I would submit that the real "terrorist's best friend" has been George W. Bush. Of course, it's not polite in Republican circles to say so, but if you look at the alleged goals of terrorists who "hate the U.S. for its freedoms", you'd be hard-pressed to name any individual who has hewed to the terrorist agenda like Dubya has. Make the citizens paranoid and irrational through endless fear that always seems rooted in something indefinable? Check. Bog down the Armed Forces in a sandpit hellhole somewhere that their expensive equipment's value is neutralized and where it requires constant (costly) replacement? Check. Make the United States the subject of eye-rolling disdain and palpable dislike throughout the free world, so that nobody wants to help the U.S. achieve its global objectives and some actively oppose it? Check. Wreck the economy so that average citizens panic and start storing money in their mattresses? Again, check.

George W. Bush is the closest thing to an infidel saint in the Middle East - no one western leader has taken the Great Satan over the bumps the way he has, and the damage he has done is lasting and still growing like a cancer.

And, should you need reminding, John McCain is just like him, without the sense of humour.

OTHER than the fact that Blackman or a White Woman IS going to be in the WH, This election is NO DIFFERENT, NO WORSE than ANY election I've seen in mud slinging. Thank GOD, no riots so far. The 3 year campaigns were a little tedious, but other than that---same ole crap. THAT'S AMERICAN politics.

It's painful watching John McCain embarrass himself with the new "Who is Barack Obama?" stump speech. It's viscerally pathetic.

Who is Barack Obama? He's your senate colleague of four years, Senator.

McCain is done. There won't be any comeback. He will not win the election, and he knows it. All that's left is for him to choose how he loses, and how best to serve his country in that loss.

Usually it feels unreal to refer to the administration as the world's most dangerous force.

If it weren't for all the stories and other bloggers who confirm my fears I would probably have to tape my mouth shut for fear of being thought a loon.

Q: Does America really have ANY enemies in the world?

In the short time after 9/11 when we were discombobulated the only voices were of sympathy for us. Now, during this crisis are there ANY voices rising against us? No.

It appears more obvious than ever before that we have seen the enemy and it is within us. It is the constant political fight for power, for control of the government and corporate economic power of the most powerful country in the history of the world.

We're tearing ourselves apart -- for no really good reason.

Like parliamentary countries which have proportional representation it's difficult to gain the kind of majority which eradicates extremists and vocal minorities of destruction. We didn't used to have this, did we?

Please tell me I'm not imagining that it really is the Crazies, the Bushies who are destroying us?

I hate this situation. I hate having to argue that the government is the enemy. It seems to confirm the Republican ideological view that government is not our friend. Yes, yes, I know it's being run by Republicans who are proving their point. But it is still a horrible thing to have to think.

There are times when I have to consider the possibility that the McCain campaign is a continuation of the Bush administration and there are other times when I see how bizarre they are behaving that I think they're throwing the election to save us from Bush-III. This is definitely not a normal situation -- you betcha.

When will January come?

i think this is another demonstration of Jonathan Schwarz's "iron law of institutions": that people would rather see the institution itself fail and maintain their positions in its elite, than see it succeed but lose their positions.

which doesn't really excuse the *voters* of course.

Yes, so what shall we do about this crisis? This feels like a phase transition to a genuinely global system, much as the last big phase transition (1914 - 1945) was the transition to the American Era. Can we get there without the intervening depression and world war, please?

This is the campaign of a man for whom there will never be another, I think.
At very least, he knows he will be too old to run in 2012. But it may be that he knows he won't make it to the 2010 Senate race.
It's pure speculation on my part, but I look at John McCain and I see Macbeth.
Yeah, I know. Crazy.
But he may be avoiding releasing his medical records for a reason.
It would explain a lot.

The GOP has become a deeply irresponsible party, so used to running on fear-mongering and self-interest that it is incapable of perspective, planning or vision.

Instead we're left with delusions and base appeals. It seems as if the voters are finally seeing it for what it's worth, at least for this cycle.

Sorry, Mike Meyer, there may have been elements of previous campaigns that were equally bad, but I can recall nothing as consistently and continuously negative as what McCain is offering now, and I've been voting since 1972. I simply can't remember a case where an opponent was essentially branded a traitor by his opponent. Incompetent, even buffoonish, and certainly accused of possessing wrong-headed ideas and proposals. But a traitor to the nation? No.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post, Hilzoy.

I often feel like tearing my hair out when I have conversations with people who base their voting preference on things that not only do not matter, but are false and stupid, such as the smear emails or McPalin's recent speeches.

One such smear email arrived via a relative... called "The Potential First Family", it was not about Barack, Michelle, Maliah and Sasha, but about Obama's Kenyan family. Some was not true (and debunked by snopes) but even the stuff that was true was nothing that Obama was responsible for nor was it relevant to how he would govern, his ideas, temperament & judgment, his intelligence, his accomplishments, etc.

Based on this email, no one should ever dare run for public office because we all have crazy or drunk or law-breaking or morally corrupt relatives, and according to this email the sins of our relatives are our sins and we are responsible for them all.

