Obama’s effort at pleasing both the Patriots and the Left in his West Point speech (see below, Obama’s grandiose equivocation) has not succeeded. How could it?

Like a circus performer trying to ride two horses with one foot on each saddle as the steeds canter round the ring, he struggled to maintain his balance, but fell off. His speech was a failure. His announcement that he will send more troops and start retreating on a fixed date is derided by both sides.

The Chicago Tribune has had the bright idea of accosting Bill Ayers, an ever dependable mouthpiece for the Left, and asking for his thoughts. You can see him and listen to his reply here. Predictably he excoriates Obama for pursuing the war in Afghanistan at all. (Note also that he seems to think Aghanistan is in the ‘Middle East’. He’s so far on the left himself, this famous educationist, that all middles most probably seem immensely wide to him.)

Ayers is attending an anti-war rally. How does it feel, Mr President, to have your old anti-war comrades demonstrating against you and your war?

Obama’s entire presidency is doomed to be the same impossible struggle: to keep his balance between the long-established realities of American freedom and power on the one hand and his collectivist idealism – the ‘change’ he promised – on the other. It cannot be done, fortunately. But the very struggle to do the impossible could prove disastrous for the nation.

[PS  The reason we didn’t neatly balance ‘Patriots’ with ‘Revolutionaries’ , or ‘the Left’ with ‘the Right’ is that (i) many on the Left deny that they are ‘revolutionaries’ or even ‘socialists’ although they support collectivist policies which are both, such as nationalized health care and cap-and-trade; and (ii) ‘the Right’ can be made to include non-egalitarian collectivists. ‘Libertarians versus Collectivists’ would be good, but would need to be explained, as neither word is commonly used as we use them. ‘Collectivist’ might be easily enough digested, but ‘Libertarian’ as the word is most often used (especially with its anti-war connotation) does not fit with the way most American patriots think of themselves, even though they love liberty.]

Jillian Becker  December 4, 2009

From Fox News, via The Religion of Peace which heads this story No Joke :

On Jan. 1, 2010, Hezbollah and its de-facto ruler Iran could have a direct line to the Security Council and gain access to all the confidential information to which Security Council members are privy.

In October the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for Lebanon to be the Asian bloc’s new non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a 2-year term.

Earlier today the Lebanese Government endorsed Hezbollah’s demand allowing it to keep its huge weapons arsenal. In doing so the Lebanese government is able to maintain its shaky unity government in which Hezbollah, a designated terrorist group by the U.S. state department, holds two ministries.

Critics worry that the Lebanese will essentially be sitting on the Security Council while ignoring Security Council resolutions that call for the disarming of armed militias, in other words Hezbollah.

Analysts point to the influence wielded by the Iranian-funded Hezbollah in Lebanon as a cause for concern over Lebanon’s acceptance into the Security Council. …

Hezbollah’s acceptance of joining the national unity government came with a promise of not having to disarm as well as receiving the power of veto following months of complicated negotiations.

While repeated calls to the Lebanese foreign ministry in Beirut went unanswered, Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.N., Nawaf Salam, was recently quoted in reports as saying that once on the Security Council, Lebanon would “work for a more just and democratic international system.”

Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi told Fox News that he had no comment as to what the organization wants from the Security Council and denied that his organization was bound by U.N. resolutions that called for disarming militias, telling Fox News that “the organization is not a militia” and to look at Wednesday’s announcement by the Lebanese government that leaves Hezbollah in full control of its arms. …

The group that controls the Lebanese foreign ministry: AMAL, the Lebanese Resistance Detachments … is strongly allied with Hezbollah. It holds influence over Lebanon’s foreign policy, which in turn gives Hezbollah enormous influence over what goes on at places like Lebanon’s United Nations Mission.

At last we atheists believe in the existence of a Savior of Mankind. We don’t know his name. We only know he’s a simple hacker.

He’s saved us from incalculable harm.

Or at least we hope he has.

When short-sighted capitalists and blind communist ideologues meet next week in Copenhagen, will they yet succeed in impoverishing and enslaving us in the name of saving the planet from global warming? Even though the hacker has revealed that the ‘science’ is fraudulent?

From Canada Free Press:

The upcoming Copenhagen meeting sponsored by the United Nations had hoped for a global redistribution of wealth over the next 20 years of between $6 trillion and $10.5 trillion, according to the draft treaty, to “Compensate for damage to the less developed countries’ economy and also compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity, as many will become environmental refugees.” Third world governments see dollar signs.

