Watching Barack Obama's Periclean oratory last evening, we imagined that today we would be posting about McCain's choice of Mitt Romney for vice-president.  Well, the immediate benefit of his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is that it overwhelms the news cycle and makes Obama's speech seem like distant history.

An editorial in the July 2007 edition of The Weekly Standard by Fred Barnes provides an excellent introduction to Palin, as we learn she not only took on special interests, she also stared down corrupt Republican chieftains in Alaska, and won.  Beyond the salience of her character and values--a pro-life, arch fiscal conservative--she has the toughness of Hillary without the razor-edged personality, and, she wears skirts (the sight of Hillary's blaze-orange pant suit filling up the television screen the other night was a scene straight from Dante).

She's also a lifetime member of the NRA, a "hockey-mom," an avid hunter who loves moose-burgers, and, most telling, her fifth child was born last year with Downs Syndrome, and she never, ever considered an abortion.  Knowing, as we do, that eugenics played a part in the founding of Planned Parenthood, we wonder how many Obama supporters would have carried that baby to term.

However, it will be vital that McCain dispel the "inexperience" charge that's already been leveled by the Obama camp.  It's a sign of electoral desperation because it's clear that Palin, as a candidate for vice-president has more executive experience than Obama, the presidential nominee.  If that's a fight they want, McCain and the RNC should begin running ads right away.

But, we would be remiss if we overlooked Obama's acceptance speech last evening.  With more pageantry than substance, complete with pyrotechnics and his usual rhetorical verve, Obama painted a picture of himself that stands in absolute contrast to his record.  It may have been inauspicious to have Senator Dick Durbin introduce Mr. Obama since his charisma factor is best measured in fractions.  But Obama's lengthy list of "promises," informed as they were with a modicum of restraint, and the deft balance he struck between government solutions and individual responsibility probably did disabuse some voters of the charge that he's an unalloyed liberal--despite the fact that it's patently false.

He also did his best to argue that soldiers on both sides of the aisle have fought and died for this nation, concluding that "We all put our country first."  But, of course, this blurs and thereby obfuscates the left's diffident approach to the military option, and Obama himself noted it should always be used as a last resort.  That forms the framework of liberalism's approach to foreign policy, which is to say it's a 'soft power' paradigm in a 'hard power' world, dealing as we must with the likes of Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin.

The truth-meter imploded when Obama said "this election has never been about me. It's been about you.", which, given the monarchical setting and eighty thousand adoring subjects--well, supporters--is yet more evidence of the remarkable elasticity of political claims. 

We close with yet another paradoxical implication of McCain's choice of Palin:  To wit, it would be an irony of epic proportions if, in the year that was special-ordered for Hillary Clinton, a Republican woman became the first in the nation's history to reach the upper echelon of the executive branch of government.  This is one aspect of McCain's maverick nature that even conservatives can learn to love.

Former presidential aspirant and convicted philanderer John Edwards must have been correct in his assertion that there are "two Americas," and one of them is on parade at the Democratic Convention in Denver.  That's the one that posits that each of us is locked in his own socio-economic cell, incapable of advancing or improving our fate, the victim of an unjust capitalist system and rank prejudice in the work place and at the beach.

For readers who have had the intestinal fortitude to watch the Dems convention each evening this week, the picture of an America where strife is common and movement on the economic ladder is impossible is unmistakable.  Moreover, if the convention were your only source of information, you would be convinced that the last seven years were the worst in recorded history. 

Of course, the truth is a rather different story.  Let's begin with the fact that when President Bush took office, our Gross Domestic Product was -.49, and let's not forget that his tax cuts resulted in positive growth for the majority of his tenure--including 3.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, far higher than anticipated.  Furthermore, unemployment has averaged 5.1 percent during the Bush years, a bit below the much-vaunted 5.2 percent of the Clinton years.

We've also heard that the Bush tax cuts favored the wealthy.  Well, let's stipulate that other than death, everything favors the wealthy--they weather economic downturns better, they have access to the finest restaurants and health care, vacations, you name it.  But, something you won't hear at the Dems' convention is that lower and middle income earners under Bush have paid less in federal taxes than under Clinton.  Indeed, a single income earner at $30,000 paid $3,157 in federal taxes under Clinton, while under Bush that figure is $2,756; a married couple with $50,000 in income paid $5,085 and $4,012, respectively.  You can review all the data at www.taxfoundation.org, but it would behoove the McCain camp to tout these facts when he's charged with the sin of wanting to perpetuate Bush's tax policies.

