The search for political purchase leads some of the most astute among us down the well traveled road to humiliation.  Jon Stoltz, writing in today's Huffington Post, provides the latest example of temerity gone wild, by supporting Gen. Wesley Clark's laughable assertion that Senator John McCain isn't qualified to be president because he lacks "executive responsibility."  He quotes the general in an exchange between the general and Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation:

He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall.  He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not.  Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it'.

Well, it's an illustrative example, because for many on the left, General Clark apparently among them, staring down a diplomat is on a par with facing Attila the Hun.  Although it's outside the small intellectual universe Mr. Schieffer inhabits, his first response, which might have been uttered by a Russert or Wallace, should have been:  "If Senator McCain doesn't pass muster, what does that say about Senator Obama?". 

However, the more illuminating tack here is to examine Stoltz' attack, which has become the left's well-rehearsed--that is, tiresome--litany of charges, from McCain's allegedly poor judgment to his failure to confess his alleged sins in supporting the war in Iraq, and, of course, the fact that bin Laden is "still out there."  For a frontal assault it's reeks of effete cowardice because it's a curious combination of policy differences and hyperbole, not a substantive prosecution of McCain's real capabilities.

This is a natural by-product of the fact that McCain is something of a political Rubik's cube for the left:  He's a kind of perpetual puzzle that keeps on vexing them despite their best efforts to pigeonhole him.  Indulging a slight digression, the same could be said for many conservatives, some of whom are undergoing therapy to begin the wholly traumatic process of accepting a perennially inconstant ally in the war against liberalism.  But, as we've argued, McCain's candidacy would only be possible at a time such as this when unalloyed conservatism is unpalatable for so many. 

Stoltz and his brethren on the left now find themselves in a decidedly awkward position:  They have a candidate well to the left of failed presidential nominee George McGovern, who is inartfully making his way to the center by rewriting his script to comport with mainstream voters.  But it's a study in desperation because despite his glaringly thin resume, there is, in fact, a wealth of quotes and clips that demonstrate that Mr. Obama is an extremist, from his support of partial birth abortion to his statements that he would ban handguns and have gun manufacturers prosecuted, to his goal of federalizing our health care system.

The left is certainly in lock-step with that agenda but the folks in Peoria remain in a state of shock when they hear the real Obama's vision for America.  That's a problem for patrons of the Huffington Post and liberals nationwise whose blind hatred of President Bush and all things conservative has them mired in policy positions hostile to the common man.  It leads them into embarrassing and untenable positions such as General Clark's, which is but one of many skewed lenses through which liberalism views the world.

If you believe that the right to self-defense is America's pre-eminent right you'll celebrate today's Supreme Court decision which clarified for an age in desperate need of clarification that the right applies to individuals not a militia--read, the state.  If, however, you believe that our Constitution and Bill of Rights should be conditioned by the civic and cultural fashion of the day, the court's 5-4 decision is lamentable.

Besides the fact that four justices were able to convince themselves that the state has the right to proscribe gun ownership in one's own home, it's instructive to juxtapose this decision with the court's recent ruling regarding habeas corpus rights for Gitmo prisoners.  Only those who support the fanciful notion of the malleability of the Constitution is it possible to at once grant rights to aliens on foreign soil and criminalize the possession of guns in the homes of law-abiding citizens.

For reasons best left to cultural anthropologists, the past forty-five years has seen the advent of the remarkable claim that guns themselves cause crime.  If true, the matches we use to light cigars and camp fires should be criminalized because they also cause arson.  Since any pre-adolescent unschooled in logic can follow this argument, it's astonishing that it's completely lost on a significant percentage of people who work and pay taxes in this nation, and are able to drive cars and even dress themselves in the morning.

Although society has attempted to mitigate it, violent crime, not unlike poverty, will always be with us, because they are inherent in all societies, even, or especially those with a measure of civic and economic freedom.  But since ninety-plus percent of crimes are committed by career criminals, and since we have a multi-tiered layer of gun laws already on the books, the only recourse left to the liberal is to categorically outlaw them.  Of course, they are careful to avoid the footnote to that statement, which is that guns would be outlawed for law-abiding citizens, not criminals, whose behavior is immune to the inhibitions of law to which the rest of us instinctively succumb.

Writing for the dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."  First, they already are heavily regulated, which is why the D.C. case made its way to the highest court.  But let's not forget that attempts by elected officials to circumscribe civil rights have been ruled unconstitutional numerous times, which is only to say a strict reading of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is the best guarantor that our rights won't be nullified any currently elected majority in Congress.

