I have felt a bit out of the blogging groove as of late. Even in years past when I have left town for vacation, I still found time for a post or two, as in 2008 when I wrote from Boston about the presidential debate between then-candidates Barack Obama and John McCain or in 2010 when I marveled about how difficult it was for a tourist like myself to get a clear view of the ocean on the coast of Maine.

From Sea to Shining Sea: Robert Leckie

So, let me briefly review what I’ve been up to the last couple weeks. As I hinted, I was on vacation in New England last week. Unlike in 2010 or 2008 (or the time before that), I didn’t bother to actually go into the city this time. My friend lives about 10 minutes north of Boston on the North Shore, so I mostly stayed in that general area, visiting numerous used book stores in Rowley, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Danvers. Among them were  the Used Book Superstore, (This is a chain store, but the one I visited was in Danvers), Broken in Books (Rowley) and my favorite, Manchester by the Book (Manchester-by-the-Sea). In total, I came back to Georgia with seven books, and while I did visit Barnes & Noble once in Peabody, Mass., I resisted the urge to buy any brand new books. Prior to making it to Boston, I stayed over a couple days in Plymouth, where I drove past but did not actually see, what others described as “unimpressive” rock of that town’s fame.

I have also been reading quite a bit. Since the editor of the paper where I work seems fond of calculating the completion percentage of whatever history book through which he’s currently plowing (I believe he’s at 90 percent), I recently tabulated mine. I am about 72 percent done with From Sea to Shining Sea (not to be confused with this one), the former of which is a 600-page romp through the War of 1812, the war with Mexico and America’s westward expansion. It is an elegant and entertaining read and not so erudite that it’s inaccessible to the common reader. I plan to begin “The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson” next, which will no doubt make the incontrovertible case that while Jefferson made outward shows toward religion, he was privately more likely a deist and did not believe in the various miracles attributed to Christ. According to Charles Sanford:

From the evidence of his life, we may safely conclude that Jefferson remained a member in good standing of his local Episcopal church all his life, in outward form at least. His inward convictions were another matter, however. His great-grandson described Jefferson’s religion as that of a “conservative Unitarian….He did not believe in the miracles, nor the divinity of Christ, nor the doctrine of the atonement, but he was a firm believer in Divine Providence, in the efficacy of prayer, in a future state of rewards and punishments, and in the meeting of friends in another world.”

Jefferson also famously said in a letter to Benjamin Rush:

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every from of tyranny over the mind of man.

In any case, I’m quite anticipating reading the book on Jefferson after I finish my romp through America’s expansionist years.

Otherwise, I have been catching up on my Counter Strike: Source, which I did not get to play at all while on vacation. This is a super high priority, I know, especially for someone who puts so much importance on reading and studying, but since I don’t watch much TV, I’ve got to have an engine by which to channel a little nightly frivolity. Of course, even at that, I am quite competitive and probably take it too seriously. Before going to Boston, for instance, I was quite disappointed with the my so-called “KDR” or kill-death ratio (It was o.95 or something. Quite unacceptable), but happily, the server was reset, and so too were the stats. Now, I’m at about 1.07. While some players’ KDR is above 1.50, anything above 1.0 is respectable in my case. I tend to quit the round or “spectate” if I find myself slipping too far below 1.0 so as not to totally screw up my stats. So much for the mirth.

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Site notes: I just updated the software to version WordPress 3.1.3, and for anyone who uses WordPress plugins, you may want to shy away from Statpress. Although I had been using it for quite some time, it apparently caused some overload issues on one of my web host’s servers. My host, IXwebhosting.com, had to disable my database until I detected and fixed the problem. Luckily, the word “statpress” actually appeared in the error message generated by the server, so the culprit was clear.

Article first published as DADT Repeal Languishes in Senate on Blogcritics.

A bill that would have repealed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was blocked this week in the U.S. Senate via a John McCain led filibuster. The vote to halt repeal was 56-43.

Here’s a look at the vote breakdown:

Credit: The New York Times/Geography of the vote

The controversy and debates surrounding the portion of the National Defense Authorization Act that would repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” seem like a non-issue to me, at least to some degree, and there is one element here of which I might actually agree with some conservatives, but for a wholly different reason.

