Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony, is guest blogging as one of Jewcy's Lit Klatsch authors.  His book narrates the lives of a young couple from the time they meet in college through fifteen years of their journey through life together.

So last Tuesday (can it really be only a week ago?) my wife and I drove down from Brooklyn to Philly to get people to the polls. We were stationed in northeast Philly, in a largely African American neighborhood, and I admit to feeling more than a little uncomfortable playing the role we played, the same role hundreds of others played (all the volunteers at our station seemed to hail from Brooklyn, and just about all of us were white, well-educated, etc.). I felt like a carpetbagger, and a very particular kind of carpetbagger. A white guy from New York come to Philadelphia to tell black people to vote for a black man. I wasn't sure how I would feel if I was on the other end. So I was delighted by the reception we got, which was utterly enthusiastic, with not a trace of resentment from anyone (save from one middle-aged woman who was voting for McCain), and it felt to me that one of the wonderful things about this election was the way racial differences were transcended not just in the voting booth but in interactions between voters.

But to take a step back, I was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, though I never quite drank the Obama Kool Aid that some of my friends did. This takes nothing away from his candidacy, which was obviously historic. And he ran a disciplined, tight campaign, and he's serious and extremely intelligent, all the things that we need in a President today and that our current President and Obama's opponent lacks.  This all goes almost without saying. And being only a few years younger than Obama, I have several good friends who were classmates of his at law school and co-editors with him on the Harvard Law Review, and the reports are nothing less than glowing. In his heart of hearts, he's probably a real liberal, certainly more liberal than any President in memory.

That said, the guy's a politician, and anyone who doubts that he's going to govern very much from the center should have a look at Ryan Lizza's long and thorough profile of Obama in the New Yorker from a few months back. It's sobering and a real reality check to those who think they're getting Adlai Stevenson.

But then, Adlai Stevenson never became President, and he'd have even less of a chance of winning if he were alive today. I thank god that Obama was elected. I'm struck, though, by the degree to which smart liberals seem deluded about whom they're getting and deluded, even more so, by what the election of Obama portends. Yes, it's huge and historic, and yes, the number of new voters was incredible, but all this talk about a permanent change in the political landscape seems silly, as does the argument that Obama proved that the way to win is to take the high road. Yes, Obama won, and yes, he took the high road (Mccain, by contrast, ran an absolutely scurrilous campaign, and anyone who wants to give him credit for giving a "gracious" concession speech, well I'm not even going to go there...), but he won despite having gone the high road, not because of it.

Obama won because Lehman Brothers collapsed. Simple as that. We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis in nearly a century, and the timing of that crisis worked perfectly for Obama's campaign. Yes, he's smart and charismatic; yes, he ran an incredibly disciplined campaign; yes, he managed not to be baited into becoming the "angry black man," all of which are notable accomplishments. But none of that would have mattered were it not for the economic crisis. Everyone hates negative campaigning, but politicians continue to do it because it works, and now there's extensive neuroscientific research explaining exactly how and why it works. It didn't work this time, but only because of wildly unusual circumstances. This was an election with perhaps the most unpopular President ever in a country in just about the worst economic crisis it has ever faced, and in such circumstances, Bill Ayers and socialism and Rashid Khalidi and Barack Hussein Obama and all the other nonsense that got thrown at him didn't stick. Swift Boat wouldn't have stuck, either, and neither would Willie Horton. John Kerry would have won this election. Even Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale might have won this election. And anyone who thinks that North Carolina is now officially and henceforth a blue state is seriously deluded.

****************

Not to toot my own horn (OK, I will, if only briefly), but the book was a 2007 NY Times Notable Book, and the way this is relevant to you is that I'm offering a free copy to three lucky Jewcy readers. All you have to do is send me an email at Jhenkin at SLC dot edu with the subject "Achin' for Matrimony" and you'll be entered in the drawing. For more about the novel, click on here, and for those of you who want to skip straight over the foreplay and buy the book for yourself, your friends, your cousins (Chanukah isn't far away!) here's the place for you.

Finally, a note to book groups. I've been participating in a lot of book group discussions of Matrimony, so if you're in a book group, or know people who are, and would like a visit from the author either in person or by telephone, get in touch with me at the aforementioned email address or through the book group link on my website. 

Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Cheers to my brother's girlfriend. Always the optimistic, tree-hugging, whale-saving, jailed-protester, "I like the Shins and think voting is important" bleeding-heart liberal with a heart of gold, the girl whose car's bumper has more opinions than any human I've ever come across was one of the lone people to have apparently kept things in prospective amongst last night's revelry. Upon arriving home after wading through the celebrations in the street following Barack Obama's acceptance speech, I logged onto the Facebook and was greeted by a message on the News Feed: Obama's fictitious doppelganger

"Amanda Duzak is very happy that Obama won, but remember he has no intentions to bring down the capitalist system."

As kind of an asshole, it never slipped my mind that while Obama's election is exciting and historic and all, things are still pretty bad right now, and unlikely to change significantly. In fact, an argument can be made that there may even be cause for concern, as tough times, economically and politically, are the primordial ooze for the rise of tyranny. Am I insinuating that Obama will become a Stalin-esque dictator? No, it doesn't seem terribly likely. However, the guy is already pretty powerful, and doesn't even take office for another several months. On a side note, from my ironic, detached pedestal, nothing would make me happier than for Obama to show up to his Inauguration in full Muslim garb and proclaim himself Caliph of the new Western Islamic Empire.

Sensationalism aside, what is more likely to happen is that the economy continues to falter, Iraqis continue to die, the environment breaks down even further, and the world will continue as it was on November 3rd. Sorry to lob a big matzo ball of pessimism out there, but what I really don't understand what anyone is expecting to happen now. The scenario of Obama's rise and subsequent election to high office in a lot of ways parallels the fictitious ascendance of Baltimore mayor Tommy Carcetti in the TV show, The Wire: A prominent local politician, a racial minority amongst his base, runs against the ruling party on a platform of hope and reform, inspiring the masses and being swept into office on the strength of a solid campaign based around cult of personality. The city sees the election of the new Carcetti Administration as "A New Day," with everyone, including Carcetti and his staff, ready to begin making real changes in the troubled city. Before long, however, reality sets in and the Administration is faced with having to cut money from the schools in effort to reach crime goals, from hospitals to help with schools, from community programs to help hospitals and so on and so forth. When the show leaves off, Carcetti has jumped ship on Baltimore to run for governor, and the city is left in exactly the same state as it was before he came to power.

