polls closed and returned around 9:30pm, traveling to and from on an always-busy four-lane thoroughfare.

We had the road to ourselves -- it was eerie, like driving at 3am on a Sunday morning. In a state that went for Obama-Biden and a county that swung for McCain-Palin, it seemed that everyone but us was home watching the returns come in.

American history was made tonight, and no one wanted to miss a minute of it. Regardless of my personal political leanings, I'm glad I was alive to see it.

Fatigue, contrast & perspective

With the two dominant parties' presidential candidates blitzing the national media with ads and appearances, I can't imagine an American who won't be glad to see this campaign end.

Unless you live in a hotly contested state, however -- like here in Ohio, or in Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri and arguably a few others -- you won't be as glad as I'll be.

I'm a card-carrying political junkie, but enough already.

My answering machine has recorded an average of six "robo-calls" each and every day for the past ten days. I've heard the canned voices of both presidential nominees and both running mates, as well as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hank Williams, Jr. and other luminaries. I can find the DELETE button in the dark.

And then there are the rallies.

On Friday, Sen. John McCain, joined by Gov. Schwarzenegger, exhorted his followers at Nationwide Arena in Columbus. Pres. George W. Bush had drawn a capacity crowd of 20,000 to a similar rally at the same venue four years ago, but Sen. McCain managed to pull fewer than half that number. Empty sections of the hall were hidden by flags, banners and huge black curtains, giving the impression that it was a standing-room-only crowd. It wasn't.

Enthusiastic partisans roared as Gov. Schwarzenegger cracked wise about Sen. Barack Obama's scrawny physique and they gobbled up Sen. McCain's familiar stump speech, but by all accounts the mood was as strained as the crowd was small.

Yesterday Sen. Obama made what we expect to be his final campaign appearance in Columbus. The rally, held on the grounds of the Ohio State Capitol, attracted an estimated 60,000 people -- that on the same day that the Democratic nominee drew a crowd of 80,000 to a lakefront mall in Cleveland.

I'm sure that Sen. McCain and his people are doing the best they can, but the difference between a condensed event in a hockey arena and a sea of humanity on the best day of Indian Summer is striking.

Maybe McCain-Palin supporters just aren't the rallying kind. Perhaps most Republicans were busy escorting their spawns on trick-or-treat night. In any case, we won't know 'til Wednesday morning whether what we've seen at these events will be reflected at the ballot box, but if I were working the Republican campaign, I'd be in therapy.

When all is said and done, though, rallies and robo-calls are just sideshows in this political circus -- the main attraction, the point of this expensive exercise, is the voting.

Ohio has allowed its citizens to vote early, the first time that's been possible in a presidential election year. As we've seen all across the country, lines have been long -- at one big polling place in Columbus yesterday, for example, the wait was reported to be six hours.

As long as election officials are able to preserve the integrity of the process, I'm all in favor of expanding opportunities for citizens to register and vote -- motor-voter, absentee ballots, voting early and the like.

It's not about ensuring that everyone votes. It's about making it possible for every American who wants to vote to have a reasonable chance to exercise their privilege.

Ours is an imperfect system and always will be, and the early-voting phenomenon has highlighted its flaws. What's unacceptable to me, however, is the whining I hear about having to wait in line to vote. In this point-and-click, instant-gratification society of ours, anyone who bitches about the inconvenience of their freedom should be introduced to Iraqis willing to risk their very lives to dip a digit into a bottle of purple ink.

We're Americans, fortunate and free. Tomorrow we vote.

Decided

In March, I looked forward to "a national conversation between Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain." I knew that these two very different candidates would present the American electorate with a clear choice, and I was optimistic that they'd conduct their campaigns with more decency than we've seen in recent years.

I got the matchup I wanted, but my optimism appears to have been a bit cockeyed.

While I favored Sen. Barack Obama's nomination, I was never destined to cast a general-election vote for him. Still, his campaign has been superior to his opponent's in every way that matters: tactics and strategy, messages and media, principle and leadership. The judgment and steady temperament he's demonstrated are far better suited to high office than the GOP nominee's long legislative résumé and erratic behavior.

None of that allays my very real concerns about an Obama presidency, but the Democratic nominee has earned my respect. His policies and political philosophy simply prevent him from earning my vote.

Sen. McCain has been, to put it mildly, a disappointment, throwing his honor and the last of his dignity on the pyre of his candidacy. After vowing to run a respectful campaign and to quash irrelevant attacks on his opponent, he's allowed a disturbing and dangerous tone to run wild for months. Sure, he tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle a few weeks ago, but he turned it loose again when his campaign started hemorrhaging support from the noisy right.

