Doing The Work Of The People - Election Edition!

Some miscellaneous observations after working election night at ABC News in downtown DC.

• The most asinine thing I saw on TV was CNN having reporters reporting via hologram. I saw Jessica Yellin chatting with Wolf Blitzer from Chicago, with this strange blue haze around her. And the camera was careful to pan around Wolf Blitzer's studio, just to prove to the audience that Yellin was really a hologram. To bring home the point, CNN put up a chyron on the screen that read "Jessica Yellin reporting live via hologram". It did look cool - like Princess Leia giving election results. But what did it add to CNN's coverage? Absolutely nothing. A standard split screen would have done the job just as - NO - more effectively, because the audience would have heard what Yellin had to say instead of focusing on watching her glow.
  
  

• The most presidential thing of John McCain's campaign was the last thing he did - give a brilliant concession speech... And does anyone really doubt he'll follow through with his promise to support President Obama?


• With 2008 out of the way, there's no time like the present to start on 2010. One of the many interviews I edited during the evening was with Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who chairs the GOP's House campaign committee. Even in defeat, Cole focused on the silver lining for Republicans, and pointed out that Democrats will now be held responsible for everything that happens in Washington, and he boldly (and correctly, I think) predicted that if the Democrats don't move to the center and work with Republicans, that the GOP will pick up a lot of seats two years from now.


• When I walked out of ABC at 1:30 this morning, I could hear people shouting and car horns honking as they left the White House. There were people all over the place - this being about 5 blocks north of the White House, where crowds had gathered. I could not help but smile at the young people's youthful exuberance, and feel a bit sad for them that what they had just lived through was the easy part. Campaigning is one thing - leading is another... and even in a best-case scenario, this 21st Century Camelot is going to be severely tested from day one.


• I got home at 2:30, and to bed around 3 am. I thought surely that my hard day's work would merit me the opportunity to sleep in, right? Wrong. The Empress bellowed at about 7:15. She was racing to get ready for work, and needed her coffee. She needed HER coffee. I'm telling you.... Daddy's been home too long, cuz Mama is getting spoiled!

Well - That's That!

I drove up to my wife/son's school this morning, waited about 15 minutes in line, and cast my ballot. I will tell you truthfully that I stared at the screen for President for about a minute before I cast my vote, and to be honest, as I have mentioned before, I would be relatively comfortable with either Obama or McCain in the Oval office... or at least as comfortable as one can be considering I don't think either of those guys have a clue of what to do about the economy.

I will not reveal my specific presidential vote - not that it matters much in far left Montgomery County, Maryland - but I will say that my votes on the ballot swung from the far left to the far right. If I am a squishy moderate, so be it, but I believe what I believe, and I think anyone who simply votes on a party line year in and year out represents part of the problem in our polarized society rather than part of the solution.

How many bad incumbent members of Congress will be returned to Washington this fall, simply because they represent the majority party in their districts? I suspect a great many.

But at least this election is over! There will now be a bye week, and then it's time to get ready for the next one. Palin in 2012, anyone?

A Cautionary Tale...

I'm breaking my "no more presidential election blogging" rule just long enough to note that John McCain's 11th hour campaign tactic is to point out the dangers of having one party controlling everything. Without any effective "pushback" from an opposition party, some better ideas are inevitably going to end up in the trash can, and a good chunk of the nation will, at least for the next two years, essentially be without a voice in the business of America.

McCain is right.

For evidence of this, let's look at my hometown of Montgomery County, Maryland, where even liberal Republicans have been seemingly forever driven from office. Without any GOP dissent, the County Council has effectively killed a proposal to charge ambulance fees, a move than would have generated 14 million dollars in revenue at a time when the county is facing a 250 million dollar deficit. This is the same county that earlier this year killed a proposal to sell alcohol on Sundays because the evils of selling booze outweighed the potential extra revenue that Sunday sales would bring.

