Returning to Colorado after a two-thousand mile pilgrimage through the prairie states and across America's heartland, it appears as though the electoral momentum is redounding to Barack Obama.  But, that's the conventional wisdom, gleaned from newspapers and mainstream television reporting which are force-fed a diet rich in polling data designed to reinforce the seeming inevitability of an Obama victory.

However, before we offer our analysis, we'll let Patrick Buchanan weigh in with a balanced and insightful analysis that hits the electoral high and low notes just right, underscoring the opportunities and pitfalls that await McCain.

Deeply embedded in virtually every editorial, newspaper article or television report we glimpsed were bleak prognostications and sorrowful lamentations concerning our financial markets, which are invariably larded with an anecdotal storyline calculated to wed the entire debacle to the Bush presidency, which is ineluctably tied to Senator John McCain.  Indeed, the somber tone of every radio announcer or television anchor or article is one of purposeful resignation, and it's only Obama's studied timidity on the subject that gives us any hope for a McCain victory next month.  He's convinced he can coast to victory and that is McCain's best hope to turn this around.

But, therein lies the quandary:  With the political walls crumbling all around him and the enemy at the gate, anyone else would be at daggers drawn, understanding that his electoral lifeblood is slowly being drained--except for McCain, whose lack of urgency either belies a deeper and more aggressive strategy that he has yet to unleash or betrays an astonishing lack of understanding of the political battlefield.

Indeed, in every city or town we visited, from the quiet hamlets in south-west Minnesota to Rapid City to the frontier town of Cheyenne and across Nebraska, the talk from regular Republicans in restaurants and on the editorial pages was bewilderment at McCain's stunning indifference to the grim fact that we're in the eleventh hour of his campaign and rather than doffing his gloves he's wearing a smoking jacket, nodding out in his corner.

It's all the more astounding because Obama's candidacy is such a target-rich environment, which is to say it would be nearly impossible to find a more liberal Democrat, barring even a clone of George McGovern.  We've heard endless stories about Bush fatigue, the economy, and the war, but that dwarfs when compared with a political strategy that begins by listing Obama's top ten liberal positions.

In a coordinated attack with the RNC, McCain should compile such a list and hammer each of them in a national campaign that forces them into the evening news cycle and onto the front pages of mainstream papers, each time succinctly concluding that Obama is just too extreme, whether it's on foreign policy, taxes, abortion, or guns, and linking them all to his associations with extremists from Reverend Wright to William Ayers.

It's all there, just waiting for McCain to exploit.  In twenty-four days we'll either be waking up to the prospect of four years of President Obama or President McCain.  If the thought of higher taxes and lower security makes you cringe, do everything you can in the interim to make the case to McCain directly and in letters to the editor, that this is still winnable, that it matters, and that there is a crucial difference between the ad hominen attacks he correctly eschews and highlighting character flaws and chronic lapses in judgment, which are completely legitimate, and which he has failed to exploit.

Editor's note:  We're on a road trip, from Colorado to the mid-west, taking the sights and sounds of the nation's heartland, as well as guaging it's political temperature.  Tarrying now in a quiet hamlet in south-western Minnesota, we perused an article in the Twin Cities' oracle of liberal wisdom, the Star Tribune, which has an uncanny ability to meld its reporting with its editorial proclivities. 

A front-page article in Sunday's paper quotes it's own poll, which are notoriously biased and therefore quaranteened from the likes of Gallup and Rasmussen, that concluded that Obama is 18 points ahead of McCain.  Citing voters' belief that Obama is better able to deal with our economic crisis and his performance in the first presidential debate, the article makes the predictable conclusion that he is well positioned to win in November.

That prompted our letter to the editor of the Star Trib:

For many, it's a comforting, if unfounded axiom of politics in Minnesota that Democrats generally and Obama specifically, are better able to resolve our economic problems ("Obama leaps ahead of McCain," Oct. 5).  Indeed, the conventional wisdom wending it way through the mainstream media is that the Republican anti-regulatory instinct is responsible for the debacle in our capital markets.

For an antidote, we turn to Senate bill 190, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, would have mandated unprecedented levels of regulatory oversight for the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and would have become law except for the fact that senate Democrats voted against it, on a party-line vote in committee; in contrast, Senator McCain was one of three co-sponsors for the bill.  Another carefully guarded secret is that Sens. Obama, Clinton, and Dodd led the charge to run interference in support of Mae and Mac.  Not surprising, all three have received tens of thousands of dollars from these mortgage cash machines.

Among other things, the bill would have significantly limited the financial exposure of these entities by redefining the levels of acceptable risk and recalibrating their debt-equity ratio requirements.  However, senate Democrats, whose intransigence directly contributed to the debacle we're facing, voted their financial and political conscience, not their ethical conscience, effectively socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.

