Shocked, shocked to find a politician there!

Even if we give the candidates the benefit of the doubt, their campaigns are staffed by people who will do what they feel is necessary to win. That gives us enough evidence to determine that they are both pretty much politics as usual. This charade that we have each campaign that one or more of the candidates is breaking the mold is getting old.

Taking that into account, it becomes hard to believe that either candidate will change much in Washington. Nevertheless, there are enough differences to choose between them. And, of course, pray that the winner turns out to be at least somewhat competent.

You are certainly correct that both candidates have constructed political profiles that people with their feet on the ground can't help but find amusing. I say political profiles because they are both, in fact, interesting people with interesting stories.

Out here in the Far West, we have sun-baked clay. To dig a pole hole you have to chip at the ground as hard as stone until you make a dent it it. Then you add a little water and let it soak into the clay to soften it, dig a little more, add more water, dig some more add more water, etc.

It takes a couple of days to dig a post hole three feet deep so you can set a pole that the winds of time won't tear down.

This is how I see Obama and the Political system, digging holes in the hard baked resistance to change and digging deep enough to withstand the Winds of opposition. Sounds like good old fashion Politics at its best rather than the mud slinging, trash heaping mess we have delt with since Reagan was elected.

Derek ,

I find the fact if McCain betrayed people or the party to be quite relative so I will not go as far as Daniel does when he says McCain has a history of " staking out a position in opposition to his party in the interests of attracting good press and cultivating a reputation as one of the "good" Republicans-the "noble, tolerant" McCain "

He might actually believe in those positions. Also as I noted before there are different varied strains of conservative thought. I have to note that no one yells that Jon Kyl betrayed anyone for supporting immigration reform. Perhaps he is not the fun easy target

That being said of course McCain is a politician. Politics is the art of the possible and establishing coalitions and to be rigid as it's my view or the highway is not smart politcs. THose people are more suited to just sitting at home writing blogs and being on talk radio than actually having to govern

Also as I noted before there are different varied strains of conservative thought.

Because we've never really tried McCain's conservatism, right? Because we didn't have a president who signed on to CFR, pushed for amnesty for illegal aliens and has advocated one of the most belligerent foreign polices since Teddy Roosevelt? Gosh, if only we could try that conservatism in the White House. We'd see a rapidly growing economy, a world at peace and in love with Uncle Sam, and a president with record high approval polls.

Back to the real world. McCain's strain has been tried, and found seriously wanting. For the good of the country and for the good of the Republican party, conservatives should let McCain fail. Indeed they should work for it.

Barack H. Obama is nothing more than a con man in a Brooks Brothers suit. If I were an Obama supporter with any capacity for critical thinking, his comments over the last few weeks, particularly in the area of energy policy and the Conquest War in Iraq, would start me wondering if I'd been the target of consumer fraud.

In any event, I learned long ago not to take any national- or provincial-level politician's statements seriously, on any issue. They are so far removed from the real Human beings that make up their actual constituencies that said real people are just abstractions to them. At least if a town- or county-level politician does something you don't care for, you can go down to their offices rather easily and give them a little "accountability" in the form of a knuckle sandwich.

Neither of these poseurs is going to be able to accomplish much in the upcoming four-to-eight years in any event; the financial strictures that the retirements of the Boomers will impose will see to that. Politically speaking, the ship of state is on autopilot, and the bridge controls are locked. The iceberg is approaching, and the impending crash is going to be a civilizational-level (maybe even a species-level) prizewinner.

Why on Earth anyone would WANT to be in charge in such circumstances is utterly beyond me.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

If John McCain really expected the media to fawn over him this year as they did in 2000, he was very foolish.

Truth is, if McCain had managed to win the GOP nomination in 2000, the media would almost immediately have remembered, "Oh wait, we forgot- we're liberals and he's a Republican. He was a nice story for a while, but it's time to start pumping up Al Gore and trashing McCain."

It was already starting to happen, just before Bush started winning primaries (dig up some old Anna Quindlen columns from 2000, and you'll see that the Left was starting to snap out of its infatuation with McCain).

The media are liberal. McCain is a politician. Both the media and McCain are opportunistic. No big surprises there.