Saturday, August 16, 2008

16 Aug 2008 10:04 pm

Saddleback Reax

A reader writes:

I watched this program from the perspective of a Christian.  Obama gave thoughtful honest answers which, I think, reflected his faith and how it informs his life and politics.  He came across to me as genuine.   Clearly, McCain is uncomfortable talking about his faith; maybe that's because it's just who he is but it also may be that his faith is only superficially a part of his identity.   McCain avoided being personal by stringing together jokes and anecdotes along with statements from his stump speeches and ads.

You and I saw this very differently.  In my view Obama was the winner.  He participated in a personal conversation and McCain in a town hall meeting.

Another echoes:

Continue reading "Saddleback Reax" »

16 Aug 2008 09:10 pm

Live-Blogging Saddleback - McCain

9.57 pm. McCain's evolution into a candidate who knows how to stroke the Christianist base is somewhat impressive. It was a little canned at times, but it will work with evangelicals. All in all, this struck me as pretty much a draw. But it also struck me that the questions could have been asked in a non-religious setting and by a real journalist who might have even followed up the questions and not allowed both candidates, but especially McCain, to go on anecdote auto-pilot.

By the way, McCain said he'd go to any venue in this campaign. Somehow, I doubt that.

9.55 pm. I don't mean to sound churlish but the cliches are pretty overwhelming at this point. America's best days are ahead ... etc etc. And then we get this strange peroration with the obvious refrain that the campaign has decided on: putting country first.

9.51 pm. Peerless answer on adoption.

9.46 pm. Why does the early Christian history of Georgia have anything to do with our decisions in foreign policy? He keeps mentioning it - so it's obviously a talking point. Weird. Like Russia isn't a predominantly Christian country? And his policy seems to be: send a message to the Russians. That appears to be it.

Continue reading "Live-Blogging Saddleback - McCain" »

16 Aug 2008 08:18 pm

Live-Blogging Saddleback - Obama

8. 57 pm. I don't retract anything about my concern that the first debate of sorts should be held in a church. But actually this forum so far was in no way offensive to secular values. It did not demand adherence to any religious doctrine and debated moral issues in terms that reflected faith but didn't exclude the faithless. Kudos to Warren.

8.56 pm. "I want people to know me well." "We will get the president we need." There's a strange calm to the guy, a self-distancing that isn't simply aloofness. Maybe it's faith.

8.54 pm. His basic pitch: to build bridges. To restore empathy.

8.52 pm. Finally, Obama mentions torture. Why has Rick Warren not mentioned this? Is it not incumbent on a government to police itself morally before it seeks to solve every wound on God's earth. He has cited any number of moral issues, but not the transcendent moral issue as it relates to the direct actions of the current administration.

8.50 pm. "Enormous credit" to Bush for PEPFAR.

8.42 pm. Man, he can even talk me into higher taxes. Here's how: he actually makes a simple case that we cannot have something for nothing. I get that. I know that. Of course, if all the federal government were doing were good schools and good roads, most of us would not be whining. And, of course, the little rant against complexity and loopholes cannot do him any harm.

So far, this is a masterful performance. Having watched nothing but ads and soundbites and speeches for the past few weeks, I'd forgotten a little bit what a class act he can be.

Continue reading "Live-Blogging Saddleback - Obama" »

16 Aug 2008 08:04 pm

Face Of The Day

Men cry during the funeral of an Abkhaz soldier who was killed in the remote Kodori Gorge town of Ghvada while demining a bomb after an armed clash with Georgians, in Sukhumi on August 16, 2008. By Viktor Drachev/AFP/Getty.

16 Aug 2008 07:53 pm

About Andy Bacevich

A reader writes:

A. James Bacevich was my Colonel while I was in the 11th ACR stationed in Fulda, Germany.  Not sure if you know much about his background, but he was, I believe, passed over for general and retired.  His being passed over was at the time attributed to his having been the CO of the unit during the largest accident ever, which happened on July 11th, 1991, at Camp Doha in Kuwait, when our motor pool blew up injuring a few people and rendering the base inoperable. I was there, and it was a terrifying mess.  You can read about it here. 