In the U.S., the Treasury Department estimates that the president’s cap-and-trade approach would “generate federal receipts on the order of $100- to $200 billion annually.” The Congressional Budget Office reports that a 15 percent CO2 reduction would cost an average household $1,600 a year.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a bureaucrat’s paradise that exists solely to perpetrate the myth, while enjoying frequent meetings at exotic venues throughout the world.

Many governments maintain bureaucracies just to “study” the myth. In the U.S., it’s the Global Change Research Program. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association], the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center of the USGS [US Geological Survey], and the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] are just a few other federal agencies feeding at the trough.

Over the last 20 years, the US government spent $32 billion on climate research, yet has failed to find any evidence that carbon dioxide emissions significantly affect temperature or represent a danger. Government agencies, the private sector, and universities were the recipients of this money. These organizations have a vested interest in maintaining the myth.

The feds also spent another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. Solar and wind-power generation of electricity can be a supplemental supply, but these methods could not compete with fossil fuels without a subsidy. These industries have a vested interest in maintaining the myth.

The ethanol industry is founded solely on the myth that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels, even though the U.S. has abundant supplies.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Bailout bill) contained $3.4 billion for research and experimentation in the area of carbon sequestration – burying carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuel plants. There are also, really wild schemes for geoengineering, schemes to block the sun with mirrors, or seed the atmosphere with sulfur to produce more clouds.

On the world commodities market, trading carbon credits generated $126 billion in 2008, and big banks are collecting fees, and some project a market worth $2 trillion. Al Gore’s venture capital firm, Hara Software which makes software to track greenhouse gas emissions, stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation. If the myth is destroyed, this market will evaporate.

Back in 2007, a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) to lobby for cap & trade. The companies planned to profit (at least in the short term) from either the cap-and-trade provisions or from selling high-priced, politically-favored (if not mandated) so-called “green” technology to the rest of us — whether we need it or not, and regardless of whether it produces any environmental or societal benefits.

Corporate USCAP members include: Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar Inc., Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, Exelon, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, John Deer & Co, PG&E Corporation, and PNM Resources. …

The vested interests are strong and many. Is the global warming industry “too big to fail?” It remains to be seen whether those interests, and [collectivist] political ideology will triumph over truth and common sense.

President Obama’s speech on what he is planning to do about the war in Afghanistan was the speech of a deeply committed radical with a mind soaked in the toxic ideology of the Left, challenged to explain to himself and his ideological comrades just why he was continuing to wage war in a Third World country in defiance of all their passionately held ideals.

Pity the man! What a task he was forced to set himself!

As president of the United States, addressing men serving in his country’s military, he had to present his decision to commit 30,000 more troops to the war as a move reflecting an unswerving appreciation of their willing sacrifice, a determination to win, and a passion for upholding the honor of the country he leads. In  none of this he believes, but he had to say he did. He had to come across as encouraging, dedicated to the cause, intent on achieving goals for which his audience were willing to give their lives. He had to sound sincere when he was not. As part of the act, but making his task even harder for himself, he chose to announce his new strategy for the war at the Military Academy at West Point, which Chris Matthews of MSNBC called, speaking for peaceniks of the left everywhere, the ‘enemy’s camp’.

At the same time he had to be true to his political faith, which is in absolute opposition to any war waged by the United States on or in a Third World country, especially against an Islamic movement. His speech had to signal to the pacifist faction of the American left, the whole of the international left, and to Muslims world-wide that he was in principle against the war, against all war, against America being militarily strong, against America being the mightiest power and the most successful capitalist country in the world.

No wonder it took him months to work out what to do and how to spin it. Did he succeed? Superficially, yes. The speech, amazingly, so well fulfills his contradictory needs that it could almost be called a masterpiece of equivocation. At least until it is scrutinized in detail. Then the irreconcilable bits show up all too plainly.

How did he do it?

Pick the speech apart and you can see how it was done. For instance, for the voters and the patriots, for the generals and the soldiers, for the fulfillment of the duties of his office – let’s put all of these into a category headed Patriots –  he says:

‘On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children …’

Then for the left revolutionaries, for the pacifists, for Islam, for America-haters, for the panel of Marxist advisers in his White House, for his dead communist father, his  hippy mother, his wife, his best friends, for his Marxist professors and mentors and benefactors, his pastors, his erstwhile Alinsky-team employers,  for his  terrorist associates, for ACORN and the SEIU, for his whole revolutionary base, and for Islam their ally – let’s put all these into a category headed the Left – he says:

‘… without regard to their faith or race or station.’