Attentive observers of the Obama phenomenon also know that many liken him to Jack Kennedy.  It's curious, because beyond their youthfulness and charismatic appeal, they share little in common.  First, Kennedy was a war hero and had a solid record of accomplishment in the House and Senate before he ran for president.  But, more critically, recall that he entreated Americans to not ask what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.  Have you ever heard Obama say that?

Of course, not.  In fact, it's the antithesis.  He has a nearly limitless capacity for coming up with programs to help us, to make life easier for struggling Americans--which, in Obama-Land, is everyone, save the wealthy, of course.  Indeed, he has a solution for our ailing public school system, our health care 'crisis,' the 'housing crisis,' the crisis in our financial markets, and on down the list.  But all these crises seem to have a similar solution, and they all involve money--your money--and a realignment of government to assume a greater role.

Succinctly stated, if you celebrate that, you tend to be a Democrat; if you lament it, you are likely a Republican.  The growth and expansion of the role of government in the past fifty years has been astounding, yet for many, perhaps most, Americans, whose historical clocks seemed to have started with their earliest memory of life on earth, there's no downside to an intrusive government.

We'll save that for another day, but for those who believe there are two Americas, one where opportunity is limited to a select few, remember Thomas Edison's pithy observation:  "The reason so many people avoid opportunity is because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."

So as we await Obama's speech tonight from Periclean Greece--we mean Denver, of course--it would do us well to recall that there's only one America, and, that it's a nation of laws, where the idea of freedom and its corollary, responsibility, make it the greatest place to live on earth.

A discordant issue for Democrats has materialized on the political landscape, one they wished would have stayed buried in the conservative American conscience.  During House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's interview last Sunday on Meet the Press, Tom Brokow asked her the same question that Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama--when does human life begin?  Although you can pick up any high school biology book for the answer, liberals have a knack for complicating simple issues, and in this regard Pelosi is an honor student.

She crafted a wholly fallacious argument which claimed that the Catholic Church has never been definitive on the matter, that it's been an evolving definition.  On Monday, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput issued a cogent clarification and trenchant criticism of Pelosi's specious argument, and yesterday, several other archbishops and bishops joined the fray.  It would have been far more intellectually honest for Pelosi to have simply stated that she has a profound disagreement with the Church, but to appear on national television and disseminate outright lies, in particular about the teachings of a major religion, is despicable.

We segue to presidential politics and an op-ed by Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune, dealing with Barack Obama's extreme position on abortion.  Readers are forewarned that the graphic descriptions in this editorial are disturbing as they describe how new-born babies were routinely left to die in a process abhorrently called "live birth abortions."  It's a procedure that every person would find morally corrupt were it performed on a dog, yet it apparently was commonly done on humans.

We highlight this because as a state senator, Obama voted against a bill that would have outlawed the practice, which he justified because he said he preferred the federal version of the legislation.  The problem is that the two were effectively identical.

Beyond the mechanics of the matter, what does it tell us about a presidential candidate who so aggressively protects a woman's 'choice' to murder her own baby that he's willing to do so after it's been born?  It begs the question of whether he would support such legislation if the age were raised to six months or a year after birth?  What is mystifying about these craven arguments is how blithely they embrace them, apparently indifferent to their moral toxicity.  

It's curious that liberals such as Obama fervently believe in the 'science' of global warming--which is unsettled at best--but confess ignorance when it comes to believing that human life begins at conception.

That Obama can make the argument that he wouldn't want one of his daughters "punished with a baby" were she to become pregnant, is an appalling moral transgression and a blemish on his soul.  We have to wonder whether this is the kind of enlightened thinking his supporters find so uplifting?

Although political optimism is a force multiplier, pessimism breeds twins--insecurity and anxiety--which conspire to depress the strongest willed among us.  That's why Democrats are waking to the disquieting reality that in a year that was supposed to catapult their nominee into the White House, they remain in the polling doldrums.  Eugene Robinson, a thoughtful liberal, expresses this collective angst in a Washington Post editorial which might double as a textbook for his party's troubling state of affairs.

Political entitlement can erode electoral confidence faster than an ethical scandal, and that's at the core of the Democrats' problems.  Not only is it unbecoming, it blunts innovation and enthusiasm, which creates its own kind of spiraling negative energy.  Robinson tries desperately to rally the troops, drawing dark pictures of an America under a McCain presidency, trying to lure Clinton supporters back into the fold. 

The Democrats' nascent desperation also recalls Hamlet's damning habit of "thinking too precisely on th' event," which is a kind of inadvertent propensity for foreshadowing events before they're fully evolved, in ways that inhibit a favorable outcome.  As Robinson observes, "Unlike Republicans, Democrats like to obsess about what could go wrong.  It's kind of a partisan hobby."  Well, it's also an unhealthy hobby, because it likens politics to a kind of performance art, one that is so self-consciously preoccupied with failure that it stumbles its way onto the stage.