The media's shameful portrayal of these failures as attributable to Republicans is hardly surprising because they and their Democrat chums in Congress are deft historical revisionists practiced at the art of political opportunism.  So, as the Democrats become incandescent, gloating that Republican greed is to blame for our financial sector woes, we would do well to remind them that political self-interest is a bipartisan disease, and that Obama's plan to tax his way out of our crisis is hardly change we can believe in.

Stipulating that there were not major faux pas, the reason it's unproductive to pronounce a clear winner in a debate is because it's so thoroughly influenced by one's political perspective.  Last night's vice presidential debate is a case in point.  We could tally up points scored, slight diversions from the truth, and wholesale fabrications, but how you evaluate each pro or con reflects an undeniable bias.

All candidates exaggerate the truths that bolster their arguments and minimize their deficits, and, when they are hit with a question they're uncertain about, they deftly change the subject or answer an unrelated question.  Therefore, we're obliged to look more deeply into their performance and that means assessing how the candidates' judgment and character will play their dovetailed role in influencing our voting calculus.

Given his predisposition for loquacity, digression, and self-aggrandizement, Senator Biden acquitted himself rather well.  But regardless of one's political party, Biden's thirty-five year senate record contains  an undeniable wealth of hyperbole and distortion that could easily be the subject of a doctoral dissertation.  It goes all the back to his tenure in law school, where the evidence strongly suggests he took liberties with the work of others--that's called plagiarism--and includes his 1988 presidential run which was fatally derailed when it became known he lifted large quotes from British Labor Leader, Neal Kinnick.

And, we haven't even touched on his encyclopedia of memorable gaffes.  Therefore, his obvious command of foreign affairs must be judged against this background of his inconstant fidelity to the truth, as well as issues that highlight a less than forthright character.  Delving into his senate record, he adamantly opposed the first Gulf War, which was arguably more justified than the second, which he supported.  When the war became unpopular, he switched sides condemning President Bush with the conventional--read facile--charge of manipulating pre-war intelligence, this, despite the fact that his own legislative body found no evidence for the allegation.

If you graph his decisions against polling data you'll see that his thinking is the transparent product of public opinion, not the result of a linear thought process informed by sound judgment.  Sarah Palin, in contrast, displayed a higher confidence level in her positions, from the virtues of low taxation to the prudence of a robust national security policy, two areas that typically finds liberals scrambling for nuance and misdirectional cues.  Indeed, there is simply no evidence that Obama's plan to increase corporate taxes, to tax dividends, and to raise taxes on 'the rich,' has ever worked during an economic downturn.

He himself is on record has saying he would postpone the tax increases, a tacit admission that they would be injurious to our fragile economy.  Senator Biden merely parroted the Obama talking points, from providing a tax cut to ninety-five percent of income earners to sitting down without preconditions with our arch enemies--of course on this issue, he provided the predictable makeover, saying that's not what Obama meant. 

Even correcting for the fact that the record speaks for itself, when you couple Biden with Obama, character does become an issue.  We need only mention the names of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, the fiery anti-American racist preacher and unrepentant domestic terrorist, respectively.  Toss convicted felon Tony Rezko into this unsavory stew and you must question Obama's judgment--why would someone who professes to be mainstream consort with known extremists?

We conclude with one of the simplest truisms of political campaigns:  The electorate tends to favor candidates they like, people with whom they identify, and the most telling characteristics they use in divining that are candor and shared values.  In that regard, Sarah Palin connected with voters last evening, she was comfortable and confident, and, crucially, she was one of us--regular folks who love this nation and all it stands for.

Beyond the glaring liberal bias in our mainstream media is their innate inability to pick it up on their own radar.  Hugh Hewitt discussed his recent interview with Governor Sarah Palin with radio host John Roberts, who asked him why Palin doesn't provide the media wide access to her as has Senator Joe Biden. 

It's a question that ought to elicit laughter and thigh-slapping because anyone who saw Katie Couric's interview with Palin witnessed that transparent elitist condescension so prevalent in the mainstream media.  It's at once haughty and acerbic and the poorly veiled pretense of their questioning is freighted with implied conclusions almost guaranteed to produce a certain outcome--one likely to embarrass or flummox the interviewee, rather than enlighten the viewers.

It's a hallowed article of liberal faith that conservative women are a threat, not just because they've wandered off the abortion reservation but because they have the temerity to support the Second Amendment, which, for the left, is a kind of primal apostasy.  How is it, the feminist coda retorts, that a Palin doesn't see guns as the bane of the universe, that she views criminals as culpable and not as victims, and actually believes that concealed carry laws increase public safety?