Long story short, some folks in them motor pool were doing some maintenance, and put the halon fire extinguishers in an ammo carriers for m109's (artillery vehicles) on mechanical safe, a heater caught on fire, ammo cooked off, and it caused a chain reaction.

Continue reading "About Andy Bacevich" »

16 Aug 2008 07:25 pm

Thinking Through Warming

Ryan Avent calls Manzi's article on global warming "the most sophisticated argument against comprehensive carbon regulation that you'll ever see," but thinks it's "fundamentally flawed" and goes on to argue in favor of a carbon tax.

16 Aug 2008 06:40 pm

Slow Motion Genocide

Richard Just has a long and fairly nuanced piece on Darfur:

No genocide has ever been so thoroughly documented while it was taking place. There were certainly no independent film-makers in Auschwitz in 1942, and the best-known Holocaust memoirs did not achieve a wide audience until years after the war. The world more or less looked the other way as genocide unfolded in Cambodia during the 1970s, and the slaughter in Rwanda happened so quickly--a mere hundred days--that by the time the public grasped the extent of the horror, the killing was done. But here is Darfur, whose torments are known to all. The sheer volume of historical, anthropological, and narrative detail available to the public about the genocide is staggering. In the case of the genocide in Darfur, ignorance has never been possible. But the genocide continues. We document what we do not stop. The truth does not set anybody free.

16 Aug 2008 05:32 pm

Extreme Stargazing

From the archives David Freedman's article on the Messier Marathon, a competition for astronomers:

Soon hundreds of stars were shining, along with three planets. By eight-fifteen most competitors had settled into a steady routine. Under other circumstances they might have filled notebooks with descriptions and sketches of their sightings -- and many of the Messier objects are quite beautiful, from galaxies that appear as opaline whorls or streaks to nebulae whose indigo or other tints can be picked up by large telescopes. But tonight's objects were quarry to be spotted quickly -- "bagged" is the term marathoners use -- and then immediately left behind.

16 Aug 2008 04:12 pm

The iHitch

Hitchhiking in the future:

For those of us standing on the side of the road waiting for a ride, what we lack is a means of connecting us to a driver who doesn't know we need them. But the technological solution to this problem is already close at hand - it is simply a matter of integrating three common functions:

Continue reading "The iHitch" »

16 Aug 2008 03:46 pm

The View From Your Window

Mexico City, Mexico, 5 pm.

16 Aug 2008 03:18 pm

Here Comes The Sun

In absorbing the dizzying series of foreign policy challenges facing this president and the next, one factor obviously stands out. Oil - the damage it does and the tyrants it enables - is the great enemy, from Georgia to Iraq. Finding a way to get ourselves off this stuff is the most urgent national security need we have. Which is why this progress on solar power is so encouraging:

At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations. The largest photovoltaic installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

Spain has a 23-megawatt plant, and Germany is building one of 40 megawatts. A recently built plant that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight, called Nevada Solar One, can produce 64 megawatts of power.

16 Aug 2008 03:07 pm

e-Molotov Cocktail

Evgeny Morozov joined Russia's cyber war against Georgia:

In less than an hour, I had become an Internet soldier. I didn't receive any calls from Kremlin operatives; nor did I have to buy a Web server or modify my computer in any significant way. If what I was doing was cyberwarfare, I have some concerns about the number of child soldiers who may just find it too fun and accessible to resist.

16 Aug 2008 02:56 pm

Those Curtains Were A Crime

Alex Tabarrok writes about those prosecuted for practicing interior design without a license.

16 Aug 2008 02:47 pm

Colbert King On Mark Penn

A scorcher. But, as with much that King writes, dead-on.

16 Aug 2008 02:16 pm

Quote For The Day

"The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in part of through the distribution of largesse here at home, and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad," - Andrew Bacevich, in his new book, "The Limits Of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."

His interview with Bill Moyers is here. Bacevich's voice is an indispensable one in trying to figure out the thicket we are in.

