John McCain is known for his black and white simplistic stance towards many issues, and Sarah Palin cloned him perfectly in the vice-presidential debates by saying if she had to carry on as president in the event of McCain’s demise she would continue to “get rid of the greed and the corruption on Wall Street and in Washington.”

Comments such as these which invoke holy war imagery in response to recent social and economic trends have endeared Sarah Palin to angry Americans, and especially to conservatives associated with the Republican right wing. They forget that self-interest is at the heart of capitalism and that “greed” in the housing market on which our economy is so heavily based is spread throughout all levels, including the consumer level.

Conservative commentator David Brooks follows the Republican Party and is perplexed that they selected Palin knowing she only appeals to a relatively small percentage of the population. Republicans are engaging in planned obsolescence.

…the Republican Party has become a small-town party, running against — as Sarah Palin did last night — against big cities, against the East Coast, to some extent, against newspaper readers.

I understand why they’re doing it, running against Washington. This is the way Republicans do populism. But in the long run, it’s poisonous and self-destructive. You cannot be a majority party in this country if the coasts don’t like you and people who read newspapers don’t like you.

And they have narrowed themselves. … And with Sarah Palin, short-term gain last night, but long-term turning people off. (David Brooks, Online News Hour,10/3/08)

It seems to me Joe Biden gave what could be considered pastoral advice to the Republican Party – actually it was grandfatherly advice to any listener — a few minutes after Sarah Palin’s holy war comments cited above, in his response to the last question about how to lead in Washington, about how to bring about a spirit of bipartisan cooperation.

Joe Biden shared what he had learned in the Senate, a principle he learned the hard way because he violated it first and then was taught by Mike Mansfield to see why the principle is important. Listen to this segment of the debate to hear Biden’s account. We only have space for the principle here.

This is the principle: Don’t question other people’s motives. Question their judgment.

Underlying this principle is the fact that each representative is sent to Congress because other people see something they like in those representatives. Biden left it up to us to meditate on the implications of this fact; but it does not take much time to realize that in a democracy each person must allow their opinion to be one among many. Our leaders should not see themselves as being at war with each other, but rather as representing people who elected them to work for the common good. They must then work with other community and business leaders on the same respectful basis to have any hope of enlisting their support and accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Without making any accusations, and in a gracious manner that admitted he was a sinner as much as any one else, Joe Biden shared this principle as he had received it.

By closing the vice-presidential debate on this note, I think Joe Biden achieved an intellectual triumph that no one has yet acknowledged.

In this one principle he undermined most of Sarah Palin’s appeal as John McCain’s running mate.

Most people recognize she is not yet ready for presidential level office. Her role is simply to draw right-wing voters to John McCain. She is a gamble for the Republican Party. And she is a gamble for the USA.

Joe Biden held up a mirror for the Republican Party to examine its own soul. The problem with all principles, however, is that it is much easier to hear them than to put them into practice.

Will We Divide Between Fear and Hope?

This coming presidential election is shaping up to be a contest between our fears and our hopes.

There are so many ways to capitalize on fear.  Here is yet another:

Charles Krauthammer laments the rise of John McCain, but then lays the blame on George Bush, saying…

Mr. Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He’s kept us safe. He’s the original apostate sheriff.

So George Bush has kept us safe, has he?

Has Charles Krauthammer forgotten about 9/11, an event that was not entirely unpredictable since it was the second attempt on the twin towers?

What George Bush did do was use the failures of the past to declare a war on terror and then use that “war” to justify all sorts of over-reaching of his presidential powers in many areas, all in the name of that war.

What is Charles Krauthammer trying to do by telling us that George Bush has kept us safe?

It’s the same thing we can expect the Republican campaign to do as it begins to rally its support for John McCain - to tell us we will only be safe if Republicans are in control.

There are lots of ways to respond to this claim.  Is it true?  Is it probable?  What has happened in the past?  What are the differences between Bush, McCain, Obama, and Clinton?  Do presidents really have much to do with the effectiveness of national security, or are military and other civil servants the major influence? Etc.

What I am more interested in, however, is the use of scare tactics on the American people, since they are the ones who elect the president.  And claims such as this one by Charles Krauthammer contribute to that kind of manipulation.

Why make such an outrageous claim?

For one thing, there is still nearly another year to go in President Bush’s term.  But Krauthammer is betting that nothing will happen before then.

He is not talking about American soldiers on active duty; so the “we” who are safe are not those of us who identify with those who are in that poorly planned military mission in the Middle East. 

He is not talking about our lost American prestige around the globe; so he is not talking about the security that comes from the solidarity of support we receive in the family of nations. 

Krauthammer just means we have not been attacked on American soil since 9/11 when he says George Bush has kept us safe.

But since, as FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “terrorists operate seamlessly across borders and continents, aided by sophisticated communications technologies…; and they patiently and methodically plan and prepare their attacks,” there is a reasonable likelihood that we will be attacked on American soil sooner or later.   

And since many indicators suggest that the next president may well be Democratic, Krauthammer is playing the odds that an attack on American soil will occur within nine years from now but after 2008, and therefore that attack can be “blamed” on the next Democratic president! 

And of course, if there is no attack in the first term and this Democratic president is re-elected (since exposure favors the incumbent), then the odds are even greater that an attack will occur in the second term.  Demonizing the Democrats is thereby a gamble about whether an attack is more likely in 2008 or during the following eight year span. 

Assuming the Democrats win the election, Krauthammer and the Republicans will have a large window in which to claim Americans made a big mistake in rejecting the Republican candidate, if a terrorist attack on American soil does occur.

Now let’s just say McCain does win in November 2008.   And let’s say we are attacked on American soil during McCain’s term of office.  Will anyone start blaming him?   Who in their right mind would do that? 

So why would anyone in their right mind think that a president from either party would be careless about national defense?

Only Republicans allow themselves to get away with this stupid argument.