Then we have the interviewers' questions which range from inquiries about the Bush Doctrine to Supreme Court decisions to reading material--all of which demonstrated that she's not a politician with a silver tongue.  It's her sense of normalcy that is at once charming and discomfiting because we're used to seeing flinty women like Madeline Albright or Margaret Thatcher in positions of power, not the attractive gal we run into at the local grocery store.  Or, to put the argument more starkly, the question of whether we would rather have dinner with Hillary or Sarah would be an easy one for most Americans.

It's that sense that she's unwittingly toying with our hard-wired responses that both advances and freezes our estimation that she's truly ready to take over as president, and it's also that ambiguity that the mainstream media relishes, knowing that it's an uneven playing field whenever they get her in their clutches.

That's why it makes far more sense for Palin to appear before crowds where she can run through a litany of easily rehearsed stump lines, rather than submit to the harsh interviews a la Couric and Gibson.  They have zero credibility except among other left-leaning cognoscenti who quaff the same liberal, elitist elixir and who tacitly support Obama's socialist agenda.  Their definition of media fairness is so incestuously intertwined with their politics as to render it meaningless.

As for tonight's debate, the expectations are so low and her opponent is so gaffe prone that all she'll have to do is stay composed and hew to the McCain--not the party--line, and she'll do just fine.  Look for Biden to be deferential, but if he senses he's falling behind in the count, he might just tap that limitless well of Bidenisms and get caught in a web of his own creation.

There are times when even cliches, those overworked notions that have lost their relevancy, have the ring of truth.  Such is the case concerning the cliche about meeting the enemy and determining it is us:  That is, as we scan the landscape in search of culprits for this financial disaster, we might begin by glimpsing the mirror that reflects our nation's collective image, as it clearly shows a sheepish populace, stunned by the notion of a proposed bailout of our financial markets, one that dwarfs anything in American history.

We've all seen false modesty, but feigned anger is a bit harder to detect because it's less susceptible to the rigorous cross examination that might expose it.  Nonetheless, once you get beyond the charge that Wall street executives shouldn't benefit from the bailout, which is the low-hanging fruit of this national conversation, the cultural themes that run beneath our anger betrays the same motivations and goals that originally led to this debacle:  The kind of self-interested, blinkered myopia whose focus extends no further than the meticulously imposed horizon of the current quarter. 

Indeed, the charge that our financial markets were preyed upon by unscrupulous capitalists trying to exploit the system makes up in lurid headlines what it lacks in fidelity to the truth.  The typical American family is hardly a paragon of fiscal discipline, since they carry an average of $12,000 in credit card debt and have a savings rate that begins with a decimal point. 

Since consumer spending is seventy percent of our economy, we ought not blunt the enthusiasm of our fellow Americans, who habitually spend beyond their means.  However, it's a bit hypocritical of us to expect the free market to act in ways we ourselves are reticent to do, which is to impose a rigorous financial discipline that ensures economic stability now and into the future.

And, isn't it the case that our seething criticism of Congress--which itself has mastered the art of local versus national interest by fulfilling voters' demands for programs and projects that benefit them exclusively--is somewhat misplaced?  Aren't we sending mixed regulatory signals when we celebrate the multi-tiered system of rules that govern everything from land use to product development, but acquiesce when Congress effectively recasts the definition of credit-worthiness to include people who have no business owning a home?

Sensible regulation would not inhibit or constrain the entrepreneurial spirit that is the backbone of our economy, but it would provide a meaningful level of confidence that transactions, be they in real estate or our financial markets, are transparent and governed by the judicious application of fairness, which means not trying to micromanage outcomes.  But here too, the populist instinct that runs so deeply through American culture, implicitly condones our steeply progressive tax code, effectively punishing success and rewarding mediocrity.

So, as Congress gears up once again to vote on the newly revised bailout legislation--which is now presumably more focused on main-street versus Wall Street--let's not forget that our charges of guilt should be informed by a candor that captures our own scrambled and self-interested motivations in its nets, because we can't expect our leaders to act like angels when we have so obviously failed to do so ourselves.

If you believe polls are a kind of electoral soothsayer, Barack Obama won last Friday's debate and John McCain is on a glidepath to defeat.  Liberal pundits were on record that McCain was slated to win the debate since he's out performed Obama in most of their verbal battles to date, so the expectations were set so lowt for Obama that anything short of a Bidenesque gaffe parade would constitute victory.

And, Obama demonstrated that he's learning on the campaign trail, improving his delivery and focus, which, of course, he would have to do were he to win the presidency--more on-the-job learning.  But scoring a debate is more than merely quoting the internals of polling data which showed women approved Obama's performance and felt he assuaged anxieties about the economy.  That's because underlying all such pronouncements is the candidates' judgment, character, and values--which is to say, the most compelling reasons to vote for, or against, either of them.