And the same thing goes for people we know who we've only met once, or had a loose association with, who are law breakers, cheated on their spouses, or were bombers 40 years ago when we were kids.

It just defies logic. Let's get SERIOUS people!

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So what about Begala's raising McCain's membership on the board of directors of the ultra-radical Council for World Freedom during the 1980s?

This was a group that emerged out of the Republican far right (Gen. John Singlaub) that the Anti-Defamation League called "a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites."

I think it's legitimate to question a person's associations, but in Obama's case the connection to Ayers is very indirect, inconsequential at best. And Obama has denounced Ayers' radical views.

Would McCain denounce the Council for World Freedom? Probably not since Reagan addressed the group in 1984, giving it legitimacy. This makes them patriots.

As James Fallows knows, history has not been kind to empires with high indebtedness, a weak currency and overstretched military might. In fact, dominant powers dominate only as long as they are creditors with a strong currency and sustainable military deployment.
The US is now the Miami Heat of the geopolitical scene: a recent champ who now needs serious rebuilding. We must retrench, back off our international military commitments, rebuild the economy, schools and infrastructure at home and THEN see where we stand in the world. Otherwise we crash.

Upon reading Fallows' words, it becomes increasingly clear that the America he describes is little more than a paper-doll image of what it once was. The United States is, indeed, wealthy---but that wealth has become concentrated amongst the few, to the horrific and painful detriment of the many. Again, the United States is indeed, powerful---but that power has been garnered and bartered through a malady of Fear that, in the eyes of the world, borders not merely on the definition of criminal, but reaches ever closer to the filth of Treason itself. And, yet again, the United States is, indeed, productive---but that productivity has been built atop a sandcastle of inexpensive imports, bulk-headed by countless millions of employment positions exported via outsourcing for the short-term comforts of immediate profit which now faces the incoming tsunami created when the countless individuals adversely affected by those outsourcings---and the domino effect placed upon both the national and global economies that accompany those losses---smashes ashore and eradicates all conceivable traces that the United States was once anything more than the battered tin cup proffered by a half-starved creature found within the pages of a typical Charles Dickens novel.

It is therefore merely a note of factuality---not a pleasant factuality; not a cloak that any of us wish to bear; not a mantle that even the tithe of a tithe among us deserve to cower under, yet a point of logical conclusion we must nevertheless suffer---that the United States now finds itself on trial before the world. You, I, our children, and our children's children for many generations to come will be relegated not to the role of victim, but to the responsibility of perpetrator for the unwarranted sufferings now inflicted upon the world as a whole; agonies once beyond the imaginations of decency that these United States once stood for, and fought for, and in some many cases throughout our brief history, even dies for.

All of these indictments---each and every last one of them, are the true legacy of George W. Bush, his presidency, his administration, and his culture---a culture to which the mindsets and goals of the Republican Party itself, embodied within the mortal carcasses of its current presidential and vice-presidential aspirants, are as irrevocably chained as Jacob Marley was bound by "the chains he forged in life" by electing to concentrate on the endless hunger of Self, and forgetting that "mankind was his business."

This is our moment; America's "Christmas Eve" in which we must face a choice---to change our ways; to acknowledge that we have, both individually as citizens and collectively as a nation gone down the wrong path and come but a hair's-breadth from going over the precipice and into the fires of societal oblivion---or to continue onward for that brief, final step into the endless and irrevocable abyss of "staying the course."

These United States---this Republic, her Constitution, her People, and Everything for which She has ever stood and will ever stand for, can neither afford nor survive the "Bah, Humbug" agendas of a McCain/Palin administration that would continue the tunnel-visioned, counting-house Scrooge-isms of the current administration. There is no option to merely turn aside from the course; rather, it is but one of only two choices: Turn back, or take the final step into oblivion.

There is no question as to my choice; it is to turn, reaching out for what this nation once was and can once again be, and to steady myself against the specter that such a reach may require much more of me than a mere moment or three inside the confines of a voting booth. I know---as we all must know---that the United States in in a terrible position, and we shall all be put hard to it if we and our nation are to survive in a respectable manner amongst the greater global community.

In the end, however, I can justify my choice by knowing that the United States of America is an entity that has, in Her history, walked the harder path before---and She has walked that path well....

S. M. Waybright
Chardon, OH

What we may perceive as a distraction, this "distraction" is to many undecided voters in rural areas of key battleground states their primary source of information. Many of these voters do not have access to daily newspapers. Their only news comes via TV. So what do they get other than a few sound bites and TV ads -- the media coverage that McCain can steer and control.

So the McCain strategy has boiled down to keeping some of these key rural districts in the red column. The best way they think to do this is to keep hammering away at rural populist sentiments and bias against the liberal urban elites. Palin is a natural to help with this strategy. As long as she has speech writers and a teleprompter she will perform her limited task.

Should McCain happen to win the electoral college vote via such a divisive strategy we can plan on him taking the country even further down the shitter because there is absolutely no way that he could unite a country that he so selfishly divided by a secession of last resort.