The Wire is, of course, fictional, but the cyclical nature of hope, failure, prosperity, politics, and all that other good stuff is very real. One man isn’t going to step up and fix all the wrongs faced by the American people. The best anyone can really hope for is that his administration doesn’t make things worse, something that I personally believe he will probably succeed in. What will be interesting is to see how the jubilant but reactionary public reacts to President Obama when things don’t immediately get better. I’m fairly confident in the new Administration, and believe that it will actually do some good. However, calibrate your expectations, or you are setting yourselves up for disappointment.

This is the second of a two-part post about last night's election. For more, check out Part I: A New Hope

I'm not prone to sentimentality. The subtitle of my site is "Feelings Are Stupid." However, the people of Brooklyn's reaction to President-Elect Barack Obama was definitely something with which I was completely unfamiliar, and hence, may have had me feeling some feelings (I will admit to nothing). I voted for Obama, and subsequently wrote articles on this site about the meaninglessness of his New York Times endorsement, the public's vapid demonization of his rival's vice-presidential candidate and even how difficult it would be for someone to kill him. Earlier on Election Day, I wrote that there was nothing that I was anticipating more than the end of the campaign season because I was so sick of hearing about him.
The intersection of 5th Ave & Union St., 2:00am
Walking home from a friend's house where I had watched the Election returns, I encountered people, New Yorkers no less, pouring into the streets in celebration. I have never been to New Orleans, but I imagine it's a similar scene. At the intersection of 5th Avenue and Union Street in Park Slope, a crowd had gathered, hundreds deep. I commented to a police officer that was standing nearby that I had never seen anything like this before; it was like something you see on CNN or the BBC when the Prime Minister of some destabilized South Asian government is executed. It was like the video of the Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The police officer shared my amazement, mentioning that maybe it was for real; maybe these people gathering in the street at 2:00 in the morning really did feel something linking them. Although I remained 100% confident that the people in front of me hated each other, and that the following morning they would go right back to quietly ignoring one another, I said nothing. The scene was awesome, in every sense of the word.

Admittedly, I was pretty drunk from getting swept up in the excitement (although not enough not to notice that John McCain referred to black people as "them" during his concession speech), but I was nonetheless impressed with my fellow Brooklynites. This is only the second election in which I have been of age to vote, and who knows if I'll even be alive to vote in the next one? But I'm fairly confident that the events of the night of November 4, 2008 will not be repeated in my lifetime. Of the U.S. Presidents past who have been considered despots in their time (your Lincolns, Roosevelts, Andrew Johnsons, etc.) I don't see G.W. Bush joining them in their varying degrees of redemption. I've defended him in the past, but at this point there's no denying it: America is in the midst of a tumultuous period in its history, one that may one day even be viewed in retrospect as the worst in history. However, the new guy, a black guy, is an inspiration to the masses, and a refreshing change to the status quo. It will be interesting to see how this works out, but last night, I let the people have their fun.

P.S.: I also totally high-fived a black guy last night. It was awesome. As a friend of mine noted, the scope of what is racially cool and not cool has been altered; For the next several years, we can all issue the retroactive caveat, "It's cool, my president is black," after saying something that may be considered suspect.

For a rebuttal to myself, continue reading Part II: Revenge of Thinking

When he addressed the Republican Jewish Convention on a campaign stop through Washington last year, Rudy Giuliani drew attention to a sea change that many believe is agitating the Jewish community. "A lot of you are the first Republicans in your families," he declared, pointing his finger at the audience. "Right? Am I right?" Smiling and raising his arms in a gentle oy vey iz mir gesture, he drew attention to his own journey from Democrat to Independent to Republican. At the time, he and Hilary Clinton were the candidates with the most support in the Jewish community, and Giuliani got plenty of wry laughs from the choir.

At the time it seemed the Republican Jews had a lot to be happy about. The Republican share of the Jewish vote has increased steadily since Ronald Regan's presidency. In 1992, 11 percent of Jews voted Republican. In 1996, 16 percent. The numbers rose to 23 percent in 2004, and the latest poll by the American Jewish Committee, released last month, shows McCain holding at 30 percent.

That's still one vote for every two Obama picks up, at 57 percent, but it's a definite dent in comparison to John Kerry's 69 percent this time four years ago (he won the undecideds to take 77 percent of the final Jewish vote). If those numbers hold, they will mark a huge swing in the Jewish vote, which has reliably delivered its 4 percent of the total vote to Democrats each election. Across election cycles, exit polls have repeatedly confirmed an average of 80 to 90 percent Democratic support within the Jewish community. Demographers have shown the Jewish tendency to vote blue equals that of blacks, Hispanics and the unemployed. With their high proportion of registered voters, the group is small but always courted in elections.

While Orthodox Jews have an accepted tendency towards conservatism, political or otherwise, they only make up 8.9 percent of the Jewish electorate. (This number is lower than the proportion of Orthodox in the Jewish community since a larger share of of Orthodox are under the age of 18.) A 1997 study by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, "American Liberalism: Unraveling the Strands," showed that the majority of Jews are more likely than non-Jews to identify as liberals (47 percent vs. 28 percent).

This liberality is followed through in almost all issue areas--including, your grandma will no doubt be delighted to know, a firm "commitment to permissive social codes, sexual codes in particular." Jews are especially liberal when it comes to our support of abortion rights and aversion to school prayer. However, the gap between Jews and non-Jews begins to pale on issues of equal rights for women and blacks and opposition to capital punishment. On these civil liberties issues, only 5 percent more Jews identify as liberal than non-Jews, a very narrow margin of error for a much vaunted-Jewish liberalism.