Beneath Obama's sheen and poise, which surely make him look presidential, is a man desperately running from his arch-liberal record, so much in evidence during the primary, but now having been air-brushed out of the picture.  The debate was an opportunity for Obama to demonstrate his centrist principles, but what we saw was a superficial make-over where euphemism was pressed into service to sanitize his reputation as the senate's most liberal member.

So, although he never used the words "tax increase," we did hear about "investments," which is the left's new code for income redistribution.  Economic success, in the view of liberals, is a stigma because it couldn't have been achieved save for the exploitation of the great unwashed masses who toil in the service industry, permanently shackled to under-paying jobs.  Although liberals draw a curious kind of sustenance from this kind of class warfare, moderates--including Independents--typically demand more of their president than chalkboard characterizations that gain credibility by exploiting stereotypes.

Obama touted his middle class tax cut, and here McCain should have pounced by stating that nearly forty percent of Americans pay no income tax whatsoever, and asking how Obama would propose those people receive tax cuts?  Well, of course, they'd be receiving checks, because in Obama's view, our system isn't sufficiently progressive, this despite the fact that the top five percent of income earners pay over fifty percent of all federal income taxes.

With respect to education, you won't hear the words "excellence" and "competition" in the same sentence uttered by Obama, because, as the liberal narrative goes, the only thing stopping us from reducing drop-out rates or increasing test scores is money.  Competition through vouchers and pay for performance for teachers would result in a collective whining fit by the teachers union, because unlike every other industry in America, they believe they should be exempt from the stern taskmaster called accountability.

On the foreign policy front, Obama proffered the retreaded arguments against the war in Iraq, but McCain countered that had Congress supported Obama's bill to withdraw troops by March of this year, Iraq would have descended into a maelstrom of ethnic savagery, with Iran leading the charge.  This again proves that with sufficient help from a compliant media, which has never held Obama responsible for his patently irresponsible recommendations, their pet candidates can be sheltered from the consequences of their myopic judgment.

Change, it turns out, is fraught with ambiguity and, crucially, is dependent upon character and judgment.  Hobbling the economy with hundred of billions in new spending, and pledging to schedule meetings with the world's tyrants, is not the kind of change mainstream Americans are looking for.  Once again, the Democrats have groomed a candidate for office who is far to the left of the nation.  It will be up to McCain to demonstrate how such a man would govern and to make the case that his policies would inhibit growth at home and encourage belligerents abroad.

Boldness has always been an integral part of presidential campaigns, which is why so many Democrats are beginning to understand the underwhelming nature of Barack Obama's candidacy.  Ever since he gave his oratorical introduction on the national stage back in 2004, we've been instructed that this was a man who transcended politics, a man of extraordinary vision who can instantly tap our better angels for a bipartisan goal greater than ourselves.

However, with his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Obama's narrative of dramatic change returned to earth and became the stuff of erstwhile party politics, recycled in a lofty, if predictable rhetoric.  Indeed, if you listen to his solutions to America's woes they echo the conventional platforms of modern Democrats, from Carter to Clinton, who found innovative ways to repackage the message that more government is better.  Coupled with Obama's message of a duty-free ride which asks nothing of voters in terms of sacrifice or, God forbid, a return to the time when personal responsibility and individual initiative were the twin pillars of the American formula for success.

Those virtues now seem like civic museum displays, reflecting a time when the government's role was to protect our borders and safeguard our civil liberties.  Today, for every problem, from a conflict at school to our capital markets nightmare, we habitually turn to the government for resolution.  At the core of our civic diffidence is a lack of individual courage, and the reason is that the collectivist vision of the left has been successfully instilled in us from birth.  It's modern liberalism's dream of a cradle-to-grave life-plan that provides a multi-tiered safety net to eliminate life's travails.

The problem, of course, is that when you artificially redact life's challenges you also remove the opportunities for growth by providing substantive rewards for phantom efforts.  That's the core fault with Obama's platform, it uses the power of the purse to leverage political clout in the misguided effort to provide relief for every real or imagined problem.  As such, it's a kind of cultural insult because it presupposes that we're wholly incapable of resolving our problems on our own, and it socializes our personal ills, in everything from advancing our professional careers to dealing with financial struggles.

Therefore, it's likely that at tonight's debate Obama will remain true to his parochial principles of threadbare, big government, Democratic programs, which make no demands of voters.  That's apparently what attracted so many on the left, combined with the fact that their seething hatred of President Bush finally found catharsis in a candidate who purports to take them into the political stratosphere.  But, like most journeys fueled by the power of rhetoric, they inevitably work their way back to earth, only to find that the grueling task of governing remains as vexing as ever.

