Left or Right, What's the Difference?

Chris Whiteside of New Left Media gives attendees at last Saturday's Rally to Restore Sanity the same opportunity to explain themselves that he gave to attendees at Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally a few weeks ago.

And it's a sad, sad thing, either way you look.

Sunday Drive: JFK

Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of that awful day. I remember it vividly: a brilliantly sunny autumn day, my mother hanging clothes out on the line in the backyard, myself watching TV in my parents' bed - I'd stayed home from school that day with the sniffles. All the ordinary routines of life going on as they should, as they always had, safe and predictable.

Then suddenly all was changed: a blank screen and the CBS logo; the ominous words, We interrupt this program . . . ; shots fired in Dallas at the Presidential motorcade; President Kennedy taken to a hospital; confusion on the streets and in the broadcast studio. I ran to tell my mother to come see. "Oh honey, don't joke about a thing like that." "No, Mommy, it's true, Walter Cronkite said . . . ."

And then the long, sad weekend, no cartoons on Saturday, no programs at all but news coverage and documentaries about the President's life. Not even any commercials for three days. We kids bemoaned the fact that there was nothing else to watch on TV; but young as we were, we were unwillingly fascinated by all that was happening, just like the grownups. And all the unforgettable images that have been replayed and repeated so many times across the years since then.

Well, I don't want to dwell today on the details of JFK's death, the poignant tableau of his widow and young children, the grief of a whole nation united in shock and sadness. Instead, I want to put a reminder here of who Kennedy was and why he inspired the nation and the world: the legacy of hope, the vision of all that America could be and should be to the world.

The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high--to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises--it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook--it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric--and those who prefer that course should not cast their votes for me, regardless of party.

But I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age--to all who respond to the Scriptural call: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed."

Fun while it lasted . . .

. . . so say the crowds of conservative columnists and bloggers as they jump for the lifeboats from the foundering Palin shipwreck. One of today's most prominent is Kathleen Parker, columnist for the National Review, emphasis mine:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. . . .

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Of interest here, taking a sharp-eyed view of all four candidates, is conservative columnist George F. Will's observations in his Sept. 3rd column on the necessary qualifications for the presidency: experience and character and good sense, both political and constitutional.

Will calls Obama "the least experienced person to receive a presidential nomination in the 75 years since the federal government became a comprehensively intrusive regulatory state and modern weaponry annihilated the protection the nation derived from time and distance."

Well, that may be so; and that's partly why I voted for Hillary in the primary last spring.

But having read Obama's Audacity of Hope and watching his performance in the campaign, I have faith that he will indeed rise to the occasion, as have other lightly-experienced Presidents in our history.

Lincoln's executive experience was rather short too, as I recall, when he got the job; but he earned a marble monument and a hallowed name in the annals of democracy.

Palin's name, I'm afraid, will go down in history as nothing more than the butt of wry jokes. And deservedly so.

But perhaps this manifest farce will spell the end of the "image politics" that began with Reagan's election: the triumph of style over substance.

Let us pray.