As usual, politics are at play here, and there's no yin to counter the yang. Volunteer firefighters are leading the fight to kill the ambulance fee, because they say they shouldn't be required to charge people for services when they themselves are providing their time for free. That's all well and good, but it doesn't pay the county's bills.

If the ambulance fee is approved, the volunteers are promising to fight back and place the issue on the ballot in 2010. And guess what else will happen in 2010? Every single member of the county council will be up for re-election, and members of the council don't want their names on the same ballot as an unpopular fee that they supported.

With all of our elected officials sleeping in the same political bed, there's no one with the political will to fight the status quo in Montgomery County. And taxpayers are paying the price.

Keep that in mind when the Democrats control the House and the Senate and the White House.

And keep your checkbook handy.

Monday Morning Two-fer

It's 6 am... The Missus has been up all night preparing kindergarten lessons, and needs to get on the computer to check her e-mail, so I must make this quick. Therefore, I will!

1. The election has officially reached the "nails on the chalkboard" point for me. I can't hear or see an election ad for either candidate without shuddering. Please let the next 8 days pass quickly! However - I do still enjoy SNL sketches making fun of the candidates - Here's the best one from this weekend:


2. If I'm pissed off that there was no NFL game last night because it took the week off to make way for the World Series, does that mean I'm not a baseball fan? I guess so.

Thank God, then, for "Mad Men"! I watched the season two finale instead of the Phillies/Rays game... It's just too bad we have to wait until next July for season three! Guess it's time to start pining for "LOST" to return!

Happy Monday!

Want Change And Hop-ie? Vote For Opie!

I had promised myself I was done blogging on stuff related to the election... But then, my sister Jill, brought this video to my attention. Almost to a rule, I HATE celebrity political endorsements, because I find that most celebrities are even more ignorant than I am, and that their status doesn't make then at all qualified to endorse anyone. But for the cool factor alone, I have to give a big thumbs up to this one! Enjoy - and then vote for whoever you want!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Election Fatigue

I got up this morning and wrote four paragraphs with my latest take on the upcoming elections... and quickly found that I'm bored with both Obama and McCain... as I imagine much of America is. Short of a major scandal (which America doesn't need), you should know by now who you'll be voting for three weeks from today.

So let's talk about something of much more import to the American people. I am, of course, speaking about football. PRO football in general, and the NFC East to be specific. How much better can it get than this? Just as it seemed like the division was going to be anointed as the greatest ever, three of the four teams lost in week six - and to teams they were heavily favored to beat, to boot! The only team that won in week 6 were the last-place Eagles, which means all four teams are in position to beat the crap out of each other for the rest of the season!

Can life get any better than this? Yes. It's the Ides of October, for chrissakes (well, almost - it's Ides Eve)! God did not intend for football fans to be watching games when it's 85 degrees outside, except in Miami, where God did not intend any teams that wear Aqua and Orange to be taken seriously, anyway.

I prematurely made my first pot of chili of the season last week, and now it's taking up space in my freezer because God also did not intend any self-respecting chili to be consumed in weather like this.

One more football-related note in this rather scatter-brained entry (which is still more interesting by far than any election related blog I might have written)... I am dying to get to the theater to see "The Express", the movie based on Ernie Davis, the first black to win the Heisman Trophy. Davis went to Syracuse, and was set to follow his idol and fellow Orangeman Jim Brown to the Cleveland Browns, but he died of Leukemia before he ever got the chance to go to the NFL.

The film is getting mixed reviews for its accuracy, but it does include several scenes shot on the Syracuse campus that I want to see, including one in front of Hendricks Chapel, where I sang in choir. I'm especially interested to see the depiction of Syracuse's Archbold stadium, which was torn down before my freshman year to make way for the Carrier Dome. You can see the dome behind the chapel in the picture above. In the film, the old stadium has been digitally inserted to replace the Dome, and it'll be interesting to see what that looked like!

Screw Obama/McCain - Let's Talk About Palin!