Obviously but understandably, Jews are particularly concerned about Israel's safety and the threat of Islamic fascism. They have been dismayed by Barack Obama's perceived over-eagerness to talk with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who has made destructive comments about the Jewish State. "When it comes to issues of national security, Israel's security, there's no margin for error," said Suzanne Kurtz, press secretary for the Republican Jewish Coalition. The organization ran a series of controversial ads that questioned Obama's record and intentions, asking and answering their own question: "Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be." "Republicans are seen as having a muscular foreign policy, not a philosophy like Obama who'll sit down unconditionally [with backers of terrorism]," Kurtz insisted.

This line of thinking has a prominent advocate in Jewish Republican convert Senator Joe Lieberman. Lieberman votes with the Democrats in the Senate on many issues. But his support of the Iraq War aligns him with the Republican Party.

It also has swayed voters like Robert Mouro, 38, who I found waving a McCain-Palin placard at the protest against Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in New York last October. Mouro voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988, and twice for Bill Clinton; in his opinion, he's stayed in place while the Democratic Party has left him. "I'm a perfect example of a neocon," he explained. "I'm what you heard about. Socially I'm a liberal, but national security is more important. The War on Islamic fascism began November 4, 1979 [the date of the Iranian hostage crisis]."

The National Jewish Democratic Committee refutes the notion that McCain's proposed policy towards Iran is any different from Obama's. "Iran is part of a larger issue which the right-wing has fostered about Obama, an aura of somehow this guy is not trustworthy," said Ira Forman, executive director. The NJDC believes it's not McCain's hawkishness, but his perceived status as a moderate Republican that is the biggest threat to Democratic hopes for the Jewish vote.

This is worrying news for those who believe that the Democratic platform best speaks to Jewish voters, but comforting for those who worry that foreign policy will decide the Jewish vote. Although the Jewish community, as with all small groups, is notoriously hard to poll, the latest numbers from J-Street, the progressive Jewish lobbying group, show that 55 percent of respondents chose the economy as one of the two issues that would most influence their presidential and congressional vote in November. Thirty-three percent chose the war in Iraq. Health care and national security tied at 21 percent, and Israel came seventh on the list at 8 percent.

Something else to bear in mind is that politics is always in flux, and voters can blush from red to blue just as easily as the other way around. Despite traditional expectations of its 21,000 Jews, Nassau County on Long Island has traditionally been a Republican base: "When a Republican dies and goes to heaven it looks a lot like Nassau County," said the late president Ronald Reagan. But this month, Democratic registration in the county took the lead with 328,604 to the Republican 328,477. Though a small margin, the Democrats have closed a nearly 100,000-vote gap since 1970. It goes to show that voting patterns never stand still; the Republican Jewish vote is growing, but perhaps more in visibility than in numbers.

I don't know about you all, but I've come down with the election-flu.

I've identified the germinology:

1. 24 hour election coverage. I've got news about the Mccain-Obama situation coming at me from Twitter, Friend Feed, CNN, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and Fox News (thanks to my multi-news channel that lets me watch all the major stations at the same time), the local Hawaii ten-page newspaper, Alternet updates on my Blackberry, a constant stream of posts on my Facebook page, huge Hawaii for Obama posters at the supermarket, and even Tenzin. Right this second, he is in the bathtub singing, "Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama."

2. The growing hostility. I was just speaking in the bible belt, the midwest, the west coast, and the northeast. Among many moments of difficulty, an airline attendant looked at me with disdain when I asked for a cup of water, and then told me there wasn't enough to give me. At a hotel in Tennessee, a family of five asked me huffily to show them to their room. I was made-up, dressed in my best suede boots and killer trench from Barneys, and striding to the elevator to give a talk at the local university.

In another southern state that will go unnamed, I asked why about a "No Firearms Allowed" sign on the front door of my hotel. I had no sooner gotten the words out, when a policeman stood up from his post in the lobby, put his hand on his gun, and asked the woman behind the desk if she was having a problem with me.

And then, last night when I got home, I heard what I can only describe as Commando-style yelling coming from across the yard. I heard "Go!" and "Aim!" and "Move out!" Was it a television? A white supremacist group doing an exercise for the day after the election? I wish I could say definitively that it was the former, but since I've been hearing a lot of bagpipe playing over yonder, and checking in with the SPLC on the staggering rise of white hate groups as shown in the map above, I'm not so sure.

The truth is, the backlash on this necessary step forward is going to be monumental. I recently saw a documentary on the civil war. One historian said the North won the war, but the South won Reconstruction-- blacks were emancipated, but they were also severely brutalized and disempowered shortly thereafter. I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying Obama supporters of all colors and creeds need to get ready. Now is the time for all of us to vote, and also prepare. 

Today, my friends, I am going to take some time off to rest and recover. I'm going to lie in bed with a book after I post this and try not to think about the economy. I am going to send messages of reassurance to all of the people in the world terrified of change that we will make it through if we can be open to what is rather than attached to what was, and I am going to check all of the locks on my doors and windows to make sure they are secure. 

I'm also going to try, try, try, to give my son my undivided attention for at least thirty minutes. And that includes being with him without thinking about the ten thousand things on my to-do list and what the world might look like at the end of next month. Then I'm going to make some chicken soup. 

And one more thing. The Dalai Lama says a guaranteed way to feel better is to think about others more than yourself. So I'm going to ask how you're doing with all of this. How are you managing these final days to E-day?

Are you okay?

Cross posted from my blog at theroot.com

For that half of the country for whom eviscerating Palin has become a recreational obsession, a wake-up call is needed: political humor has tipped into completely classless tribal behavior. Following in the daily example set by Keith Olberman's relentless political tirades, a Park Slope hair salon hosted a Democratic fundraising event entitled "Updos for Obama," in which women made donations in exchange for Palin-style haircuts.

The women of Park Slope gather to be catty en masse

"When you look at what it is to be a feminist in today's culture and specifically in New York, her nomination can be such a betrayal," said one woman at the Park Slope event.

Betrayal? Really? Why? Because her views differ from those of the catty liberals of Park Slope? These women aren't responding to Sarah Palin, they are reacting against the caricature of Sarah Palin they see on TV.

The necessity of political satire to check the power public figures hold over our celebrity-obsessed polity is not in question. But we've reached a point in which we've transcended satire and degenerated into an uncivilized atmosphere where any kind of dialogue is impossible.