16 Aug 2008 02:09 pm

The Obama Money Juggernaut

$51 million is very serious cash. It's double McCain's haul. That rope-a-dope theory may have some legs.

16 Aug 2008 01:56 pm

A World Order

A telling paragraph from Isaiah Berlin's 1949 profile of Churchill:

Mr. Churchill is one of the diminishing number of those who genuinely believe in a specific world order: the desire to give it life and strength is the most powerful single influence upon everything which he thinks and imagines, does and is. When biographers and historians come to describe and analyze his views on Europe or America, on the British Empire or Russia, on India or Palestine, or even on social or economic policy, they will find that his opinions on all these topics are set in fixed patterns, set early in life and later only reinforced.

Thus he has always believed in great states and civilizations in an almost hierarchical order, and has never, for instance, hated Germany as such: Germany is a great, historically hallowed state; the Germans are a great historic race and as such occupy a proportionate amount of space in Mr. Churchill's world picture. He denounced the Prussians in the First World War and the Nazis in the Second; the Germans, scarcely at all. He has always entertained a glowing vision of France and her culture, and has unalterably advocated the necessity of Anglo-French collaboration. He has always looked on the Russians as a formless, quasi-Asiatic mass beyond the walls of European civilization. His belief in and predilection for the American democracy are too well known to need comment—they are the foundation of his political outlook.

16 Aug 2008 01:43 pm

Photographing Billboards

Oddly captivating work by Branislav Kropilak:

More here.

16 Aug 2008 01:38 pm

Rigging The Iraq Elections?

Some troubling signs from Iraq. The elections aren't happening on schedule and the powers that be are doing all they can to disenfranchise the powers that aren't.

16 Aug 2008 01:27 pm

CC Static

A bit from Michael Erard's 2001 article on closed captions:

Although Clark accepts the inevitability of real-time gaffes, he deems any avoidable error in the pop-on format unacceptable, and he is easily vexed. He criticizes the sans serif fonts typically used for captions as "typographically debased" (among other things, the spacing of their letters cannot be adjusted, and they cannot render many accented letters and other unusual characters), and he complains that to a foreign viewer, the standard U.S. and Canadian practice of using all capital letters "makes everyone seem like they're shouting."

16 Aug 2008 12:33 pm

Faces Of The Day

The reader who sent this in notes:

I collect 19th century imagery of gay couples, same sex affection, drag, etc. I recently acquired this cabinet card. 

Can't say for sure whether this is an actual gay couple as many males expressed themselves like this in nineteenth century photography but it's fun to think about. This is J. H. Short and J. W. Shanklin, co-owners of The Daily Republican. This cabinet card was made in February 1889.

16 Aug 2008 11:43 am

Tainted Evidence

Radley Balko and Roger Koppl highlight problems with forensic science:

Crime labs, DNA labs, and medical examiners shouldn't serve under the same bureaucracy as district attorneys and police agencies. If these experts must work for the government, they should report to an independent state agency, if not the courts themselves. There should be a wall of separation between analysis and interpretation. Thus, an independent medical examiner would, for instance, perform and videotape the actual procedure in an autopsy. The prosecution and defense would then each bring in their own experts to interpret the results in court. When the same expert performs both the analysis and interpretation, defense experts are often at a disadvantage, having to rely on the notes and photos of the same expert whose testimony they're disputing.

16 Aug 2008 11:19 am

Walzer On Russia

Worth a read:

The invasion may not turn out to be a victory for Russia. The most heartening moment in the last week was the arrival in Tbilisi on Tuesday of the presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, and Poland to stand in solidarity with Saakashvili. They are not ready to accept the reassertion of an old-fashioned Russian “sphere of influence.” And their public presence and resistance are more important than any American or European statements.

16 Aug 2008 11:16 am

International Equilibrium

Jeffrey Tayler, writing from Moscow, has a smart dispatch on the war in Georgia. His thoughts on NATO:

...that the United States would even consider proposing Georgia for membership in NATO reflects a blindness to the consequences of the first two rounds of NATO expansion and defies elementary strategic logic.