McCain's plan is to get folks into a frenzy. Sarah will attempt the same.

We will become very divided as a Nation.

Screaming matches at rallies between reasonable and rabid souls.

It will not be amusing.

Hilzoy: They cannot summon up the common decency, let alone the greatness, to respond to a crisis with the seriousness it requires.

100% brilliant.

MarkH: I hate having to argue that the government is the enemy.

I don't think it's the government that is the enemy, but more accurately the people and corporations who run it. America was colonized through the money-making efforts of merchants hoping to exploit the land and its native people. And that's just what happened. And yet, when I studied the early settlements in grade school it was "religious freedom" our fore-fathers were searching for.

Today, the right wing plays religious values to a population that cannot possibly comprehend the business mechanizations that are the foundations of the US, its greatest beneficiary, and ultimately will be its destroyer. We get called "imperialists" by the rest of the world. And yet, few of us here really know or wonder why. We've used money and influence, disastrous loans, the military, coercion, black ops, and flat out war to expand our global empire, not in order to spread freedom like we've been sold, but to spread free markets.

We brag to ourselves about being the greatest nation on earth, and the richest, and the strongest. But we're trillions of dollars in debt, so we're not the richest. We're getting our asses handed to us militarily in the Middle East, so we're not the strongest. So, is the claim of "greatest nation" any more valid?

My point is, it's not our government per se. [If the problem was just our government, you and I probably would see no point in voting. And I, for one, intend to vote my ass off on November 4th.] It's what we've made of it. It's who we've given it to. It's what we let it get away with. And it's how we let it lie to us.

If we elect officials who say we are all one thing, but we are actually another, and we let them get away with it, then we're just dooming ourselves.

Now, I don't look at the coming election as a chance to "fix" everything. We've got a lot to deal with. But, when "W" took office I remember thinking, "what's the worst that can happen?" Look at how horrendously our country has changed in a mere eight years. Surely, if we get a few of the right people in there, we can make something good happen.

Read John Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers." He describes how a nation's greatness depends on how it manages its wealth relative to other competitors. Not encouraging for us now.

When I read the histories of great powers in decline, sometimes they manage it well. But much more often, they do not. And one of the common threads is this: that at a moment that seems self-evidently to be a real crisis for the nation, people who should know better continue to tear one another apart, fighting for some tiny scrap of advantage rather than thinking of their country

Not just powers in decline, but powers that never were and can't get up off the mat.

Petty little fiefdoms we call countries. Stuck in poverty and superstition while its "leader" lives in relative luxury that remains primitive by modern measures because they have no vision for making their country great. That might mean making others great instead of concerning oneself with one's own favored circle.

Saudi Arabia cannot be great. Zimbabwe? No chance. Libya? Fuggedaboudit.

It was Truman who said "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

To that effect, America can return to sumptuous prosperity only if our leadership no longer worships at the feet of the plutocrats that see America;'s greatness embodied by the wonders the wealthy can afford. Who can think of any country as great when masses of people get holed up in a sports stadium after a good solid rain? What's so magnificent about a country where people line up in emergency rooms for anitbiotic prescriptions? What's so admirable about a nation that relies on foreign factories and farms for everything we consume in such staggering quantity?

These are not the hallmarks of a philosophy that seeks to return grit and iron back to a people. These are the sops and spectacle used by emperors to distract a people who haven't faced their duties to themselves, their families, their country. This has been a self-satisfied nation of fools led by the greatest fool among them who has yet to recognize that anything is amiss.

Toowearyforoutrage: word. VERY well said. You and Steve Waybright ought to be speechwriters, that's pow'ful stuff.

Jesus Steve at6:08 I think most of us agree with the sentiments that you've expressed but do you have to present them as if you were writing a romance novel?
Don't confuse eloquence with verbosity.

There is a book by Barbara Tuchman, a very well respected historian, that was written in the 1980's, I believe. The title escapes me at the moment (The March of Folly?), but it was a series of examples of how political power structures work to their own disadvantage, mainly through the desire of the power brokers for short term gain at the expense of long term catastrophe. That is what we have been experiencing since the Reagan era and what people like Gingrich, Delay, Armey, Lott, and the whole gang of neocons have been doing. Today's article is a good summary of what Dr. Tuchman was talking about.

What would you like the candidates to talk about?

Obama believes in spending, spending, spending--which is the problem, not the solution. McCain believes in spending, spending, spending--for Israel and their wars, and not paying taxes to boot--which is the problem, not the solution. And the people want gimme, gimme, gimme, which is the problem, not the solution.

This is precisely why, should McCain win. My wife and I are emigrating. I don't want to live in a country in decline.

Obama believes in spending, spending, spending--which is the problem, not the solution. McCain believes in spending, spending, spending--for Israel and their wars, and not paying taxes to boot--which is the problem, not the solution. And the people want gimme, gimme, gimme, which is the problem, not the solution.

No, actually, it's this kind of "thinking" that is the root problem in this country. All cant, no mind.