Yes, Palin is an attractive woman. Yes, it appears that she is completely nuts (the creationism, the retarded kid, etc). And yes, she is a Republican. But seeing Palin's nomination as a betrayal to feminist values is just as shitty as referring to Barack Obama an 'Uncle Tom' because he doesn't roll with 50 and sell weed.

So take a look at yourselves in the mirror, women of Park Slope; you may also notice that your new 'do looks great, just like Sarah Palin.

The NBC poll showing that 55% of Americans do not believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president is notable to me for one reason: 40% of Americans DO think she's qualified. That's a lot of people! Like if America were a baseball team then you could say that the outfielders, the pitcher and the catcher don't think she's qualified but the entire infield does.

And what does it mean to "Love America"? Or more to the point what are "Un-American views"? Is it un-American to be self-critical? If so, then we should still have slavery and women shouldn't be allowed to vote. Or by that logic then I guess it's un-American to oppose Roe v. Wade? It's in the Constitution after all. Still, the implications that Barack Obama holds un-American views persist. What's the idea there? That he's going to become president so that he can bomb... himself?

If you've been watching her interviews you'll notice that Sarah Palin's favorite word is "Ahmadinejad". She just loves saying that word. And I mean let's face it: it is a very hard word to pronounce. It reminds me of a story about James Ellroy's LA Confidential. It involves the word "valediction". The gist of the story is that using big words like "valediction" (or "Ahmadinejad") can sometimes con an audience into thinking things make sense when in fact they don't. "Boy, that's a long word, she must know what she's talking about."

With the latest revelation that Sarah Palin has spent more than four times what Joe the Plumber makes in a year, $175,000 to be exact, on her wardrobe so far, I couldn't help but thinking of another book: The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I also thought of the movie, or to be more exact, the making of the movie. The making of the movie version of Bonfire of the Vanities as detailed in the book The Devil's Candy by Julie Salamon is the story of a pretty good idea that became a really, really bad idea really fast. I think that the publisher's comments sum it up well: "When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade...This riveting insider's portrait provides a timeless account of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale."

If only John McCain's presidential bid were just a movie. Then again who thought really thought that the movie about the chihuahua would do so well?

For a while, with the Bush era coming to an end, it looked like the US would face a severe comedy crunch, a boom and bust of punchlines and impersonations. With the termination of Dubya's second term looming, cartoonists, sketchwriters, talk-show hosts and stand-up acts were losing their sense of purpose. The exit of the stoopid, monkey-faced commander-in-chief posed a long-term threat to gag writers' careers.

The real Sarah Palin observes her likeness on SNL (NY Times)

Enter Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. A moose-hunting anti-abortionist whose unmarried daughter got pregnant at 17. A ‘hockey mom' who only applied for a passport last year, aged 43. A former beauty queen and a smalltown Alaskan who says things like ‘You betcha' and ‘I'll tell ya'.

Pure comedy gold.

As actress Tina Fey's recent impersonations of Palin on the comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (SNL) have shown, poking fun at gun-toting, smalltown-minded, redneck Republicans has not fallen out of favour. Fey, of 30 Rock fame, has become an international household name as a result of her Palin skits, and SNL has achieved its highest ratings in 14 years.

In fact, Fey's impersonations of Palin may now be better known than Palin's own media appearances. True, it was Palin herself who, at the Republican National Convention, famously confessed that she is a regular ‘hockey mom', comparing herself to a ‘pitbull with lipstick'. And it was the real Palin who said that the proximity of Alaska (where she is governor) to Russia shows that she has ‘foreign policy experience'.

The lines ‘I can see Russia from my house' and ‘I am looking forward to a portion of your questions' are equally well known now - but they were spoken by Tina Fey spoofing Palin. Fey's impersonations have become bigger news than the real campaign. On this side of the Atlantic, Fey made it on to the front pages of both the Independent and the Guardian, who called her ‘the real star of the US election'.

Tina Fey and Sarah Palin on SNL

Last Saturday, the Fey-as-Palin mania reached a climax as Palin herself appeared on SNL alongside Fey. In the skit, as her mimic addressed a mock press conference, Palin watched from backstage, together with SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels. Actor Alec Baldwin joined them, apparently mistaking the real Palin for Fey, and proceeded to scold Michaels for letting Fey join ‘that horrible woman' onstage. ‘She goes against everything we stand for!' he exclaimed. Michaels awkwardly pointed out that the woman next to them was, in fact, that ‘horrible woman', Governor Palin, and Baldwin mumbled an apology.

SNL has come under fire for giving Palin a spot on its programme. Some argued that it gave her unnecessary, and possibly positive, media exposure. Baldwin retorted: "If you think an appearance on SNL would sway voters... you may have more contempt for the electorate of this country than the Republican National Committee does. And that's a lot of contempt."

Fair enough. Yet the idea that Palin stands against everything we stand for, as Baldwin put it - that's ‘we' as in the smug SNL world - also expresses a sense of contempt. Sure, Baldwin's comment on SNL was a joke. But the joke worked because it reflected a very real attitude, namely that the media-savvy, big-city, sophisticated Democrats (‘we') are frightened that gun-loving Joe-shmos (‘they') might actually choose to exercise their democratic right to vote on 4 November and put a cross next to Palin's name.

Post-Bush, bashing Palin has become a cheap way for apparently erudite celebrities and commentators to distance themselves from redneck America. For what informs the outbreak of comedic attacks on Palin is a not-so-funny snobbery towards small towns and religious people, and fear that America might lose its moral authority to boss around dodgy foreign regimes.

Matt Damon talks about Sarah Palin

In an interview on CBS soon after John McCain announced Palin as his running mate, actor Matt Damon said the prospect of her possibly becoming president was a ‘really scary thing' - even though he admitted, in the next breath, that "I don't know anything about her. I know she was mayor of a really, really small town and she was governor of Alaska for less than two years," he said.

For Damon, all we need to know is that America could be a heartbeat away (if McCain croaks) from being ruled by someone from a really small town who has the audacity to go to Washington and - even worse - think she can tell big-city folk like Damon what to do. On Palin's alleged creationist beliefs, Damon went on: "I need to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years go. I really want to know because she's gonna have the nuclear codes."