Admittedly, reading some portions of “10 U.S.C. § 654 : US Code – Section 654: Policy concerning homosexuality in the armed forces” makes me cringe a bit, particularly the part about forcing homosexuals to refrain from whatever it is they do in their private lives, or else, be discharged from the military. Presumably, straight people can go about their bedroom business unimpeded. Perhaps, that portion should be repealed. But I think the specific part about military officials being banned from asking about personal orientation and personnel being banned from talking about it seems to me to be sound. For, I don’t believe sexual orientation is or should be relevant at all in military life. Thus, if both gay and straight people simply banished any talk about who is or might be straight or gay seems to be the most constructive way to proceed. Or, maybe this is asking too much.

Regardless, the rational, I suppose, behind the code above is that military personnel live separate lives than you or I, that they are essentially public figures and are held to a higher standard. But it is here that the prejudice in the code against homosexuals, that they intrinsically live less moral lives than anyone else, seaps through with lucidity. If homosexual military personnel are essentially public figures and are conduits of taxpayer money, so are straight service men and women. So, where is the ban on heterosexuals admitting they are straight or the ban on heterosexuals engaging in their behavior?

I previously wrote a review of the movie, “Milk” with Sean Penn, in which I lauded Harvey Milk’s attempts to enact change in his community by doing it the right way: by running for public office, contrasted to those well-known gay pride parade attendees whose flamboyancy and flaunting of their gayness wins them few brownie points. Thus, I think there might be a measure of empowerment gained by paraders in providing shock value to the rest of us, sort of a way of taking comfort in their otherness. That’s something to which I can relate in some ways, but it seems to me that creating an atmosphere of otherness within the gay community to the rest of the world seems counterintuitive to what folks are attempting to accomplish. That is, equal rights. Thus, if homosexuals truly want to be “equal,” not just in word but in law, throw off the us-against-them mentality, run for office, say nothing about your private matters and enact change from the top down.

Again, regarding DADT, I think the best way to proceed in all this might be to ban conversation about sexual orientation altogether, from enlistment, to boot camp and beyond. For I can’t see how, in any way, sexual orientation, straight, bi or heterosexual, is relevant to any goal the military might hope to achieve, and this includes those who might seek to serve in the military as openly gay. It’s nobody’s business but their own.

Anyone who reads this blog well knows by now that I make no exceptions when it comes to holding leaders, folks in the media and others accountable for their words or actions. While my overall inclination is toward a certain ideology that generally puts caring for people above amassing wealth, from Democrats to Republicans to Independents, everyone’s feet is held to the fire here.

Credit: The Associated Press

I think John McCain is one of the most well-respected leaders in Washington, and it has been because of his willingness to work with folks on both sides of the aisle to get things done on the Hill. That, and he’s also one of the most pragmatic, clear thinking among his Republican brethren.

But nothing gets me charged more than exposing outright deceptiveness for what it is, and it can come from the left as much as from the right.

Yesterday, I came across this story from The Daily Beast, which claimed that McCain said on a radio show that he would not work with Democrats and reach across the aisle on the issue of immigration reform.

The originally linked story is from Think Progress, which, it’s no secret, is a progressive website, that probably, just as much as conservative ones, attempts to prop up its messages by begging, borrowing, stealing or by whatever other means to A) trash the opposing sides and B) advance its agenda.

This is a contemptible approach, in my view, no matter what side of the aisle you side with, and it’s a dangerous method for democracy as we know it. Let’s take the McCain case. Regarding the issue of immigration reform, a caller asked, and this is pasted straight from Think Progress’s article:

I would like to ask Sen. McCain if he will make a promise on the air now that if we reelect him, he will not reach across the aisle, especially with Lindsey Graham, for comprehensive immigration reform. Will you not do that for the time you’re in office. (I deleted the unnecessarily bold text where Think Progress claimed McCain wouldn’t reach across the aisle. Text is text. Bolding it doesn’t make it anymore important.)

McCain’s reply as recorded by Think Progress:

Yes ma’am. … I am promising that I will try to address the issue of immigration in a way that is best for the United States of America.