He's revealed gross cynicism, displayed questionable temperament, exercised shockingly poor judgment and generally has shown me that he's not fit to lead. Worst of all, he chose a running mate who herself is neither fit nor qualified.

Along the way, Sen. McCain lost his voice, along with my trust, my respect and my vote.

Incidentally, I'm not the least bit swayed by arm-twisters demanding that I vote for McCain-Palin, else I be in-league with gun grabbers and entitlement addicts. Bullshit -- that sort of "you're with the terrorists" fear mongering is a sheepish endorsement of the status quo.

Obama-Biden surely would take us farther away from what's best for our country, but it'd be naive of me to view McCain-Palin as some sort of inoculant against assaults on our Second Amendment rights, exploding entitlements and socialized capitalism. Whichever wins, we'll be fighting the same battles with our bloated government.

The end of preventing an Obama-Biden victory doesn't justify my voting for a politically, ethically and intellectually corrupt ticket -- but just as I won't cast that token defensive vote, I won't cast a vote out of protest, either. This isn't about indignation.

It's about my country. It's about my kids.

Come Wednesday morning, I'll look my spawns in the eye and tell them that my vote stood for the same things I stand for. The values that I drum into their teenage heads will ring true. The next time they hear me say that power belongs to The People and that the Constitution still means something, they'll know that there's honor in backing up their words with actions, even when those actions are unpopular.

The two-party monopoly has failed our nation. I've know that for years and, for once, I'm not going to blink on Election Day. This time I won't make a reflexive choice, another cowardly capitulation to a lesser evil that takes America farther down the same self-destructive road.

That's why on Tuesday I'll cast one independent citizen's vote for Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr.

To do otherwise not only would blaspheme my sacred American privilege -- it'd be an insult to the country I'll leave to my children.

And the hits...

"I don't think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. ... Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be...adequate. I can't say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year...well, I hope not...get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested." (Lawrence Eagleburger, Secretary of State under Pres. George H.W. Bush and a supporter of Sen. John McCain, on Gov. Sarah Palin's readiness to assume the presidency in a time of national crisis)

"I have not been convicted. I have a case pending against me, and probably the worse case of prosecutorial...misconduct by the prosecutors that is known. ... I've not been convicted yet." (Sen. Ted Stevens, who was convicted Monday in federal court jury on seven counts of lying on Senate disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in gifts, in a debate yesterday)

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media." (Gov. Sarah Palin, in a radio interview this morning, trying to explain how criticism is a violation of the First Amendment...or maybe she was advocating that the First Amendment be amended to outlaw the free press...or limit free speech, but then...oh, never mind -- just read the excellent salon.com article and weep)

"Wanna talk qualifications? The difference between Sen. Barack Obama and Gov. Sarah Palin is that he's qualified to teach Constitutional Law at the college level and she seems barely qualified to serve as an usher at freshman orientation." (KintlaLake)

A pair of 'toons & a goon

As ordinary Americans hold garage sales to pay their mortgages, it appears that vulnerable Republicans are liquidating their dignity to sustain their desperate campaigns. To call Sen. Elizabeth Dole's ad misleading is neither harsh enough nor satisfactorily accurate -- considering its intent, the ad is an outright, willful lie.

At the end of the spot, the viewer is left with the distinct impression that that the woman's voice proclaiming, "There is no God!" is that of Dole's opponent, Kay Hagan -- and it's not. Ms. Hagan is now suing Sen. Dole for defamation and libel, and while I'm no fan of lawsuits, I hope Ms. Hagan gets whatever she's asking for.

A former colleague of mine worked as a senior adviser to Ms. Dole during her unsuccessful bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, and she once told me that the sputtering Dole campaign "put the fun in dysfunctional."

Clearly, the fun is gone. The dysfunction, judging by Sen. Dole's shameful tactics, is alive and well.

Boo!

We have our October Surprise, such as it is.

Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are bashing the Los Angeles Times for "withholding" a videotape of Sen. Barack Obama attending a 2003 party for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel.

Mr. Khalidi and Sen. Obama were colleagues at the University of Chicago and reportedly are longtime friends, but both publicly have acknowledged their stark disagreement about Israel. The Los Angeles Times, as is its right, is protecting the source of the tape.

Countless independent analyses have reached the same conclusion: At best, McCain-Palin is trying to make something of nothing; at worst, the GOP campaign is engaging in gross misrepresentation of the facts.

No one doubts that McCain-Palin is making a play for skittish Jewish-American voters in battleground Florida -- it's a transparent, Ayers-esque move, born of desperation and consistent with the campaign's dedication to fear mongering over the last week.

Hard to believe, isn't it, that an event that happened five years ago and that the Los Angeles Times wrote about seven months ago suddenly is a big deal?