This is an updated version of one of the key arguments deployed against Reagan: that he was a dumb, overly Christian former actor who might plummet the world into nuclear meltdown on a whim. But perhaps Damon can tell us if he really believes polar bears and penguins are dying out because of global warming, and if he really thinks that representing the planet as a naked woman is a progressive view of the female sex. Because these trendy visions of climate chaos being visited upon Mother Earth appeared in a recent nature documentary narrated by Damon. Plenty of Prius-driving celebrity environmentalists who slam creationists for their backward views - from Damon to Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt - preach their own secular version of Kingdom Come. They tell us that we must repent for our sins against Nature or else we will be visited by floods and pestilence. Yet while they pray for Al Gore to deliver us from evil and bring salvation to those who join his ‘genuine moral and spiritual challenge,' they see Palin as a backward Bible-basher.

Palin's lack of foreign-policy experience, and her talk of how close Alaska is to Russia, is another joke that keeps on running. In a particularly funny sequence on SNL, Fey-as-Palin said that Alaskans "Keep an eye on" their Russian neighbors: "Every morning, when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do is look outside to see if there are any Russians hanging around. And if there are, you gotta go up to them and ask, 'What are you doing here?' And if they can't give you a good reason, it's our responsibility to say, you know, 'Shoo! Get back over there!'"

Yet some seem to believe that this really is how Palin plans to deal with foreigners. The prospect of Palin as president is, according to Damon, "like a really bad Disney movie -- a hockey mom facing down Putin'. A Facebook group called 'I have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin' has attracted over 240,000 members.

However, when it comes to Disneyfying foreign policy, no one - not even Palin - can beat celebrities themselves. Celebs are forever turning complex international conflicts into simplistic morality tales of good guys v bad guys, with America and the ‘international community' as the knights in shining armour who must rescue the destitute.

Along with stars like George Clooney (who once said of the conflict in Darfur: ‘It's not a political issue. There's only right and wrong'), East Coast celebrities like Damon and Mia Farrow have displayed a gung-ho attitude that would make even Palin blush. Their ‘Save Darfur' campaign recently parked a black military helicopter on Second Avenue in New York with a banner saying ‘Send me to Darfur'. Farrow has reportedly been in talks with Blackwater, the private military firm that caused so much destruction in Iraq, about sending men to Darfur. Indeed, Damon's central concern about Palin - that she is too flimsy a politician to face down the likes of Putin - shows what lies behind Palin-bashing over foreign policy: the notion that she isn't experienced enough to deal with those dodgy Russians, murderous Africans and other lunatics on the world stage.

Of course, it's not surprising that comedians have jumped on Palin - she hands it to them on a plate, with a folksy wink and a side serving of cheesy one-liners. She's easy to imitate and easy to mock. But mocking Republicans is hardly risqué or controversial after eight years of Bush. A real challenge would be to take the piss out of Barack Obama.

Yet when The New Yorker magazine recently tried to mix Obama with satire on its front page - with a cartoon showing the Democratic presidential hopeful and his wife as fist-bumping bin Laden-worshippers in the Oval Office - it was greeted with outrage and disgust from Democrats and Republicans alike. Obama has been untouchable in the largely white world of American late-night comedy. When Daily Show host Jon Stewart quipped about Obama changing his position on campaign financing during his leadership race against Hillary Clinton, the audience didn't appreciate the joke. ‘You know, you're allowed to laugh at him', Stewart said. He later told the New York Times: "People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them." For now, Obama, it seems, is untouchable. As Mike Sweeney, head writer for Conan O'Brien on Late Night, said in July: "We're hoping he picks an idiot as vice president."

Well, Biden is no Palin. But at least the Alaskan hockey mom has bought American comedians some time and given the East Coast and Hollywood celebrity set a renewed sense of purpose, someone to direct their anger at. In the process, they have provided some laughs, while exposing what lies behind cheap and easy Palin-bashing: hostility towards smalltown people, a desire to protect American prestige in humanitarian military affairs, and a blind fear of making any jokes about the main man: Obama.

Al-Qaeda is funny. Well, not usually, but the jihadist group's announcement on Wednesday morning that it is endorsing John McCain in the 2008 United States presidential election is undeniably comical. A posting on al-Hesbah, an extremist web site that has been tied to al-Qaeda, declared: "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," because he is likely to continue the "failing march of his predecessor."

Wavering between complete obliviousness and self-awareness in its most absolute form, al-Qaeda is in a position that must be making a bunch of people pretty uncomfortable. No American politician wants to be linked to the organization responsible for September 11, and there is no doubt that the terrorist group knows that. With al-Qeada's announcement comes a barrage of attempts at rationalization:

Is al-Qaeda endorsing McCain because they actually want him to win, or are they using reverse psychology in hopes of disparaging McCain and driving voters into Barack Obama's court? If that is the case, what would they have to gain from an Obama presidency? Or what if al-Qaeda is actually not aware of the horrible connotations that come with any mention of their name and believe themselves to be making a serious endorsement? What's going on with these guys, anyway; does a, al-Qaeda central governing body even exist anymore?

The al-Hesbah post continues with what has become standard-issue anti-America terrorist punditry, claiming that the group is considering launching an attack on America at some point in the weeks leading up to the election, believing:

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

The whole situation is great; it's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer attempts to be nice to Ned Flanders but ends up destroying his life. Killing through kindness...classic.

Jesse Jackson, who three and a half months ago expressed his desire to amputate Obama's testicles, apparently believes that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain influential, but will lose much of their prominence if and when Obama is elected, according to a story in the New York Post.

This is the characteristic position for Jackson to take, considering his past run-ins with the Jewish community. In 1984, Jackson referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in an interview. Instead of apologizing and moving on, the reverend played the always-popular, "The Jews are conspiring against me" card, with predictably limited success. Jackson eventually relented and apologized in a speech at a New York City synagogue.

Jackson's comments come at a time when politically conservative Jews are trying to portray Obama as bad for Israel and are even linking his views with those of -- wait for it -- Pat Buchanan and running attack ads featuring the slogan, "Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be."

However, there really isn’t any indication that Obama’s policies -- at least since he began running for president -- reflect what Jackson has implied. As Marty Peretz noted in an essay in The New Republic, Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have both publically declared their continued support for Israel on numerous occasions. Peretz argues that Jackson’s comments about Obama and Israel are mostly just self-serving attempts to remain relevant.