As a diversion from the anguish of our financial woes we turn to the question of why Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate.  Much discussion, debate, and, of course, vilification, has followed John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, everything from questioning her experience and religion to her decision not to abort Trig, her child with Downs Syndrome, and even mocking her hunting prowess.

For some timely comic relief, let's examine the wisdom of choosing Biden, that charming gaffe machine who, in a recent interview with Katie Couric of CBS News said:

Part of what a leader does is to instill confidence, is demonstrate that he or she knows what they're talking about and communicates to people, if you listen to me and follow what I’m suggesting we can fix this.  When the stock market crashed Franklin Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the pictures of greed, he said, look this is what happened.  [Emphasis added, but probably not necessary.]

Since most of us aren't students of history, we might be kind and forgive the fact that the stock market crashed in 1929 when Herbert Hoover was president (Roosevelt's term began in 1933), but don't most people know that television didn't exist at that time?  It's this kind of wholesale fabrication--versus a simple misstatement of fact--that strongly suggests a character flaw.

When it became clear that Obama would win the nomination, Biden laid down a nice napalm blast with this ingenious quip:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.

And, who can forget this gem, which is Biden's ham-handed attempt to ingratiate himself with an Indian American supporter; he said that in Delaware,

...you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.

What he was trying to convey is that Indian Americans have been so successful as small business owners of convenience stores, but his delivery made it sound as though they're the only ethnicity that frequents such establishments--it takes work to come up with these contorted lines, so we shouldn't just dismiss them out of hand.  If he doesn't land the veep job, there may be a spot for him as a writer for the late-night talk shows.

He was also recently caught on tape as saying that the U.S. won't be building any more clean-coal plants, which will put the Obama-Biden campaign on solid footing with the voters in western Pennsylvania.  Add to that his remarkable admission that Hillary Clinton might well have been a better choice than himself for vice president, and his excoriation of an ad his own campaign ran that made light of McCain's computer illiteracy.

Although there is, in all of these wonder-gaffes, an element of charming cluelessness, when we wed them with his astonishingly naive recommendation to partition Iraq into its three ethnic constituencies, we come up against an insurmountable problem--stunningly bad judgment.

So as we weigh McCain's decision to draft Sarah Palin, a chief executive with a real reform record, it's only fair that we look into the process Obama followed, one that mysteriously convinced him that Biden is the superlative choice in running mates. 

In the election of 2006 we saw the start of what might be called stealth liberalism.  It was the product of the political machinations of Rep. Rahm Emanual who matriculated liberal candidates into his school for moderates and ran them as such in conservative-leaning districts.  Once elected, these politicians effectively abdicated their campaign promises of fiscal moderation and voted their true colors.

In the 2008 election season we're seeing evidence of the same phenomenon.  Across the nation and here in the battleground state of Colorado, Democrats with unequivocally liberal voting records are running on platforms that tout their fiscal conservatism and concern for the working class.  However, scratch the surface and code words such as 'investment' invariably materialize, which is the left's transparent term for tax increases.

Mark Udall, who is running for the senate seat in Colorado being vacated by Senator Wayne Allard, could be poster politician for this craven practice.  Earlier this month Udall was quoted as saying "I support responsible tax cuts [emphasis added] to help Colorado working families and to create jobs" but he has consistently voted against lowering income taxes, eliminating the marriage penalty, increasing the child tax credit, and eliminating the death tax.

Demonstrating that his understanding of economics is veneer thin, Udall's own web site states "I have not supported the...continuing program of excessive tax breaks for the people who need them least."  He conveniently forgets or ignores that under President Bush, millions of low-income wage earners were taken off the tax rolls entirely, such that fully thirty-eight percent of Americans pay no income tax whatsoever.  Moreover, the top fifty percent pay ninety-six percent of income taxes.

With respect to the estate tax, otherwise known as the 'death tax,' Udall has been a staunch opponent of ending it.  It's a stunningly selfish tax for a politician to defend since those dollars have been taxed so many times it's impossible to track.  Yet, in the July 27, 2004 edition of Human Events, Udall was quoted as saying "We should keep the estate tax...".  In the same article he said he didn't believe it helps Colorado farmers or small businesses. 

He, along with his deep bench of liberal lightweights in Congress, don't seem to understand that lowering taxes increases federal receipts, while increasing employment.  In the January 21, 2004 edition of the Rocky Mountain News, Udall stated "Taxcuts have not worked to put people back to work."  Taxes, it's been perversely noted, is the lifeblood of liberals, because it sharpens their appetite for expansive government and purchases political power at the voting booth.