It may seem strategically myopic for us to be rallying the opposition, but the civic health of the Republic hangs in the balance.  Their views may be anachronistic and driven in an untoward way by the hard left--which is why they seem so diffident to express them--but they ought to fight hard to contrast their vision for America with that of McCain's.  There's an evolving sense of hesitation, a tentative confidence in their ideas, that seems to be simmering just beneath the surface of their studied caution.

For mainstream Democrats, this year's election was supposed to be different than 2004, when they stood in stunned disbelief as their effete candidate took body blows and failed to counter-punch.  But in their overweening desire to appear bipartisan, itself the inevitable by-product of their candidate's presumptive allure, they seem to be forgetting that they must make the case to the voters that Obama is a man of substance, not just a handsome, articulate--might we say, "clean"--candidate.

There's still time, of course, and perhaps the Democrats will rally from their slumber, but the first step must be to realize they've been dozing their way through the election thus far, and it's by no means certain they reached that point.  The infighting between the Clintons and Obamas, as well as between the hard left and mainstream Democrat voters, must cease, because party cohesion is the most crucial predicate to winning elections.

So, our recommendation is that the Democrats should bring on the policy debate, let the gloves fall, throw down the gauntlet, or whatever pugilistic metaphor you prefer.  But don't stand idly by as opportunity recedes into the background of your most fervent desire, leaving you with shadowy memories of what might have been.  That's not what this battle of ideas is supposed to be about.

Politics, it's been said, has it's own kind of internal logic.  So it is that Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running-mate, a quintessential Washington insider and uninspiring also-ran whose presidential aspirations are as legendary as they are quixotic.  We turn to E.J. Dionne, writing in today's Washington Post, for insight into this decision, because Biden's nearly 40-year senate career is a veritable treasure trove of oppositional data just waiting to be mined by the Republican National Committee.

According to Dionne, the choice of Biden reflects Obama's need to shore up support among white working class voters who are apparently immune to the allure of the Illinois senator's charismatic message of change.  Coupled with the hopes of drawing the millions of disaffected Clinton voters and potential ability to exploit many years of foreign policy experience, Dionne is confident Biden was a wise choice.

Thus the campaign is calling him the "scrappy kid from Scranton" to define him as a blue-collar tough who has mastered the art of verbal combat, who's a champion of the working class, to balance Obama's Harvard elitism--which, of course, the Obama campaign denies exists.  But other than stipulating that few voters look beyond the top of the ticket when choosing their president, over the years critics have become accustomed to calling Biden a windbag, not merely because of his studied loquacity, but because his polemics so rarely have the ring of originality, and when they do, their eccentricity overtakes their stamp of uniqueness.

Take Iraq, for example.  Biden was one of the few congressional leaders to call for its partition into its three ethnic/religious constituencies as a solution to the then-intractable fighting.  Besides being a logistical pipe dream of mythic proportions, the idea was in diametrical opposition to the Iraqi people's wishes.  It also belies the notion that democratic values and institutions can overcome ethnic and religious tensions, which is an obvious analog of America's plight as an ethnic melting pot, not to mention its revolutionary roots that sought to cast off the shackles of a nation with a state-based religion.

Overlooking for the moment his many half-baked ideas, from the perspective of resume comparisons, Biden's is vastly superior to Obama's.  Indeed, many Democratic operatives are quietly asking one another how it is that a man with a one-page resume beecame the party's nominee?  The truth his that his choice of Biden reflects a profound insecurity, not just in foreign affairs, but across the political spectrum. 

It's as though Obama were looking for a mentor, not a running-mate, someone who could walk him through the policy complexities that so obviously befuddle him the moment the teleprompter is removed.  That's reinforced by the fact that, hailing from Delaware, Biden clearly wasn't chosen for his ability to deliver a state.  Dionne coyly states that the choice is "about governing, not just about winning an election."  So, is Biden, who, in contrast to Obama, voted to support military action in Iraq, going to be consulted on solving the implacable problems we face with Iran? 

The list is as endless as the problems are vexing, but where Dionne and others see wisdom in this choice, we see a rapidly emerging pattern of vulnerability and desperation in the Obama campaign, one where the VP choice seems justified as a way to prop up a politically callow and intellectually shallow candidate who has mysteriously advanced well beyond his abilities.