More About Obama and Israel: Why Not To Vote For Barack Obama, J'Accuse!, Putting Jews Back in Their Place

The way New York Times tells it, one would think that Sarah Silverman's The Great Schlep has been a failure of epic proportions. The article states that to date, about 100 people have made the comedienne-dictated aliyah, a number that pales in comparison to the seven million or so who have watched the Great Schlep video, but nonetheless, 100 people that weren't in Florida before.

The Great Schlep is the brainchild of Mik Moore and Ari Wallach, the co-directors of the Jewish voter-advocacy group, JewsVote.org. In the Times story, Moore declared the initial turnout "a really good start," and hopes for "dozens" more Jewish youths to make the trek down to Florida to encourage elderly Jews to ignore the hype and vote for Barack Obama.

Some of the group's talking points include:

While the Times seems to see the Schlep's initial turnout as disappointing, based on Moore's statements, it sounds like it is exactly in line with expectations. The fact that 100 people traveled to Florida is remarkable. Through web traffic directed through Silverman's video, JewsVote.org has also raised $22,372, through Tuesday morning. The number of people who actually traveled to Florida shouldn't be viewed as a disappointment or failure to attract a larger contingency; it is a considerable success that The Great Schlep has garnered enough attention that 100 people actually went out of their way and traveled to Florida to support the cause, and that the New York Times is reporting on such.

As America again enters election season, I'd like to remind my more conservative countrymen that we told you so. 

We told you, at the start, that the Iraq War was a mistake.  We pointed to the flimsy evidence, to the lack of a long-term plan, to the thousands of lives that would surely be lost in this bit of American adventurism.  But your cowboy in Washington had other ideas, and you believed his lies and misdirections about Saddam and 9/11.  Now we're stuck in a Middle Eastern Vietnam, hemorrhaging money -- although, thank God, not as much blood as before.  But: over 30,000 American injured soldiers!  You say "support our troops."  Well, we supported them when you didn't.  We didn't want them to die in a pointless and stupid war.

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In the run-up to the start of the primary season, my fellow Brit blogger Andrew Sullivan somehow managed to endorse both John McCain and Ron Paul as the least worst alternatives in an uninspiring GOP field (eventually plumping for Paul).  But despite nominally being a conservative, there’s no doubt where Sullivan’s main hopes for the presidency rest; a series of gushing articles in recent weeks (most notably in December’s Atlantic magazine) confirm him as a fully signed-up Obamaniac. On his own blog, Sullivan even describes “what can only be called euphoria from America's allies and friends around the world at the prospect of an Obama presidency”. That strikes me as something of an exaggeration, to put it mildly, but there is no doubt that the eyes of the world are glued to this US election like no other that I can remember.

Of course, it’s not simply, or even mostly, down to Obama (whom my spellchecker obstinately insists on trying to rename ‘Osama’ – expect Fox to use that excuse some time soon). In fact, there are a number of reasons for the heightened interest. First and most obvious, the race is incredibly hard to call. A week or two ago the Dem nomination was Hillary’s to lose; at time of writing this she may be only hours from (effectively) being out. The Republicans, meanwhile, have eschewed the boy-girl matchup in favour of an all-male threeway; a sweaty tangle of shiny teeth, macho postures and barking mad attack ads that most outsiders find at once utterly baffling and totally compelling (Chuck Norris? I mean, what?).

Second, and probably equally obvious now I think about it, a lot of people over here would get excited about a sheep’s bladder on a stick if it was running to replace the current incumbent. Now, I have no time whatsoever for the kneejerk Bush-hatred of the European Left, which blames this administration, directly or indirectly, for everything from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to David Beckham’s knackered knee; but you don’t have to be a alfalfa-munching Kos reader to see that most of the world will breathe a hearty sigh of relief in 54 weeks’ time. Of course, as most of the runners and riders are relatively unknown beyond your shores, observers of all political stripes can pin their own hopes and hobby-horses onto Bush’s departure; the new guy is going to disappoint a lot of people very quickly. But for the time being, people are – if not exactly “euphoric”, in Sullivan’s phrase – certainly optimistic. 

However, I think there’s something else at work here, too. The typical supercilious European view of the US political system (shared by many in Britain) is that it’s irredeemably broken; a messy combination of special interests, religious nutjobs and insane amounts of money weighing down a drawn-out process that seems to take about three years, and which usually conspires to pick the wrong guy anyway (and it is always a guy - and a Protestant white guy, at that), and then holds him hostage to the lobby groups who got him elected (big oil, the labour unions, the NRA and – of course – the Israel lobby).

Like all caricatures, it only works because there’s more than a hint of truth informing the broad brush strokes. But there’s a growing realisation that behind our sneering view of American-style democracy, something else is at work. There is, at least on the face of it, a healthy optimism about the political process in the US – yes, yes, it may only be skin-deep, and challenged daily by candidates whose interest lies in trading on fear rather than hope, but it still makes a refreshing change from the world-weary scepticism with which we greet every utterance from our own politicians in this country. Part of that is down to the possibility that a year from now we will see the first black President, or first woman. We beat you to the latter, of course, but our politics is still every bit as dominated by average white guys as it once was.

And worse is the stifling uniformity that has descended on the British political system in the post-ideological age. Tony Blair apes Conservative themes and policies, Gordon Brown poses with the hated [by him] Thatcher in Downing Street and steals Tory policies for short-term gain, and for their own part our Conservatives go out of their way to try and appropriate the rhetoric and language of the “progressive” left. To witness the slightly archaic system of caucuses and primaries that seem to be propelling Barack Obama past the slick Clinton machine, or seeing Huckabee giving Mitt Romney a richly deserved kicking in Iowa despite spending a fraction of his rival’s budget, is inevitably to look at our own stagnant political systems - in which we are lectured by increasingly similar-looking social democrats, who look like they should be selling homes but whom we would not dream of inviting into our own - and wonder if we’ve got things so great here.

Give the appalling Mitt Romney a little credit. The Big Speech of ten days ago contained one striking image for which I hope someone on his payroll got a bonus:

I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer.

He is, of course, right: church attendances in many European countries have declined to the extent that in Britain, for example, there are now more regular attendees at mosque every week than in our churches - fewer than 10% of the population are regular churchgoers and that is expected to halve in the next generation.

Romney chose to attribute this to the state establishment of religion(s) in European nations (but then, as the adherent of a minority faith, he would, wouldn't he?), but there are any number of equally plausible theories which might explain falling attendances, not least the rise of empiricism and the development - primarily, but not exclusively, in Western Europe - of the scientific method, which in turn allowed us to build an explanation of the world around us that did not rely on a God, gods or Flying Spaghetti Monster to make it tick.

Irrespective of the reasons for the different outlooks Europeans and Americans have towards religion in the 21st century, my problems with Mitt Romney have nothing to do with Mormonism and everything to do with moronism. Suspicions were first aroused back in May - which for a foreigner, I reckon, puts me in on the ground floor - when Mitt contributed this razor-sharp analysis of the jihadist menace facing the West:

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us. And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

To say that this is an analysis which would shame a Fox news anchor is not just an easy shot, because Brit Hume doesn't have the nuclear codes. Either way, I began to wonder if there was anything between this guy's collar and his haircut. But I still didn't have much to go on, until a few weeks later from the Boston Globe came the infamous tale of the family dog Seamus, whose carrier Romney had attached to the roof of their Chevy station wagon for a 12-hour drive to Ontario, entirely oblivious to the possibility that bombing along the Interstate at 70 mph might terrify the mutt:

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.

This, the Globe hilariously opined, was "a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management." To me he just came across as a wanker. Say what you like about Brit Hume, but to the best of my knowledge he's never driven 12 hours with a dog strapped to the roof of his fucking car. (Fortunately, dog lovers have a means of redress.)

But the more serious issues cannot be ignored. As many commentators pointed out, not least Jewcy's own Michael Weiss on these pages, Romney's supposed disavowal of a "religious test" for the Presidency was as disturbing as it was self-serving, because it was phrased carefully to be inclusive only of people of faith (such as, er, Mitt Romney and GOP primary voters) and made no mention whatever of those of us who profess none, or even whose faith does not inform their political decisionmaking. The crass crescendo of his speech - "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom", which will be news to the people of Sweden and Saudi Arabia respectively - only served to underline the distance that separates modern American politics from its European analogues.

In Britain we have a slightly different kind of ‘religious test'. Tony Blair phrased it best in an interview aired some time after he stepped down last summer; "you talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter". His Rove-esque media handler, Alistair Campbell, famously said to reporters that "we don't do God", because there was real terror within the Blair camp that any overt mention of religious faith, no matter how carefully spun, would alienate far more voters than it would impress.

When it comes to religion, British people really do play up to your stereotype; it's not really something we like to discuss in polite society - indeed, something slightly embarrassing. To the vast majority of Europeans - including those, like me, who count ourselves as being of the Right - a statement such as that of Mike Huckabee that "if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it", would be grounds for instant dismissal as a serious contender for public office at just about any level.

No doubt Team Huckabee congratulated themselves afterwards on finding a formula that allowed them to sidestep a potentially tricky question but, as with the ridiculous Romney, I could only marvel at how close this dolt is to being the Republican nominee for the White House. (Hitchens gives him both barrels in Slate today, and as ever with the Dude it's an unqualified joy.) Indeed, Huckabee said later on in that same debate that "it's interesting that that question would even be asked of somebody running for president". Well, they wouldn't have to ask it if they didn't suspect that you'd have such an off-the-charts barking mad answer, would they, you twat?

I don't mean to come across as a militant atheist in the Dawkins-Hitchens mould, because by and large I am not. Powerful personal faith has a range of corollaries, many of them very positive - and there are times when I envy the certainty that religious belief can bring. Nor do I write this in a spirit of transatlantic mockery or superiority, because God knows - if you'll pardon the phrase - that when I look at the politicians in my own country I am filled with unutterable despair.

Is the British religious test - requiring of politicians that any religious belief be kept firmly private and in the background - healthier than the American position, particularly but by no means exclusively the preserve of the GOP, that candidates must wear their faith on every shirtsleeve in a frantic effort to assure the voters that they are people of moral solidity who can be trusted with the great seal of office? Yes, I think it is, but that's not to say that you're wrong if you disagree. And that, finally, is the point; I have no intention of forcing my moral code, such as it is, on you, but I naturally suspect all politicians of wanting to force their beliefs on me. And when those beliefs have the force of God's hand behind them, I start to get very nervous indeed, irrespective of the purity of His servants' motives.

Hillary Says: please, kill it first.Who cares how the 2008 presidential candidates take their coffee? I certainly don't, and I'd assume you probably don't, either. However, someone over at the AP seems to think it's relevant. The Associated Press has "asked candidates a series of questions about their personal side." Inquiries range from foods they hate to prized possessions to how they take their coffee. Because we're all dying to know. I had to fight to stay awake while reading it all, thanks both to the incredibly inane questions and outrageously boring answers.

Come on, candidates! Step up your game! I don't care that you hate mushrooms or eggplant! Please, spare me your gripes about vegetables! Not liking vegetables is soooo last century. Bill Richardson: The bland answer you gave about your distaste for mushrooms is distasteful to me! Obama: You could at least have gotten witty and offered something along the lines of "anything beats beets." John McCain: Titillate me with spin, talk to me about how you learned to love broccoli because, despite not doing "too well with vegetables," you know that they are good for you and want to set a good example. And Huckabee: Who in his right mind doesn't like carrots? Wrong answer, boy oh boy.

Perhaps the best answer given to the "food you hate" question came from Hillary Clinton, who said, and I quote, "I don't like, you know, things that are still alive." What? The hell? Are you talking about? Something tells me it's not oysters. Are you often served living creatures at dinner parties? Where on earth are you dining, and who with? Vietnam, with Anthony Bourdain? Hillary, next time, try this: "The only foods I don't like are those grown or raised in ways that are harmful to people, animals, and the earth, for example, conventionally grown produce that is sprayed with toxic pesticides, GMOs that haven't been sufficiently shown to be safe for human consumption, and meat and dairy from animals that have been mistreated and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones." Wow, you'd win over all of the Vegetarian Times subscribers with that one!

As for their answers about how they take their coffee, the candidates missed a killer opportunity at spiel. Not a one mentioned fair trade, shade grown, organic coffee. Nope, they thought it was sufficiently interesting to offer straightforward, unimaginative, unpolitical answers. Take Obama, who likes it "black" (I'm not even going to go there), and Giuliani, who takes his with "Splenda, Sweet'n Low, or Equal, whichever is available."

agahdgiahdkahfiopuahdkahdklgha;kjhalkdsjhba;ksdjhaoisdh;a -- Oops, sorry--I momentarily fell asleep on my keyboard.

Spice it up, guys and gals. You are politicians, after all.

Jamie has already alluded and linked to the big, sopping valentine Andrew Sullivan delivers to Barack Obama in next month's Atlantic. At the risk of affirming an official Shvitz position on this cover story, let me just say that it's one of the most homiletic and trite pieces of political journalism I've seen in a long time.

One is told, repeatedly, that Obama is the cure for what ails America because he's post-Boomer, multiracial and has an evocative full name that will cause some pleasantly puzzled expressions in Lahore and Jakarta. The man is the message, in other words, and never you mind about his policies, experience or whether or not he'd make the best wartime commander-in-chief.

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Now consider this hypothetical. Long before sacred terror afflicted these shores or most Americans had even heard the name Osama Bin Laden, a civil war was raging in the Islamic world that pitted the theologically pure against the reformist, the moderate and the apostate. We've seen how Abu Musab-al Zarqawi treated his co-religionists, who weren't up to snuff and were thus "polytheists" worse than Jews and Christians. In Darfur, a genocide that has been blessed and encouraged by Bin Laden, is currently underway to eliminate black Muslims whom their Arab Muslim killers refer to as "niggers." If we're to judge a candidate for high office on the basis of his gene pool, I can't think of a better rallying point for Al Qaeda than a "brown-skinned man whose father was an African" and "attended a majority-Muslim school," then came to America and discovered Jesus Christ. If you thought hope was powerful, wait until you see the audacity of dashed expectations.

Obama's heritage neither qualifies nor disqualifies him as president any more than Hillary's protean head of hair does her. And, as if to underscore the nonsense of his previous observation, Sullivan goes on to laud Obama for taking up his non-Muslim faith:

The best speech Obama has ever given was not his famous 2004 convention address, but a June 2007 speech in Connecticut. In it, he described his religious conversion:

One Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called “The Audacity of Hope.” And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, he would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works.

That would be the same Rev. Wright who traveled to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to gladhand Muammar Qaddafi, and who spoke of 9/11 with the same roosting chickens rhetoric that has now become cliche on the radical fringes. Obama's spiritual awakening comes in a distant second to his political opportunism, since he has an odd way of rewarding his favorite apostle and phrasemaker. He disinvited Wright from delivering a public invocation last February, on the exact date he announced his White House run. According to one of the Obama's spokesmen, "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself." Well, why shouldn't a church led by a man of questionable motive and political affiliations not have to defend itself when it is openly credited with imbuing the divine spark in a possible leader of the free world? If Wright had such a impact that Obama took up religion because of him, isn't he deserving of something more than this calculated and weasely distancing? In short, how is Obama's religiosity any different, or any less meretricious, than that of the other candidates?

I don't doubt that Obama is the freshest national politician the U.S. has seen in a quite a while. I admire him a lot and -- glib Skype conversations with my co-editor aside -- I still haven't made up my mind not to vote for him. But what benefits him and the country least are the kinds of shallow and sanctimonious hosannas that depict him as a saintly figure. Sullivan is good enough to confess that he's suffering from a kind of electoral affirmative action impulse that esteems black religiosity for being just that. Fine. But when it comes time for the 101st Airborne to touch down on Waziristan, or garrisons to be shuffled in Iraq so as to maintain the hard-won security that's been established there, I suspect we'll need tougher metrics for assessing leadership than smiling white condescension.

The Salt Lake Tribune says that a Mitt Romney administration might fulfill prophecy.

It's Mormon lore, a story passed along by some old-timers about the importance of their faith and their country. In the latter days, the story goes, the U.S. Constitution will hang by a thread and a Mormon will ride in on a metaphorical white horse to save it.

And just when the Mormons begin lulling you to sleep with the classic Biblical language and imagery they love so well, they slip in some little piece of Americana that jolts you back to full attention. So, sure, there will be an Age to Come in which all the world shall worship in a new Jerusalem (Boring. Every monotheist and his mother says that.) But the new Jerusalem will be located, naturally, at the present site of Independence, Missouri (Interesting! No one says that!).

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The Jewish-American lobby is going to get trounced by the Arab-American lobby, says David Forman in the Jerusalem Post. If it doesn't happen in the upcoming election, it'll happen eventually.

With the next presidential election already heating up, American Jewish influence will be further challenged. With heavy Arab-American communities in Michigan, Illinois and California - pivotal states in any national election - it will be interesting to see whether America's next president will continue to give preferential treatment to Jewish and Israel concerns.

As the American-Arab community grows in numbers and confidence, it will increasingly be American Muslims who will influence US foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East.

The article reads like a heroic non-sequitur, with Forman spending the first several paragraphs explaining that the idea of “The Lobby” is “antisemitic propaganda,” and the rest of the article lamenting that our Lobby is about to get pwned by their Lobby. He also gives us plenty of dubious Islam-is-irredeemable boilerplate (“Pluralism is not part of the Islamic tradition. There is no such thing as a Reform Muslim.”). And oh yeah, intermarriage: that’s a problem!

But hidden amidst all the noise is a plausible argument, which goes like this: In the past, pro-Israel activists have succeeded in drawing attention to Israeli interests. But that increased attention only helped when Israeli interests also served American interests. So now our problem now is twofold. One: pro-Israel activists are increasingly outgunned by pro-Arab activists, both in numbers and conviction. Two: Israel no longer effectively serves American interests, as evidenced by their failure to curb Iran's Mini-Me, Hizballah. So it’s a perfect storm. The America-Israel relationship may be headed for the shitter.