I skipped last night's debate between Obama and McCain, and opted instead to catch a recap on Nightline, which apparently proved to be a good decision because all the reviews seem to indicate the Presidential candidates were pretty darn boring...


So instead, this morning, I choose to discuss my fascination with Sarah Palin, who is decidedly less boring than the other three candidates! I call your attention to an article by Camille Paglia on Salon.com. Paglia is a self-professed liberal columnist and devoted Barack Obama supporter, who also happens to share my feelings about the Alaska Governor. Paglia shares my view that Palin has been criminally misjudged and that she is, in fact, an "uber" rather than "anti" feminist. Here are a few choice passages for those of you who opt not to read the entire column...


Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.


The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.


One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.


Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.


The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin's bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition -- without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature.


I sometimes feel like I'm on a deserted island when it comes to my appreciation of Governor Palin, but then I look at the TV ratings for her debate with Joe Biden - 70 million people, the second largest televised debate of all time - and realize that a lot of you are, if not supportive, at least fascinated by her. And it makes me realize America's closets are jammed pretty tight with people!

Thank You For Going The Hell Away!

I read with interest this editorial letter from this morning's Washington Post:

Campaigning For a Little Courtesy
Sunday, October 5, 2008; B08

As campaign season rages to a fever pitch, volunteers for Republicans and Democrats scurry from house to house conducting mini-surveys to determine which voters have already made their choices and which remain undecided. For the first time since I was eligible to vote 30 years ago, I decided to join a presidential campaign as a volunteer.

Voters and non-voters alike should know that it is not pleasant to knock on the doors of strangers. I do not like to interrupt tired people at dinnertime or on their precious weekends, but it is the only way I know of to help my country at a time of great adversity. My volunteerism has come as a result of a surprising surge of middle-age patriotism, pure and simple, which requires a great deal of courage and time away from my family.

Which is why I have been appalled at how I have been treated when I knock on doors.

Though I am always apologetic about the disturbance and extremely polite, some people have yelled at me, slammed doors in my face and treated me with unveiled contempt. One woman who looked absolutely terrified when I introduced myself shut her door -- then locked and deadbolted it -- closed her garage doors and raced from window to window to make sure they were secured. At 5-foot-5 and a size 4, standing there holding lists of registered voters, I realize I must look extremely threatening. When I am treated disdainfully, I walk away wondering: Are these people unkind because they have different political views than I do or are they just unkind to begin with?

So I would like to make a plea this election season: Please, when someone knocks at your door to discuss your vote, be courteous.

We are all volunteers, doing what we think is best for our country. You may not wish to divulge your choice -- "refused" is one of the boxes we can check on our forms -- but please let us know this in a polite manner. There is no need to be rude.

The work we do is hard and unpaid. A smile and friendly word from a stranger would be greatly appreciated.

Eleanor Herman Dyment
McLean

Ms. Dyment - I have a suggestion. Go away. You may see your volunteer work as patriotic, but I see it as unwelcome and as a monumental pain in the ass.

I'm sure you've heard of the National Do Not Call registry. There are now more than 150 million phone numbers in America on that list - people who don't want to receive intrusive phone calls from marketers. Why would you think they want you knocking on their doors?

In this day and age, I truly believe you will do your candidate more harm than good by going door-to-door to harass people. Your time would be better spent writing a check to the campaign of your choice and encouraging that campaign to develop a direct mail piece.

I know that door-to-door volunteerism has been a crucial part of campaigning. My mother was a GOP activist when I was a kid, and I spent more than a few hours delivering fliers and going door-to-door myself. But we don't live in that world any more. We have 24-hour cable news cycles, and the internet, so there is no shortage of ways for us to hear about candidates. For better or worse, we live in a more suspicious world. I'm not saying we shouldn't be more receptive to opening our doors to strangers, but you are not about to change that social more.

Sorry to pee on your parade, but please don't knock on my door!

John Matthews

Brookeville, MD

I Heart Sarah Palin

There - I've finally come out of the closet. I love and admire Sarah Palin. She had me at "howdy!"