Evidence of the vacuity of statements in opposition is much in abundance, but leading the pack is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a vociferous gun control advocate in Congress, who stated:  "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it"  If she's talking about criminals, she's correct, because now the good people of D.C., and places where liberalism's heavy hand has criminalized law-abiding citizens' rights to self-defense, will finally be able to re-claim those rights.

Few issues in America are as contentious and divisive as religion, and the recently released study by the Pew Foundation on religion and public life is sure to reanimate the nation's differences.  Some of the findings merely confirm what most people intuitively know, for example, that overwhelming majorities have a belief in God, or, to characterize it in the parlance of our cultural cognoscenti, a supernatural being.

More nuanced are the findings that about seven in ten believe that many religions can lead to eternal life and that there is more than one interpretation of the teachings of their own religion.  Of course, those beliefs fundamentally clash with the precepts of those religions, which is only to say that if all religions are equal, by what standard would one choose one over another.  Moreover, it casts one's thoughtfulness in a poor light if, after a lifetime of study and reflection, choosing Catholicism over a protestant religion is a difference without a distinction.

Another paradox is that although eight in ten believe in absolute standards, only a third said they turned to their religion's teachings to set their own standards.  A fascinating insight into the Obama-Reverend Wright controversy is that about half said churches should express their views on day-to-day social and political questions, with that number rising to seven in ten for members of predominantly black churches.

The erosion of certainty in our most sacred beliefs is thoroughly consistent with the epistemic free-fall in which we find ourselves, where our post-modern consensus on the reality of relativism is the only one we seem capable of reaching.  In that context it's hardly surprising that by broad majorities people believe that no one religion--not even their own--enjoys an inside track on the road to heaven, or that their religion is more closely attuned to the nature of God.  After all, in our brave new paradigm, absolutes have been redacted from our religious lexicon and therefore our beliefs are merely products of our own unique thinking.

Looking inside the study's findings we might be disturbed by the fact that large percentages of people are reticent to apply the standards of their religion to their own lives, which logically leads one to question the sincerity or resilience of their beliefs.  Indeed, for those who take this journey seriously, the trajectory of our religious development is always challenged by our moral shortcomings, and although religious demands are rigorous, presuming we are honest brokers of our own behavior, isn't that what produces sanctified souls?  If so, we can only imagine the internal reasoning people follow who endorse the standards of their religion but elect a different set to guide them through life's moral maze.

As to the subject of churches addressing social and political issues, there is a wide range of views on this, but our take is that the application of precepts such as sacred Scripture or the Catechism of the Catholic Church to our politics and society is healthy to the degree it isn't manipulated or distorted in service to a political end. 

The obvious example is the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion.  During the 2004 election, a debate raged after a number of Bishops said Democratic nominee John Kerry should be denied communion because he supports abortion.  Religion generally, and Catholicism specifically, aren't democratic institutions, which is to say they don't conduct votes on their teachings.  Moreover, although Catholic teaching addresses the notion of an 'informed conscience' and its ability to differ in certain matters with Church dogma, liberals tend to ignore the 'informed' element in this construction.  'Informed' means the conscience is predicated on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Magisterium, not 'informed' with the left's notion of the refined elite, which is effectively above or beyond the moral reach of the Church.

The degree to which we're willing to submit to a set of dogmatic principles--which is, after all, what defines religious belief--provides a kind of window into our souls, in both a civic and moral sense.  Those on the left tend to impose their ego or will on their religion, insisting that it ought to adhere to each peculiar twist and turn in their moral being, while those on the right strive to empty themselves of the human preconditions that inhibit their ability to comply with their religion's teachings.

That leads each of them to seek politicians who confirm their beliefs, with the left being drawn to Obama's situational ethics and the right to McCain's support of absolutes.  It's a debate that shows no sign of abating as we approach the November elections.

Not long after 9/11, a quote from George Orwell began hitting the email and blog circuit.  With the new television ad from MoveOn.org, which is being aired in a variety of battleground states, the Orwell quote is once again apposite.

But first, the ad.  A woman is seen holding her infant boy.  She looks into the camera and says:

Hi, John McCain. This is Alex.  And he’s my first.  So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog.  That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him.  And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex?  Because if you were, you can’t have him.

Bill Kristol, writing in the New York Times, taps the first level of response when he quotes the mother of a soldier:

Does that mean that she wants other people’s sons to keep the wolves at bay so that her son can live a life of complete narcissism?  What is it she thinks happens in the world? ... Someone has to stand between our society and danger.  If not my son, then who?  If not little Alex then someone else will have to stand and deliver.  Someone’s son, somewhere.

Although narcissism is an integral component of liberalism, there's more to this than self-love.  It's the uniquely insular way in which so many liberals posit the argument against the war in Iraq, indeed, against all wars that don't neatly comport with their nuanced view of the world.  Moreover,  raises intellectual cowardice to a virtue to argue, as they do, that America can continue to enjoy the hard-won freedoms so many take for granted without the willingness, nay, the obligation, to sustain our tradition of personal sacrifice for a greater good.

