A death sentence for Detroit

Polls show most Americans don't want Uncle Sam to help the Big Three and I couldn't care less.

They're wrong, plain and simple, but it's not entirely their fault. The amount of misinformation floating out there on ye olde information superhighway and from TV anchors who should know better is staggering.

Certainly there's a bit of bailout fatigue. The $15 billion bridge loan that cleared the U.S. House on Wednesday is a lot of money. Senate Republicans slayed it Thursday and the deal looks dead.

This would be utterly devastating for the U.S. economy - not just Michigan's.

Now would be the perfect time for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to be the statesman he is and end this political brinksmanship rooted in deep-seated denial of financial reality. He got hammered this fall for suspending his campaign to push for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. No one could accuse him of playing politics now; this would simply be bold action for the good of the country.

The fact is, letting just two of the three domestic automakers go bankrupt means the death of 1.8 million jobs in just the first year alone.

Still don't care? Won't affect me or my state?

Try this. Taxpayers will see $66 million swirl down the drain in two years if just two of the companies go bankrupt. Bye-bye tax revenue; hello unemployment insurance.

The cost of bankruptcy is more than four times what the autos could get from the feds, according to a report by the Anderson Economic Group. CEO Patrick Anderson is a staunch fiscal conservative, so it's striking that he's not arguing that the free market should be allowed to work here.

The reality is, the more economically prudent solution is the bridge loan. Every taxpayer in America should be treated to a copy of this report.

Unfortunately, this won't stop the Big Three bashing because it's too much fun. What we have is an axis of ignorance of far-out environmentalists and free-market Republicans.

The left whines that Detroit's gas-guzzling dinosaurs rape the planet and there's karma in letting them wheeze out their last breath. Their greedy CEOs sucking up $20 million bonuses are the living symbols of what's wrong with capitalism.

Yeah, not very powerful stuff. That's why this hasn't really gained traction and even big-time liberals like U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are willing to lend Motown a hand.

The right, however, is scoring big with its version of economic nihilism run amok. It's the unions' fault, of course, and even reputable media are selling the falsehood that workers make $70 per hour. The New Republic has nicely debunked this myth and you'll notice that conservatives in Michigan, no matter how anti-union, haven't jumped on this bandwagon.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter, the Louisianan best known for using the services of the D.C. Madam, this week derided the bridge loan as being "ass-backwards" in a rambling speech that proved he knows a lot more about hookers than economics.

Southern Republicans smugly brag that their foreign plants will flourish if the domestic autos combust. Yeah, here's the problem. When auto suppliers start croaking - and they will - Honda, Volkswagen and Toyota will bleed, even more than they are now.

By the way, Japan, China and Germany haven't had any problem bailing out their automakers. Kind of an unfair disadvantage, don't you think?

Both sides agree that the Big Three got too fat and happy (true) and churned out cars people didn't want to buy (also true, but now even Toyota's sales plummeted 32 percent last month). Why? The credit crunch, which has pushed the Big Three to the brink, just as they were making the labor and technology overhauls they need to thrive.

Peel away the political spin, and that's the real cause of the current crisis.

But when economics get too complex, there's always the shorthand of blasting the Big Three titans for their nasty corporate jet habit.

There's a disingenuous double standard at work. The bridge loan pales in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars the feds have thrown at financial institutions like AIG and Citigroup. Their executives somehow escaped begging on Capitol Hill but the Big Three's humiliation (twice) provided hours of entertainment on C-SPAN.

At this point, the Big Three need a Christmas miracle. This is not a regional issue, but it's looking like Michiganders need to lead the way - and not just at the federal level.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Senate Majority Mike Bishop, R-Rochester; and House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, should be holding daily joint press conferences on the car crisis.

There are still some Mitten Staters who believe that Ford, GM and Chrysler are getting what they deserve and the rest of us will somehow be hunky-dory. They need to hear a strong bipartisan counterpoint to the dead-enders.

Letting the Big Three die isn't just cutting off our nose to spite our face. It would be a decapitation.

The GOP: Evolve or die

The party of personal responsibility is having an awfully hard time with that concept after the election.

Listening to Republicans nowadays is like booking time with a colicky baby. I haven't heard so much whining and crying since my daughter was 3 months old.

Oh, and have I mentioned they're angry? Really steamed, like savaging anyone who suggests they chill as godless socialists who want nonstop gay sex and baby killing for the next eight years (I think I hear my e-mail now). I look forward to adding them to my folder of paranoid messages that Barack Obama won't be inaugurated after all because there is *PROOF THAT HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE WAS FORGED.* And the threats from Republicans that they just might be moving to Canada.

There's little time for self-reflection in a pity party. And right now, the right is rapturously licking its wounds, sounding more than a little like the Dems in 1980.

There's scant acknowledgement that Obama ran a stellar campaign and Democrats have clearly become the party for moderate voters. No one wants to dwell on the fact that Obama won by 7 percent nationally, when George W. Bush topped out at 3 percent in '04 after losing the popular vote in 2000. And please don't bring up that Obama won nine Bush states, some like Nevada and New Mexico by double digits.

Ignore the state-of-the-art get-out-the-vote drive that made W's look like amateur hour. And pay no attention to the 200,000 tearful supporters in Grant Park, the collective world adulation and reports that Obama could draw a record-shattering 4 million to his inauguration.

No, it's not so much that the Dems won this election, but circumstances conspired so the GOP lost. Really, how could Republicans win with the economy tanking, Bush's legacy and the malevolent media?

It's never their fault. The country is still with them, despite irrefutable proof to the contrary with the presidency and two houses of Congress going very blue.

The clinical definition of this, of course, is denial.

Republicans still insist Obama would have lost without Wall Street going into a tailspin. John McCain was leading in many polls until then, which they attribute to their favorite moose-shooting mama, Sarah Palin. That ignores the fact this was a post-convention bounce and the first time the Arizona senator had posted a consistent lead.

While the economy is surely a tricky issue with a Republican in the White House, the fact is that McCain both lost on this issue due to his wild mood swings and stunts, and Obama won it with his cool demeanor that settled voters' frayed nerves. He also connected far better to the middle class.

As for the current president, he surely was an albatross, which was precisely why right-wingers were whining from the get-go how unfair it was to tie Bush to McCain. Why? They knew it was a powerful message and worried it would work.

Of course, it didn't have to. McCain differs from Bush on issues ranging from global warming to campaign finance and has a much more bipartisan disposition. But by veering to the right to shore up the base, he made those Bush-McCain morphs seem plausible and unseemly.

And there is a certain irony in Republicans ranting that the president isn't a true conservative anyway, what with his big-government Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind. Well, kiddies, most of you voted for them at the time. Talking heads used to screech that anyone who would dare question our commander-in-chief at a time of war should be charged with treason.

Bush's only real problem with the right is that his poll numbers plummeted.

And finally there's the media, or shall I say, the worldwide conspiracy to put Obama in the Oval Office. Look, it's a fact that Obama won a landslide in newspaper endorsements and won over a number of columnists, many of them conservatives like Chris Buckley.

I don't think this election with its nonstop horserace coverage was a high point for investigative journalism into either candidate, although Obama came out slightly ahead in this regard. There were more negative stories about McCain in general, but that's what happens when your campaign is wracked with infighting and you're losing.

But the idea that the media can determine elections is laughable. If that's the case, we wouldn't be hemorrhaging red ink, because everyone would want a piece of the all-powerful press. Our sales pitch would be devastatingly simple: We can make presidents, you know.
Here's the bottom line for Republicans: You lost. Own it. Learn from it. Stop focusing on what you can't control and fix the fundamental problem - you're not connecting with voters like Obama did. Your no-tax, social-issues-on-steroids message has grown stale.

Ronald Reagan hasn't ruled for 20 years and yet you're still looking back. Demographics can become destiny and you're losing badly with key groups like young voters, Asians and Latinos.

Change is hard for conservatives, for obvious definitional reasons. But the truth is, in the kill-or-be-killed world of politics, those who don't evolve - becoming stronger and leaner - die.

So far Republicans are resisting such heresy. Evolution is just a theory, after all.

Death of a maverick

The political autopsy of John McCain has already begun.

Four days remain, of course, and he could still pull this out. But even more than the daunting gap in swing state polls, it's the rabid infighting and utter gloom in Team McCain that's the dead giveaway that Nov. 4 will be a brief and bloody night for Republicans.

Two narratives have arisen as to why McCain will lose. His supporters claim that with a tanking economy and President Bush's record low popularity, McCain was sunk from the start. No other Republican could have made it a contest.

Less charitable folks say McCain has run a terrible campaign, plagued by bickering staff with competing agendas from the start. His message bounced all over the place (which sadly is inevitable when more moderate candidates compete in GOP primaries and then shift to the general election).

But it was the Wall Street meltdown proved fatal. McCain seemed determined to prove Barack Obama's charge that he was erratic (suspending the campaign, diddling around Washington, going to the debate anyway) and the impression has stuck.

There's truth to both storylines. But I think the ultimate reason is more organic.

