I'll tell you one thing that worries me, Kat. I think Obama may not be a nasty enough man to campaign effectively against the Rovian tactics of the Republicans. Your public will always vote against a candidate whom they do not perceive as "tough enough".

Posing as "tough enough" generally involves two avenues of crummy and cynical behaviour:

1. bellicose statements about fighting America's supposed foreign "enemies" and pursuing them "to the gates of hell"

2. vicious attacks on the patriotism and courage and character and honesty and morality of the opposing candidate

Obama is the type of person who likes to take the high road and rise above that sort of awful garbage...and I greatly respect him for wanting to rise above it...but it will not serve him well at the ballot box if he does, because the majority of American voters are unmerciless to people who take the high road. They do not vote in fair-minded and rational ladies or fair-minded and rational gentlemen who treat their opponents decently and look at both sides of something before shooting their mouths off, they vote in pit fighters. They are attracted by the scent of blood.

Thus they usually get the irresponsible governments that their instincts led them directly to, seems to me. That was what usually happened in Rome too. The mob loved nothing better than a conquering hero who came home figuratively walking on a carpet of skulls...or else promising to deliver one quite soon.

McCain is acting out that role to perfection, as Republican candidates almost always do. The only time I can recall when it totally backfired for them was in '64 when Goldwater ran. There was enormous sympathy for the dead John Kennedy at that time and a desire to continue his legacy by electing Lyndon Johnson, and Johnson played on that and successfully portrayed Goldwater as an extremist wacko who would lead the nation into a disatrous war.

And what did Johnson do in the four years after he was elected? He delivered that carpet of skulls...over in Vietnam.

This is why I trust the Democratic Party as much as I do the Republican Party, which is to say I trust them both about as much as I would a pit viper.