As we approach the November elections, voters concerned about the impact of taxes, personally, and for our economy, should be wary of this new breed of liberal, the kind who speaks tactfully about the virtues of "responsible tax cuts," but who continue to wage class warfare with schemes to tax the 'rich.'  Underlying their warped desire to tax success into submission is a political culture that mistakenly construes 'fairness' as an unlimited license to pick our pockets.

However, their message will have the ring of plausibility, of consensual concern for the common man, but with a faint, but nonetheless recognizable echo of socialism.  There are many other reasons Coloradoans should vote for Bob Schaffer, the Republican candidate, but his articulate support of low taxation and the unambiguous ways in which it creates prosperity, is one of the most powerful arguments.

In following the news concerning the meltdown in our investment banking and mortgage business sectors, you've doubtless heard the mainstream media and Democratic lawmakers lecturing us that the Republicans' self-interested infatuation with de-regulation is to blame.  The truth, as is so often the case, is rather different.

If you've never heard of Senate bill 190, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, you're not on any short-list of the ignorant uninformed.  This bill would have mandated unprecedented levels of regulatory oversight for the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and would have become law except for the fact that senate Democrats voted against it, on a party-line vote in committee.  What's even more astonishing, if not unpredictable, is that Sens. Obama, Clinton, and Dodd led the charge to run intervention in support of Mae and Mac.  Not surprising, all three have received tens of thousands of dollars from these mortgage cash machines.

Among other things, the bill would have significantly limited the financial exposure of these entities by redefining the levels of acceptable risk and recalibrating their debt-equity ratio requirements.  However, senate Democrats, whose intransigence directly contributed to the debacle we're facing, voted their financial and political conscience, not their ethical conscience, effectively socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.

The media's shameful portrayal of these failures as attributable to Republicans is hardly surprising because they and their Democrat chums in Congress are in perpetual search of justifications for their regulatory excesses, which are transparently predicated on a cynical disdain for our capitalist system.  Drilling down to yet another dark stratum, it's clear that their zeal of regulation is intended to cure what they see as the unacceptable inequities of our capitalist system.

You see, they've rewritten our traditional understanding of winners and losers, whether on Little League teams or on Wall Street, such that the former are stigmatized as exploiting the rules and the latter are victims of an oppressive and unfair "system."  So, while the rest of the world sleeps at night, they're up burning the regulatory oil, drafting reams of legislation to check our entrepreneurial spirit--e.g., their dream of limiting executive pay--and, to tax initiative into the ground. 

It's a fascinating study in the race between the Democrats' genetic predispoisiton to regulate and the universal quid pro quo which exempts political favorites, and it's particularly telling that the winner was raw political self-interest, not the supposedly vulnerable, unwashed masses, buffeted by the winds of the free market.

Something else you won't read about in the mainstream press is that Senator John McCain was one of three co-sponsors for S-190.  So, as the Democrats become incandescent, gloating that Republican greed is to blame for our financial sector woes, we would do well to remind them that they had their chance to regulate these problems while they were still Lilliputians, but chose to wait until they became Brobdingnags, which, paradoxically, makes the bipartisan case for massive government intervention.

You know the adage, that amidst a sea of fabrications there is usually one truth, and James Moore, writing in today's Huffington Post concerning our financial markets debacle, demonstrates its validity.  One of the left's most prevalent artifacts of their archaic understanding of economics is that greed is the backbone of capitalism.  Its heartiness is not only a testimony of the resilience of distortions in service to 'greater' political goal, but also to the unique way in which such myths insidiously work their way into our cultural lexicon.

Moore argues that Republicans alone have been responsible for the deregulation of the banking industry and the allegedly amorphous design of the regulatory apparatus intended to control illicit financial transactions.  We've previously stipulated a premise of regulation, which is that it's always far more blunt and belated than the capitalist instinct that drives entrepreneurs.  Bureaucrats and members of Congress may spend sleepless nights crafting regulations that rival the human genome experiment in terms of their complexity, but they're truly no match for the profit instinct that's imbued in every capitalist's mortal soul.

Since risk is inherent in any business investment or financial instrument, regulators' most fundamental charge is to define that bright line between reasonable risk and the kind of risk in the recently designed financial schemes, from derivatives to sub-prime mortgages deftly cloaked in the guise of stable investments.  That, it's now clear, was the failure of every oversight institution, from the SEC to the FDIC, as well as Congress itself. 

Liberals such as Moore may criticize the Republicans' proclivity for deregulated markets, but their vilification of them belies the fact that investment profits and losses are equal opportunity realities.  That is, the primary difference between liberals and conservatives in this regard is that the former are fair weather capitalists who gladly gorge themselves when profits are robust but who disingenuously whine when--as is inevitable--the system cleanses itself of imperfections, and they're made to suffer losses.