Now, when reading this for the first time, I thought the “…” was a little puzzling. I thought: “Was the ‘Yes ma’am’ just an acknowledgment that he would, indeed, not reach across the aisle or, and more plausibly, simply an acknowledgment that McCain heard and understood the lady’s question? From listening to the actual audio, it appears to be the latter. And did you notice the little chuckle McCain made after the woman was done with her question? This leads me to believe that he didn’t necessarily take the lady’s query terribly seriously and was merely attempting to come up with a reasonable response without outright disagreeing with her. Here is the audio:

I’m not confident that he agreed to that particular promise from this obviously right-winger. As for his part, Lindsey Graham, a senator from my home state of South Carolina, has very admirably reached out to folks on the other side of the aisle, as has McCain, to try to come to a consensus on numerous issues, immigration not the least of them.

After his long years of service of trying to work with Democrats and other leaders to get stuff done in Washington, I highly doubt that just because his state has adopted a new immigration bill, that he would decide out of the blue to turn into a rabid partisan crank. Partisanship, after all, is one component of politics that folks hate about Washington. That makes sense for a logical reason: partisanship (unless there’s a supermajority) rarely succeeds in getting anything done. And its folks like McCain and Graham who carrying the torch of the centrist, which, at least in some small part, bolsters my faith in the process.

Note: “Ctd.” means this is continued from a previous post.

For obvious reasons, Democrats and the always ideologically hard to pin down Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are supporting an effort to repeal the mid-1990s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” law that prevents military personnel from openenly serving in the military. President Obama also called for the repeal during his first State of the Union address.

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.

Republicans, however, are by and large seeking more information from top military officials about how cutting the ban may affect servicemen and women. And I think they are taking the right stance on this point. As one commenter from the Politics Daily Web site said:

Current policy seems to work so leave it alone. Just imagine the problems it will create. How are reg soldiers going to feel knowing that they are showering with someone who is gay? Or just being in the same room? I am not against gays, just wondering how others might feel. I still thing its in the gene make-up of the body which determines what someone might be. But two guys or women holding hands on a base could cause problems. Privately- who cares.

And appearing exacerbated by those suggestions, pondermom wrote:

Straight men are showering next to gay men NOW they just don’t know it. And how are they going to feel ” just being in the same room ” ? Are you serious? You and Diane Schwab are both completely clueless. Are straight men attracted to every woman they see? Why would you think that gay men and women are attracted to every other man or woman walking down the street, or for that matter, showering next to? And, by the way, the military is not exactly the profession that the “drag queen” type of gay man, which I am sure is what you think all gay men are, is going to choose…. basic training and stilettos don’t exactly mesh.

It’s true that just because men and women are serving together doesn’t mean that everyone is attracted to everyone. Or, we can at least hope that most members of the military have moved along from their hormone-strewn puberty years. And it’s also short-sighted to think that just because someone is gay that he’s going to automatically “like” every guy he sees. Gay attraction works the same as straight attraction. Some folks float your boat; some don’t. Still, I think lifting DADT could get awkward as the former commenter suggested. As I’ve noted elsewhere, who I “like” on a personal level is my business, and I see little reason to shout my straightness to the stars. Neither should gays.

I think some folks might be forgetting a key component of DADT: the law prevents military officials from investigating their sexuality upon enlisting or during their times of service. Surely any repeal of DADT would address this part of the law. Like John McCain has suggested, the status quo should probably be held on this particular issue.

If anything, perhaps arcane language in the current law, such as: gays in the military would

create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability …

should be cleaned up and modernized.

This is really getting quite tiresome. If you are one who watches the news at least once a day, you hear a series of words that, once latched onto by TV anchors and politicians, seem to turn into, say, kudzu vines or cancer, spreading and metastasizing to the point that they have totally saturated (and choked) the verbiage market. That said, here are a few of my favorites … or should I say, most hated and most cliché:

• Change: Since the election is over, this one isn’t quite as prevalent as it was, but during the campaign season — as in every campaign season — it was noxious. While now-President-elect Barack Obama, perhaps, was capable of instituting the most change if elected, both candidates used the word ad nauseum to attempt to separate themselves from political buffoons, lobbyists and the current administrations failings. We heard, “Change we can believe in” from the Obama camp, and we heard the shockingly unclever turnaround, “Friends, that’s not change we can believe in” from McCain. Since Obama was capable of instituting the most change, quite literally, since his win would have meant a different party in charge of the highest office in the land, we at least thought his calls for change were coherent. McCain’s continual declarations that he too would bring change was laughable — unless, of course, he meant the kind of frightening change of a much older, less healthy (than Bush) man in the White House, who, if he died, heaven forbid, would leave us with Sarah Palin. Now, that would certainly have been change, but unfortunately friends, it wouldn’t have been the kind we could believe in.
• Vet: That’s right, no longer can the word “vet” simply mean a veterinarian or veteran. The media has latched onto this like a stray cat on fish bones. We can no longer use evaluate or analyze or discern or study up on or any other comparable phrase. All must be now and forever vetted. Vet, vet vet.
• Tap: Nope, not with your hands. And don’t tap the Rockies, at least now until you’re done reading this. “Tap,” with its almost taboo connotation, seems like a bizarre way to convey that Obama has appointed another person to his administration. I suppose the intended meaning is that Obama is “tapping” the resources of whoever he has named. But in headlines, we simply get: “Obama taps Richardson for commerce spot.”
• Wall Street/Main Street: This little gem came to the fore most recently during the bank fallout, and politicians have used it to comfort those in Anytown, USA by saying that propping up Wall Street is not the only important decision lawmakers must make. They also must find ways to help out Main Street, the little guy, Joe Schmoh, and the like.
• And finally, the winner for the most ubiquitous buzzword of the day: bailout. We seemingly bailout those companies who traditionally, have packed their pockets quite full of giant sums of money that you and I will never see. When they need help, we trip over ourselves to save them because saving them means saving jobs and saving future economic strife, while no one is standing in line ready to bailout the small business down the street who is just as affected by the economy as the big guys, yet has no one’s sympathy and no one’s extra resources to make it through. After all this, we haven’t come to the heart of the issue yet: We allow such companies to swell to the heavens, so that they become so massive and influential that their very failure would the entire economy into disrepair. Something is wrong with such a system.

And on that happy note, I leave with a quote from Benjamin Franklin about debt, which has been the cause of much of man’s economic woe for centuries:

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hungerness bite, nor nakedness freeze thee.

As my wife and I were in the dark, somewhere between Allentown, Pa. and New York City bound for Boston, Mass. on a very long, one-day car ride, we tuned in to the third of the presidential debates, where John McCain and Barack Obama again pleaded their cases, and again laid out their, even then redundant, plans to turn America around in the wake of George W. Bush’s errant policies.

Here, like in talks before, we heard McCain mention his concern (or lack thereof, we’re not sure) for Obama’s “associations” with

Mr. Ayers, I don’t care about an old washed-up terrorist.

In the very next breath:

But as Senator Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship.

It’s remarkable that someone could turn about-face in a matter of half a second. Regardless, Ayers was clearly an issue, and one of Obama’s Achilles’ heels throughout the election cycle.

Yesterday, Ayers broke his silence in a column posted on The New York Times’ Web site (The column was published in Saturday’s print edition).

In it, Ayers admits:

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war. — William Ayers, column published in The New York Times, Dec. 6, 2008

In the piece, of course, Ayers says he co-founded The Weather Underground, which we already knew, and that the organization did plant “several small bombs” in government offices, including ones at the Pentagon and the Capitol in protest to the Vietnam War. He said the Undergound’s protests were peaceful, intended to harm no one and not terrorist in nature.

He goes on to express confoundment that placing two people in the same room, who had very thin, at best, associates amounted to palling around, noting, “There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.”

We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.

Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue. —Ayers

The McCain camp during the campaign seemed to present the opposite argument: hang with, shake hands with, view across the room those of unscrupulous, now or at any point in the past, and be forever married to those people’s hips. Ayers closing exposed what we knew: that the McCain camp was simply trying to stir the kettle of fear by dark associations, which almost hobbled Obama’s campaign. Interestingly, as if to hint at who he supported during the election — it was quite clear from the beginning of the column as well — Ayers injected Obama’s “not this time” phrase into his last paragraph.