Besides excoriating success, one of the hallmarks of modern liberalism is its habit of assuming that wealth begets elitism.  The latest example, of course, is McCain's response to the question about how many homes he owns.  A quicker wit might have responded by saying "About half a dozen fewer than John Kerry," and a more polished politician would have known the answer immediately, but McCain is neither, so he became flummoxed and said a staffer would be in touch.

What was lost in this fleeting tempest is how we've all been seduced by the left's conflation of wealth with elitism.  Time was when economic success was correctly recognized as the product of hard work, sacrifice, and the a track record of making smart decisions.  Now it's culturally reviled and envied by people who feel they've somehow been cheated out of life's riches, that they missed out on the lottery so many others seem to have won.  And, the media transparently encourages this vicarious indulgence by linking it all to elitism.

Recall that when Obama made his comments about rural white voters turning to religion and guns, his apologists said he couldn't be elitist because he grew up poor and just recently paid off his student loans.  Somewhere in the fog and cross-currents of our cultural thought we've forgotten that an elite is a kind of snob who looks down at others, convinced they have the corner on knowledge and wisdom--none of which as to do with one's net worth.  Indeed, although John Kerry--dubbed the Boston Brahman during the 04 election--is an example of a monied (at least by marriage) elitist, there are many down-market elitists who are smugly assured of their superiority to us mere mortals. 

Indeed, it's more about attitude and values than wealth, but the latter is the left's fashionable proxy for all things they despise, in large part because they're certain most wealthy people inherited, rather than earned it, and those who did, probably did so on the backs of the proverbial 'common man.'  The truth, which never seems to get in the way of their coy and smarmy arguments, is rather different.  The vast majority of wealthy Americans earned their money, and success in our capitalist society is enjoyed by an unprecedented number of people, albeit at a wide variety of levels due to disparities in talent and effort.  For instance, the average millionaire is more likely to be the owner of a concrete finishing company who drives a Ford F150 than a dot.com-er who drives a Lexis.

When you compare where Obama and McCain are on this index, the urbane, Harvard educated man is the one with disdain for the blue collar worker with the imprint of a snuff can in the rear pocket of his jeans, sun-leathered skin, imbiber of mass produced beer in a can--which he doesn't recycle.  No, it's a truism the left surely knows but won't admit because it smacks of the cultural equivalent of racism, and, it's not likely to win votes either.

In contrast, and despite the fact that he married well, McCain, who has been seasoned by five plus years as a prisoner of war, tortured and abused, has a far more credible appreciation of the frailties of life, of its uncertainties, and is far less inclined to preach to us about our faults than he is to tout America's greatness.  It's a contrast that voters are starting to better understand, now that so many more are paying attention. 

And, judging from the steady shift in polling data, the more they see of Obama, the less they like.

We begin with a brief look at the state of wisdom emanating from the disgruntled hard left, compliments of Michael Moore, whose piece in the Rolling Stone provides convincing evidence of why the Democrats are in serious trouble this election year.  Rarely are we provided such a transparent view into the soul of the liberal mind, from its reflexive insistence upon state-based solutions to on-demand abortion and a reflexive disdain for all things conservative--it's no wonder Obama's stock is dropping with the price of oil.

Moore begins with an assertion that might seem plausible, until you get closer to the rhetorical canvas.  He argues that Americans are on the side of Democrats, because

They are pro-environment, pro-women's rights and pro-choice.  They don't like war.  They want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal health-care system.

Notice the simplistic method of characterizing the issues that seeks to pre-empt rebuttal by its gross generalizations and meticulous avoidance of detail.  To begin with, everyone is pro-environment, the question is at what cost and sacrifice, which is why extreme legislation in response to the unsettled science of climate change never even gets to the floor of the senate.

Second, although Republicans are strong supporters of women's rights they also support the unborn because they believe that the left's notion of a 'choice' is merely a euphemism for murder; third, who does like war?  That's another canard popularized by arch liberals such as Moore; the real question is how you deal with belligerents, despots, and evil.  Moore and his ilk live in a fantasy-land where evil no longer exists and diplomacy solves every problem from Home Owner Association disputes to disarming Iran of its nukes. 

The minimum wage is a straw argument because it impacts a minuscule percentage of workers, and, moreover, results in higher unemployment.

As for a single-payer universal health-care system, no one has posited a system that's viable since Hillary's disastrous proposal in the early 90s.  The reasons are many, but they begin with the fact that the examples of Canada and most of Europe, where wait times for routine care are measured in weeks or months, and where confiscatory taxation is used to underwrite it, are not acceptable to most Americans.  We don't have a health care crisis, we have a cost crisis, which can't be solved by creating a government Leviathan to administer the system.