Oh, the guilt-by-association tactic will work on a handful of shallow-minded voters -- it already has -- but that's just sad commentary on an impressionable electorate. Sadder still, however, is seeing how low Sen. McCain is willing to stoop to scratch out a few votes.

It seems he has nothing else to offer.

In related news, as they say, at a rally today in Defiance, Ohio, Sen. McCain made a point to recognize the presence of Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher.

"Joe's with us today. Joe where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?"

Joe wasn't there.

That moment might well be the hollowest echo of a wretchedly mismanaged campaign.

Understatement

"I thought last night...we had reached the limits of absurdity, in talking yet one more time about Sarah Palin's wardrobe. But tonight I think we even went higher. With 'Joe the Plumber' out there. They have him with John McCain out on the trail -- offering views about Israel. Come on, give us a break." (David Gergen, adviser to four U.S. Presidents, appearing yesterday on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360)

Wednesday bits

Joe for John
Stop the presses -- Toledo's own Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher has formally "endorsed" Sen. John McCain for President.

Since his accidental encounter with Sen. Barack Obama, Mr. Wurzelbacher hasn't yet met a microphone he doesn't love. He's got the conservative GOP talking points down pat, and he's said that he's considering his own run for public office. His world-view seems to be informed exclusively by the voices emanating from the dashboard of his plumbing truck, so naturally he's become a populist darling.

I love the fact that Mr. Wurzelbacher is seizing his moment in the national spotlight, really I do. He's no smarter than me, or my neighbor, or my spawns' school-bus driver -- but he's smart enough to have realized that if he's going to be a tool, he might as well take full advantage of the moment.

Hughes uses hues
Here on the north side of Columbus, Republican state Rep. Jim Hughes is facing attorney Danielle Blue in the race for the 16th District's vacant State Senate seat. Ms. Blue has the endorsement of popular Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, and she'd seem to have the perfect surname for a Democrat.

The GOP candidate is running a television ad questioning Ms. Blue's lack of experience -- no surprise there, but the spot uses his opponent's name in a rather creative way. "Blue" is displayed in large, gold block letters and outlined in dark blue -- to citizens of Buckeye Nation, that's a clear reference to the maize-and-blue of hated Michigan.

Rep. Hughes appears later in the commercial clad in a red -- er, scarlet -- sweater, chatting up four young people dressed conspicuously in Ohio State garb.

It's hilarious -- and it just might work, because in this neck of the woods, accusing a political opponent of official corruption isn't nearly as lethal as linking them to the University of Michigan.

Local color

Barbara West, an anchor with ABC affiliate WFTV in Orlando, asked Sen. Joe Biden this question during an interview last Thursday:

"You may recognize this famous quote: 'From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"

Sen. Biden, smiling broadly, responded:

"Are you joking? Is this is a joke? Or is that a real question?"

The rest of the five-minute interview was, let's say, contentious.

She said later that she was simply asking "tough questions," and she's won praise from the far right for her performance. There's only one problem with that: Ms. West didn't ask tough questions -- she asked laughable questions. She must've quaffed an entire keg of high-test right-wing Kool-Aid before regurgitating it in front of the cameras.

A critical viewing of her subsequent interview with Sen. John McCain, conducted today, leaves no doubt about what Ms. West has been drinking.

Voters, by and large, don't care about the whole Marxism thing. If they cared enough to actually learn about it, they'd know that what Sen. Barack Obama is proposing isn't Marxism. They'd understand that Ms. West, disguised as a news anchor, was trafficking in extremist buzz-words and GOP talking points, nothing more.

Did I mention that Ms. West is married to a Republican spin doctor?

I'm no fan of Sen. Biden and I won't be voting for the Obama-Biden ticket, but I know partisan idiocy when I see it. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that Ms. West, typical of a "personality" languishing in middle age and stuck doing the 5:30am newscast in a local market, probably doesn't know Karl from Harpo.

And she'll probably have her own FOX News show before Christmas.

Sarah Palin, under the bus

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone. She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom." (an adviser to Sen. John McCain, to CNN)

"I think she'd like to go more rogue." (a GOP official, to Politico)

"She's lost faith with the staff. She knows the $150,000 wardrobe story damaged her. (But) she's an adult. She didn't ask questions about where the clothes came from?" (a McCain-Palin aide, to the New York Post)

"She's now positioning herself for her own future. Of course, this is bad for John. It looks like no one is in charge." (a senior McCain-Palin adviser, to the New York Post)

"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012. And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally." (Peter Hart, Democratic pollster, to CNN)

"It’s a sign of undisciplined people who do not have loyalty that they ought to have to the candidate." (Karl Rove, former advisor to Pres. George W. Bush, to Politico, on finger-pointing within McCain-Palin)