McCain wasn't allowed to be McCain. He didn't run the kind of campaign he wanted, leaving him forever to wonder what if. What if I'd picked Joe Lieberman as VP? What if I'd run a clean campaign? What if I ran on the issues I valued most and palled around with the press?

In a way, McCain will probably regret this more than his actual defeat. Because there's nothing quite like compromising your core and going down anyway.

Let's make this clear. This wasn't a murder of McCain; it was a suicide. McCain is the captain of the ship and didn't have to hand the reins over to traditional GOP advisers like Rick Davis and Charlie Black nationally or Chuck Yob in Michigan. If he wanted to run like a true maverick, he should have kept his conscience, John Weaver, and hired Mike Murphy, who wasn't afraid to challenge him.

But McCain ran like a candidate afraid to lose from the get-go. It was only when he got back to basics in New Hampshire, tirelessly holding town halls in hamlets for a dozen people at a time last summer, that his campaign was reborn.

What ultimately greased his way through the inhospitable GOP primary season was that the far right was uncharacteristically fickle about its anointed candidate. Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and even social liberal Rudy Giuliani duked it out while McCain stitched together a series of unlikely wins.

Once he grabbed the nomination, he floundered for four months, failing to campaign hard even as Obama and Hillary Clinton threatened to obliterate each other and take the party with them.

McCain clearly thought he'd face Clinton, whom he respected, and always viewed Obama as a cocky usurper. But his campaign allowed him to telegraph his disdain, which he most notably did with his sighs and eye rolls at the debates. Better advisers would have drilled Mac to be more happy warrior, less grumpy old man.

His contempt for Obama also allowed him to OK vile robocalls linking him to terrorism, run sinister ads questioning his patriotism and fall just short of calling him a commie at rallies. McCain can justify this to himself because Obama ducked town hall debates and broke his public financing pledge.

But the truth is that McCain is running the sort of bare-knuckle, whip-up-the-basest-elements-in-the-base campaign that Bush thrashed him with in 2000. The lesson McCain seemed to learn from that was that nice guys finish last. Better to sell out than sell yourself short.

Which brings us to his pick of Sarah Palin. Reports in the New Yorker and other publications clearly paint McCain as being irascible and demoralized when his advisers foisted Palin upon him. The senator wanted a truly bipartisan, national security ticket with Lieberman.

McCain was told in no uncertain terms that he would shatter the party, that pandemonium would reign at the convention with a far right exodus. Well, so what? The Dixiecrats walked out of the Dems' bash in 1948 and most formally seceded by the '60s. That helped the Democratic Party redefine itself as one dedicated to equality and human rights.

McCain would have captured the holy grail of independents and stolen away moderate and conservative Democrats.

Look at the GOP right now. The civil war is happening anyway. McCain could have been the leader of the new pragmatic, centrist party. He could have taken control of the party platform on climate change, drilling, gay rights and abortion for starters. Instead, it's even more radical than it was under Bush's tutelage.

Now McCain is being pilloried by the right-wing media for killing the party (ha!) while Palin is canonized and groomed for the glorious resurrection in '12. Good luck with that.

If McCain had followed his instincts, he still might have fallen short. But at least his political epitaph would have cathartically read, "I did it my way."

Grand Old Pummeling

Even if John McCain manages to pull this one out in a squeaker, that won't be enough to save the Michigan Republican Party.

That's because McCain's circus-like pullout from the Mitten State earlier this month instantly translated into a double-digit lead for Barack Obama. No one, even Mac's most diehard supporters, thinks a comeback here is possible, unless Obama does a suicidal Detroit campaign swing with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Kwame Kilpatrick and Willie Horton at his side.

McCain has choked off all the oxygen to down-ballot races here. Gone are the money, organization and rock star visits by Sarah Palin that state and local Republicans were desperately counting on to help them withstand the swelling Democratic tide.

Republicans thought they could finally pin the economy on Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but the Wall Street meltdown gave the guv a fresh coat of Teflon. It's a perfect storm and the GOP mood has swung from full-scale panic to unshakable depression.

Right now, the conservative estimate on state House losses is four. The doomsday scenario is 12, which would put the lower chamber at a lopsided 70-40 split in the Dems' favor.

The educational boards will swing even more Democratic, and many county, city and township bodies will be bluer after Nov. 4.

When a party fails as spectacularly as the Republicans are poised to, it's time for some soul-searching - which in politics usually means backstabbing and bloodbaths.

The wily maverick - who most of the blood-red party brass never cared much for anyway - will certainly garner his share of the blame. But John McCain won't be here to kick around.

The Michigan GOP's problems, of course, started long before this ridiculously long campaign. There are two crises facing Republicans post-Nov. 4: Who will lead them and where are they going?

In the short-term, this means yet another civil war between factions led by party chair Saul Anuzis and former National Committeeman Chuck Yob.

It's hard to say how that will turn out, but it will be a strain for Saul to shake off two disastrous election cycles in a row. Even though as a former Mitt Romney guy, he never had the inside track with the McCain clan and received no notice the nominee was skeddadling from Michigan.

There are many Republicans who wish a plague on both their houses, slamming Anuzis for meddling in policy matters like last year's budget crisis and Yob for having a political track record akin to perennial losers like my Chicago Cubs.

They just want a party that works. This is uncomfortable ground for people accustomed to the order, fraternalism and seniority that has had a vice grip on the GOP. Now they seem as splintered as Democrats, which have long operated like a loud, dysfunctional family.

The Republican Party here and nationally is fissuring amidst competing, incongruous interests brought together under Reagan - the country club set, moderates, the religious right, disgruntled blue collar Democrats, Wall Street, small business, rural dwellers and fiscal conservatives.

The split crystallized under the McCain-Palin ticket. There was little fire from the base or talk radio for McCain, who could never be forgiven for calling fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance." No matter how far to the right he veered, it was never good enough.

Palin was a godsend to the party faithful, but she turned off moderate McCainiacs, as well as a fatal number of independents. The result is no one's truly happy with the GOP ticket, as opposed to the Dems, who are both inspired by Obama and giddy to turn the page on George Bush.

Michigan Republicans have a better chance than their national counterparts to get it together. Granholm still remains unpopular, which bodes well for the 2010 governor's race, and the next wave of term-limited House retirements is set to sock Democrats far harder than the GOP. The party should pick up another Senate seat if state Sen. Mark Schauer captures the 7th District congressional slot.

But they'll need organization and a message. What's clear is that the party orthodoxy on abortion and taxes hasn't worked. Social issues have driven moderates from the party in droves. And it seems increasingly likely that no legislator will lose his seat for hiking taxes last year.

This is not 1980. That's something Republicans have to get over, stat. The get-government-off-my-back ethos has withered. Now it's bring back big government if you can save my 401(k).

That doesn't mean that conservatism is dead, nor should it be. But politics is never static, while parties tend to be. The Democrats finally had to become more pragmatic and rejigger themselves after their thumpings in the '80s and '90s and the day of reckoning has come for the GOP. The party needs fresh ideas on the fiscal crisis, health care and foreign policy.

Gerald Ford, Bill Milliken and Dwight Eisenhower offer obvious role models of centrist conservatism spliced with good government. And there was something safely reassuring about these leaders during troubled times.

All I know is if a modern Milliken gave it a stab in 2010, he'd have my vote in a heartbeat.

Grand Old Pummeling

Even if John McCain manages to pull this one out in a squeaker, that won't be enough to save the Michigan Republican Party.

That's because McCain's circus-like pullout from the Mitten State earlier this month instantly translated into a double-digit lead for Barack Obama. No one, even Mac's most diehard supporters, thinks a comeback here is possible, unless Obama does a suicidal Detroit campaign swing with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Kwame Kilpatrick and Willie Horton at his side.

McCain has choked off all the oxygen to down-ballot races here. Gone are the money, organization and rock star visits by Sarah Palin that state and local Republicans were desperately counting on to help them withstand the swelling Democratic tide.

Republicans thought they could finally pin the economy on Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but the Wall Street meltdown gave the guv a fresh coat of Teflon. It's a perfect storm and the GOP mood has swung from full-scale panic to unshakable depression.

Right now, the conservative estimate on state House losses is four. The doomsday scenario is 12, which would put the lower chamber at a lopsided 70-40 split in the Dems' favor.

The educational boards will swing even more Democratic, and many county, city and township bodies will be bluer after Nov. 4.

When a party fails as spectacularly as the Republicans are poised to, it's time for some soul-searching - which in politics usually means backstabbing and bloodbaths.

The wily maverick - who most of the blood-red party brass never cared much for anyway - will certainly garner his share of the blame. But John McCain won't be here to kick around.

The Michigan GOP's problems, of course, started long before this ridiculously long campaign. There are two crises facing Republicans post-Nov. 4: Who will lead them and where are they going?

In the short-term, this means yet another civil war between factions led by party chair Saul Anuzis and former National Committeeman Chuck Yob.

It's hard to say how that will turn out, but it will be a strain for Saul to shake off two disastrous election cycles in a row. Even though as a former Mitt Romney guy, he never had the inside track with the McCain clan and received no notice the nominee was skeddadling from Michigan.