Ayers did well to wait until after the election to flesh these thoughts out in public. Had he tossed his proverbial voice into the already crowded cauldron of plumbers and pigs, it could have resulted in a true political circus nightmare, if it hadn’t hit that point already. Ayers admits he regretted what he did way back when, and has served his community as a professor for decades now. Since the low-level tactic didn’t dupe enough Americans, I think at this, we can let it go. What is important now is to support education, not willful ignorance, understanding, not fear, at least until the next batch of presidential candidates rolls around and tests our mettle in discerning honesty from dishonesty.

I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education. —Ayers

The ironies of the modern Democratic and Republican parties are stark. One hundred fifty years ago, the Republican Party was a trailblazer in social and moral reform. It alone helped tumble slavery, while the Democratically-controlled South resisted, seceded and eventually surrendered a Civil War that a few in the South, paradoxically today calling themselves Republicans or Libertarians, are still waging. At one time, the Republican Party was the progressive party, while the Democrats floundered in an intrisincally flawed and morally decrepit economic system.

Something changed around the 1920s and 1930s, as the Democratic Party began garnering support under Frederick D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a series of programs geared to refuel the ailing numerous elements of the economy and American life, fresh off the heels of The Great Depression.

Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms. — “A New Deal,” Stuart Chase

Then Republicans began equating New Deal policies as synonymous, or at least, similar to socialist ideals, thus, in part, creating the tension that laid the foundation for what we consider our modern Democratic and Republican parties. Democrats, then, made great gains in the Civil Rights movement of the mid-1960s, while many Republican’s hail the Reagon years as the epicenter of all that is conservative and fiscal.

So, in light of Barack Obama’s recent nomination to the presidency, where did the Republican Party slip a disk? It was not merely in the George W. Bush administration’s failings in Iraq and New Orleans or the economy. Those were certainly fire-starters, but the problem begins elsewhere. I would argue that it begins with the folks who are seemingly still waging the Civil War, allbeit in less explicit ways, 150 years after the fact. It begins with a party seemingly stuck in the past.

On the surface and most immediately, the party lost the election for any number of reasons: the novelty of a candidate like Barack Obama; the downward-spiraling economy, which sped quickly on Bush’s watch; equations, real or imagined, made between Bush and John McCain; Sarah Palin … the list is long.

The general failing that has been accumulating over the years begins with the party’s seeming inability (or unwillingness) to move on, to modernize itself in our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religion society. It certainly doesn’t revolve simply around Iraq or the economy. The world of the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps the heyday of what some would consider to be the “good ol’ days” in America, is no better or worse than today with regard to moral uprightness. Mass murderers still killed en masse, genocidal dictators still touted their claims of positive ethnic cleansing and racists still supported the axioms of Jim Crow and the segregated South. All these elements go in cycles, and just because we aren’t witnessing modern versions of The Crusades of the Holocaust, doesn’t mean tragedies far worse than genocides in Darfur and famines in Africa, won’t crop up again at some point in our history.

Many Republicans, at least those not yet attempting to anaylse where the disk skipped, are still locked in a time, real or imagined, where America was more morally upright and more partitioned into separate ideologies, social classes and races. The world appeared more black and white then (no pun intended). But, for good or bad, this no longer represents America today. The inability to recognize this has led to the coinage “the stupid party.” I include this not to trivialize the matter or make jokes because it’s not funny in the least. Quite literally, the Democrats picked up the most votes of those with college educations, post-graduate degrees and the like.

The Economist on Nov. 13 put it this way:

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda. — The Economist, Nov. 13, 2008

And further down, we read that the party is

… trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

The article concludes by mentioning a book titled, “Ideas have Consequences” by Richard Weaver. The party’s lack of fresh, salient ideas about how to handle our most pressing issues and the unwillingness to step into the 21st century — and even more, a seeming inability to recognize that need — has gotten the party to its current predicament. Ideas have certain consequences, but a lack of ideas, perhaps, breed even more dire results.

John McCain apparently climbed out of the woodworks Tuesday to conduct an interview with Jay Leno for the “Tonight Show,” meanwhile, Sarah Palin has, after her running mate’s defeat, been all over the place. For instance, her recent interview with Matt Lauer, where she chatted with him (with hubby present at times in their Alaska home) about the race’s negative turn down the home stretch, the decisive Obama win and the supposed tensions between Palin and folks within the McCain camp.