Republicans, in contrast, not only understand the virtues of targeted, smart regulation--versus a plethora of multi-tiered regulation that strangles the profit motive--they also intuitively recognize that every investment, regardless of its perceived risk factor, may backfire, and that, indeed, markets at the micro- and macro-level will always purge the system of imperfections, and, crucially, punish the unwise.

Moore argues that when Republicans' "greed...gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses."  Well, that's a bilateral political reality, and when markets turn south it's a photo-finish to see which party will be first to punish the malefactors and erect a new and more Draconian set of regulations.

Moore charges former senator Phil Gramm with opening the Pandora's Box which led a stampede of financial miscreants to exploit the common man for their greedy gain.  He argues that Gramm slid the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) into the 2000 Bush budget, and that the result was that "neither the SEC nor the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were able to examine financial institutions like hedge funds or investment banks to guarantee they had the assets necessary to cover losses they were guaranteeing."

Although his analysis accurate, the collateral truth, which he fails to mention, is that the legislation had bipartisan support.  The CFMA banned regulation of credit default swaps. These unregulated instruments, which are insurance policies against default on risky investments like mortgage backed securities, led to the justification for the recent government loan--not bailout--to A.I.G.  That's the one grain of truth in Moore's diatribe against the 'greedy Republicans.'

We're also hearing from the Obama campaign that Senator McCain voted for the the repeal of the provision of the Glass-Steagall Act which prohibited a bank holding company from ownership in financial investment firms, but, as always you won't get the entire story:  Senator Biden also voted for it, and it was signed into law in 1999 by President Clinton.

There are many lessons in this tragic devolution of our financial markets, and tomorrow we'll take up another.   However, as both sides jockey for political advantage, we always return to the basics:  A measure of intelligent regulation is crucial to provide predictability to financial transactions and to constrain illicit behavior.  But, no amount of regulation can eliminate risk, and those smile when their portfolios are soaring but decry the evils of capitalist greed when they're not, epitomize the very height of hypocrisy.

It's always fascinating to witness liberals such as E.J. Dionne as they sacrifice history at the altar of political expedience.  In an effort to exploit the recent debacle in our capital markets, he argues that the financial depredations by the financial and business 'elites' of 1930s and Roosevelt's response to them is tantamount to the regulatory--and electoral--response that Congress and Obama are about to unleash.

Proving once again that historical analogies for the left have a remarkable elasticity, Dionne's premise is that today's Wall Street titans share the same 'elitist' pedigree as those that roamed the earth in search of their next victim some eighty years ago.  Moreover, capitalism, for him is acceptable only within the stifling constraints of socialist principles:

Americans don't mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else.

We might begin by reminding Dionne that about sixty-five percent of Americans now own stock mutual funds, many producing dividends, so the argument that the "paycheck" workers, as he cynically calls them, aren't participating in the benefits of our capitalist system, is simply false on its face.  What he and his socialist pals love to vilify is 'wealth,' forgetting that these days most wealthy people made their money the old fashioned way--they earned it.  As the leftist elites discovered not long ago (i.e., the book, The Millionaire Next Door), the average millionaire is more likely to be the 55 year old owner of a concrete finishing company than the Wall Street investment banker.

But that revelation is swept under their cultural carpet because it doesn't comport with their Robber Baron view of an America where the few claw their way to the top on the backs of the defenseless working class.  Indeed, in order to provide political clout for their regulatory agenda they must produce persuasive evidence of systemic abuse, and with the assistance of a compliant media, that's precisely what they're doing.

Capitalism, when viewed through the lens of liberalism, can always bear more regulation, and so they convince themselves that they can prescribe the perfect regulatory nostrums for our ills: 

...never mind that a little more regulation might have prevented the subprime-mortgage-buying, short-term-profit-maximizing Wall Streeters from wrecking the economy.

The paradox in this sad state of affairs is that it was Congressional liberals who re-wrote the lending laws that govern the banking industry to allow those with questionable credit scores to qualify for mortgages they had no business purchasing.  What's astounding is that liberals such as Dionne have the temerity to blame "Wall Streeters," who merely leveraged the new regulations to their advantage for profit. 

As Larry Kudlow wrote in an enlightened editorial,

...George Mason economist Tyler Cowen wrote in the New York Times, one of the problems with the U.S. financial system is not a lack of regulation, but a lack of smart and effective regulation.

And, despite the sea of regulations adopted during the Bush Administration, "it turns out that neither the Fed, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, nor the SEC properly supervised high-risk leveraged borrowings and the capital-adequacy ratios necessary to safeguard against losses."  Why, we should ask Dionne, is this oversight--or myopia--the fault of "Wall Streeters," when they were merely using their capitalist instincts to maximize profits within the regulatory framework they inherited?