The left's obtuse insularity is also manifest in its heinous embrace of abortion as they apparently convince themselves that sexual intercourse oughtn't be burdened with the inconvenience of a child.  Or, as Barack Obama maliciously described it, were his daughter to make a mistake and come home pregnant, he wouldn't want her to be "punished" with a baby.  It also dovetails nicely with the $7 trillion dollars we've squandered at the altar of liberalism on the twisted vision of the Great Society, which did little more than provide a cultural manacle for inner-city minorities.  But that doesn't matter, what does is how the white guilt of the liberal is sated, albeit temporarily.

But, back to our main theme:  The ignoble culmination of liberalism is its specious refrain that violence committed by evil people is the product income inequality, of selfish Americans who are incurious about the world, and that despots are the natural--and just--response.  In that context, Alex's mother is merely making the obvious observation that war generally, and the war in Iraq specifically, is a quixotic enterprise, a wasteful fiction, unworthy of the life of her son--and, by extrapolation, everyone's son.

We finish with that Orwell quote, which is the perfect antidote to the liberal's smug, self-referential denial of reality:

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Leave it to Jonathan Chait and The New Republic to work their make-over magic with Barack Obama, transforming him from the dovish, hard-left, anti-war protester to a military plenipotentate.  Chait begins with the risible notion that "on the only terrorism-related positions where Obama has staked out ground to the left of the Bush administration--torture, closing Guantánamo--McCain has, too."

He apparently forgets the Bush Doctrine vis a vis terrorism, and that is the scorned strategy of pre-emption, the bane of the left, including Obama.  What's astounding is the belated way in which liberals such as Chait are finally admitting that we're winning in Iraq.  Even more profound is the fact that since broad majorities in both parties--except, of course, Obama--voted in favor of military action, and since nothing changed but the fact that our strategy had to be re-tooled (name a war where that wasn't true), the left's hand-wringing defeatism is, in truth, the result of an incapacity for war.

Although many, perhaps most in Chait's camp would wear that as a badge of courage, it's hardly a winning strategy for a nominee for president in wartime.  Imagine Harry Truman or Jack Kennedy quivering when challenged, telling the nation we just don't have the stomach to prevail.  It's because Obama has been unwilling to say he would use military action against Iran to prevent Ahmadinejad from acquiring a nuclear weapon that, for most Americans, Chait's parodic characterization--"Wimps like John Kerry and Obama have a daintier, more equivocal sensibility"--has the ring of truth.

Moreover, Chait's quoting Obama talking about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and how "They [the perpetrators] are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated," perfectly misses the point:  It's not just Obama's obtuse focus on law enforcement, it's his references to the trials at Nuremberg, which, even students of history know is inapt:  To wit, those were military commissions and stand in absolute contrast to the access to our civil court system that Obama and his liberal brethren are championing. 

Indeed, it's an irony completely lost on Obama and Chait that the Supreme Court's decision granting habeas rights to Gitmo prisoners was predicated on a disapproval of the system of military commissions Congress adopted at the Supreme Court's urging.  Therefore, Obama's comparisons to Nuremberg could be called intellectually dishonest, but, in truth, it's just ignorant.

In yet another stroke of brazen naivete, Chait argues that "arresting them [the 1993 WTC bombers] strikes me as more efficient than leveling their apartment with a drone-fired missile."  Counter-terrorism measures, which feature the kind of tactics Chait would find deplorable, including, as they do, warrantless wiretaps, have demonstrated their worth countless times and have led the CIA et al to key leaders of al-Qaeda, who were dispatched well before any chatter about recourse to law enforcement measures.

It's always high theater watching the left running from its record and posturing as tough guys in the war against radical Islam, but when you perform the forensics, they are betrayed for the political chameleons they are.  Obama is merely more artful than most, a kind of Lawrence Olivier of the left.

The world is clearly infatuated with Barack Obama.  Writing in today's Huffington Post, Derek Shearer brings an international flair to this love-fest, raising in the world's eyes the specter of the youthful Jack Kennedy.  In his travels, Shearer noted that "Syrians seemed amazed that the United States which many in the region see as the Great Satan would actually nominate such a person to be president," and he told everyone who would listen that Obama would "first focus on responsibly removing American troops from Iraq -- one of his key campaign promises and a signature commitment of his political career." 

