Posted on 10/11/2008 9:08:01 AM PDT by DocT111
It's been a dopey campaign. But they usually are. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt ran on balancing the budget and cutting government spending. In 1940, it was preserving U.S. neutrality in the European war. In 1960, on the cusp of a decade of fundamental change in race relations and the size and scope of the government, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon spent a lot of time debating a nonexistent missile gap and Quemoy and Matsu. In 2000, the issue of Islamic terrorism was barely mentioned by George W. Bush or Al Gore.
This isn't a criticism of America or of its democracy. Other countries are no better. And it's not as if our elites are any more far-seeing than our politicians. Election campaigns--like intellectual debates--tend to be past- and present-oriented. But sometimes the past and present are of limited use as guides to the future.
This is surely one of those times. We haven't even begun to understand the implications and consequences of the financial crisis that has burst upon us. We still haven't come to grips with the realities of the post 9/11 world of terror, jihadism, nuclear proliferation, and an axis of dictatorships determined to resist and roll back the advances of freedom and democracy. And we have put off thinking seriously about various Brave New World-type issues that loom before us in the 21st century.
One does sense today that, as Lincoln memorably put it, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Kristol knocks it out of the park! Thanks very much for sharing.
Why do people believe it is possible to set character aside, when evaluating policy positions?
It IS character and past performance that instruct us on the credibility of a candidate’s campaign rhetoric.
The “negative, attack ads” are necessary to make the point that OBAMA CAN NOT BE TRUSTED!!!!!
You know after they have used Sara Palin like a rented Donkey.. put her up well ridden and wet...
Or the press will not write good reviews for McCain.
Of course, destroying Gov Palin reputation is just fine and dandy for McCain.
I’m at the point with this race, where the thing that I care most about is that Sarah Palin remains politically viable for 2012.
#
And for the next few weeks strive to get her good name and political positions back.
It is said she will go on SNL next to kiss her enemy's arse.
She had better put her foot down and say NO, as her first act of independence.
**We still haven’t come to grips with the realities of the post 9/11 world of terror, jihadism, nuclear proliferation, and an axis of dictatorships determined to resist and roll back the advances of freedom and democracy. **
And McCain is willing to think about these things. Obamanation won’t. He will just raise taxes and spend.
Posts like yours have convinced me to change my tagline.
Nixon knew it was nonexistent, but that the Soviets were making some slow progress. Kennedy may or may not have known. Most of the evidence was pretty closely held imagery intelligence, both satellite and airborne (Mostly from U-2s).
I think of this every time I hear McCain speak; and hope.
ML/NJ
Victor Davis Hanson:
Not Over Yet -- Reasons for hope on the first Tuesday in November
The National Review ^ | October 10, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on Friday, October 10, 2008 12:43:48 PM by 2ndDivisionVet
Of course, this is a Democratic year. The public is tired of George Bush and eight years of an incumbent administration. War, Wall Street, and the absence of a conservative Reagan-like charismatic figure should make it easy for a Democrat to win the presidency. After a nearly miraculous McCain surge in September, following the Republican Convention and Palin nomination, the Republicans are once again floundering — and a sense of utter despair has now set in among conservatives.
Wall Street melted down. The New York–Washington media elite went ballistic over vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Alaskan mom of five in near suicidal fashion was ordered by the campaign to put her head in the Charlie Gibson-Katie Couric guillotine. A trailing McCain — while sober and workmanlike in the first two debates — failed to close the ring and hammer the agile Obama as a charismatic charlatan.
The result is that with not much more than three weeks left in the campaign, a number of conservatives have all but accepted (if a few not eager for) an Obama victory. Others are angry at the McCain campaign’s supposed reluctance to go after Obama’s hyper-liberal, hyper-partisan Senate record, his dubious Chicago coterie, his serial flip-flops, and his inexperience. And how, most wonder, can McCain regain the lead lost three weeks ago, when the media has given up any pretense of disinterested coverage, time is growing ever more short, prominent conservatives such as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and Kathleen Parker have suggested Sarah Palin would be unfit to assume the presidency, and former Romney supporters are raising again their unease with the once again too moderate-sounding McCain?
Yet for all the gloom, there are several reasons why this race is by no means over...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
Leave it to McCain to find a movie about a Mexican revolutionary and anarchists to be his favorite.
Zapatistas for McCain!
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