Changing subjects, most Americans were stunned to learn that Barack Obama doesn't know when life begins.  His response to Pastor Rick Warren's question of whether life begins at conception started with a series of uncomfortable stammers, and finished by saying the question was above his pay grade.  Coupled with his savage support for the live-birth abortion bill which allows a baby who survived an abortion to be killed, ought to make every American ill. 

Is this another example of Obama's post-partisanship, his transcendental politics that seeks to bring out the best in us?  A supreme paradox is that he quoted the Gospel of Matthew--"Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.", lecturing that it's a lesson we Americans seem to have forgotten.  From the frail elderly to the physically handicapped, we can easily imagine who "the least of my brothers" is, but isn't the helpless, the defenseless unborn human the least of the least?

Although we've highlighted the unpersuasive explanations from liberal leading lights as to why Obama isn't decimating McCain, we can't pass up our favorite leftist, Paul Krugman, who rarely fails to misread trends.  Writing in Sunday's New York Times, he argues that Obama's lack of passion on economic issues--not his message--may well lead to a loss in November.

But for Krugman, it's all in the rhetoric, not the policy, so he recommends that Obama borrow from Clinton's sharp-edged politics, forgetting that the latter was a convert (albeit a slow learner) to the virtues of welfare reform and understood the value lower corporate tax rates, just two issues that Obama's in the dark about.

For a more informed view, we turn to Kevin Hassett, writing in Bloomberg.com.  He provides a few lucid lessons about finances and taxation that everyone ought to read because it illustrates the supreme stupidity of the Democrats' distorted policies in general, and Obama's specifically.  He's particularly strong concerning the left's enduring embrace of corporate bashing.  We could add to his arguments the popular jihad against 'corporate welfare,' which even McCain likes to lambaste.

Although a flat tax structure with zero deductions has an undeniable allure, it's a political pipe dream, so favorable tax treatment of corporations--not unlike homeowners--is likely to continue.  But more fundamentally, the political message implied by juxtaposing 'welfare' with 'corporations' is a misguided and unwarranted broadside.  To wit, traditional welfare is corrosive because it provides financial reinforcement for phantom efforts, whereas providing tax incentives for corporations is a different matter because they actually produce goods and services, as well as stock equity and, in many instances, dividends.

That dovetails nicely with Krugman's vilification of corporations, but it's a message that won't pass through the impermeable membrane of liberal politics because Obama is too beholden to the hard left.  As such, no revision of his rhetoric or infusion of passion can change his lethargic--Krugman's word--efforts to reach voters.

Russia's transparently hegemonic aggression against Georgia reflects the timeless lesson concerning belligerents:  Only the credible threat of violent retaliation keeps them in check.  The animosities between these two nations has a deep and caustic history, and the same can be said of Russia and the other formerly conscripted satellite nations of the Soviet Union. 

One of the lessons this naked aggression provides is that, as John McCain writes in today's Wall Street Journal, "The world has learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked."  It's an astonishing comment about the perennially obtuse nature of humans that we appear preordained to learning these lessons once again.  The problem is that the horrific wars of the 20th century are only animated in history books and those, it seems, are read no more frequently than books concerning the mating habits of the Hummingbird.

So it is that an entire generation of Westerners generally and Americans specifically, are convinced that evil is extinct, that savage aggression can be therapized into submission (it's called diplomacy), and that democracies needn't be defended to survive.  These myths weren't created in a vacuum.  Rather, they're the product of decades of insidious inculcation by academicians and our public school system, and, having worked their way into every crevice of our thinking, they've achieved the level of unassailable truth, at least the modern version of it, which is on a par with 'global warming.'

Mr. McCain makes some judicious recommendations, beginning with the removal of Russia from the G-8, which is reserved for democracies.  Add to that a decisive no vote for its dream of World Trade Organization membership, and you would have the beginning of a meaningful response by the civilized world.  Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's comments provided the necessary historical context:

This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it.  Things have changed.

That kind of condemnation and precursor to action is precisely what's needed at a time when Russia correctly senses weakness in American resolve.  Anything less than a meaningful series of punishments will telegraph to Putin and his thugs that Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine are theirs for the taking.

Editorial writers, political analysts, and pundits all seem enamored of the demographics of voting, ethnically segregating the electorate, then applying age cohorts, to either prognosticate elections or garner support for their candidates.  Writing in today's Boston Globe, David Paul Kuhn provides yet another analysis, arguing that Obama may be able to capture the white male vote, which has always been electorally out of reach of Democrats. 