That is quite an admission to make in my world, which is dominated largely by liberal-leaning, academia-loving, Democratic loyalists - in other words, most of my friends and colleagues are, like myself, members of the mainstream media. My admiration for Sarah Palin was first savagely attacked by one of my closest friends less than 24 hours after she was introduced to the world, and I have kept my affections close to the vest ever since. But now that the Palin/Biden debate is out of the way, I'm coming out to one and all.

My closeted burden has been lifted because the pressure is finally off Palin. Now that the debate is over, she is going to take a backseat to her running mate for the rest of the campaign, and this time next month, Barack Obama will be elected President, as he probably should be.

There is no doubt to anyone with a semi-objective eye watching the debate that Joe Biden clearly won on content. In fact, it may have been the best public speaking I've ever seen Biden do. He was crisp with his comments, and I found him to be warm and engaging.

But I was darn proud of Sarah Palin as well. She could have gone "Admiral Stockdale" right from the start, but she hung in there with Biden for an hour and a half and never conceded her ground. She also wisely ignored Gwen Ifil's questions and Joe Biden's challenges when she didn't know the answers or have a comeback, and I was OK with that. She did what she had to do to not completely embarrass herself, and she did it with class, and humor and warmth.

A lot has been asked of Sarah Palin since she was grabbed from obscurity to become John McCain's running mate just five weeks ago, and she has held up as well as anyone in her situation could possibly be expected to. She was a shiny apple who was asked to be an orange on extremely short notice. Was she properly vetted in advance? No. Did she know everything that a candidate for national office needs to know? No. But when Sarah Palin was asked to help her party and her party's Presidential nominee, she stepped up to the plate. And that counts for a ton in my book, considering the knee-jerk savage criticism she has had to endure and the wilting pressure she has faced. She also, by the way, faced knee-jerk public idolatry that did not serve her well in the end, as supporters envisioned Palin as some sort of fantasy Samantha Stevens who could deliver votes with a twitch of her bespectacled nose.


Palin has been painted as "dumb" and "stupid"... an anti-feminist and a fundamentalist Christian whacko. She is none of those things. What she IS is "you and me." She IS an average person - someone who is an expert within her sphere of influence (i.e., running Alaska), with considerably fewer skills in areas that she has not had to deal with. Could YOU, for example, give an intelligent response on which factions are harboring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Pakistan? Me neither.


The difference between Sarah Palin and the rest of us is that she was pushed into a national spotlight and asked to pretend to be something she is not... and she had to do it knowing that we knew she was playing a role. Put yourself in Sarah Palin's red high heels for a minute and imagine how well you'd have done answering Katie Couric's questions.


About three weeks ago, actor Matt Damon said Sarah Palin is "like a bad Disney movie." Well, you know what? I love Disney movies (big surprise there)... movies like "The Rookie" and "Miracle" and "Remember The Titans", where teams or individuals in unlikely scenarios face long-odd chances of succeeding, but still, in the end use their guts and determination to win. Well, Sarah Palin is not going to win - this time. The economic crisis has taken too much of a toll on the McCain campaign, and Palin's own inevitable struggles with the media have not helped in that regard.


But there's also a very good chance this Disney film is not over. If we've learned nothing else about Sarah Palin, we have learned that she is a highly skilled politician and a very good, if not great, communicator. Her affair with the camera lens rivals those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and we have not seen the end of her. Say what you will about Palin's premature debut on the national stage - she has put her state on the map in ways that no politician has ever done before, and I think she'll definitely end up in Washington as a member of the U.S. Senate if that's what she wants.


That's when the real education of Sarah Palin will begin. And, by golly, those Democrats better gosh darn watch out then!

Houseguests - The Power Is Up For Grabs!

How's this for political analysis? As we move closer to election day, I'm finding myself more and more frequently comparing the Presidential campaign to the TV show, "Big Brother", at least in this sense...