Laced throughout his piece are references to the kind of new America the left so desperately wants to see:  "Globalization is not Americanization...It is vital for the US to lead, but not dominate in making globalization more equitable and more environmentally friendly -- both within our borders and for the entire world."  We have here liberalism's agenda that begins with a disdain of American exceptionalism and champions higher taxes, wealth redistribution, burdensome regulation, and a focus on extra-constitutional "fairness," which is their nearly limitless fund of support for a carefully selected list of aggrieved victims.

For the left, the prospect of an Obama presidency is their ticket out of the Bush nightmare they are convinced has tarnished America's reputation worldwide.  The problem is that the evidence of a permanent civic scar in places like Italy, France, the UK, or Germany, exists only in the collective mind of the academic and cultural elites.  The people in those nations, it should be noted, have recently elected conservative leaders far more similar to Mr. Bush than Mr. Obama. 

Moreover, the major nations in western Europe are moving rapidly towards a supply side approach to taxes and regulation, with nearly every one of them reducing capital gains taxes and  regulations.  They appear to understand, in ways that apparently elude Obama, that the way to attract capital is to create incentives to encourage a thriving economy.  The Illinois senator, in stark contrast, has pledged to raise taxes on those most likely to hire workers--the 'rich' the left loves to hate, which is people making more than $200,000 annually, many of whom are small business owners.

However, the real horror that makes Shearer tremble in his Birkenstocks, is how President Bush has presided over a disastrous war in Iraq.  We won't delve into the wealth of detail, beginning with the modern liberal's well-rehearsed fear of military conflict, except to note that even the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and a host of other mainstream media outlets have been running reports demonstrating that we're actually winning in Iraq--no thanks to Shearer, Obama, and their defeatist friends on the left.

A predicate for winning the office of the president of the United States has always included a resume that includes executive experience, a series of progressive positions in elective government, and the kind of maturity that is the product of years in government and the business world.  When Mr. Obama announced he was forming an exploratory committee for his run for president he had exactly 143 days of experience in the senate.  What if that's all we required of physicians or attorneys to practice?  Indeed, you need more experience than that to become a master plumber.  There are a number of foods with a longer shelf-life.

In contrast, Senator McCain's 26 years in congress and 22 years of military service, which includes 1,966 days in captivity as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, does, in fact, qualify him to inhabit the White House.

We're still in the early stages of the general election cycle, but the precursors of Obama's inexperience are already much in evidence.  This is a gifted orator who's primary experience is that of an urban activist with a pattern of ties to paleo-liberals that most Americans find disturbing.  That's an electoral battle McCain can win.

One of the latent premises of our modern age is the fact that our collective attention span and historical ignorance conspire to raise stupidity to a virtue.  Although both parties are susceptible to this phenomenon, the Democrats seems to have raised it a perverse kind of art form.  America's foreign policy is an illustrative case in point, and we can begin the review with the following quote:

Let our position be absolutely clear:  An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

A reflexive response is that this was either Bush I or Bush II, but both would be incorrect.  Was it President Reagan?  No, it was President Carter in his 1980 State of the Union Address, and it was a response to the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.  Although Mr. Carter won't be recognized as anything other than a mediocre president, this statement, written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, his National Security Adviser, merely reflects America's reasonable right to defend its interests. 

Yet, when something similar is uttered by President Bush, we hear cries of 'cowboy diplomacy,' and 'unilateralism,' which ring particularly hollow in light of the unprecedented success of the 6-party talks with North Korea.  Speaking of which, we're not testing the elasticity of the truth by suggesting that most Americans probably couldn't tell you how many coalition partners the U.S. had when it entered the Korean War--it was nine--about twenty fewer than Bush I had in the Gulf War and nearly the same when Bush II invaded Iraq in 2003.

For a second exhibit, we turn to a French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, who asserted that his nation "cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyper power."  Readers hermetically locked into the Bush hating European paradigm would think it was 'W' he was referring to, when, in fact, it was President Clinton, in the seventh year of his presidency.

The 20th century saw the development of institutions whose goal was to dilute the allegedly pernicious influence of nationalism.  Although that was a natural by-product of World War II, there's no evidence that those bodies--the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal Court, and the EU itself--have played a measurable role in inhibiting belligerents on the international stage.  Yet it's America's nationalism, whether under Carter, Clinton, or the Bushes, that seems to invoke the ire of European nations, although it's clear it reached its zenith under 'W.'  But in light of America's role in liberating Europe and Japan, not to mention dozens of other interventions in the name of freedom, is it justified?

Returning to our theme that human history seems to be a long series of re-runs, cyclical lessons that are learned in the crucible of war and then resurface later only to be relearned anew, this generation seems intent upon reprising the roles of good and evil.  Indeed, one of the unfortunate causalities of post-modernism is the thoroughly obtuse notion that we've conquered evil, that we've achieved a kind of universal understanding that liberal democracy is the political equivalent of gravity--it's the way the world is.  It's corollary is that noxious notion of the moral equivalence of all nations, a uniquely vicious product of academia and its tireless elites.