Continue reading "International Equilibrium" »

16 Aug 2008 11:04 am

Bad Opening Sentences

A contest. The winner:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’

16 Aug 2008 10:11 am

Remnick On Putin

Pretty much a perfect take:

Putin is not Hitler or Stalin; he is not even Leonid Brezhnev. He is what he is, and that is bad enough.

16 Aug 2008 08:30 am

How Pernicious Is Rick Warren?

It's perhaps the most depressing fact of this campaign so far that the first major encounter between McCain and Obama will be presided over by a mega-pastor and in a church. Here's Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with the man who is taking American politics one step further away from the vision of the Founding Fathers. Take this particular piece of blather:

I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion. Faith is simply a worldview. A person who says he puts his faith on the shelf when he's making decisions is either an idiot or a liar. It's entirely appropriate for me to ask what is their frame of reference.

The entire basis for Western secular government, which rests on the capacity of people to distance absolute truth from political affairs, is based on idiocy or lies? I wonder if Warren has ever read Locke, or Hobbes, or Machiavelli or would even understand the term secularism if it knocked him square off his pedestal. Then here we have full-on Christianism in foreign policy:

Continue reading "How Pernicious Is Rick Warren?" »

Friday, August 15, 2008

15 Aug 2008 11:13 pm

How It All Began

From Michael Dobbs' excellent and even-handed piece in the WaPo:

It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault. It was a huge miscalculation.

Putin's aggression was massively disproportionate, but the US definitely played into his hands by championing Saakashvili so hubristically. And I didn't know this:

It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies; he sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.

Wise leaders show a steady hand and a calm posture in dealing with these events. McCain has done neither. Once again, the most impressive figure in all of this has been Robert Gates.

15 Aug 2008 11:02 pm

Charlie Part Two

The second installment of Charlie the Unicorn, the trippiest thing on the web:

15 Aug 2008 09:55 pm

Obama Fading?

A reader writes:

With regards to the idea that Obama's campaign has been ineffectual over the last few weeks, I can't help but give these guys all the benefit of the doubt.  They've run a nearly flawless campaign, aside from the Wright episode.  I'm reminded of the tactics of Muhammed Ali versus George Foreman in their great boxing fight of the early 70's... I can't help but wonder if Obama's campaign is purposely taking all of the best (worst?) that McCain's campaign can come up with during the current Olympic buildup/downtime with the thought of turning everything into a downhill run to victory from the conventions on.

I can't help but think we're seeing political rope-a-dope ...

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've worried about Obama's seeming reluctance to fight back. But my worry is simply about him losing control of the narrative of this campaign.

15 Aug 2008 08:25 pm

Christianists For Obama

Some evangelicals tout Obama's family values. The contrast with the once-philandering, adulterous divorcé running for the GOP goes unstated:

15 Aug 2008 07:40 pm

Beijing's Casting Couch

You thought those dancers in the opening ceremony were selected on ability alone?

15 Aug 2008 06:28 pm

The Logic Of McCain

A reader writes:

You asked, "By what logic can gay rights be more significant an issue for a religious party like the GOP than abortion?"

By the electoral logic. Anything touching on homosexuality cuts into the Republican strategy to define this, along with every other, presidential election as a choice between a folksy, ordinary, and masculine patriot and an elite, peculiar, and effeminate cosmopolitan. Merely mentioning anything gay, let alone having gay friends, wavering on gay marriage, etc. punts you in the latter camp. You can't say the same for abortion.

15 Aug 2008 06:01 pm

Face Of The Day

A seal jumps at the zoo in the northern German city of Hanover on August 15, 2008. The zoo held an animal Olympic games to coincide with the Olympic games in Beijing. By Nigel Treblin/AFP/Getty.

15 Aug 2008 05:19 pm

Dissent of The Day

A reader writes:

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Are you aware that 36% of all American women know how to knit or crochet? And that that number reflects an 51% increase in the number of knitters in the last 10 years? Or, incidentally, that there are more and more men knitting every year? At a recent production of Midsummer Night's Dream that my theater company did, there were five knitters backstage--three women, two of them in high school; two men, one in college and the other my 55 year old father.