There are many Republicans who wish a plague on both their houses, slamming Anuzis for meddling in policy matters like last year's budget crisis and Yob for having a political track record akin to perennial losers like my Chicago Cubs.

They just want a party that works. This is uncomfortable ground for people accustomed to the order, fraternalism and seniority that has had a vice grip on the GOP. Now they seem as splintered as Democrats, which have long operated like a loud, dysfunctional family.

The Republican Party here and nationally is fissuring amidst competing, incongruous interests brought together under Reagan - the country club set, moderates, the religious right, disgruntled blue collar Democrats, Wall Street, small business, rural dwellers and fiscal conservatives.

The split crystallized under the McCain-Palin ticket. There was little fire from the base or talk radio for McCain, who could never be forgiven for calling fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance." No matter how far to the right he veered, it was never good enough.

Palin was a godsend to the party faithful, but she turned off moderate McCainiacs, as well as a fatal number of independents. The result is no one's truly happy with the GOP ticket, as opposed to the Dems, who are both inspired by Obama and giddy to turn the page on George Bush.

Michigan Republicans have a better chance than their national counterparts to get it together. Granholm still remains unpopular, which bodes well for the 2010 governor's race, and the next wave of term-limited House retirements is set to sock Democrats far harder than the GOP. The party should pick up another Senate seat if state Sen. Mark Schauer captures the 7th District congressional slot.

But they'll need organization and a message. What's clear is that the party orthodoxy on abortion and taxes hasn't worked. Social issues have driven moderates from the party in droves. And it seems increasingly likely that no legislator will lose his seat for hiking taxes last year.

This is not 1980. That's something Republicans have to get over, stat. The get-government-off-my-back ethos has withered. Now it's bring back big government if you can save my 401(k).

That doesn't mean that conservatism is dead, nor should it be. But politics is never static, while parties tend to be. The Democrats finally had to become more pragmatic and rejigger themselves after their thumpings in the '80s and '90s and the day of reckoning has come for the GOP. The party needs fresh ideas on the fiscal crisis, health care and foreign policy.

Gerald Ford, Bill Milliken and Dwight Eisenhower offer obvious role models of centrist conservatism spliced with good government. And there was something safely reassuring about these leaders during troubled times.

All I know is if a modern Milliken gave it a stab in 2010, he'd have my vote in a heartbeat.

Joe Sixpack snubs Sarah Palin

Doggone it, if it weren't for that George W. Bush, America would be head-over-heels for Sarah Palin.

They're both plain folks, who play up their folksy accents that are just as American as all get-out. Their unflinching, moral absolutist vision of the world is distilled into simple sound bites, unlike some snooty, professorial Harvard-types, Barack. They tap into our hopes and especially fears because they "don't blink" or ever "wave the white flag of surrender" to terrorists.

In this "American Idol" era, we're supposed to go for the guy we can chug a beer with or the gal we can giggle with over a skinny mocha latte.

But not this time.

Why? Been there, done that.

We've already rolled the dice on a president with a fatal allergy to intellectual curiosity, demanding only "yes" men who won't challenge his chillingly narrow view of the world. We tried likeable and down-home and wound up with war(s?) we cannot win, a $10 trillion debt and an economy that bears more than a casual resemblance to the one Herbert Hoover bequeathed to us in the 1930s.

So, ya know, we're kinda sayin' "thanks, but no thanks" to that sweet Sarah Palin.

As Joe Biden's mother might say, "God love her," but this ain't amateur hour, kiddies.

But this raises a more important question: How can we trust John McCain when he's willing to entrust the country he loves so deeply with someone so inexperienced and unintellectual?

That fancy-pants know-it-all Obama doesn't seem like such a bad guy to steer us through a financial meltdown no one seems to comprehend. As conservative icon Charles Krauthammer ruefully observes, the Democrat has a "first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president."

He won't lurch from stunt to stunt, as McCain jarringly has for his entire campaign. And Obama doesn't need flash cards to solve the crisis, like Palin brought to her debate last week.

Afterward, the talking heads (those evil Eastern elites) were convinced Joe Sixpack would go as ga-ga for Palin as they did, because the pretty lady said "Joe Sixpack," "hockey mom" and the Reagan classic, "There you go again."

We didn't. Why? Americans are smarter than a fifth grader. We do value substance over style. The fact that she can only spout scant talking points on the bailout and doesn't grasp McCain's position on Pakistan bothers us. That's why every poll showed Biden wiped the floor with her.

Deflated conservatives still insist the self-proclaimed Sarahcuda is connecting with Main Street Americans. Dozens of polls say otherwise; she can't win over women or independents.

No matter. Her flinty winks literally sent hard-up right-wingers like Rich Lowry into a fit of embarrassing ecstasy, mooning over the "little starbursts" he felt through the teevee. Ahem.

Sarah should have been the perfect focus-grouped candidate, down to the effortless way she drops her g's and winks at you (only you). The GOP couldn't have built a better veep if they'd finagled some of that sci-fi-style cloning technology the pro-life loonies warn will take over Michigan if the pro-embryonic stem cell Proposal 2 passes.

Palin would have killed in the heyday of Newt Gingrich, as the apple-cheeked, high-heeled embodiment of gun-totin' rugged individualism. But now we're back to the era of big government, aided by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The country has changed, snapping back to the middle and even (gasp!) the left.

For too many years, we've plucked presidential candidates with criteria fit for a glitzy Hollywood biopic, not the leader of the free world. That was part of the problem with John Edwards, a coiffed empty suit whom desperate Democrats projected their hopes and dreams onto because he came in a slick, Southern-fried wrapper.

On the campaign trail, Palin brings the heat to a movement running cold. "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do - as the greatest force for good in the world," she drawls (rhetoric that incited one cultured fan to shout, "Kill him!")

She's warned us. Obama "pals around with terrorists" and will maniacally raise our taxes. We know blood will be on our hands.

And yet, a clear majority of us are planning to vote for him. She doesn't do it for us.

Palin will soon be relegated to irrelevance, perhaps the de facto leader of the far-right fringe of a party teetering on the brink of combustion. That's why David Brooks calls her brand of anti-intellectual populism a "fatal cancer to the Republican party."

I hope it eats the party alive so it reverts back to the civil spirit of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. But instead of looking backward to '80s-style solutions, the young Turks will have to embrace a 21st century realism to the staggering problems ahead.

Palin can serve as a parable for the dangers of always choosing glib politics over good policy. She can invigorate the GOP, perhaps by destroying it as Democrats take both houses of Congress, the White House, most governor's mansions and more state and local seats across the country.

And for that, let's salute ya, Sister Sarah.

Grace after the fire

GRAND LEDGE -- Hillary Clinton is so over it.

The primary ping-pong, that is - the bitter battles with Barack, her husband's crimson face and wagging finger, the endless wrangling over every state, every superdelegate.

It all seemed to wash away as a Zen-like Hillary took to the stage Saturday and bestowed her message on the mostly female crowd of 1,000: Move on and vote Obama.

Maybe it's the distance. Maybe it was Friday's debate and the harrowing financial meltdown that hasn't fazed the kid from Chi-town one bit, while the impeccably experienced John McCain swan-dived into a full-scale panic. But Clinton seemed genuinely impressed with Obama in a way she never was when they engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

"I'm campaigning as hard as I can to make sure he's the next president," she announced with almost maternal pride. "I think last night people saw why."

Decked in a canary suit as sunny as her demeanor, Clinton radiated a laid-back warmth to a clearly smitten crowd. (There wasn't a PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) miscreant in sight). Instead of having to make the sale for herself in a pressure-cooker primary, she could relax and merrily dispatch McCain while pumping up Obama.

Losing such a brutal, close contest was devastating, no doubt. Many pundits believed she'd hole herself up with astringent aides Lanny Davis and Howard Wolfson, resurfacing to give aid and comfort to the GOP with unhelpful comments about Obama. ("He did admire Kwame Kilpatrick immensely, I know that.")

But Hillary's grace and enthusiasm has surprised even this cynical columnist, admittedly not her biggest fan. I don't know that Obama would have been able to pull off what she has if the roles were reversed.

Often sour and steely in her own race, Clinton has transformed herself into the happy warrior. This was supposed to be John McCain's role, instead reduced to a scowling septuagenarian lecturing baby Barack that "he just doesn't understand" anything, when it's his running mate who can't name a single newspaper she reads, another Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade or any of his maverick reforms ("I'll try to find you some and I'll bring 'em to ya.")

Is it real? Who knows? No one can say what's truly going on in someone's head. Maybe Clinton is giving a Cannes-worthy performance and will be punching her ballot for McCain on Nov. 4 anyway. She no doubt is looking ahead to 2012, just in case, as is one Mitt Romney.

But publicly, she is all-in in '08 and apparently has told Bill to get with the program, prompting him to (finally) say nice things about Obama while barnstorming Florida this week.

No one could have predicted what an effective surrogate Hillary has become for her former rival. Indeed, she's Obama's best defender, an emissary to women, although they're flocking back on the Barack bandwagon in droves since Sarah Palin has proven to be a national embarrassment.