That conventional thinking has a long half-life is evidenced by Democrats generally and liberals in particular, who seem impervious to the past thirty years of radical Islam and the dozens of attacks on Western nations.  That this savagery culminated in the attack of 9/11 seems also to have receded over the horizon of their thinking, although they are loathe to concede it had anything to do with President Bush's counter-terrorism efforts.

Although Senator McCain may win in November, with the expected Congressional losses to Democrats, it's probable that our current trajectory vis a vis Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon will remain unperturbed.  If that's the case, and if the Carter Doctrine quoted above is deemed unacceptable when uttered by a McCain, we may well be on track to relearning last century's lessons, but on a magnitude far more devastating.

A recent news report indicated that America's incarceration rate has reached an unprecedented level.  Although causes weren't explored, implicit in the report's message is that this was a disturbing development.  A cursory analysis would tell us that either law enforcement and our judicial system were performing in a more efficient--read aggressive--manner, or serious crime has increased, or perhaps both.

But, either way, most Americans wouldn't lament the fact that more convicted criminals are behind bars rather than out on our streets committing crimes.  Unless, of course, you're a member of that unique class that believes that criminals are merely underprivileged and abused, would-be contributing members of society were it not for dysfunctional parenting, racism, or any of a number of convenient excuses.

One of the paradoxes of our criminal justice system is that the sentencing guidelines seem remarkably lenient, which is why according to Professor John Lott (More Guns, Less Crime) about 90 percent of convicted murderers had a prior criminal record.  His statistics are confirmed by a New York Times study (4/28/06) that demonstrated that of the city's 1,662 murders from 2003 to 2005, 90 percent of the murderers had criminal records.

Although that makes sense, the way liberals decry the horrors of guns you might think that the majority of crimes committed with guns were the result of law-abiding citizens.  Otherwise what explanation would there be for their zealous pursuit of ever more aggressive gun control laws, since career criminals consistently ignore them?

From this analysis it appears as though the left thwarts the only real attempts to keep criminals off the streets.  First, since they endorse the misguided notion that social pathologies excuse violent behavior.  That leads them to embrace the idea that criminals aren't solely responsible for their own behavior, which, in turn, legitimizes their arguments for lenient sentencing guidelines and early parole.

More mystifying is that they seem completely unaware that it's repeat criminals who are responsible for the overwhelming percent of violent crime, otherwise they would be celebrating higher incarceration rates.  That might just lead them to understand the folly of more gun control laws--but it's unlikely.

It's ultimately a cultural issue and we may as well face the fact that the Obamas of the world simply don't trust law-abiding citizens with guns, and they stigmatize them as Neanderthals who are out of sync with their refined sensibilities.  The Illinois senator is on record as stating he could confiscate all handguns and prosecute gun manufacturers when their weapons were traced to violent crimes. 

Although it's a Looking Glass approach to law enforcement and criminal justice, it's what many, perhaps most liberals seem to think.  It will be a study in historical revisionism to watch Obama recast his extremist views for the general election, just as he serially rewrote his script on Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, and now, Jim Johnson ("That's not the Tony Rezko I knew.").

It should be an entertaining election season.

Last Friday afternoon, a bright star in the celestial world of political journalism was prematurely extinguished.  The tributes and testimonials, in ink and on television, have demonstrated just how profoundly the light of Tim Russert illuminated the American political landscape.

From Tom Brokow this morning, appearing on Russert's Meet the Press and choking back tears as he described Tim's unbridled and transparent love of this nation, to Joe Klein's moving tribute in Time, which poignantly illustrates Russert's political acumen and love of life, whether you were an devotee of his Sunday morning show or not, we all now have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the man who was a giant in televised political journalism.

In contrast to most of the leading lights in that genre, whose political stripes are less meticulously guarded, Russert took criticism from both sides of the aisle.  Liberals accused him of having a conservative bias, and conservatives were convinced he was a closet liberal, who desperately wanted to come out.  It's because of that duality of identities that the three to four million who tuned in each Sunday morning found him so engaging. 

Regardless of their party, prominence on the political stage, a neophyte or veteran, his guests could be assured of one thing:  By show time Russert would have an encyclopedic knowledge of their history, evidence of shifts in political positions, and the inevitable soft spots in their political armor.  But unlike so many interviewers, Russert never seemed to take delight in exploiting vulnerabilities.  You'll recall that regardless of the outcome of a heated exchange on a given subject he would move on to the next one without betraying an emotional response.  That raised viewers' confidence levels that his goal of gleaning information on their behalf was truly his only intent.