Knitting ain't just for Grandma anymore.

15 Aug 2008 04:50 pm

It's Alive!

The first man-made biological brain? Well, almost:

The robot’s biological brain is made up of cultured neurons which are placed onto a multi electrode array (MEA). The MEA is a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells. This is then used to drive the movement of the robot. Every time the robot nears an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes. In response, the brain’s output is used to drive the wheels of the robot, left and right, so that it moves around in an attempt to avoid hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer, its sole means of control is from its own brain.

15 Aug 2008 04:47 pm

What a Convention Bounce Looks Like

Nate Silver crunches the numbers. The gist:

A 6-point convention bounce represents par. If a candidate gets a bounce larger than 6 points, that can be considered to be a good sign. If the bounce is smaller than 6 points, that can be considered to be a bad sign.

15 Aug 2008 04:44 pm

Contra Coyne

Paul Wells continues the conversation about Georgia at McLeans. Coyne's original piece (and my response) is here.

15 Aug 2008 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Chimps on ice!

15 Aug 2008 04:09 pm

Elevating A Smear?

Levin wonders if Obama is "over-learning the Swift Boat lesson with their reaction to the Corsi book." Crowley thinks not, while Jonathan Martin suggests the 41 page rebuttal the Obama campaign has issued should have a subtitle: "We Are Not John Kerry's Campaign."
 

15 Aug 2008 03:34 pm

The Gold Standard

This reminds me of the Obama-Clinton popular vote arguments:

It's interesting to look at the official Beijing Olympics medal-count site, which like all other media I've seen in China ranks countries' performance according to how many gold medals they have won. Right at this moment, it shows China as #1 with 22 golds, vs 14 for the runner up, the United States. Then look at the main US Olympic Committee/NBC medal-count site, which as of right now shows the US as #1 with 43 total medals, vs 36 for #2 China.  We're all above average!

15 Aug 2008 03:19 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Corsi's approach to politics is both destructive and self-destructive. If Senator Obama loses, he should lose on the merits: his record in public life and his political philosophy. And while it's legitimate to take into account Obama's past associations with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright -especially for someone like Obama, about whom relatively little is known- it's wrong and reckless to throw out unsubstantiated charges and smears against Senator Obama.

Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt," - Peter Wehner.

But JPod exults here. And sees the Corsi book's success as a resurgence in the "conservative book market." It was created by Mary Matalin, a person in very good standing with the GOP, who gave her boss's daughter, Mary Cheney, a $500,000 advance for a book only five people read. The sad truth is: this kind of crap is the right's central critique of Obama and no one in the Republican hierarchy will disown it. This is Peter's party. It's admirable that he's saying what he's saying, but he surely must know the slime machine he is riding.

15 Aug 2008 03:15 pm

No Excuses For McCain

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"What worries me is that McCain's eagerness for more conflict in the world - pushing Russia and China into a corner - is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?
Count me out."

I'm glad you added the last sentence, but I wish more people would stop making touchy-feely excuses for John McCain because they used to support him. I am a former McCain 2000 supporter. He was a personal hero. I bought his book for my father for father's day while I was in high school. But we need to stop with the madness. The rhetoric coming out of the McCain campaign (and the Republican Party by default) on this issue is seriously endangering the national well-being. This is neither moral, nor exciting, nor providing a great national purpose.

Continue reading "No Excuses For McCain" »

15 Aug 2008 02:57 pm

The View From Your Window

Stockholm, Sweden, 10 am.

15 Aug 2008 02:55 pm

Krauthammer Against Himself?

Nice catch from Ross.