A few highlights:

Lauer: When you did know it wouldn’t go well for you?
Palin: I — you know, I didn’t know until the — the…

Lauer: Right up through election night?
Palin: Absolutely. I had great faith that, you know, perhaps when that voter entered that voting booth and closed that curtain that what would kick in for them was, perhaps, a bold step that would have to be taken in casting a vote for us, but having to put a lot of faith in that commitment we tried to articulate, that we were the true change that would progress this nation. So again, the margin was pretty surprising to me.

She apparently had great faith in the Bradley Effect: “I had great faith that, you know, perhaps when that voter entered that voting booth and closed that curtain that what would kick in for them …” (she could have easily said:) that they were about to vote for a black man (half black) and that person’s whiteness would not allow that to happen. Thus, white people’s whiteness would, in secrecy, with only God watching, choose the familiar over, what some would call, a risky black vote. But with a 52.6 percent win in the Electoral College and a nearly 10 million vote advantage in the popular vote, we must conclude that would have been faulty reasoning, for the white And black vote were heard that day. Here is Palin’s full response:

I had great faith that, you know, perhaps when that voter entered that voting booth and closed that curtain that what would kick in for them was, perhaps, a bold step that would have to be taken in casting a vote for us, but having to put a lot of faith in that commitment we tried to articulate, that we were the true change that would progress this nation. So again, the margin was pretty surprising to me.

I can’t make sense of it either, and my version seems more comprehensible. Regardless …

Next:

Lauer: There is this feeling — and some of this comes from leaks and other just perception, people getting a gut — that there was increasing tension between you and Senator McCain in the final stretch of this campaign. Tell me what the relationship was like.

S. PALIN: We have a great relationship. Had from day one. Had the first time that I met him last year, he and his wife. I just have been great admirers of them, of their family, of all that Senator McCain has accomplished. Never once was there any inkling of tension between the two of us. Perhaps within the campaign there were campaign staffers who…

Lauer: Well, describe that for me. Who was butting heads?

S. PALIN: You know, I don’t even know. That inside baseball stuff regarding the way a campaign works on that level — I certainly didn’t get bogged down in any of the potential skirmishes or perceived problems.

Baseball stuff?

When asked if she was disappointed that she wasn’t able (by staffers) to give the speech she wanted, she said,

A little bit because again — not — not for me personally to get to be up there on the stage and give one last speech, but to be able to say, “This is an American hero. Let us be thankful for what he just offered our nation. Now, let’s all work together to support the new president.

On this point, I believe her, and I believe her because she not only gives accolades to the loser, the “American hero,” McCain, but to their opponent. And I also believe that her and McCain have nearly always been quite candid and close with one another, and it was likely McCain’s campaign officials, not the man himself, who saw the damage Palin was doing (i.e. disasters interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, to name a couple).

Lauer then brings up the wardrobe issue, and I don’t care. Next line of questioning.

Lauer appears at Palin’s home in Alaska and says,

While we were there, we had a chance to talk to Governor Palin about the highs and lows of the campaign and what the future holds for her.

Meanwhile, it is now 7:30 on a Tuesday morning, the 11th day of November 2008. I’m Matt Lauer reporting live from Anchorage, Alaska. Meredith is back in Studio 1A in New York City.

And, Meredith, do you think the producers would let me get away with calling this my ends of the earth trip?

VIEIRA: I don’t think so. Nice try, Matt. But, uh-uh. I don’t think so. You’re coming back and then going out again.

But I’m actually looking forward to dinner with the Palins.

What was your biggest surprise when you met the family?

Lauer: You know what, this is a very down-to-earth family. You know, over the last couple of months we got used to watching Sarah Palin on the road with the Secret Service around here and state troopers everywhere. None of the trappings of the campaign remain. She is someone who drives the 45 miles between Wasilla and Anchorage every day herself — no driver. And when she’s home, she is a working mom, cooking dinner, as I mentioned, for her family and for visitors. And so I think that it’s just that how down to earth she appears to be is what really surprised me most.

Here, with the “I’m actually looking forward to dinner with the Palins” Lauer inserts himself into his own story as one of its characters, which is precisely the opposite of what a journalist should do. I’m not suggesting Lauer was a journalist in the first place, just that he wears that badge.