But despite Kuhn's attempt to parse this conundrum, he leaves us with more questions than answers.  Indeed, he notes historical explanations for white men declining to vote for Democrats, including allegations of racial bias, but he fails to make a firm finding, and concludes with the blithe assertion that "for too long, some progressives have viewed seeking these men as antithetical to liberalism.  Rebutting that intellectual vice would truly change Democratic politics."

The key to cutting this Gordian Knot is to understand the allure of white men to Republican values and ideas and the obvious disincentive they express by avoiding Democrat candidates like an electoral plague.  We begin with, Kuhn's statement that "Obama's one clear gain with white men, over Gore and John Kerry, is with those under age 30."  Since white men are arguably the last cultural vestige of what might be called alpha-politics, and since our public education system has successfully stigmatized such unfashionable characteristics, it stands to reason that men under thirty are the most susceptible to Obama's politics of 'soft power.'

Moreover, the rugged individualism of Republicanism, with its attendant insistence on personal accountability, are anathema to the modern Democratic narrative of victimhood, its reflexive disdain for authority, and its chimerical claim of the moral equivalence of all nations.  White men are, indeed, a group of cultural hold-outs, an incorrigible, anachronistic lot that still exhibits a measure of masculinity by denying that government is the solution to every problem, from the left's laundry list of '-isms' to the price of gas at the pumps.

Their answer is more likely to involve the virtues of lower taxation, reduced regulation, and the self-correcting 'invisible hand' of free markets.  For the Democrats, that's a kind of callous heresy because it contradicts their nearly Freudian infatuation with government solutions.  They'll deny it, of course, but because it's in the intellectual groundwater of their thinking, they're completely blind to its existence, in large part because they've become so thoroughly habituated to thinking that government solutions are the best guarantor of our collective salvation--at least on earth.

So, as liberal commentators burn the midnight oil trying to disentangle the complexities of the electorate's voting propensities, we can only hope that this year's elections once again demonstrate that the Republican virtues of smaller government are alive and well, with white men leading the charge.  But since this is a party of ideas, we also hope that Americans of every ethnicity recognize that the Democrats' vision of an expansive, Statist nation isn't in their best interest--an admittedly difficult case to make in this day and age.

It's a curious spectacle when liberals find themselves in the uncomfortable position of reaping what they sow.  Indeed, whether it's the dramatic increase of single-parenthood in urban America in the wake of the Great Society or, most recently, the latent housing 'crisis' that developed as a result of the Community Development Act and subsequent legislation aimed at expanding home ownership, the left is a textbook study of an endless cycle of programs, each designed to remedy the unintended--but obvious--consequences of the previous one.

For a uniquely compelling example, we turn to Jared Bernstein's piece in today's Huffington Post, which is a rhetorically confused medley of arguments calculated to blame the market place--read conservatism--for everything from our housing woes to the war in Iraq.  The usual suspects are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-governmental entities that carry about seventy percent of U.S. mortgages.  What's painfully ironic (and which is completely lost on Bernstein), is that these entities are run by Democratic bureaucrats who are making 'obscene profits' at tax payer expense.

The Countrywides of America, which wrote loans to uncreditworthy individuals, merely resold them to Fannie and Freddie, whose regulatory infrastructure can't possibly hold the weight of the bad debt it carries.  The result, of course, is to turn to tax payers, which was as inevitable as it was shameful.  Despite what you  hear in the mainstream media, these are political, not regulatory problems, because lending institution guidelines are written to reflect the regulations written by Congress.  If the goal is to extend credit to riskier clients, they'll gladly oblige.

Being a reliable liberal, Bernstein argues that "the real price of much of our economic activity fails to reflect the damage to the planet" which is why he and his leftist pals are cheering now that gas prices are strangling American consumers.  The paradox is that it's particularly crushing the lower and middle income earners, about whom liberals such as Bernstein are presumably so concerned.  It's clear that for liberals, when politics and policy clash the former will always prevail.

At the core of the left's economic misunderstanding, which leads the Bernsteins of the world to erroneously conclude that we've misappraised risk, is their firm, if implied belief in the 'zero sum' economic paradigm.  It asserts that the economic pie, and the engine that drives it--productivity--are inelastic, and that innovation and the 'creative destruction' of capitalism have no impact on Gross Domestic Product.  That's why, in their prescriptive view of things, we can't 'drill our way out' of the energy crisis, and the only way to cure our financial market problems is to recalibrate risk--not keep taxes and regulation low.

It demonstrates once again--as though more evidence were needed--that the left reflexively looks to the state for solutions, for everything from 'our failing schools' to the inevitable shortcomings of the free market system.  Their approach also has the benefit--to them, if not the rest of us--of allowing them to argue that our crisis of the day can be solved, if we just have more money, what they call 'investment,' but is known by the economically literate among us, as higher taxes.