The other half of his larger than life persona was his love family, friends, and colleagues, as well as his abiding Catholic faith.  It's impossible to know for certain, but Russert is likely one of the few, perhaps the only, major political television journalist who carried a Rosary.  As his many friends have attested, when he said he would pray for you, you knew he would--it wasn't a Hallmark card kind of sympathy.

His working class upbringing in Buffalo and his Jesuit education were the twin pillars that informed his view of America and its political system which produced the politicians he interviewed.  Having worked for Sen. Patrick Moynihan, he had an intimate understanding of the mechanics--cynical and positive--that was the lifeblood of our politics.  Coupled with a keenly intuitive sense of our human frailties, of the politician's instinctive desire strike just the right balance in the voters' eyes, Russert's line of questioning could seem harsh, but it was never unfair.  And, although these posts and many others in the political world, have occasionally accused him of missing the meta-analysis, it wasn't for want of enthusiasm or love of his profession.

For millions of Americans, ourselves included, Sunday morning will be a less colorful place in the world of television news shows, and if we all feel we've been cheated of a fine mind, a man whose skills made us more informed, and an example of a life well lived, it's because it's true.

May God bless you Tim, bless Maureen, Luke, and Big Russ, thanks for your tireless dedication to your work, and for your love of this great Republic.

If you look beyond the mainstream reporting on Senator Obama, into the editorial pages and a smattering of blogs on both sides of the aisle, two quite different views emerge.  We'll look at two of them to highlight the remarkable contrast and then try to divine why he elicits such responses.

The first is Karl Rove's piece in today's Wall Street Journal, which juxtaposes Mr. Obama's approach to dealing with foreign policy challenges such as Iran with that of President Reagan's.  Attentive readers will recall it was Obama himself who mentioned Reagan during his flat-footed response about whether he would speak with despots without pre-conditions.  In those comments he noted that Mr. Reagan routinely spoke with the Soviet Union, an incidental comment which, once again, demonstrates the potency of the nebulous comparison. 

Indeed, as Mr. Rove notes, Reagan's interactions with the "evil empire" were only after years of analyzing the regime, and after he had articulated a three-faceted strategic plan for dealing with it, something Mr. Obama hasn't taken the time to do vis a vis Iran.  It's that glaring credibility gap that Obama apparently thinks America will either overlook or forgive, which is only true in the case of unrepetant liberals. 

Those serious about dealing with belligerent nations such as Iran, which most experts believe will have an operational nuclear weapon this side of 24 months, have to demand more of our would-be presidents than glib comparisons and hollow attempts to achieve gravitas with the statement Rove quotes:  He (Obama) "understood that diplomacy backed by real leverage was a fundamental tool of statecraft."

"Real leverage," of course, is in the eyes of the beholder, and Obama's many statements on the subject have an undergraduate feel to them, especially when compared with Mr. Reagan's.  Indeed, Obama's years as a backbencher in the Illinois legislature and three years of unremarkable service in the senate never fail to bring his lofty, stratospheric oratory back to earth.

For contrast, we turn to a reliably liberal view of the universe, Garrison Keillor, writing in today's Chicago Tribune.  We can forgive the loose-associated narrative he weaves together because that's Mr. Keillor's signature forte.  But what strikes even the casual observer is that his rhetoric reflects the same substance-free thinking so prevalent in Obama:

He is graceful and quick and possessed of confidence, and if you like the English language you'll find a lot to admire in him. People can dismiss the importance of speaking, but that is a big part of the job he's running for.

Although he is smitten by Obama's candor and the fervor he brings to a speech, other than a predictable broadside about the Iraq war and the Bush Administration, that's about all we get in terms of analytical muscle from Keillor.  Indeed, this is the kind of weak tea we sip from just about every liberal writer, primarily because the policies Obama espouses are so conspicuously left of any Democrat save Rep. Dennis Kucinich they're loathe to recite them.

Giving a strong speech is, indeed, an important part of the job of president, but when you think of Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, or Reagan, you recall far more than the speeches they gave.  What truly matters is the principles they championed, informed by a deep and abiding understanding of what makes America great--its values of freedom and the rule of law--and the unapologetic way in which they acquitted them on the domestic and international stage.

What's astonishing is that people like Keillor can so facilely separate oratorical skills from the power of principles that animate them.  It makes us wonder what they see in Obama, since he himself has been so studiously evasive when talking about his strategic approach to despotic regimes such as Iran.

The only conclusion we can reach is that Obama must have been correct when he said he's a kind of Rorschach test--people can impute their own thoughts and feelings about him, just as Keillor has, since there's no accountability or consequence.  However, we typically demand more substance in a president, and to the extent Obama has provided any, it isn't able to withstand even the kid-glove scrutiny Keillor provides.