In the game of Big Brother, losing contestants frequently try to make the claim that they have played the game honestly, with morally superior intent, and they invariably are shown the door because they are not willing (or are not smart enough) to make the cutthroat plays necessary to win the game. So the quandry becomes whether to be popular and lose, or to be lambasted and win.

In the game of Presidential "Big Brother" that is playing out in my head, Obama is coming out as the nice guy, and John McCain is coming out as the tough guy who just might win in the end.

The McCain campaign has been excoriated by the Obama camp (and by Democrats in general) for picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, a move that many on the left see as a cynical effort to pickup some Hillary Clinton supporters, and described by many as a "Hail Mary" pass to save a failing campaign. Well, for a while, anyway, the move worked, and it worked far better than even the McCain campaign could have imagined. Like her or hate her, Palin is still getting plenty of attention, despite the fact that a near-blackout has been imposed by the McCain campaign in terms of media access. Joe Biden is readily available to the media, but the way things have been going for him lately, don't be surprised if the Democrats put Biden in a media blackout as well!

Now, John McCain has announced he's suspending his campaign and returning to Washington until a deal is reached on a rescue package for America's financial system. The Democrats are crying foul once again, saying McCain's move is nothing but a political ploy to turn the attention away from his trailing poll numbers. They also are claiming "dirty pool", because they say Obama reached out to McCain first, only to have McCain go before the media first in order to get the "leadership" edge on the issue. In the game of "Big Brother", we call this "the player getting played".

There's no doubt McCain is making a big gamble here. His latest play could come across as a political ploy... OR it could come across as McCain being a renegade... actually doing something "presidential" and leading by example, leaving Obama in the dust to engage in the political game alone.

No matter how you look at it though, there is no doubt that in the Presidential campaign, John McCain has been more imaginative, and demonstrated that he's more willing to take chances than Barack Obama is. This could very well kill McCain's chances of being President. But if America elects John McCain on November 4th, it will be because he was doing what he needed to do to win the game.

Obama may be able to claim the moral high road.

But McCain will claim the White House.

And Now - A Public Service Announcement.

Election Day is coming... Do you know where your teenager is?

See more Judd Apatow videos at Funny or Die

Back To Earth

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Well, actually, a LOT of Republicans said the election was over after Sarah Palin was picked to be John McCain's running mate. But at some point or other, Palin had to get off the campaign trail and say something in public that strayed from her well-crafted acceptance speech, which she had been repeating for over a week. And that point came on September 11th in Fairbanks.

Palin's performance in her first interview with Charlie Gibson should not be compared with the 9-11 disaster, although I'm sure some NY Times or Slate.com columnist will not be able to resist that allusion. This was not, however, Palin's finest moment. Gibson, rightly so, launched right into questions about foreign policy - the area that most people in America suspect would be Palin's weakest link. And she did prove to be pretty weak. Her answers concerning Israel and the Russian invasion of Georgia were clearly crafted by someone else and grafted onto Palin's brain. And she clearly had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was when Charlie asked her about it.

Red meat Republicans will be tempted to attack Charlie Gibson for his questions, or for the borderline-condescending manner in which he asked them. But they should stop right there. Charlie Gibson was hand-picked by the McCain camp, and can you really name anyone else of stature who would have treated Palin any more fairly? I will say I was not very comfortable with Gibson's grilling about God. Religion is a very personal thing, and what makes sense to one person vis a vis God may make no sense at all to someone else.

Palin supporters will give her a pass on much of the interview. Let's face it... the vast majority of Americans don't know anything about foreign policy - that's what we elect other people to worry about. And I, for one, had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was, either! I have never had any delusion that Sarah Palin knows squat about foreign policy, and I could frankly care less about her bona fides in that area. Most Governors who have ever run for President have the same weakness entering the White House, and they simply learn on the job.

However, Palin's struggles with Gibson DO mark an important point in the election. It will give Democrats (and the media - especially MSNBC) some traction for the first time since Palin was introduced to the public before the GOP Convention. And it should erase a good portion of the bump that McCain enjoyed after St. Paul.

