Sen. Barack Obama is an honorable man whose personal story embodies much that is great about this complex country.

Sen. John McCain has given his adult life to serving this nation with great honor and distinction; he personally understands what war means.

In short, that’s why both are excellent candidates to run for the U.S. presidency. Yes, like many I wish we could wrap them into one – McCain’s experience (because it does matter) and Obama’s intellect and charisma (because that too matters a great deal).

And no, I’m not going to tell you who’s the better choice. But I am tired of both the kooks on the left and the whackos on the right telling me who should sit in the Oval Office in an era of Iranian lust for nuclear power, increasing economic disparity at home and – God forbid – the return of “Beverly Hills 90210” to TV. (I really don’t care about that last one, but I didn’t make it up.)

Of late we’ve had Obamanik Madonna calling McCain a new Hitler and hardcore conservatives finding ways to applaud the teenage pregnancy of GOP VP pick Sarah Palin’s daughter. Yes, it shouldn’t be a campaign issue – but the Republicans are the ones who are whipping out that “family values” card all the time.

Meanwhile, the general kooks on the left – whom the Democratic party has never done a good enough job of silencing – grossly mis-characterize McCain’s support of U.S. involvement in Iraq. It’s quite bizarre to do so as the troop surge pays off, a move that McCain long-ago advocated. (As did I.)

Meanwhile, the general whackos on the far right think that Obama is a secret Muslim who will put a veil on the Statue of Liberty (and I don’t mean a figurative one). Likewise, the Republicans do far too little to silence them and their Internet innuendo campaign.

So let’s have both leaders of the political parties stand up to their radical fringes. How? Why not sign a contract for civil debate, one that includes making a donation to each other’s campaign when their surrogates go out and do the dirty work. Who would judge the violations? Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush – both of whom actually get along well – come to mind. If that doesn’t work, some pre-school teacher would do just as well because he or she is experienced in such baby behavior.

The most interesting Conservative POV I have found, from an email about the controversy around Palin:

Obama supporters are waiting to be delivered from some ancient, original sin and moved to tears by the man’s beauty, by his pastoral cadences, and his soft invocation to honor our better selves. They don’t need policy specifics, because most of the things the Democrats would remedy are mostly gotcha-points they concocted to unman W, and not authentic differences of opinion. (Seriously. How would Obama end terrorism? Fix global oil or natural resources markets? Corral the Russians? Improve schools?) Obama is more about making liberals feel better. He provides precisely the sort of mirror that liberals would hold up to themselves if they didn’t have to constantly reconcile their personal discomfort with all their fellow-travelers in interest-group pluralism.  Their thinking goes: if we can deliver a black American to the Whitehouse, Americans will be free to move on from the racial guilt that liberal pluralism saddles us all with.

That sort of retributive playground justice won’t work. By implication, sooner or later they’ll need to find room on the ticket for not just racial out-groups, but also trans-gendered persons, exemplars of “special needs”, left-handed redheads, or even illegal non-citizens—in short, anyone who can stake a claim to victimhood as a result of some distinction from the rest of us. It’s a politics of endless division.

For all the passionate libs like some of your young readers, it’s a huge deal to make things right for everybody. I know, I’m not Jewish but hail from an original English family in northern Florida. More generations of my family on this continent were slave owners than have been born since Emancipation and if there’s really a great karmic scoreboard somewhere, my great-great grandchildren will still inherit our forbearers’ deficits of compassion. Instinctively, I, too would like to cheer Obama on, to whittle down that debt, and to make a brave, beautiful statement to the world.

But I can’t, because he’s living a lie that contradicts the one really essential shared American experience: individual liberty and responsibility.

Like all liberals, Obama insists that our civil rights and the opportunities they encourage accrue to the groups we associate ourselves with and not to our separate, sovereign, individual consciences. We are Chicagoans, Methodists, union members, lawyers, Buppies, Buckeyes, or parents, and we must vie for equality or advantage over New Yorkers, Catholics, investors, plumbers, preppies, Wolverines and the childless. What else is a “Community Organizer” but a person who divides a populace to force special accommodations for one group or another?

At the end of day, when every pluralist thread has been unravelled and all the various brotherhoods balkanized to their logical ends, what will be left are simply individual citizens. The Constitution says I’m already there. I don’t need Obama’s blessing.

I really encourage you to read the Boston Globe story about Obama and his real estate deals in Chicago. That this stuff isn’t being talked about is scary.

Neal, I have to agree with Daniel. There is no question that it is time for our politicians to grow up, however, there is no question in my mind that the “Whakos on the Right” shoulder more of the blame for the political environment. “Swift Boating” has become a verb and it represents the politics of fear. There is no question that fear is the central piece to the Republican strategy and they will continue to peddle fear until the American people stand up and say enough.

Sorry Neal , there is no moral equivalence when it comes to this issue.
Equating the Democrats with the Republicans with this position is the same thing as when people equate the Israel army with the action of Palestinian Terrorists. At some point there is such a thing as self defense.