Clinton's sheer depth on policy issues and effortless intellect underscores Palin's indignant incuriosity and startling cerebral shallowness, which even a skeptic like me underestimated. The McCain campaign clearly chose style over substance, but to flagrantly do so with someone a heartbeat away from the presidency is political malpractice.

But even on the surface, Clinton's down-home "I feel your pain" routine plays better than Palin's faux populism, since she's not really concerned with building "Joe Sixpack" up, as she refers to her constituency, but on cattily tearin' the elitist haters down. I believe we refer to that as goin' for the lowest common denominator.

What the 2008 election will ultimately mean for women is anyone's guess. I tend to believe that Clinton coming so close will motivate more women to jump into public life and push harder for a female president next time. That's one reason why so many women were initially drawn to the McCain-Palin ticket, before they came down with buyer's remorse.

But the failure of Palin could have the opposite effect. Some women who remember the Gerry Ferraro days tell me that Sarah's set up to be the fall gal when McCain goes down. She's the airhead hottie who never could be trusted with the launch codes, scuttling the chances of an honorable war hero who could have restored this country's glory.

Chicks, huh?

Forgive and forget, part II: Republican Joe Schwarz has broken his silence about the 7th District congressional race and endorsed state Sen. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek. This won't come as a shock to anyone who watched the bloody GOP primary two years ago when U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, and his Club for Growth overlords disemboweled him as a liberal, baby-killing freak.

But it did catch longtime pundit Bill Ballenger a little off guard.

"Schwarz and Schauer are supposed to be good buddies, though Schauer screwed him over a few times," he observes.

Like Mark recruiting the former congressman to run as a Dem, swearing he wouldn't run himself (oops)? Or neglecting to give him credit for keeping open the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base?

I hope Mr. Schauer manned up said he's sorry. Because Schwarz just did him a huge favor, at his own political peril.

All eyes shouldn't be on Michigan

"I want you to feel the pressure, because Michigan could be the Ohio of this election." - First lady Laura Bush pumping up state delegates at the Republican National Convention

Sorry to burst Mrs. Bush's bubble, but there's a slim chance this ungodly long presidential race will come down to the Great Lakes State.

I know, I know. The national pundits think Michigan's where it's at. We're a great story with the highest unemployment rate, a beautiful but unpopular Democratic governor and an African-American ex-mayor of our largest city heading to the slam.

And stereotypes? We got your stereotypes right here. There are bowling alleys galore to pensively interview those all-important blue-collar Macomb County voters, diehard deer hunters in the rustic U.P. to rhapsodize about Sarah Palin and patchouli-drenched students in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor to philosophize about Barack Obama.

Who am I to dissuade the national press corps from our exceptionalism? So let me sincerely roll out the welcome mat for Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, Katie Couric and your posses. Please come revel in our Water Winter Wonderland and throw money at our hotels, restaurants and party stores - our Legislature will probably hand you a tax rebate. (Seriously, just ask the Hollywood set. We toss 'em away like candy).

As for Obama and John McCain, keep assaulting us with ads 24/7. Media companies are doing slightly better than Lehman Brothers and your assistance is greatly appreciated.

But the thing is, you'll be taking another girl home on election night. It's looking more like Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia or even New Hampshire with her anorexic four electoral votes will tip the scales for that magic 270.

We were the belle of the ball for the bungled primary in January and those crazy Dems couldn't decide how to pick delegates for months. The fact that so many candidates boycotted us made us far more fun to figure out than Florida.

So the likelihood that Michigan will again be front and center Nov. 4 is small. There's always a chance, of course. Who could have predicted the camp-worthy pregnant chad thing eight years ago? Elections are a whacky business and a lot can happen in five weeks.

There could be another terrorist attack on American soil, for one thing. The housing crisis could continue to cramp the markets even with a $700 billion bailout. Or Kwame Kilpatrick could punch out a cop naked while shouting, "Long live Barack Obama!"

Now if McCain conquers Michigan, he'll be in prime position to win the Electoral College unless Obama steals Ohio or Florida out from him. But if McCain wins our economically mutilated state that's been reliably blue since 1992, I'll bet it's Johnny in a rout. He'll take Wisconsin, Minnesota and possibly Pennsylvania and keep his vulnerable western states.

Obama's turnout model of young and black voters will be declared a dismal failure and the Bradley effect will have reared its head.

That could certainly happen. But the McCain folks don't really think he'll bag the Mitten State, although they say publicly they have a "really good chance," as Mrs. Bush told the delegation at the RNC. Why not? They're happy to see Obama part with millions here. And they know it will be close, even though the Democrat leads in 11 of the last 13 post-convention polls.

But if McCain was truly serious about winning the Wolverine State, his veep would have been Mitt Romney, Bloomfield Hills' favorite son.

John Dunagan, President Bush's Michigan chair in '04, claims Palin will single-handedly flip the state red. His reasoning? We have 12 minor league hockey teams and the highest registration of snowmobiles in the country.

Um ... sure. Who can argue with empirical evidence like that?

Obama started at a disadvantage by not campaigning here for the primary. McCain has roots in Michigan dating back to his 2000 victory, although he lost badly this year to Romney. But Obama's ground game is far better - 40-plus offices, a massive voter registration effort and superior media operation.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is Obama's biggest albatross here. In some polls, voters blame her more than Bush for the state's unparalleled economic woes. That could change with Wall Street's implosion, of course, but there's a reason she's not in the Democrat's stable of surrogates.

In the end, it comes down to the Detroit suburbs in vote-rich Oakland County, which has turned Democratic for the last two cycles. (Macomb was sooo '80s). Tensions in Detroit helped McCain post unusually high numbers here in a recent Time survey.

If Kwame was still the proud occupant of the Manoogian Mansion, I'd say that Michigan's traditional lack of racial transcendence, as Obama poetically puts it, would propel McCain to the White House. But Hizzoner's gone and he has no relationship with Obama to speak of.

I'm inclined to agree with former McCain adviser Mike Murphy, an old hand in John Engler's and Spence Abraham's campaigns, who thinks Oakland County is Obama country. Palin will appeal to the quirkily conservative Macomb crowd, but she's too much pitbull for Oakland's sunny soccer moms who aren't fond of guns but do like making their own uterine decisions.

Somewhere, Mitt Romney is shaking his head and plotting for 2012.

A party of whiners

Republicans have become wusses. Next thing you know, they'll want to cuddle.

I came of political age in the Newt Gingrich era, and the right-wingers I knew were bold and brash. They didn't talk about their feelings or make excuses. They swore on Adam Smith's soul that the world would be a better place with lower taxes, less regulation and a Deringer in every home.

Frankly, they were a lot more fun to hang out with that the liberals who screeched that calling grown women "girls" was a hate crime and believed the notorious Antioch College edict requiring students to ask permission before engaging in each new act of love ("May I bite your navel?") was sound public policy Congress should consider.

So I never thought I'd see that day when the GOP would become the poster child for Affirmative Action and political correctness.

What a letdown.

As Wall Street collapses into free-fall, violence amps up in Afghanistan and gas shoots up north of $4 again, whiny conservatives are carrying on about cosmetics.

If you have a pulse and occasionally click on cable news, you know that Barack Obama used the shopworn political phrase, "lipstick on a pig," last week.

Former acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift shrieked Sexism, noting that because GOP veep pick Sarah Palin talks about slathering on lipstick, she must be the porker in question.

"Often times, you're responsible for your words even if they're misconstrued," sniffed Ms. Swift, who ironically was broomed by the GOP establishment to make way for Mitt Romney, whom I understand is male.

It was as if I was transported back in time to my too-serious, abstractly academic women's studies classes and our insufferable debates over whether the word "history" (get it, "history"?) was misogynistic. That was the point at which the resident Republican would sanely chime in with an, "Oh, please!"

But the humorless, hypersensitive train barreled on after "Saturday Night Live" skewered both Palin and Hillary Clinton. Fired Hewlett-Packard CEO and John McCain adviser Carly Fiorina panned Tina Fey's dead-on impression of the Alaska guv ("I can see Russia from my house!") as (what else?) Sexist.

In another ironic twist, the feisty Fiorina got the hook Wednesday after she declared Palin (and McCain, because she is not Sexist) didn't have the gonads to head a major corporation. But she hastily added they could run the good old U.S. of A. (What everyone seems too polite to say is that Carly couldn't run a company either, though she was rewarded with a $21 million golden parachute for trying).

Palin herself hasn't cried Sexism, since she avoids the evil elite media's meanie questions like the plague. Instead, she allows others to wallow in victim feminism for her.

Since when do Republicans, especially those who proudly compare themselves to pitbulls, dodge a fight, especially with weenies in the press?

Meanwhile, every conservative in America, down to uber-reactionary U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg of Tipton (who I believe is still undecided on women's suffrage), is repeating the talking points that Palin is supremely qualified because she has "executive experience."

Folks, let's just take a time-out for a second.

Can you really say that someone who was mayor of a town of 6,700 and governor for 20 months of a state with 670,000 souls (.02 percent of the U.S. population) should be a heart attack away from taking over as leader of the free world? Don't you think the VP should know the Bush Doctrine or have an elementary grasp of the financial markets?

Let's call this what it is: Affirmative Action run amok, shunting expertise or even basic competence in favor a focus-grouped new face who plays well on tee-vee. I know of no other politician who has so breathtakingly blown an interview as Palin did on ABC and survived. Obama would have been laughed off the national stage.

Don't Palinistas feel a wee bit silly attacking Charles Gibson as Sexist for doing his job? Don't they ever tire of defending St. Sarah because McCain chose her and the Maverick is infallible?

Joe Lieberman, McCain's almost veep, gave a rather Freudian answer when initially asked if Palin was qualified to be president.

"Well, let's assume the best," he laughed nervously. "John's in great shape."

The truth is, the GOP is a party in the throes of a full-blown identity crisis, forced to disown its once beloved and now wildly unpopular President Bush and his disastrous economic and foreign policy agendas. Gone is the swagger, the supreme confidence of the Contract with America signatories, replaced by defensive, desperate thought police bleating about the unfairness of it all.

They sound like ... Democrats.

Maybe right-wingers should admit that their merciless (and amusing) ridiculing of Barackstar, who parted the Rocky Mountains for a crowd of 84,000 adoring disciples, was jealousy, plain and simple.

"The presidential election isn't a popularity contest!" they'd dourly declare.

But as soon as superfine, superstar Sarah glided on stage, they suddenly had a reason to turn out in droves and scream, "Drill, baby, drill!"

Not that there would be any double entrendre there. That, my friends, would be Sexist.

My dear John (McCain) letter

This is just to say that you lost my vote over the last few weeks and Barack Obama won it.

Sen. McCain, I know I'm just a simple single mom, but I do live in Michigan, ground zero in the Electoral College battle.

This wasn't an easy choice. I was with you when only five folks showed up to your town hall meetings in New Hampshire last summer as you stood up for a compromise on immigration. I cheered when you told Mitten Staters that those cushy auto jobs ain't a-comin' back before you tanked in our primary.

And I defended you against the loony left's bizarre assaults on your military service. You are, indeed, an American hero, and one of mine.

But your attack-happy, outrage-driven campaign - which is inexplicably run by the slimeballs who slandered you on behalf of George W. Bush in 2000 - is beneath you. You cannot blame the bombastic ads and barrage of smears on wily subordinates; you are the captain of this ship and you refuse to turn it around.

And as you have seen fit to appease the far right more and more each day, down to your extremist VP pick, I'm struggling to see you as the man on white horseback who's come to save the day. You seem like you only want to win - at any cost.

"This campaign isn't about issues," your campaign manager scoffed last week. Well, I think that insults the American people. And it insults me as a voter.

Because I'd like you to know that I will be voting for Barack Obama on the issues. And the economy is No. 1 for my family. I like that Obama's comprehensive economic plan is rooted in conservative ideas on tax cuts, which need to be broad-based. You don't have many ideas beyond extending the narrow Bush tax cuts and calling your opponent a tax-hiker.

I'm sure the few making over $250,000 approve, but even you knew those cuts would be fiscally disastrous, which is why you voted against them. Our country can't sustain this kind of lopsided tax code, not while the middle class is losing net income for the first time in decades, the gap between rich and poor is growing and the Iraq war drains $10 billion from taxpayers every month.

And speaking of the war, like the vast majority of Americans, I want to see it end. Here's my compromise to you: Declare victory and get out. I have no reason to think that Obama and his stable of bipartisan foreign policy advisers will go about this in a hasty manner akin to how Bush got us into this mess.

But Sen. McCain, you are even further out there than the president, who sees the need for a timetable after more than five years of morass. Violence is down now, hallelujah. But our military is broken, with some soldiers doing seven tours of duty in Iraq. The surge cannot be sustained. Nor do we have the manpower to truly fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan or Pakistan, much less start to tangle with Iran or Russia.

Your bellicose foreign policy is not the reasoned realpolitik of President Bush the Elder; it will bankrupt our budget and make us more vulnerable to terrorism. No one knows this better than our enemies.

And I appreciate Obama's willingness to include insurance companies, seniors groups and doctors into reforming health care, which is ridiculously inefficient and expensive. Your hands-off approach won't help the Big Three or small business being sunk by off-the-charts expenses. You're unwilling to even help uninsured children by reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

I know the new conventional wisdom is that we need to change the country by going with the GOP, which has been in charge for most of the last glorious war-ravaged decade that's culminating in economic devastation.

And I know that because I, too, have reproduced like Sarah Palin and people care more about my mug shot that what I write in this column, that I am automatically obligated to vote for your ticket.

But I'm just an average gal from Michigan who plans to vote my conscience.

Our country has been at war in Iraq since my daughter was six months old and I'm tired of having to explain death to her. Before the Bush presidency, I paid $1 a gallon for gas in Iowa, and I know as well as you do that drilling won't bring the price down one dime. What I don't know is how I'll scrape up $300,000 to send her to the University of Michigan in 12 years.

Now you're telling me that you're the maverick again, although you're certainly not on the biggest issues of the day. You have little to offer me and millions of Americans in terms of real policy change. What you can provide is a compelling life story and a superstar running mate.

Well, Sen. McCain, you warned us all not to vote on style and slogans over substance.

That's why I'm voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Palin: McCain's version of 'Trust me'

For years, Republicans have foamed at the mouth about Michigan's blonde bombshell governor, slamming her as woefully inexperienced and working in her "Dating Game" past whenever possible.

Now I've often shared their critiques of Jennifer Granholm in terms of policy and management style and I have it on pretty good authority that her senior staff despises my column. But that kind of patronizing tripe ignores her Harvard law degree (with honors), four years as attorney general, four years as a federal prosecutor and almost six years as governor.

Our governor has an almost unmatched intellect and is the state's most spellbinding speaker. Republicans will privately admit they wish they had anyone on their roster who could rival her. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, shakes in his boots around her to this day.

So when John McCain made his utterly ridiculous pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from his presidency, I found it fascinating how Granholm's hecklers (a bunch of middle-aged white guys, natch) suddenly turned into raving feminists.

There was a lot of happy talk about breaking the glass ceiling from boys who oppose the Equal Pay Act.

"(Palin) puts the voice of women on the center stage of American politics," declared state Sen. Cameron Brown, R-Fawn River Township, which should come as news to the 18 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton.

Of course Clinton has everything to do with McCain's impulsive, insulting choice that former McCain aide Mike Murphy trashed, sighing, "The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical." Evidently, Mighty Mac thinks we broads are so hard up to punch a ballot for someone with ovaries that we'll take just anyone, like spinsters over 40.

We're supposed to fall for a candidate who has to play up her eight years as the mayor of a town of 6,715 - where the Associated Press devastatingly remarked the "biggest civic worry is whether there will be enough snow for the Iditarod dog-mushing race" - and her time on the PTA to round out her resume.

Palin has spent almost two years in the governor's mansion. To put that in perspective, she leads the third least populated state with fewer folks than the 7th Congressional District.

No wonder she's elicited a collective groan from Alaska newspapers and many colleagues about her inexperience and incuriosity.

No matter. Her sculpted cheekbones and naughty high-heeled boots inspire a quivering Rush Limbaugh to declare her "a babe."

Point granted. But the simple fact is that if Palin were a bleeding-heart Democrat, there would be only two words to describe the nod: Affirmative Action.

It is a slap in the face to dedicated GOP Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, just to name a few. Palin's foreign policy credentials are so thin, having only traveled to three countries, that first lady-in-waiting Cindy McCain tried to pump her up by pointing out that Alaska is close to Russia.

Oh, dear Lord.

Yet somehow Republicans manage to tout Palin's massive "executive experience" with a straight face, while still blasting Barack Obama's eight years as a leader in the state Legislature in one of the biggest states in the country and almost four years in the U.S. Senate, chairman of a Foreign Relations subcommittee.

Oh, but don't even think of questioning St. Sarah's credentials. She is a Mom, as U.S. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, noted in a statement - yes, with a capital "M." Um, OK, but does the GOP really want to play the parental fitness card when her 17-year-old is knocked up by a dude who looks like a bad boy reject from "The Hills"?

So if you dare ask about her ethics scandals, relationship with indicted U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and readiness to be commander-in-chief on day one, be warned: You are Sexist. Even though when Hillary complained about her coverage in the primary, Sarah dismissed it as "whining."

It was a bewildered Palin who whimpered to CNBC a month ago, "I wish someone would tell me what the VP does."

But on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, they replaced her with a new and improved Stepford Wife model to spew venom at that un-American Obama who looks down on the bitter folk.

Palin conveniently forgot to mention her extremist positions, like being anti-evolution, anti-abortion for victims of rape and incest and even against protecting polar bears from extinction. Maybe that's because most of us wouldn't view her as the mom down the street, but another out-of-touch fundamentalist windbag.

But what makes me saddest about this whole sorry affair is that it reveals an utter lack of judgment by McCain, whom I deeply admire. He calculated he needed to appease the base and try to capture the Clintonites by choosing someone he'd only interviewed once a few hours before offering her the job.

His entire campaign is built around us trusting him to do the right thing - even though most Americans disagree with him on most issues, from Iraq to the economy.

Sorry, John, I'm finding that hard to do these days.

A statesman for Obama

When I met Jim Leach for the first time, protesters were shouting down a speech he gave at the Iowa City Public Library under a hand-painted banner that read, "Killer Leach."

It was during the heady days of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution in 1995 and the mild-mannered, moderate congressman was an unlikely foot soldier. But it was the first time in his 19-year career that the GOP was running the show and he dutifully towed the party line. He truly believed Republicans could clean up Washington.

So when I caught Leach's speech at the Democratic National Convention Monday endorsing Barack Obama, I let out a little gasp.

My former congressman chuckled that as a veteran of five Republican National Conventions, he'd never expected to be at a DNC, either.

"When I was asked to speak, it startled me at first and I had to think about it for a moment," Leach said during a phone interview Wednesday. "But I made a commitment and I decided to go all out."

That commitment is to Republicans for Obama, also led by Sen. Lincoln Chafee. Both were swept out of office during the 2006 Democratic tsunami, but they interestingly haven't bought the idea that maverick John McCain will restore their party. Leach believes a record number of Goldwater Republicans and independents will cross over.

Most Obama backers on tee-vee look to be 18 if they're a day and gush about their personal connection to him. But there was no come-to-Jesus moment with Leach, who admits he doesn't know Obama well.

Dispassionate Princeton professor he is, he neatly laid out a historical and geopolitical case for the Democrat better than anyone I've seen, masterfully weaving in the ideals of Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan with Obama's.

"The change Barack Obama is advocating is far more than a break with today's politics," Leach said in his speech. "It is a clarion call for renewal rooted in time-tested American values that tap Republican, as well as Democratic traditions."

Leach swats away the idea that the freshman Illinois senator is less ready to be commander-in-chief than McCain, whom he deeply respects.

"There's no doubt that John McCain has served in Congress longer than Barack Obama," says the man who was in Washington longer than both combined. "But it's important to look at judgment over experience and I am impressed by Barack's judgment."

Though he voted for the Gulf War, Leach was one of the few Republicans who didn't back the Iraq war, which he calls "a disaster." He's also troubled by the growing gulf between rich and poor and the middle class that's been left behind. What won him over to Obama was his non-ideological approach to issues and strong cast of bipartisan advisers, which he pointedly says is a break with the Bush administration.

But the most powerful part of his eight-minute monologue Monday was a devastating, and obviously tortured, indictment of the Republican Party he still calls home:

"The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming.

"And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts."

Unfortunately, the Iowan's measured and thoughtful soliloquy was drowned out by cable's talking heads and skipped by the networks, although once-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman's GOP coming-out party next week will likely net great fanfare. Pundits are praying he puts on the same kind of loopy show that Dixiecrat Zell Miller did at the 2004 RNC that spooked small children and family pets.

But the reality is that Lieberman, though an eloquent and impassioned McCainiac, is swimming against a tide where Republicans are fleeing the party in droves. And the country is moving past the middle and gently leftward. Leach thinks it didn't have to be that way.

"If we had stayed true to our core principles, we could still be in control of Congress," he told me.

Leach, who considers Dwight D. Eisenhower to be the greatest GOP president of the 20th century, could have pushed back against the tide in '06 and probably hung on to his seat. But he nixed an anti-gay mailing and inflamed the religious right, who then worked against him. They're the same folks who call him a turncoat today.

Leach can still rattle off details about that Iowa City event 13 years ago, down to the obnoxious sign. Though the liberal college town is known for its sometimes raucous protests, he clearly didn't relish being the target. He wanted to dialogue with the demonstrators; they wanted to shriek slogans stolen from the '60s.

He deserved better then and he deserves more respect now. But being a statesman is often a thankless job.

Conduct unbecoming in McCainworld

During the last days before the Michigan primary, I stood next to Shane Farlin as he tentatively shuffled up the rope line at a John McCain rally in Battle Creek.

The U.S. Army specialist had lost his right eye in Iraq; his artificial iris was a glimmering American flag. I watched McCain's brown eyes lock on the 22-year-old's, seeming wholly unaware of the hordes waving signs and cameras all around him.

The former POW thanked Farlin for his service twice and listened to his problems with Veterans Affairs for several minutes. He gave him a top aide's cell phone number. I felt my breath catch at the intense exchange, where so much was left unsaid.

Farlin was clearly awestruck afterward, pledging to vote for McCain "without a doubt." I couldn't help but feel the same, especially after covering the focus-grouped affairs of Mr. Plastic, Mitt Romney, and the televangelist-smooth tent revivals of Mike Huckabee.

That was McCain at his best - refreshingly dignified and empathetic. He proved himself the embodiment of service to this country, a notion that has become disturbingly quaint in modern times.

Lately, however, we've been seeing McCain at his worst. When it comes to Barack Obama, he's petulant and personal, seemingly unable to come to grips that he's battling a cool wunderkind 25 years his junior who only recently set foot in the Senate. The same frustration is evident in hiss ever-loyal, bickering staff, starting with his surrogate son and speech writer, Mark Salter.

In a flash of that trademark candor, Johnny Mac would probably volunteer that his raccoon-eyed, unemployed blogger daughter, Meghan, meets the commander-in-chief test better than his rival.

That bitterness, which infected Hillary Clinton (and we all know how well that turned out) won't help him any with voters. Once a candidate seems to lose his mirth and perspective (Al Gore), it's a turn-off, often a fatal one.

Because as much as Americans claim to vote on the issues, personality often trumps all.

There's the non-stop drumbeat questioning Obama's patriotism (and the defensive, disingenuous denials) that's become the stomach-churning hallmark of McCain's campaign for the last few months. The goal is to make this election a referendum on Obama, not President Bush, because the Republicans can read the polls.

The attack machine is sharpest with surrogates like Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who seems gripped by a somewhat understandable cathartic need to stick it to the party that all but abandoned him in 2006.

This race is "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put his country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate that has not," Joltin' Joe declared recently.

Sheesh. Hard to remember Lieberman actually encouraged that ungrateful, unqualified kid to run.

Obama rightly fired back in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention this week:

"But one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same."

But McCain wasn't about to back down, sniffing that Obama was getting "a little testy on this issue. ... Let me be clear: I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment." Then the Republican launched into his deceitful spiel that Obama doesn't want to win the war in Iraq.

The assault ratchets up in the blogosphere and right-wing media, of course, where reasoned intellectuals like Michael Savage gently raise if Obama is a terrorist. Oh, and he's black, if you haven't noticed. You know, like gang-bangers and Kwame Kilpatrick. Just sayin'.

McCain has done precious little to denounce any of this, shrugging, "You gotta have a sense of humor" about the latest smear book on Obama by white supremacist sympathizer Jerome Corsi. In July, McCain shelled out $19 million in mostly negative ads (only $7 million less than he raised) and he is indeed closing the gap in polling.

But at what price? Has he resigned himself to run a campaign that falls far short of the honor and statesmanship he professes just to win? Sorry, John, that ain't putting your country first. I'd say that's conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman.

The erudite David Brooks paints McCain as a victim of circumstance, having little choice amid the media hoopla around the Chosen One. My dear Republican friends tell me Obama's a thin-skinned lightweight who's not up to the job. In other words, the ends justify the means.

That's all well and good, only they didn't feel that way in South Carolina in 2000 when Bush ran a vicious whisper campaign about McCain's black baby (his adopted Bangladeshi daughter) that effectively knocked him out.

Now John McCain proudly says he'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war. It's time to prove it by running a race befitting of his character.

So much for the safe choice

Let's pause for a minute amidst the scatty cacophony to John Edwards' affair with his flighty "videographer," who no reasonable person would pay to film paint dry.

There's an irony here that's been completely overlooked - and I don't mean the obvious one that the multimillionaire thought he could get away with schtupping the help and still become the Leader of the Free World in an age of 24/7 media.

No, it's the fact that the down-home son of a millworker with his lazy Carolinian drawl (and lily-white skin) was supposed to be the safe bet for the Democrats. Jaded liberals squawked that America would never go for the ballsy chick or the black dude, so you'll vote for Edwards and you'll like it.

That's the best we can hope for. America's just not ready and all that.

Of course, folks in Iowa didn't listen to the conventional wisdom and the rest is history. But even after Barack Obama secured the nomination, a pundit here or there would sourly mumble that he was floundering because of that black thing, needling that John Edwards would be blowing John McCain out of the water.

Which amounts to a nice theory for political science students to contemplate in between Jager bombs at the bar. Those of us in the real world rejected the Plastic One because we didn't know who he was (even after being a few thousand votes in Ohio away from the vice presidency in '04) and didn't trust him.

After observing and interviewing Edwards at political events since 2003, I can say that he was heavy on sheen and light on substance. He said all the right things, repeating Democratic talking points in his artful, aw-shucks way. The father of three was great at kissing babies.

But there was no way His Contrivance seemed ready to take that 3 a.m. phone call. (Although I would vote for him to play the president on tee-vee. His coif is killer).

So maybe that's why few of us were shocked at his revelations that yes, he actually did dally with Rielle Hunter, who still sports '80s Madonna hair as a nod to her days as a coked-out New York clubhopper.

John Edwards lie? Stop the presses.

In a truly classy move, the pretty boy heaved his party girl-cum-paramour under the bus ("I didn't love her") and stressed that he timed his infidelity between his wife's bouts with cancer, something the brilliant Maureen Dowd skewered as being "oncologically correct."

To think that Elizabeth Edwards (who Rielle sniffed "didn't give off good energy") will have to spend her last years shuddering from this humiliation is just vile. Monsieur Edwards claims he told his family, which presumably includes his eldest daughter, Cate, a Harvard law student. Maybe his other two kids, 8 and 10, can find out as a Christmas present later after Mommy's passed away.

Edwards, who nailed himself in an ABC interview as a narcissist, has cringingly insisted there's nothing more for anyone to say as "I've stripped myself bare." Well, there are questions of the paternity of Hunter's daughter and if this was the first time the senator strayed.

But that's just a measure on the hypocrisy scale. It's the political implications that I'm interested in.

Just think for a moment if he were the nominee. This would be game-over for the Dems. You can argue that McCain dumping his disfigured wife for an Anheuser heiress 18 years his junior would become an issue. Perhaps. But that was almost 30 years ago and all we see now is silver-maned Cindy, doting mother of seven.

We can have a robust debate whether extramarital affairs should have any place in political discourse. I vote no, but I'm a journalistic curmudgeon, in spite of my Gen X birthday and the fact that I'm paid to blog. But Edwards' tryst is out there (and how). Given the appalling scenario with his wife's metastatic cancer, I don't really feel like doing him any favors by ignoring the political fallout.

The reality is that this kind of salacious scandal is ruinous for politicians, especially when it reinforces the very doubts people had about the candidate in the first place. Edwards knows this, having watched Bill Clinton implode (and castigating him for it).

Which is another crisis likely averted by not picking Hillary as the nominee, besides the fact that she could unite the right in a way McCain never will. Who knows when Bill's next bimbo eruption would strike, not to mention his less sexy, but far more troubling dealings in Dubai. That's the real reason Clinton's not on Obama's veep short list, not bad blood after a bruising primary.

When it comes to arrogant politicians' penchant for extracurricular activities, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And so a skinny black guy with big ears, a funny name (and the magazine-cover perfect family) is not only the voters' choice, but has turned out to be the Dems' safest bet for presidency.

Who would have thunk it.

For whom the center holds

When I was in Washington last week, I strolled over to gaze at the White House because it knocks me out every time.

A mom asked her blonde ponytailed daughter what the building was.

"That's where Barack Obama lives," the 5-year-old said matter-of-factly, before requesting ice cream.

I wondered if her confidence had anything to do with the fact that she doesn't get viral e-mails smearing him as a radical black Muslim, or read Daily Kos where posters want to try him for treason for voting for the FISA bill or any editorial page gasping about his unprecedented shift to the center.

In this lull between Obama securing the nomination in early June and accepting it at the Invesco Field in Denver in late August, his campaign is doing some soul-searching to find the right general election pitch. It hasn't been the smoothest transition in terms of messaging and fundraising - and the 24-hour news cycle hasn't been his friend.

Any misstep from the minor (like that tacky presidential seal) to the boneheaded (volunteers removing head-scarved women from sitting behind Obama at a Detroit event) is covered in breathless detail. I frequently open agitated e-mails from readers determined that the latest flap will be the end of him, although I never seem to receive them when John McCain confuses Sunnis with Shiites (again).

Want me to spill the beans on the super-secret pundit code? We don't know what will stick and what won't. We need a little distance to see if a gaffe will congeal into a pattern (the Howard Dean scream underscoring the unhinged persona theme) or if it will be a one-day story.

Not that this is not how campaigns should be covered, mind you. But it is the glossy, issue-free infotainment bent of cable news that drives perception and polls far more than the Economist's thoughtful analysis of the candidates' jobs programs.

There's no time for reflection in the frenzied rhythm of the election cycle, which goes something like this: Candidate's surrogate says something stupid; media and operatives feign outrage; surrogate apologizes; media declare this will kill the candidate's chances; the other candidate's surrogate picks up the baton the next day; the cycle continues.

And Barack Obama is usually at the epicenter of the storm.

That's because this election is all about Obama, as the kindergartner outside the White House can see. Even McCain knows that. His real hope is that "hope" will flame out and he'll be the safe, practical choice bolstered by his lifetime of service.

Now would be a good time for Johnny Mac to march into the vacuum. There are some promising signs, like his long-awaited economic speech Thursday in Michigan, home of 8.5 percent unemployment (go Wolverine State!). He's shaken up his campaign and made it more centralized, adding an office in the strategic location of Farmington Hills in vote-rich Oakland County.

But even during the primary, McCain's campaign was never on fire. Part of that is it's hard to whip up much excitement for any Republican during what's clearly another good Democratic year. But the maverick has failed to excite and inspire people like he did eight years ago, partly because he's ditched a lot of his core reform message.

Instead, McCain has morphed into the GOP standard-bearer (inviting unflattering comparisons to the bumbling Bob Dole '96 campaign). He's spent a lot of time talking up conservative judges and courting religious right leaders (some so radical like the Rev. John Hagee that it calls his judgment into question). He's also flip-flopped on the Bush tax cuts and unbelievably on torture, after spending more than five years in the Hanoi Hilton.

We hear little of campaign finance, other than to rightly criticize Obama's opt-out. His message on alternative energy is a quasi-lurch to the left, but it's ultimately unconvincing given his thin record on the issue and eagerness to jump on the gas-tax holiday and drill for the fun of it bandwagon.

While diehard McCainiacs have eagerly awaited his move to the middle, it's been Obama making a play for independents, while trying to blunt the right's traditional attacks.

His shifts haven't been that pronounced, to be honest, other than his blatant about-face on expanded government surveillance powers. But hell hath no fury like liberal bloggers scorned, so Obama is taking his share of hits right now. Welcome to the club, Barack - you've passed the IQ test and it's a good place to be.

His measured position on troop withdrawals in Iraq didn't translate well into sound bites, but means we'll be less hasty in pulling out than we were jumping in. And not supporting a mental health exception for so-called partial birth abortion - a procedure that should only be performed when the mother's health is in danger - is just common sense.

"The center cannot hold," poet William Butler Yeats once wrote. And while that's prescient in party politics and often legislation, campaigns contradict that maxim.

Modern presidential elections are determined by the center - that 40 percent of us who can't swallow the rigidity and pettiness of either party line.

If McCain continues to cede this ground to Obama, it's game over.

Puerile patriot games

PHILADELPHIA - Fourth of July has never really tripped my patriotic trigger.

Even as a kid, I found the star-spangled napkins, cookies and God forbid, swim trunks garish and empty. Most holiday barbecues I've attended over the years have featured good burgers, beer and the requisite fireworks and exactly zero discussion of America, Thomas Jefferson or the Declaration of Independence.

Now I get that I'm a history geek and most people are content on a rare day off to grouse about the Tigers' trades instead of debate whether property should have been listed as an inalienable right.

But I do deeply love this country. And it makes me a bit queasy to have such a disconnect with that on Independence Day of all days.

When I am filled with absolute wonder and gratitude for our still nascent nation is while reading tomes like Tom Paine's "Common Sense" or David McCullough's "1776," so I've spent many a Fourth with my nose buried in a book.

And there's nothing quite like stepping foot in defining landmarks to make our brief history hit home. So for the past three years, I've observed the birth of our nation at Fort Mackinac, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and now the City of Brotherly Love.

Standing in the sweltering silver-swathed room where the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration 232 years ago today, I thought it wouldn't be such a bad thing if every American was required to spend the holiday at a museum or significant site before kicking back with a brewski. It isn't a substitute for teaching civics in school like in the days of old, of course, but it's a start.

Given the popularity of Williamsburg, Valley Forge, the National Mall in Washington, Salem, Mass., and The Henry Ford in Dearborn, there's hope yet.

What gives me pause, however, is that patriotism has become a hot topic in the presidential race when most citizens can't name five signers of the Declaration or when most did so (Aug. 2, 1776).

My first reaction when this cropped up during the Democratic primary was that this was one of those idiotic non-issues that would disappear in a few news cycles. With spiking unemployment, $4-plus gas and war in two countries (three counting Iran, according to Sy Hersh) who cares if Barack Obama dons a flag pin?

But then Bill Clinton weighed in about the glorious matchup between his wife and John McCain, musing, "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election between two people who loved this country."

And Michelle Obama's remark that, "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback" continues to be reverberate in the right-wing echo chambers online and on the airwaves as proof that she's an angry black woman who hates America.

In her less-than-finest hour, Cindy McCain attempted to furrow her tightly lifted brow and cattily responded, "I'm very proud of my country." Well, isn't that special.