One of the obvious distinctions between conservatives and liberals is in the provision of goods and services for the less fortunate.  Here in Colorado Springs, Catholic Charities is about to open its newly renovated Marian House, which provides food and other services for the needy.  An excerpt from an editorial in our local paper, the Gazette, highlights the importance of such entities:

The opening of New Marian House will be a blip in the news, and then it will go about its business mostly in silence, out of sight and mind for the vast majority of people fortunate enough to afford restaurants and home-cooked meals. Every day, the charity will serve people in need simply because it's the right thing to do. Nobody will get rich; few will be thanked. It's just a gift, given in kindness, by the Catholic Church.

When you see people coming and going from the soup kitchen, keep in mind that private charities - most of them religious - form the foundation of our great country's social services network. They redistribute nothing by force.  Rather, they ask for donations so others might eat and survive.

Beyond the obvious observation that the role of religious organizations in America is crucial to those in need, it's also illuminating to note the differences between conservatives and liberals with respect to donating:  As Arthur Brooks catalogued in his book, Who Really Cares, conservatives are far more likely to donate to charity than liberals. 

The meta-analysis would suggest that the latter have a stronger trust in government than the former, but there's more to it than that.  The well documented phenomenon known as liberal guilt stems from their apparently limitless need to create an expansive--and growing--list of victims, the alleged product of our capitalist system, or racism, or sexism, or any other -ism you would care to coin.

However, it's a paradox worthy of Zeno that they don't follow through by writing checks all day to each of the myriad causes they champion--rather than dunning their fellow American through their unbridled love of taxation.  There's a great irony that's apparently lost on liberals concerning the oxymoron known as confiscatory charity, and that is it not only makes donating anonymous it also neutralizes the instinct that undwrites the desire to give.  In that regard, in response to a request to donate, liberals can say they "gave to the government."

The other part of that ignoble dyad is the left's equally cynical belief that people won't give unless forced to.  It's certainly true that not all people donate time or money to charity, but in a nation of three hundred million it is remarkable that in 2006 charitable donations were about $243 billion.

Finally, it's both intuitively and empirically accurate to state that the most efficient and efficacious way to provide services to those in need is through private agencies, whether religious or secular.  The reasons are obvious but bear noting:  Government bureaucracies are at once self-perpetuating, accountability avoidant, and indifferent to customer service. 

As the election hyperbole machine goes into full swing and you hear Obama and his ilk argue for higher taxes to solve the health care 'crisis' or assist those in poverty, remember that for liberals the solution to every problem is more money and more government.  We could remind them that if that truly solved problems this would be heaven on earth--but perhaps that's what their striving for.

One of the themes we've established in these posts is how the tectonic erosion of our nation's traditional values has led to an America that is culturally impoverished.  In a lucid and cogent piece by radio host Dennis Prager, a picture of that America emerges, a place where a despotic relativism reigns and the dogma of political correctness thrives.

You can peruse his encyclopedic juxtaposition of America when he was a boy and the place he laments it has become today, which include the glaring examples of the masterful way in which liberalism has eviscerated nearly every hallowed value and principle.  However, in the end he raises the most important question: 

"Can we return to the best values of that time?  Yes.  But not if both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court move the country even further leftward."

If that happens, he argues, we will be signing a kind of cultural promissory note that guarantees the liberal agenda of identity politics, an emasculated military, trans-nationalist foreign policy, and social mores based on cultural anarchy will be ascendant.

We would certainly agree that winning the White House and trying to staunch the blood in Congress are paramount, but because the challenges we face have roots that run deeply into our civic and cultural lives, it's unlikely that a Republican such as McCain in the White House would make a measurable difference.  Although McCain has proven traditional values--a strong military, pro-life and pro-guns voting record, knows how critical strong family values are--he's also a maverick and seems more susceptible to compromise than most conservatives would like.

It's also axiomatic that with every passing year the tacit cultural and civic premises of our nation--that America is a force for good, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, that guns aren't responsible for our crime rate, that individual rights trump group rights, that the pre-born are deserving of constitutional protection--have been redefined and downgraded.  The result is that the uncontested lessons we now teach our children, in particular in our public school system, but also through a myriad other mediums, at the effective antithesis of those that were taught fifty years ago.

Should you have the temerity to challenge those smug pieties you'll be branded 'insensitive,' 'authoritarian,' 'imperialist,' or the tour de grace, 'judgmental.'  It is these imperceptible changes over the decades that provided Senator Obama's agenda--which is well to the left of George McGovern's, the arch-liberal presidential candidate who lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon in 1972--with a wholly undeserved plausibility and credibility. 