What could this mean?  What faiths or races or stations in life could have been regarded, taken into consideration, which would have qualified the evil of the act? We know the answers. If the only people to be hit had for certain been white, been captains of the ‘military-industrial complex’, been Christians and Jews, then the attack would have been more understandable, perhaps excusable, perhaps even justified. No, it isn’t said. But it is implied. What other meaning can be found in the words?

In paragraph after paragraph the pieces stand out as these for the Patriots, these  for the Left. (And there are a few that do for both, such as those strongly condemning al-Qaeda – safely enough since many Islamic states are fervently against it.)

First for the Patriots: He tells the soldiers that he has been very good to them; they really have nothing to complain about. He has ’signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars’; he has read the letters sent to him by ‘the parents and spouses of those who deployed’; he visited wounded warriors at Walter Reed; and he ‘traveled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place’. And here are more sops to Patriots: ‘A testament to the character of our men and women in uniform’; ‘thanks to their courage, grit and perseverance’; ‘as cadets you volunteered for service during the time of danger’; ‘as your commander in chief I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service’; ‘I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan’; ‘we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum’; ‘to abandon this area now would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al-Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies’; ‘the struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly’; ‘it will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world’; ‘where al-Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold – whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere – they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships’; ‘we have to improve our intelligence so that we stay one step ahead of shadowy networks’; ‘our country has borne a special burden in global affairs’; we have spilled American blood in many countries’; ’we have not always been thanked for these efforts’; ‘more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades’; ’unlike the great powers of old,  we have not sought world domination’; ‘we do not seek to occupy other nations’; ‘we are still heirs to a noble struggle for freedom’; ‘men and women in uniform are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice that has made government of the people, by the people and for the people a reality on this Earth’.

Most of the rest of the speech is primarily to placate the Left and Islam. It would be tediously long to quote, so here’s a summary and interpretaion:  Al Qaeda  has ‘distorted and defiled Islam’; it has even attacked Muslims, for instance in Amman and Bali; our use of force in Afghanistan was fully sanctioned by both Congress and the UN’s international approval;  then we were distracted from pursuing it properly by  the unjustifiable, illegal war that Bush (not named but fully blamed) waged on Iraq;  although I am going to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, after 18 months all our troops will begin to come home; after that we’ll keep a kindly eye on the progress the Afghans make in becoming a country that is not corrupt, holds elections without fraud, and grows something more desirable than opium;  we must exercise restraint in the use of military force; in any case we cannot afford to wage war because we have an economic crisis and what resources we have must be used to change America to you-know-what; I don’t really like bothering with foreign affairs at all very much, but since I  have to let me remind you that we’ve got other tasks to do in the world, for instance in ‘disorderly regions’ (such as, not needing to be named to those who know, the Middle East); we’d rather negotiate peace than fight for it, even with the Taliban; but if the Taliban has to be fought let Pakistan do the fighting, we’ll pay them to do it; I am pursuing the goal of a world without nuclear weapons; I’ve prohibited torture; I’ll close the prison at Guantanamo Bay; I’ll speak out for human rights everywhere in the world (okay, not in China, or Cuba, or Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia, or … No, he doesn’t imply this, it just happens to be the case.)

But he fears he might not have pleased both sides after all. He anticipates disagreement and rebukes it:

‘This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue — nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse.’

He ends with a series of grandiose but entirely empty rhetorical flourishes designed to elicit applause, which they did as a mater of courtesy and custom, though most of the speech was listened to without it. No wonder. It was a self-serving exercise, not improved by the flattery bestowed on the audience.

‘America, we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes. …’

Are the Patriots deceived? Is the Left placated and are Muslims appeased?  It remains  to be seen.

Jillian Becker  December 2, 2009

With his usual incisive clarity, Thomas Sowell asks:

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about “fairness” and “social justice,” what is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for?

It would be fascinating to hear a redistributionist’s attempt to answer the question.

The good news that the Democrats are dropping rapidly in voters’ approval is tempered for us by the bad news that of  the visible Republican 2012 presidential candidates, Mike Huckabee heads the list. We see him as good-natured but dangerously naive. His religious belief is as ingenuous as that of a small child. True, Sarah Palin’s is too, but she has many qualities that made her a strong governor and could make her an effective future leader.