VIEIRA: And her kids — those kids are so cute. Looking forward to it, Matt.

Here, Viera finds her way into the plot.

Lauer then begins talking about, perhaps, Palins’s shining moment, that of her speech before the Republican National Convention.

And, you know, I knew that it was an opportunity to be there representing the middle class, hard-working American families facing challenges that certainly my family faces.

The middle class! The Middle Class? Palin, Todd and the gang may be middle class in thought and expression (They appear to be down home enough) but appearance can be deceiving. Their combined salary would by far not qualify for Barack Obama’s proposed tax breaks for those making under $250,000. Not only do they not represent suburban America, they certainly don’t represent those who can’t even afford to live in suburbia.

Then, Lauer turned to asking Palin about personal attacks on her family, of which, I care nothing about that sensationalist stuff either. Next, talk segued to the economy.

S. PALIN: Well, I think the economic collapse had a heck of a lot more to do with a collapsed campaign effort than me, personally.

Palin, in my view, was the only element that gave McCain’s campaign life. Without her, his campaign was limping, if not six feet under. And that essence was this: her vibrance (Read: relative youthfulness), oratory ability and her appeal to the everyday person, whether deserved or not. But, what led to McCain’s loss were, in part, these factors, in this order:

- Obama’s eloquence, gift of oratory, gift to inspire, youthfulness, and most importantly, his message of change in the wake of a disastrous eight years;
- Palin’s lackluster performances at debates and wholly defunct interviews with Gibson and Couric; and
- McCain’s oldness (both physical and metaphorical) and his perceived (whether real or not) connection with the policies of George Bush.

And thinking about post-Election Day, why has McCain done less interviews, while Palin is seemingly everywhere? Again, her youthfulness, her beauty (Yes, this is a totally valid reason … We, as a people, naturally gravitate toward that which is pleasant and beautiful) and her apparent possibility in many people’s minds of being a potential presidential candidate the next go around. For McCain: Who knows whether he will be here in four years, much less as a presidential candidate (and to listen to his concession speech is to conclude that he has asked that question as well). For Palin, the door is wide open. Write any nonsensical blog and include the word “Palin” as a keyword and one will get hits because people identify with that very word. And that of itself, frightens me a bit. Frankly, the thought of her leading this great nation (in McCain’s absence) is one reason of many why my vote slid elsewhere. And here, we return to the interviews she has conducted. While Palin has said she can’t even think that far ahead (to the presidency in 2012), I can. Mark my words, this won’t be the last we hear of the governor from Alaska.

Referencing a WordPress blog post that I found today, here are three of the better political cartoons about Obama’s election posted on that site, or at least the better ones in my opinion.

Obama crosses the Delaware

Obviously, this cartoon is based on this famous image. Note: McCain floating on a George W. Bush inner tube, the black woman (replaced by a white woman from the original painting) and an erudite-looking white man rowing, the Capitol, the melted icebergs, Sarah Palin nearly out of the picture and Obama looking regal and dressed as a revolutionary. Appropriately, the river crossing and subsequent battles culminated in a new day of freedom for America.

The Dream materialized

This was the more subtle of the Martin Luther King Jr.-based cartoons from the post. Here, we see MLK’s famous Dream materialize. True, Obama is only half white, but he is also half black and carries within him a burden that has been carried by oppressed people for decades and centuries, as evidenced by his numerous references to King himself. Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, if it had been framed in the context of the racial strife, in a different era, in the context of segregation and a not-so-patient hope for a better today, would have went down as, arguably, the landmark speech in American history. It will still critically important and will be, and should be, studied in its strength in structure and rhetoric.

The Lincoln bump

Not since Abraham Lincoln has a American president (or president-elect) meant so much for the centuries-long battle for equal rights in this country. It’s unfortunate that it was only after the Black Codes, lynchings, segregation, the back of the bus and other atrocities that we can finally move forward in a real, tangible way. Sure, we have slowly moved forward as a nation and would have continued, with or without Obama. The Civil Rights movement spurred it on, time and the eventual shift in social conscious did the rest. But here, as Obama makes the leap of which many black folks have only dreamed, Lincoln, not the current president, passes the torch.