Elsewhere...

Credit where it's due, not where it isn't.

Just to change things up, a little praise for Bush & Co. A great short piece by George Packer gives 43 some credit, then goes on to explain why we should be fearful of McCain-Palin (and yes, perhaps, Obama-Biden).

"A lot has been written lately about the dishonest tactics of the two tickets, especially McCain-Palin. The problem with a campaign based on relentless message discipline, repeated falsehoods, and the habitual perversion of language is that none of it stops after election day. You can’t be indifferent to truth for months on end and then suddenly return to straight talk. If McCain should win, Steve Schmidt won’t be in charge of the new Administration, but his spirit will. Prostitutes hardly ever go straight: the mental atmosphere of a campaign becomes the mental atmosphere of a government. And the results aren’t pretty—ask any Iraqi."

Even though I'd rather cut off my own foot than vote for McCain, I am worried that Obama is coming of age as a campaigner, not as an elected leader. I still feel he is capable of great things, but I hope he knows how to pivot from campaigner to leader in January 2009. As I wrote once when I was fed up after another Clinton victory, "The qualities needed to be elected president, and the qualities needed to be an effective president once elected, are at best mutually exclusive and unrelated, and at worst wholly at odds with one another."