A former member of Huckabee’s 2008 campaign, Joe Carter, confirms our view of him. Slightly to our surprise we found this at First Things, a Christian site:

The tragic murders of four policemen in Washington State, quickly turned into a political story when it was discovered that former governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had previously commuted the sentence of the gunman [Maurice Clemmons], making him eligible for parole.

Normally, I wouldn’t have much to say on such story. But because I have some familiarity with the backstory — I worked for a brief time for the Huckabee campaign — and because it has implications for the role of religion in politics, I thought it might be worth sharing my perspective.

Reflections on a politician by former campaign staffers should always be taken cum grano salis. This is no exception. While I’m still a fan of the governor I don’t believe he — nor anyone else from the 2008 primary season (from Palin to Romney to Giuliani to Paul) — has any chance of ever becoming President. Because of this, I don’t feel the need to either defend or condemn him. While the tragic chain of events that were set in place by his signing commutations are not entirely — or even primarily — the fault of the governor, he must bear a sufficient measure of responsibility. …

On the issue of clemency, commutations, and pardons. … Other governors with their sights set on higher offices had learned that doing nothing — even to correct obvious instances of injustice — was unlikely to cause any long-term political damage. Keeping an innocent man in prison is less harmful to an ambitious politician than freeing someone who may commit other crimes.

Huckabee would certainly discover this political reality the hard way. Initially, I chalked it up solely to extraordinary political courage. Later, I tempered this view when I realized that this courage was mixed with a large dose of cluelessness. The governor seemed genuinely surprised that he was held responsible for the criminal acts committed by those whose sentences he had commuted as governor. It was as if he believed that simply having noble intentions and a willingness to make tough decisions would provide political cover. The notion that he should be accountable for future crimes committed by these men seemed as foreign to him as the idea that he should refuse all leniency.

His naivete about how his actions would be judged was compounded by his own belief in the nobleness of his motives. Huckabee was — and likely remains — a true believer in the concept of restorative justice. …

Judging from the records, the governor also seemed to put a lot of weight on conversion stories — a common trait among evangelicals, who believe the gospel is sufficient for restoration and redemption of character. The opinion of clergy appears to have carried a great deal of weight in the decision-making process. …

Even the left, and his foreign fan club, are beginning to see that Obama cannot do the job he was elected to do.

Peter Wehner writes at Commentary-contentions (see the whole article here):

The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled. The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.” “He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. The Saudi “has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory,” according to Ajami. But “he is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment [for this we’ll not be too hard on him – JB]. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.”

Indeed he has — and only Obama and his increasingly clueless administration seem unaware of this.

On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.

It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.

Right now the overwhelming issue on the public’s mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.

… is Mann-made global warming. (We pinched the pun from Mark Steyn.)

This is by John Hinderaker at Power Line:

Michael Ramirez comments on the global warming scandal:

There’s no question that it’s a fraud, but whether the “scientists” who have been promoting the global warming hoax have committed felonies is not yet clear. They have taken countless hundreds of millions of dollars in government money and used it to produce fraudulent results, which may very well violate criminal statutes both here and in the U.K. And the “scientists'” destruction of data that was subject to valid Freedom of Information Act requests may have been criminal under British law …

I’d love to see the hoaxers behind bars, but it isn’t likely to happen, if only because the government officials who would have to bring charges are their allies. Criminal liability aside, the fact is that these “scientists” nearly pulled off the greatest fraud in world history. Compared to them, hoaxers like Enron and Bernie Madoff were pikers. The global warming alarmists sought to impose trillions of dollars in losses on the world economy, while living high off the hog on taxpayer money. If Bernie Madoff gets life, what would be the appropriate sentence for Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and the others?

At last! Some feminists take a stand against Islam-creep in Europe upon their noticing that Islam subjugates and oppresses women. A small step but at least it’s in the right direction.

From the Times Online:

A right-wing campaign to outlaw minarets on mosques in a referendum being held in Switzerland today has received an unlikely boost from radical feminists arguing that the tower-like structures are “male power symbols” and reminders of Islam’s oppression of women.

A “stop the minarets” campaign has provoked ferment in the land of Heidi, where women are more likely than men to vote for the ban after warnings from prominent feminists that Islam threatens their rights. …

“If we give them a minaret, they’ll have us all wearing burqas,” said Julia Werner, a local housewife. “Before you know it, we’ll have sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won’t be Swiss any more.” …

A poll suggested the Swiss would narrowly reject a ban but the feminist involvement is having an effect: according to one poll, 39% of women were in favour of a ban, but only 31% of men.

