Cutting Heads
If there's one good thing that's come from having finished training for the marathon, it'd be that I was home for the telecast of the 1st U.S. Presidential debate. I respect Jim Lehrer as a newsreader, and, in the PBS News Hour, when I catch it, as a moderator of discussion, even though I think he could stand a better set of commentators than he's got. As the moderator of the debate, let alone as the author of the questions, he was pretty weak, I thought, but be that as it may, the debate showed up a couple of points.

First, McCain often approached the point of incomprehensibility, struggling to finish a phrase, let alone a sentence, or to make a point, and always striving mightily to accomplish two things: sound like Ronald Reagan and to portray himself simultaneously as Beltway insider and "maverick" outsider. For anyone who's been paying attention, for even just the last year, neither came off.

Obama was measured and reasonable throughout, often crediting McCain when he didn't have to (and McCain certainly never saw any reason to offer any such courtesy), even when there wasn't so altogether much to hold praiseworthy. Don't forget - don't ever forget - that for all McCain's principled stand against torture as an interrogation method by U.S. troops, he rolled on the CIA and other paramilitary arms of U.S. power. I think he came off well, particularly on domestic issues, but he never stumbled on the foreign policy issues, either, even if he did let McCain slide on a few porkies.

Admittedly, I'm an Obama supporter, but that's not to say I'm blind to his faults. He doesn't have years (and years and years) of history on Capitol Hill, or any great depth in matters military, economic, or whatever. McCain certainly has more personal experience as a legislator than Obama on any matter of governance you can name. But experience doesn't translate into leadership, and that's what the Presidency is about.

Congress makes laws. The Judiciary ensures they are applied or can be. The President leads the nation. Bush has led America into a terrible economic crisis, two wars where one would have been sufficient, and a general malaise of neglect and abandonment of the needy. McCain will do nothing different. Obama will. At any rate, Obama will try. McCain is for McCain, and that's all. Obama is for America, the one we Americans are raised to believe in, the one where if you try you can succeed, where anyone can grow up to be President. That's not McCain, and he's not the President I want to see lead the country for the next four years, let alone eight.

And God help us all if his running mate ever came to power. No, let's not even mention what she could do to the Supreme Court.