Gail Collins banal defense of Barack Obama and John McCain

Gail Collin's latest article is on the current controversies over Obama's association with Ayers and McCains association with Keating. Collins defends them because she one attended a party with Bernadine Dohrn before she joined the weatherman and before she committed any terrorist actions. And she attended a school assembly at which Charles Keating spoke.

Ye Gods.

Conservatives complaint about Obama isn't that he was in the same room as Ayers - it's that they sat on the same board (yeah there is a lot of tangential stuff they are making up, but the part that's true is that Obama and Ayers sat on the same board and that Obama attended a meet and greet at Ayers house). They feel that to do these things signifies a deeper connection or affinity for what Ayers was doing in the 1960s/1970s. You can disagree if you want (I certainly do), but it's pretty different from simply attending a party.

And the Keating matter is another step beyond this nonsense. McCain was implicated in helping Keating with his matters - he was a participant.

In fairness the column is somewhat amusing, but ye gods, how banal.

Wouldn't You Like to be a Fundamental Too?

Gail Collin's latest article is pretty good. She notes that McCain seems to have become a populist in response to the latest Wall Street troubles. Yep. A Populist. And his commentary on how American Economic Fundamentals are strong? He means you.

It was a rather jumbled message, but the new story line was firm. The fundamentals were not things like employment rates or trade statistics. The fundamentals were the workers.

We are the fundamentals!

And, naturally, the humble, hard-working fundamentals are good. Who could doubt it? Was Barack Obama trying to say that he didn’t think the American working man and woman was good?

Yep. There it is. McCain's tap dancing on the economy needs a bit more practice.

Qualifications

More on the Wesley Clark fandango. Gail Collin's at the New York Times tries to do a recap of the events, discussing lessons learned from it. She ends with this paragraph.

About those lessons: McCain’s campaign has announced a staff reorganization, so perhaps he realizes that he needs better outraged-response material. Wesley Clark has learned that he’s not going to be vice president. And maybe both camps now understand that this is not the year for debates about management experience. The next president isn’t going to have much. It’s O.K. If we cared about management, we’d have stuck with Mitt Romney.

I'm not sure about that last sentence; who is the we Gail Collins is referring to. Cause I could care about management all day long, and I still wouldn't support Mitt Romney.

I think she's right though; management experience isn't deep in either man. But judgment seems like a very fruitful area of discussion. If you feel like the Bush Years, particularly in regards to the War in Iraq and the erosion of Civil Liberties, have been good for America, well you should vote for the man who's judgment led him to agree with most of those decisions, John McCain. On the other hand, if you think those actions were mistakes, well, we have a candidate for you as well.