Tatiana, a teacher who had previously voted for the left, was quoted in a newspaper as saying she would vote for the minaret ban as she could “no longer bear being mistreated and terrorised by boys who believe women are worthless”.

Socialist politicians have been furious to see icons of the left joining what is regarded as an anti-immigrant campaign by the populist Swiss People’s party, the biggest group in parliament.

One of them, Julia Onken, warned that failure to ban minarets would be “a signal of the state’s acceptance of the oppression of women”. She has sent out 4,000 emails attacking Muslims who condone forced marriage, honour killings and beating women. …

For everything that is going wrong for America, John McCain must share the blame, along with the ignorant, incompetent, petty-mindedly vengeful, Alinsky-marinated Chicago clique now in the White House.

Barack Obama was not presidential material, and some of us – some tens of millions of us in all probability – believe he won the election because John McCain let him win. Not intentionally, but foolishly.

This was how he did it. The voters were kept ignorant about Obama by the deliberate choice of those whose job it was to inform them. McCain, and McCain alone, was in a position to bypass the highly partisan media and tell the country, every time he stood before the TV cameras and addressed tens of millions of attentive ears, just whom Obama’s political faction consisted of: subversives, such as, most prominently, the America-hating terrorist-supporting Jeremiah Wright, pastoral leader of thousands, and the actual terrorist Bill Ayers,  ‘educator’ (read indoctrinator) of generations of children.

But McCain chose not to do it.

Why he chose not to do it must remain forever among the darkest of dark mysteries to those who suppose he had a reason. Only those of us see the light who believe that McCain – undoubted hero and patriot that he is, man of extraordinary courage and endurance – was simply not savvy enough to play the cards he held, and was surrounded by advisers who were also not good at thinking, or just didn’t think.

An innumerable portion of us among the tens of millions knew from the moment McCain was chosen as the Republican candidate (instead of the eminently electable Mitt Romney) – yes, from that very second – that the election was lost. It was then that our hearts sank, not to rise again on the helium of hope until very recently. (The hope, expressed at vast tea-parties, is that Obama can yet be stopped from steering the ship of state on to the rocks.)

The one person in his campaign who could and did think, had all the political astuteness necessary to use the ammunition available to win the fight, was Sarah Palin.

In her book, Going Rogue, she relates how she wanted to raise the damning facts about Obama but was ‘told to sit down and shut up’. Eventually she was reluctantly allowed by ‘headquarters’ to touch on his ‘associations with questionable characters’  but only in the form of a ‘sound bite written into a rally speech’, about Obama ‘palling around with terrorists’ (pages 306-307). One gathers that her will in this matter, as in others, was snaffled and curbed almost to impotence. She does not blame McCain, she is consistently respectful of him, but after reading her account we can and should blame him.

Slight and mild as the little stabbing sound-bite was, ‘the left went nuts, accusing me of lowdown rhetoric unworthy of presidential politics’. (Remember the cruel, lowdown, untrue things the left said about her that they must have deemed worthy of presidential politics?)

But of course the opposition reacted like that. The little stab went home. They knew her reference was potent against them. They feared that if it were made much of, if it were to be emphasized, repeated, insisted upon, their candidate was sunk.

So did McCain read the signs aright and follow up the small victory? Not he. It was always, it seems, more important to McCain to be perceived as a gentleman than that he should win the election for his party, its principles, and its policies. May he long bask in a complacent gentlemanliness as the country endures the consequences of his choice!

His whole organization aided him in making it. ‘Although,’ Palin writes, ‘it was headquarters that had issued the sound bite, the folks there did little more than duck’ when the left reacted with its whining and insolent abuse.

If Palin had been allowed to say whatever she knew needed to be said, or even better if she had been the one to plan the tactics of the campaign, it is possible that McCain would have won. He would most likely not have made a good president, but he couldn’t be as bad as Obama.

If Palin were ever to run her own campaign, signs are she would know how to do it. The autobiographer of Going Rogue emerges from the pages as not only competent, commonsensical, brave, honest, strong, unselfish, knowing her own worth without vanity, but also a born leader, a conservative who understands and shares the values that made America great, and a natural politician who at the same time is a person of integrity. A very rare phenomenon!

The Republican party should appreciate that her exceptional abilities are gifts to it, assets to be grateful for, and should help her make the most of them.

Jillian Becker   November 28, 2009