As the markets begin to settle down, the reflex for more onerous regulation will be unavoidable, especially during an election year.  But before they elbow one another to the podium, McCain and Obama should remember that the capitalist motivation is always more innovative than the regulatory motivation, so intelligent regulation--if that's possible--is always preferred.

The unprecedented level of political hysteria emanating from the left clarifies that the choice of Sarah Palin has created a seismic reaction among the liberal establishment.  Once again we make the pilgrimage to the font of presumed wisdom on the left, Arianna Huffington, who fervently argues that Palin is a neoconservative, "likeable on the outside, a blank slate on the inside," just waiting to be imprinted with the neocon label.

It's clear that neoconservativism has become a reflexive tag for liberals whose intellectual curiosity is endangered, because they use it so indiscriminately that it no longer has meaning, except, of course, among the inbred left.  For those who might be interested in the true history of neoconservatism, we link to Robert Kagan's superb article in the Spring edition of World Affairs.  It's a lucid explication of that maligned term, as it cogently argues that America has always been a "neocon nation," and defines it as:

...potent moralism and idealism in world affairs, a belief in America’s exceptional role as a promoter of the principles of liberty and democracy, a belief in the preservation of American primacy and in the exercise of power, including military power, as a tool for defending and advancing moralistic and idealistic causes, as well as a suspicion of international institutions...

Beyond being insulting, for Huffington to refer to Sarah Palin as a blank slate, ready to accept the neocon brand, tells us far more about her than McCain's choice for vice president.  It confirms that the left is mired in an intellectual monochronicity, a hermetic world impermeable to the light of inquiry, where all things conservative are lumped together and pejoratively referred to as 'neocon.'  Indeed, the policy of pre-emption policy that so many liberals thought President Bush founded, but which, as Kagan exhaustively argues, is an integral part of American history, is the left's transparent code for a blind and misguided policy of hegemonic imperialism.

Huffington and her ilk seem predestined to recycle the WMD argument until their generation is burning the Social Security oil in nursing facilities.  Their poll-driven policies, which make up in emotional appeal what they lack in principle, provide smug assurances that the Iraq war was a complete failure because Saddam Hussein didn't have the weapons the entire civilized world believed he did.  It's remarkable that the toppling of a savage dictator who cut the tongues out of women's mouths, who slaughtered five thousand Kurds, and whose sons tortured thousands of innocent citizens, not to mention the emancipation of twenty-five million people, are summarily discounted by Huffington.

Their savior, Barack Obama, has effectively pledged a policy of 'soft power' which means the State Department will be the first battalion he'll send to the front line against Iran, which will ensure Ahmadinejad will have a nuclear weapon within two years.  The new Democrats, freshly minted from the ranks of the hard left, are so war-averse that even the threat of military action sends shivers down their collective spine.

That's why the choice of Palin has them seeing Cheneys everywhere they look, because she, along with McCain, believe that a nuclear-armed Iran is simply unacceptable, and they're making their case to the American people.  Despite his recent makeover, from the anti-war dove he was at the beginning of his campaign to the tough-talking quasi-hawk, Obama can't run from his record, and most Americans do understand that this remains a dangerous world.

What Sarah Palin adds to the ticket, beyond the more obvious traits, is that she recognizes that confronting evil before it becomes lethal actually limits the scope and duration of any military conflict.  Everything Obama has said convinces us that he'll take the exact opposite approach--he'll wait until it's too late. 

As we cast our collective eye back seven years when a group of Islamic jihadists attacked America in an unprovoked display of savagery, it's clear that the consensus and resolve that instantly materialized has become frayed.  Indeed, beyond the agreement that it was a horrendous attack, Americans, including their presidential nominees, have widely divergent views on the matter.

In late September of 2001, ClearCommentary's editor was published in the Wall Street Journal, in a response to an editorial by the classicist and historian, Victor Davis Hanson.  Below is a transcript:

Although Victor Davis Hanson’s editorial is an eloquent antidote to the paralysis of America’s recent military leadership, and despite the unspeakable savagery of Sept. 11, there’s an undeniable risk that our steely resolve will become attenuated in the course of time (“Great Leaders Are Forged in War,” Sept. 24).

 

The requisite greatness in leaders may certainly be created in the crucible of war, but the resiliency of our prospective engagement will be calibrated by political realities which are largely defined by the cumulative impact of discrete victories and losses over time.

 

Therefore, because military momentum is crucial, it’s of profound importance that President Bush begin this campaign with a multifaceted attack that at once demonstrates a keen understanding o