These are old lessons, but the question is, why we are obliged to continuously relearn them?

The pre-Democrat convention polls aren't where Obama and his supporters would like them to be.  This is actually worse than 2000 and 2004, where two other liberal Democratic candidates were faring better at this time, despite the fact that it was Gore and Kerry, neither of whom achieved greatness as campaigners.  Now, even Democratic strategists and analysts are getting nervous, and with good reason, since McCain has been polling within the margin of error with Obama.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Lincoln Mitchell animates the evolving electoral anxiety, but, predictably, he focuses on the left's hobgoblin, race, rather than the growing realization by many voters that Obama simply isn't the heavy weight they once thought he was.  Like his liberal brethren, Mitchell has less than perfect political pitch when it comes to race, creating an edifice of bigotry as the pretext for Obama's failure to achieve electoral traction.

He begins with a wholly fallacious assertion:

One of the recent complexities is that among white Americans there is a virtual consensus that racism against African Americans is a thing of the past.

The more accurate characterization is that most Americans (i.e., not just white Americans) believe that the nation has made steady and meaningful advances, both legislatively and culturally, to combat racism.  They also recognize that Americans of African descent are in unprecedented positions of power, in corporate America, in politics, and in academia.  But the reason the Mitchells of the world keep rekindling the times  when racism was rampant is that if we're obliged to judge Obama merely on the integrity of his ideas, on his credibility as a presidential candidate, he falls conspicuously short.

That's why the best Republican strategy is to let voters get to know Obama as intimately as possible, because the more they know about his ideas and his vision for America, the less comfortable they are with him. 

For instance, just as Western Europe is removing the obstacles to capital formation by reducing corporate income tax rates and dismantling their vast regulatory apparatus, Obama is recommending higher taxes; he's similarly out of step with most Americans who correctly applaud the success of the counter-insurgency initiative in Iraq, rather than equivocate as the Harvard professor he once was; he maligns guns as the source of violent crime, naively subscribing to the anachronistic notion that the real victim is the criminal because he had an alcoholic father or was the child of a single parent; add to that his most recent misstep, preaching the virtues of driving with fully inflated tires (next week he'll move on to ways to combat tooth decay and how to avoid trans fatty acids).

To make matters more painful and tiresome, all of this is delivered with an arrogant professorial sternness and haughty confidence that makes us wonder about having him around day in and day out for the next four, or perhaps eight years.  Political bias aside, the one truism about presidential elections is that we elect people we like, people we're comfortable with.  That assessment is result of listening and watching these two men, of gauging their authenticity, their ability to command respect by convincing us they're up to the job.

In that regard, Obama's recent response to a seven year old girl who asked why he wants to be president, betrays a less than ringing endorsement of America.  Rather than stating that he wants to build on America's greatness, he echoed his wife Michelle's oblique disparagement of this nation.  That may play well in Berkeley, but it won't in middle America.

One of the more perverse products of the secularization of the Western hemisphere is the morally toxic notion that all species are equal.  But that, of course, is the logical and therefore inevitable conclusion--that humans are an accident of nature and therefore can't be held in higher esteem than the lowly reptile of your choice.

That, in the view of these arch radicals, justifies all means to achieve their ends, one of which is to stop  scientific research at our universities.  An article in U.S. News & World Report documents the weekend attack on two researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of whom's home was firebombed, and the other, whose car was firebombed and destroyed.

These terrorists post the names and addresses of scientists in public places along with blatant threats to them and their families.  But beyond the savagery of their methods is a moral cowardice of epic proportions, which highlights the fragility of their claims, for instance, that a rat ought to enjoy the same legal protections as a human being.  Indeed, it's the intellectual insecurity of their beliefs that leads them to the kind of violence on a par with Islamic extremists.  People with credible differences of belief in a pluralistic society such as ours are welcome at the debate table.  But those with fantastic claims, be they the domestic terrorists who perpetrated these heinous acts or the radical Islamists, hide in fear in the civic shadows, because their ideas are so delicately framed and susceptible to rebuttal.

The abdication of religious belief, of God as the agent of our creation and existence, underlies these terrorists' actions.  When you subtract Him from the equation, moral anarchy is sure to follow because the only laws that remain are those produced in their own self-referential world.  In that context, every act, regardless of how vicious, is justified, from petty larceny to capital murder.  So, regardless of the fact that these scientists, and thousands like them, are in pursuit of cures and advancements to better our lives, the use of animals in experiments and testing is so abhorrent to these terrorists they are willing to kill those whose works might one day save their lives.