In other words, it's game on!

P.S. - Watch this clip - and remember - we only tease because we love.

In Memory Of Spiro Agnew!

When I was 5 years old and Spiro Agnew was running for Governor of Maryland, my parents, who were active members of the Young Republicans, hosted a meet-and-greet for Agnew in the rec room of our home in Silver Spring. It was like a scene out of "Mad Men". I still have vague memories of it to this day, and I have better memories of faded Polaroid shots taken of the future Vice President sitting at my Mom's piano. It's neat to know that a national figure was in my basement, even if it was a national figure who would turn out to be a national embarrassment... and it's a story I will tell for the rest of my life.

So where am I going with this? There's a lot of hubbub being made over a campaign rally being held at Fairfax High School tomorrow for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The rally apparently breaks a county rule that prohibits political events from being held during the school day, and the Democrats are making a lot of noise about it, along with some unnamed teachers who say the rally will be "disruptive". I wonder if the rally would still be "disruptive" if it was being held for Barack Obama, but I digress...

I can see why rules like this would be in place... Under certain circumstances, I'm sure an event like this COULD be disruptive, and it certainly could portray the school system as taking sides. But we're not talking about a debate between two Congressional candidates. We're talking about an appearance by the potential future President and Vice President of the United States! What are the chances these students or even this school will ever have of having this opportunity again? I don't care if it's McCain or Obama or Ross Perot or Ralph freaking Nader. If they want to hold a rally at my kid's school, I'm going to say hell, YES!

I do think, in the name of fairness, just so no one's feathers are ruffled, that the county ought to afford the same opportunity to the Obama camp under the same circumstances, but at another Fairfax County high school... That way, the county might be able to allow another school body to share the same experience, and allow hundreds of other kids to say they remembered when (potentially) President Obama visited their school.

Come on... Is this REALLY that difficult?

Greater Of Two Goods?

I just had a thought. I have become so used to the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils during Presidential elections, that it never really occured to me that I could, for once in my life, be voting for the greater of two goods this November.

I am still firmly on the fence, but it's refreshing to think it could be because I really don't have anything (YET) of substance against either candidate. Barack is a bit too much "rock star" for my taste - especially given his very REAL lack of experience. John McCain is, frankly, about 10 years too old. But overall, I find both men to be attractive candidates - likable, believable and intelligent. Compare these two with the candidates from the past few elections...

2004 - George W. Bush vs. John Kerry - The epitome of lesser of two evils. Bush was not proving to be a particularly effective President, but America just plain didn't like John Kerry.

2000 - George W. Bush vs. Al Gore - People love Al Gore today, but he was a pretty weak candidate back in 2000, and so was Bush. Heck, if Gore had carried his own home state, we never would have had to learn about pregnant chads.

1996 - Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole - Okay, I'll grant you... this was NOT a lesser of two evils election. Clinton did have an effective first term, and Dole was a well-respected elder statesman. But given Clinton's incumbency, this was never a very close election to begin with.

1992 - Bill Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush vs Ross Perot - The fact that Perot drew nearly 19 percent of the vote shows this was the ultimate in the lesser of THREE evils elections....

1988 - George Bush vs. Mike Dukakis - America was not really thrilled at the idea of giving a third straight term to the GOP, but Bush was running against Dukakis, who was a Democratic prototype for John Kerry.


Call me idealistic, but I think there's a real chance Americans will go to the polls on November 4th feeling good about the choices they have to make. It's far too easy in our sharply divided nation to take sides, and we spend far too much time trashing our opponents. There is plenty that is subject to change in the next 57 days, but as of right now... If my choice (whoever it turns out to be) doesn't win, I think I'll be fairly comfortable with the other guy in the White House.

Obama may be a rock star, but at least he's not a wooden board like Kerry or Gore or Dukakis. McCain may be old, but he's not (no matter what the Democrat talking points say) a carbon copy of George W. Bush, and he will be a strong leader if elected.

