Usually a couple of things happen in a major election to make things more interesting.  This time a there have been more than usual. 

The watershed event in this year’s Republican campaign should have been the selection of Sarah Palin. It started out that way, then fell silent for a month while the McCain managers tried to fit her into their idea of how she should participate. McCain, himself, probably hamstrung her with the foolish MSM interviews. It seems that now they have learned their lessons. They have turned Sarah loose to do what she does best, which is communicate with Main Street, USA. We can just hope that it is not too late.

Meanwhile, a number of “conservative” commentators, perhaps best exemplified by Peggy Noonan, have taken a dim view of the Alaska Governor. Her latest in the Wall Street Journal had this writer in knots with righteous anger. Perhaps it is Noonan’s four honorary doctorates, despite her not having attended an Ivy League School, but seriously believe that she, and the others who have been tearing into Sarah Palin have been doing so out of jealousy, or out of indignation that someone who is not part of the eastern intellectual aristocracy would aspire to hold any part of the chief executive’s office. It is almost certain that Noonan and her colleagues cannot understand how it is that this woman from a small western school and a personal blue collar background could be this successful in politics. It simply shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Meanwhile, Sarah continues to wow her audiences with what they want to hear. She is, after all, a lot more like them than these elitists, of whatever stripe they may be.

Of course, more important, of late is the emergence of “Joe the Plumber” who has now been vetted more thoroughly than Senator Obama. Joe Wurzelbacher, has, despite claims to the contrary, pulled the McCain – Palin Ticket back into a statistical dead heat in Ohio, according to reports late on October 20. The seminal fact of his emergence is that he has dared to speak the truth, not only once, but several times in the face of the news media. He states the economic case better than John McCain and he has thrown the fear of an Obama presidency into the minds of many small business owners in the USA, if it wasn’t there already. Seriously, if the McCain ticket wins, despite his singular failure to personally communicate, he should put Joe in as the number one guest of honor at the inaugural. Maybe he should also consider giving him a job as Press Secretary. He certainly has done a better job than a few forgettable ones I’ve seen lately.

And, of course, there is the infamous quote from Senator McCain that people shouldn’t be afraid of an Obama Presidency. To begin with, McCain should remember that one of the major foundations of Obama’s candidacy is his ability to lie and to change his mind with impunity. Of course he has the press to thank for this in many respects, but this does prove one very important thing; we can’t trust the guy. After all, he didn’t keep his word on the town hall debates or his commitment to take public funding. How can we trust him to do so on his tax policy.

And on a related point, we should consider something probably more important. They guy has no experience in leading in the legislature, let alone anywhere else. He has only 3 years in the Senate, and has done essentially nothing. The same can be said of his single term in the Illinois legislature. Compare this with Lyndon B. Johnson who spent a total of 23 years in the US House and Senate combined before becoming John Kennedy’s running mate. Johnson was a very effective President because of the political capital he had amassed during his years in the legislature. Obama has none. This may lead to a co-presidency of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, while the Chosen One sits as a figurehead and rubber stamps anything they put on his desk.

Is the guy transformational, as some would like us to believe? He is most certainly not. He is simply another of the corrupt Chicago political machine people who will do anything for power and don’t give a darn about who gets hurt in the process. When he says he will “change America and change the world” no one bothers to ask how he intends to change things. Dennis Prager states, correctly, that the moral and value systems are what lead to significant changes. He has never articulated what, if any, value system he stands for, and sometimes it seems that he lacks on in his personal relations. After all, he did, for all practical purposes, throw his own grandmother under the political bus by calling her a “typical white person.” This is not the action of a person who seriously understands the consequences of his actions. We have yet to learn what his grandmother thought when she heard this.

To close, there is the prediction by Joe Biden, speaking in Washington State, that President Obama will be tested by an international crisis in the first 6 months of his presidency. Seriously, if I were Vladimir Putin, I’d go for it the day of his inauguration, and see how he reacts in a crisis. Probably, he’d flub it, just as he did, the recent invasion of Georgia. Or would Iran decide to launch a dirty bomb somewhere? Maybe right here in the US, where Obama can see how friendly and impressed the folks running that country are. Biden said he can think of four or five scenarios. Only that many? I can think of a few dozen, considering the state of the world. Don’t forget China, Syria, the Saudis, the possibility of another significant civil war in Africa, Hugo Chavez invading one of his neighbors…

Don’t get me started, please.