It's a convoluted morality that leads one down this path because the average American is deeply compassionate concerning the treatment of animals.  That begins with the humane treatment of animals that are used for food.  It's no surprise that record numbers of Americans choose beef and poultry that are raised in natural settings and brought to market with a measure of care and concern.  Our pets, whether dogs, cats, or birds, have a special place in our hearts and lives and are part of our family.

And, although most of us eat meat, poultry, and fish, it's absolutely true that we're far more tolerant of vegans than they are of us.  Indeed, there's nothing so smug and arrogant as someone who parades his sanctimonious behaviors before us, be they the recycling fanatics or those who call meat-eaters murderers.

One of the pet entreatries of the left is for us common folks to "evolve," to move beyond our conventional lives, to join the rarefied few whose exquisitely refined sense of the universe places them on a higher plane--or so they assert.  They're welcome to any plane they wish inhabit, so long as they obey the law.  But those responsible for these hideous crimes should be hunted down like the vermin they are, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

For those who are aware that the federal income tax wasn't formally sanctioned until 1913, it's a uniquely dispiriting experience to see the deficit ballooning under a presumably Republican Administration.  Writing in today's Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby laments the sorry state of our fiscal affairs, in particular that neither presidential candidate is talking about it, at least not substantively.

Jacoby chronicles the fiscal debacle that's developed and its political contours, noting that either taxes will have to be raised or spending cut, and, even among putative Republicans, the latter is highly unlikely.  Indeed, here in Colorado, Governor Bill Ritter is proposing confiscatory taxes on the oil and gas industry with the goal of using the money for college scholarships.  It's the kind of classic modern liberal-socialist tax scheme that has absolutely no foundation in our Constitution, but is so firmly embedded in our cultural thinking that many, perhaps, most will enthusiastically support it.

At the federal level, as Jacoby notes,

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation, tallying the promises made by the presidential candidates, calculates that Obama 's "investments" would cost taxpayers another $344 billion a year. McCain's add up to an extra $68.5 billion.

Stipulating that candidates must distinguish themselves with policies that will garner support, it would be as refreshing as it would politically suicidal for a credible candidate to argue that less is more.  Rep. Ron Paul made such an argument, and were it not for his blinkered foreign policy nostrums and his profound lack of charisma, he might have become the Republican nominee.

It's important to note, however, that his many other quirks notwithstanding, McCain, in sharp contrast to Obama, does understand that the government that governs least governs best.  Presuming he wins in November--and the odds are looking better all the time--there is at least the chance that spending will be curtailed.

The conflagration of programs and initiatives, at the federal, state, and local level, that redress problems and ills that were historically the charge of the individual has become intolerable.  Many, perhaps most, are efforts to resolve problems in the aftermath of poor judgment, which begins with people having children who haven't the financial means to support them, and that's both out of, and in wedlock.  But also caught in its broad--read indiscriminate--sweep, is everything from our health care 'crisis' to environmental regulations, which either skew market variables or inhibit economic growth.

For those who yearn for the days when government kept its distance, when success and authority weren't stigmatized, when religion wasn't banned from the public square, and American exceptionalism was unquestioned, this is an unequivocally difficult time to be alive.  It's only compounded when an urban activist, who, less than four years ago was a back bencher in the Illinois legislature, is a presidential nominee.

The issue of race in American politics is most divisive among those who are least able to advance beyond its cynical clutches.  For the past three decades our public education system has assured our children that we're inherently racist, that, in contrast to the vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King, skin color matters, specifically, that it tells us something important about a person's values and character.

There's an important difference between stating that racism exists--which it surely dues--and adamantly insisting that a person's skin color or ethnicity ought not matter.  In an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, Juan Williams of Fox News, provides the historical analyses and contemporary polling that demonstrates, for anyone not aware of it, that racial prejudice remains a problem in America.

What he fails to discuss is that the left has built a labyrinthine industry on race and ethnicity, which is predicated on the specious notion that we're an innately racist nation, and that the altar of diversity and multiculturalism is itself responsible for erecting walls of division among the races.  Indeed, by insidiously working its way into our educational system, our workplace, and even our homes, and by inculcating us with its gospel of guilt, liberalism has succeeded in perpetuating our racial disharmonies rather than dispelling them.

But when Williams talks about "white votes" and "black votes," and argues that Obama must tout the values of mainstream "whites" to capture the "independent white vote," he's merely acquitting the left's myth that an integral part of a person's values is his race.  That's not only unhelpful, it's a reminder of exactly how little we've progressed since Dr. King's fiery speeches in which he said he dreamed of the day when people judged one another not on the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.