Your thoughts?

Equal Time

Here's the deal with Sarah Palin. Win or lose with McCain, she's going to be one of the leading faces of the GOP for the next 20 years. Having said that, I've been tough on the Democrats lately... Time for some payback in their favor...

Tread Carefully, Feminists...

The smell of hypocrisy hangs in the air over the Presidential campaign... Democrats are howling over the fact that the other side, the Grand Old (White Man) Party, has beaten the Dems to the punch and put up a woman as a Vice Presidential candidate. There have been chuckles over the relative inexperience of Sarah Palin, along with the fact that she comes from a small state, is pro-gun and pro-life, and now has both a baby with Down Syndrome and a daughter who is pregnant, proving without a doubt that she is an irresponsible parent to boot.

In essence, the Democrats are doing everything they can to marginalize Sarah Palin, just as all men tried to marginalize all women candidates a generation ago. If Sarah Palin breaks through the glass ceiling, are we to believe it won't count because her politics are not NOW politics? Do GOP women have to submit to chromosome tests to prove their gender?

Here's what is really at play here. Last Thursday night, the Democrats thought they had the election all but locked up after Barack Obama's electrifying acceptance speech in Denver. Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Romney? Surely an electoral landslide!

What the Democrats had not counted on is that the Republicans were slick enough to steal the spotlight and turn conventional wisdom on its ear. And now the Democrats are pissed.

They are pissed that what they thought would be a rout is now a horserace. They are pissed that, after finally getting Hillary Clinton to go away, her legacy remains alive in Sarah Palin. And they are extremely pissed that of the two parties, the one that had the imagination to nominate a woman was the party of Darth Vader and Dick Cheney.

This is a hypocritical temper tantrum in the making. Would feminist groups rather have a strong woman in the White House, even if she does not share the traditional NOW platform, or would they rather have Joe Biden in a dress?

I don't expect feminist groups to support the McCain/Palin ticket... But I would hope they don't spend the next two months trying to claim that Sarah Palin is not a legitimate candidate for Vice President. Like her or not, Palin is going to make the GOP ticket more attractive to voters. And that speaks to her power... as a candidate AND as a woman.

-- Written by a pro-choice, anti-gun Obama-leaning moderate who thinks candidates deserve the courtesy of being fully-vetted by the public instead of being instantly dismissed in order to justify a political stance.

The Presidential Race Has Just Gotten Much More Interesting!

I'm not saying I'll vote for her, or predict that her surprise selection will push John McCain over the top, but Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's arrival at the GOP VP nominee will no DOUBT make the rest of the Presidential race far more interesting that the selection of Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty would have been!

I can say as an old white guy myself that another old white guy in the number two chair (such as the -ahem- other VP candidate) would have been pretty dull, and left millions of more Americans sitting on the sidelines disengaged from the battle the rest of the way. I know that's what I had been planning to do, anyway!

I think Governor Palin handled herself extremely well in her introduction to the national stage, and I think she has at least caught the attention of blind Obama loyalists who were hoping that his acceptance speech Thursday night would effectively end the race.

Give the old guy credit... He had an ace up his sleeve, and he played it at a perfect time to steal the news cycle away from Obama... The people who say John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin was a desperation move may very well be right... But that doesn't mean it wasn't the right move at the right time... And I can GUARANTEE you that McCain/Palin will get far more attention from the media and the nation over the next two months than McCain/Romney ever would have!

Let the Games begin!

Oh - and if I'm not mistaken (I havent done the homework on this), Palin would be the first major candidate for President or Vice President to have a background in sports broadcasting since Ronald Reagan... Enjoy!

Abraham, Martin and John... and Barack. And Oprah.

I want to be brief, and I don't want to be bitter. You all know where I stand on this Presidential election, so everything and everybody is viewed right now with a cynical eye.

