John McCain - a Hero for Not Inducing Too Much Hatred

That's the essence of this New York Times piece. On the other hand, his vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin, has been found to have abused executive power over a family matter in Alaska. I'm trying to find a page-1 (or maybe page-2) article on Sen. Biden - where is he?

Sarah Palin and the New York Times

Gov. Sarah Palin quoted the New York Times ("[her] copy of [yesterday's] NYT") yesterday to establish a relationship between Sen. Barack Obama and Bill Ayers; quite an improvement, since last time she spoke up, she couldn't mention the papers she reads every day. It's a real shame that this campaign season is centered around her and any silliness she purs out, doggone it! And no discussion of the serious issues is taking place any more. I hope the next presidential debates focus more on substance than on all this.

The Dumbing Down of American Politics - Salon Magazine

Read this very interesting piece. This blog has very many disagreements with the Obama-Biden ticket's professed policies - in fact, it is closer to some of the things Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are saying in the form of slogans. But the latter do not even come close to enunciating a proper conservative or libertarian position; they only give ridicule to ideas of smaller state intervention. Their support of the bail-out plan, as proposed by the Bush administration, is very indicative of their propensity to favor state intervention, when it seems politically expedient to do so. The lip service that the Republican ticket occasionally pays to libertarian ideas helps only to mock them further in the eyes of many people. Overall, the Republican ticket is a disaster for people espousing deregulation and free markets - and bringing the level of the discourse down to "folksiness" only makes matter worse.

All About Sarah

The Vice-Presidential debate was all about Sarah Palin's performance; how would she do, whether she could speak, etc. (although, it seems, much of the presidential campaign is about Sarah Palin). Most people think she did better than expected, but then those expectations were set very low, after her complete mumbling answers to Katie Couric (whose rather timid questioning she called "gotchas"). So she proceeded with her prepared sound-bites, in the knowledge that the moderator was unable to expose her discrepancies through a follow-up question, peppering her answers with "doggone it"'s and supposed folksy charm. A nice show-off but, when you really think about it, a dreadful precursor of things to come, if she were to win the vice-presidency. Being a "Joe six-pack" would probably disqualify a person from the presidency, yet Gov. Palin seems to endorse the opposite idea: it doesn't matter if she cannot handle details, focus on the substance of questions, etc., as long as she speaks like a 19th century Wild West folk hero. Maybe the GOP should nominate Bart or Homer Simpson for the job next time (granted, they are not Wild West heroes, but, boy, they sure wish they were, plus they don't blink). In the process we found about this guy, Sen. Joe Biden, who seemed at times to really know his stuff on foreign policy. Not that I approve of the Obama-Biden duo's socialist-policy tendencies (in which they will probably not be checked by Congress, as it seems that economic populism is all the rage currently), but at least his thoughts seemed very coherent on some serious questions. Judging only by the debate, I'd vote hands down for him.