The most profound question facing us is whether there are enough Americans today who understand the importance of these issues, most crucially, that Obama's vision of a robust role for government and an apologetic foreign policy will weaken our civic fabric at home and inhibit our ability to degrade the forces of evil worldwide. 

Again, it may not be a panacea to have McCain in the White House, but when compared with the alternative of a President Obama, the difference couldn't be more conspicuous.

Whether it was George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Ronald Reagan, America's greatest leaders have articulated coherent and visionary plans for America which kindled confidence and excitement that rapidly translated into electoral success.  However, a key component of their success was the consistency of their thinking and unwillingness to continuously remold their strategy to fit the evolving criticisms they all inevitably faced.

It's against that political backdrop that we juxtapose Sens. McCain and Obama, who are on record as expressing radically different views about the war in Iraq.  Tracking the evolution of their thinking and the degree to which it remained faithful to its core, versus suffering an interminable series of revisions in response to criticism, reveals both the degree to which these men understand world events as well as their own political souls. 

The following quote from Sen. Obama, in advance of the surge, reveals both a vulnerability in his understanding of warfare and, more critically, the politician's willingness to succumb to the momentary indulgence of a tactical advantage that betrays a fundamentally flawed appreciation of the broader--which is to say, more profound--elements that latently evolve.

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse. I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the president's proposal.... I think he is wrong, and I think the American people believe he's wrong.

Not long after this, Obama told Face the Nation, "We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality--we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."

In the interim, of course, the surge under the direction of Gen. David Petraeus, has met with a series of successes and the death rate for the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and civilians has dropped significantly.  Yet you won't hear Obama make any concessions because it would illustrate how ill-considered his thinking is on the matter, which would highlight his inexperience in foreign policy.

Most people have already forgotten that Obama sponsored legislation to guarantee the complete redeployment of U.S. troops by the end of March of this year.  Imagine the horrors on the ground had his legislation been successful.  It would have been a civic implosion of epic proportions, yet no one, in particular no one in the media, has questioned him on this.

With respect to Iran he is on record stating he would sit down without preconditions with its ruler, Ahmadinejad.  Recognizing the supreme naivete of his position, he recently began revising it with a set of quasi-pre-conditions, which amount to papering over some brazenly thoughtless ideas.  Yet those merely include the palpably obtuse notion that he would only have a dialog with him if it could "advance the interests of the United States."  My, how bold.

Next, recall how Obama voted against the resolution calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group.  Again, we've seen him reconfigure his thinking on this when it finally dawned on him that the IRG is, in fact, a heinous group of lawless murderers.

We could move this argument to domestic issues, most critically, the economy, where Obama has proven he's locked in the left's echo chamber where higher taxes are the solution to a stalled economy.  Since the media isn't doing it, conservative members of Congress should ask him to list all the times that raising the corporate income tax has resulted in increased tax receipts.  Or, ask him how raising taxes on the 'wealthy' will increase job creation?

If the media begins doing its duty--which is by no means assured--voters will learn that Obama is a man without so much as one new idea, that his agenda would jeopardize America's standing in the world and weaken it at home. 

That's not change we can believe in.

With the economy, in particular oil prices, appearing to improve, and the so-called housing 'crisis' receding in our collective memories, foreign policy will likely re-assert itself as the primary issue concerning most Americans.  That's making Senator Obama, the Democratic nominee, nervous, as well it should since significant numbers of voters correctly understand that his depth of knowledge and experience in that realm is best measured in micrometers.

Since the potency of arguments can often lie in their context, Kaplan provides transparent, if unwitting, justification for mainstream voters to be skeptical about Obama by arguing that a visit from a sitting United States president just isn't what it used to be:

"A presidential visit is not the cherished commodity that it once was, because the United States is no longer the superpower that it used to be."

He builds this trendy house of cards on the wholly specious premise that the U.S. has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq and that after the fall of the Soviet Union the nations of the world "began to go their own way, pursue their own interests, build their own alliances...without giving much thought to Washington's feelings about the matter."  So, despite the fact that the U.S. produces 35 percent of the world's wealth, that the military budgets of any half a dozen nations doesn't equal ours, and that our economic global reach is both uncontested and redoubtable, Mr. Kaplan says the world effectively ignores us, that we're a back-bencher nation.

Consistent with his fellow liberals, Kaplan habitually apologizes for the Bush Administration's years of defending American values, of asserting that he won't put our interests behind any other nation's, and that although we welcome allies, if necessary, we'll protect our interests and those of our allies alone--not much different from Bill Clinton, who unilaterally launched a military campaign in Bosnia without United Nations approval.  If you don't recall Kaplan becoming apoplectic over that it's because he and his leftist brethren sat quietly on the sidelines.

Kaplan finishes his agonizingly misinformed editorial with an equally obtuse assertion: