Let me tell you, my friends

The last dozen times I’ve sat down to write anything here one thing came to mind: where do I begin? McCain trying to keep the campaigns focused on personality and emotion rather than about the issues, McCain recklessly selecting an incompetent and unworthy VP candidate, the bizarre appeal of Palin to so many voters, …. One thing keeps me from bothering to write anything: the fact that people see and hear what they want to see and hear--my self included.

But a couple things struck me about last night’s debate that I thought might be worth putting down. The first is the reason McCain put his name on McCain-Feingold. He thought it was the way around the party chiefs who held him back in 2000. He realized, later, of course, that he could just sell his soul to them instead, and he didn’t need to get the rest of the Senate’s support to do that. It was also striking that this failed piece of legislation was the sole thing he could (or did) identify as evidence of his being a reformer. After decades in Washington, that’s all he’s got? Weak.

A second observation is that if the challenges we face are unprecedented, as McCain said, what is all of his experience good for? Twenty years of doing not a heck of a lot doesn’t make him stand out as the guy to lead the way into a new era with challenges we, nor he, has ever seen before.

Lastly, I thank you for these questions, my friends. They are such very good questions, and as President I will answer them clearly with my strait talk as you, my friends, know so well. Can you say condescension? Is this the 1930s. WTF does he take us for?