I do think the huge stadium thing worked for Barack Obama. I do think he gave a good speech. I DO kind of resent that every Barack Obama appearance is treated as though he has already been anointed President, and I hope that does not come back and bite him in the ass. I also hope the November election is not particularly close (like Bush/Gore in 2000), because if it is, and Obama is on the short end of the stick, there will literally be violence in the streets.

Here's one possible source of Obama backlash - Oprah Winfrey was still in the throes of orgasm when Entertainment Tonight caught up with her at Invesco Field after the speech. I don't hate Oprah, but I do hate her influence... Her opinion should not count more than anyone else's but you know damn well it does.

Oh - and we also heard from John McCain last night, buying ad time to congratulate Obama for his historic nomination. You would like to think the ad was sincere, and not a political calculation. But who's kidding whom?

And in closing, I will also say this... Love him or hate him, you have to give Obama this... He outscored the Redskins by a lot last night!

This Election Makes Me Want To Hurl!

OK... I admit it... I became kind of addicted to coming home in the afternoon the past couple of weeks and having my choice of two of three channels of Olympic coverage pretty much 24/7... And since the games ended on Sunday, I've been missing that. So with the Democratic convention on, and the GOP to follow, I decided to drift over to MSNBC this afternoon to see what was going on there. (I knew MSNBC was channel 84 on my TV because it had the Olympics last week)

I only needed about five minutes with Chris Matthews (Thank God - no relation) before I knew I was not going to satisfy my TV jones by watching election coverage. My God, the guy may as well have a Democratic party donkey stamped on his forehead! He played a clip of Michelle Obama praising Hillary Clinton during her speech, and came out of it by proclaiming, "That was one of the high points of the convention so far!" Someone should have given him a napkin to wipe up his drool!

Now, I realize that in the post-Rush Limbaugh world, neither TV nor radio commentators are expected to be center-of-the-road in their presentations any more... But while these clowns on the left and right pander to their hard-defined marginal target audiences, what's left out there for the two-thirds of us who comprise the muddled middle? These guys are not even trying very hard any more to mask their own bias.

It's bad enough that I'm deeply cynical about the candidates running for President... but to feel the same way about members of the media when I AM (some of the time, anyway) a member of the media? That really sucks.

John Edwards Can Go To Hell.

Former Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards admitted in an interview prepared for ABC's Nightline that he DID have an affair with a woman a couple of years ago, and then spent months during his run for President lying about it. This pisses me off.

I have never been a fan of John Edwards, and always pictured him as kind of a weak Vice Presidential candidate teamed with a weak Presidential candidate four years ago. But neither his politics nor his proclivity for extra-marital dalliances are what pisses me off about John Edwards.

I'm upset because every time a guy like this goes out and blatantly lies to the American people about his own character, it hurts the institution of the Presidency a little bit more. After we hear about Bill Clinton and guys like John Edwards, is there really any reason at all to believe anything that comes out of John McCain's or Barack Obama's mouths? Why should we as Americans throw our votes to either of these guys? What have they done to earn our trust?

I've certainly heard more than enough pandering from all of the candidates who are seemingly willing to say just about anything to win my vote - and wait - it's only August!

McCain may be the greatest guy on planet Earth... and Barack Obama may walk on water. But every time a politician beats his chest about honesty and integrity and then comes out to be a liar just like all of the other power-hungry troglodytes, it brings everyone else down a peg.

One other thing specifically about John Edwards... I was pissed at him even before the affair came out. His wife has stage 4 terminal cancer, and she busted her ass campaigning for him - something which quite possibly shortened her life. The Edwards have a seven-year-old son who is going to lose his mother one of these days. She should have been home spending quality time time with that boy instead of being off trying to get her cheating, lying husband elected. Now, I imagine this latest scandal could further push her health over the edge. But I don't have too much sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards. She is still a politician's wife, and I would not be surprised at all to see her sitting by Johnny's side on Oprah or with Diane Sawyer to stand by her man.

That boy deserves better.