15 Aug 2008 02:35 pm

The Argument For Lieberman

JPod gives it his best shot:

What are the risks? First, there is the disaffection of pro-lifers and other social conservatives, who don't like Lieberman's record. That can be dealt with in part by reminding people that Lieberman was an ally of social conservatives on issues of family and morality and the crudity of popular culture in the 1990s. But that will not be enough. Lieberman will have to pledge not to seek the presidency, and to make the point that he is a man of his word. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that the Lieberman choice all but requires McCain himself to pledge he will serve only one term, because the goal of his presidency will be to right the ship of state and change the atmosphere in Washington, and then get out of town.

Here's how JPod wants to right the ship of state:

Those goals are first, constructing a post-Bush foreign policy that aims to solidify the gains in Iraq and face down the threats posed by Iran's march forward and (the new entry) Russia's effort to reconstitute some kind of empire.

"Solidify the gains in Iraq" means, I presume, entrenching the occupation with permanent bases. So: one neocon war to continue; two new ones to begin. And with the world in an epochal conflict, you think McCain would leave the stage voluntarily? He lives for that kind of global conflict.

The main problem with Lieberman, by the way, is not that he belongs to another party. Both he and McCain belong to the war party. It's that Lieberman would bring out the Democratic base more powerfully than he would bring out the Republican base.

15 Aug 2008 01:40 pm

McCain Slimes Again; Obama Fades

McCain recycles the celebrity charge, sans Paris, and removes his lie about Obama's raising taxes on people earning $42,000 a year (while never acknowledging that it was a lie in the first place). But the personal demonization of Obama, and raising fears about his somehow being responsible for raising gas prices are pure demagoguery. The ad is particularly nauseating when you remember how the Rove GOP used to attack McCain for his ertwhile fiscal conservatism (since abandoned). McCain has become - and how swiftly - what he once derided.

I fear it will work, however. Since Obama's hubris in Berlin, he has lost almost every cycle of this campaign, and lost all of them quite badly. I'm not sure his campaign gets how far they have sunk, and how ineffectual and passive Obama has seemed these past few weeks. The total capitulation to the Clintons at the convention is particularly lame:

15 Aug 2008 01:03 pm

Under The Radar Obama?

Is he fighting back the clever way?

Over the past week, we've gotten our hands on a number of negative TV ads Obama's been running against McCain in key states like Ohio and Michigan. This is in addition to the tough spot, uncovered by Politico, that Obama's airing in Indiana. Clearly, the Obama campaign isn't interested in telling the media about every single McCain attack ad they're running. Perhaps this is because Obama's brand can't afford to be tarnished too much if he's seen as constantly running negative TV ads. So the campaign simply puts them on the air in key markets, doesn't tell the press about them, and layers those ads with positive ones being run nationally during the Olympics.

Continue reading "Under The Radar Obama?" »

15 Aug 2008 01:03 pm

Preventing Marriage

That's the goal of the Christianists: to exclude gay couples from the dignity and responsibility of a civic institution that all our friends, family members and neighbors enjoy. This ad helps express how that can feel:

You can donate to the campaign to protect California's marriages here. Please do. The Christianist right is spending a small fortune to demonize us in California.

15 Aug 2008 01:02 pm

Why I Still Like McCain

This will get me grief, and I'm nervous about McCain's foreign policy instincts given the past seven years, and I know he's been running a sleazy campaign, but I like the guy, and I like him for his orneriness. Here's a great summary of why:

If you want a lousy interview with McCain, ask about his wife—not for any lack of feeling, I suspect, but for lack of words about feelings. His old-school way of expressing affection? If he likes you, and you work for him, you're an "incompetent jerk''; if he likes you, and you're a bunch of reporters writing down his bons mots, it's "What do you want, you little jerks?''; and if you're a kid who's just asked about his age, and he wants to show that sure, fine, he likes you anyway, it's "Thanks for the question, you little jerk. You're drafted.''

Maybe it's my upbringing, in an all-boys British high school, where this kind of banter was quite normal. But there's a great deal about McCain's humor, sense of fun, emotional reticence - and not the dry drunk psychic shutdown of Bush - that appeals to people. Even his obvious emotionalism in a situation like Georgia - which may not make him the steadiest commander-in-chief. The coolness of Obama is hard to latch onto.