I think first lady Laura Bush got it about right when she discussed the pressure of being a new public figure and said Michelle probably meant she was "more proud." It's refreshing to see a little grace in politics.

What this really comes down to is trust. That's what the Swift Boat ads were about with John Kerry - could we really trust his military record and his ability to lead the country in an age of global terror? Three years after 9/11 (and a year of his conflicted, lumbering campaign), we got our answer.

So do we trust the half-white, half-black, Hawaii- and Indonesia-raised son of a Kenyan Muslim and Kansan Christian? Is he American enough? Or is Obama the Other who couldn't possibly be entrusted to lead our nation?

That is the crass question. And in the blogosphere and viral e-mails, it's put in shockingly racist and bigoted terms.

In case you thought our politics couldn't sink any lower, the left netroots have started to strike back, questioning McCain's flag-waving credentials. This, of course, is one of his unmitigated strengths, as a storied Vietnam War hero Americans trust by double digits to better handle terrorism.

But bloggers like Julie Powers on MichiganLiberal.com are willing to swan dive into the cesspool and actually slander McCain's heroism.

"So John, how exactly does sitting on your ass in a POW camp for five years (and then returning only to cheat on your disabled wife and dump her for the Budweiser Barbie) exactly make you such a military expert?" asks Powers, who does PR for gay rights Equality Now group, which I doubt sanctions her inflammatory rhetoric.

OK, then, Jules. Let's throw your butt in the Hanoi Hilton, break your arms and subject you to psychological trauma even worse than reading your own posts and then we'll talk.

On this Fourth of July, I suggest we take a much-needed break from letting the fringes dictate the debate. And let's celebrate our country, which gives people the freedom to say whatever they want, no matter how asinine.

Mighty Mac adrift in Michigan

Four years ago, a gaggle of grandmothers emerged from a University of Illinois building, breathlessly chirping about a U.S. Senate forum.

A cerise-scarfed lady spotted a placard for a hopeful and asked if he was The One.

"That's not our guy," she was told. "Our candidate is the one whose name no one can pronounce."

I recall glancing at her "Obama for Senate" button. Good luck, this hard-bitten political reporter thought before hurrying back to the library to finish researching an obscure local history project.

Five months later, I watched Barack Obama unfurl his fabled '04 Democratic National Convention speech in which he deftly defined the "hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too."

That was the first time I realized I'd underestimated Mr. Obama. Then came the Illinois senator's upset win in lily-white Iowa in January, 11 straight victories after Super Tuesday and knockout blow on the last primary night, June 3.

John McCain needs to learn that lesson - stat. The Vietnam POW clearly disdains Obama, a showboating whippersnapper out to steal his maverick mantle from under him. Pay your dues, kid, McCain practically seethes every time he spits out his name.

But there's another dynamic here - he clearly didn't want to face Obama. Lying below McCain's honey-coated praise for Hillary Clinton (and slams on the sexist press) was the stone-cold political calculation that she would shore up the right-wing base in a way he never could and be easier to vanquish.

Which is about right. Obama tops all the polls, even after Hillary bloodied him but good.

So one has to wonder if the Arizona senator was in denial about his inevitable opponent. Because what I want to know is: What was John McCain doing for the four months between when he clinched the GOP nomination and Obama sealed his?

And what's he doing now?

McCain had a tremendous advantage. And as far as I can see, he blew it - especially here in Michigan. It's a dream come true for a candidate to be able to define himself. To have the stage to yourself for months while your rival's teeth are being knocked in daily by a member of his own party is like a nonstop ecstasy trip for politicians.

Instead, McCain puttered around the county here and there and flipped burgers for Mitt Romney and other vice presidential wannabes in Sedona. His less than breakneck stump speed did little to evoke an image of gusto and vigor the 71-year-old needs to convey, especially to combat an oratorical Adonis who hasn't even broken a sweat after 18 straight months of barnstorming.

Since the Jan. 15 Michigan primary, McCain has done a couple of fundraisers and two events here, including a baffling May 7 speech on child pornography at Oakland University. On the list of top 1,000 issues for Michiganders, kiddie porn ranks about 1,263,000th.

The economy fills up slots one through 900 at least, as we've just hit 8.5 percent unemployment, a number we last saw when George W.'s daddy was in the Oval Office.

These are things the crackerjack Mitten State campaign team of Chuck Yob & Son should be telling McCain, but they're too busy hurling nukes at state GOP Chair Saul Anuzis to care. The Yob Doctrine dictates that it doesn't matter if you win or lose elections, but how many of your Republican brethren you can settle scores with by napalming them along the way.

McCain's campaign consists of two generic TV ads, as he seems utterly determined to lose Michigan at any cost. He won't even be back here until mid-July for yet another fundraiser.

In contrast, Obama, who completely ignored us for a year with our botched Democratic primary, has come back a-courtin' with a hundred red roses in hand on three different occasions in the last month.

"I'm so sorry, baby," the current Us Weekly cover boy croons to crowds, savvily hitting every sweet spot in the state from Troy to Grand Rapids. "I know the economy's been so bad. Let me make it up to you with John Edwards, Al Gore and $150 million in research pork."

As for the ground game, Obama is everywhere in the Great Lakes State, with 50 events last weekend from the U.P. to Downriver.

So there's little surprise that Mighty Mac sunk 8 points among independents in Rasmussen Michigan polls over the last month and he's trailing nationally, as well. He's flipped on offshore and arctic drilling and called last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

How this crass pandering is supposed to snare Democrats and independents is beyond me.

Perhaps the strategy is to wait for Obama's star to combust over the Rev. Wright or some other ghastly gaffe. Phenoms can't last forever, after all. Slow and steady experience wins the race.

Which was pretty much what Nixon said about Kennedy in '60. And we all know how that turned out.

How Hillary failed feminism

For the first time in my life, I felt embarrassed to call myself a feminist.

I realized that as Hillary Clinton gave her narcissistic non-concession speech Tuesday, which should have marked the end of a historic campaign for women everywhere. But I want to send out my heartfelt thanks to her, Geraldine Ferraro, EMILY's List and New York NOW and Harriet Christian for doing what right-wing blowhards never could.

Lady Hillary sounded only slightly less sour and a smidge saner than dear Harriet, the Clinton supporter raving outside Saturday's Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting made instantly famous on YouTube.

"The Democrats are throwing the election away! And for what? An inadequate black male?" Christian cackled, adding on Fox News that "99 percent of blacks don't even know why they're voting for" Barack Obama.

That kind of racism, once jaw-dropping, is now par for the course for cutthroat Clintonistas.

Harriet was only one of a motley crew of bitter white women screaming that Obama was a "socialist" leading an "anti-woman cult." All the blind rage about "massive disenfranchisement" was over Clinton losing four whole delegates (two, since they were halved) from my state of Michigan.

I kid you not.

But it's easy to say sayonara to reality when your candidate has. Most days, Hillz lavishes more praise on John McCain that Obama, whom she again declared less qualified than herself after he clinched the nomination Tuesday. Not that she would gracefully concede, as she probably banished calculators, as well as TVs in the Baruch College bunker she holed herself up in.

How ironic is it for the wannabe feminist-in-chief to have adopted the persona of "Math is tough" Barbie?

Clinton seemed determined to string out her self-immolated campaign, make Obama sweat and ding him even more, until boatloads of her Capitol Hill colleagues told her to hit the road Wednesday. True to form, she was shocked, still expecting her loyal subjects to fuel a last-minute comeback, as is the Clinton birthright.

Hillary never could own up to her own failings in her campaign - the arrogance, absurdly bloated adviser salaries and lack of strategy after Super Tuesday. And she certainly could never acknowledge Baby Barack's strengths - superb organization, fundraising prowess and oratorical mastery.

No, it was sexism that got her in the end.

How is anyone buying this? Our heroine was the undisputed frontrunner as wife of a popular former two-term president who's run the party for 15 years, with a $109 million personal fortune to boot. The primary system was cannily crafted by cronies like the aptly monikered Harold Ickes to ensure a swift Clintonian coronation.

And when she started to lose, she viciously bludgeoned Obama, aided by surrogates like Gerry Ferraro whose race-baiting rhetoric resembled that of toothless Southern hicks in the Jim Crow era.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, Clinton's strategy came down to trying to nakedly engineer an Obama meltdown. She couldn't just pray for another Rev. Wright; she had to show all those "hardworking white Americans" the colossal error they were making to go with the Kenyan-Kansan (and mess with the queen).

So when she let fly her musing on Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, it was a telling glimpse into her Machiavellian psyche that seemed almost wistful, as though a bullet in Barack's brain was her only road to the White House.

It wasn't ideal, but she'd take it. Politics is a bloodsport, after all.

And somehow Obama, that "skinny black guy with big ears and a funny name," as he describes himself with the kind of self-deprecation Clinton is allergic to, defied all odds.

He went off script and beat her. Talk about historic.

As for Clinton, she mangled her moment in history. Feminism didn't fail her; she failed feminism.

The melodramatic hand-wringing ("Now we'll never have a woman president!") is ridiculous and an insult to talented female politicians across the country, many of whom pointedly backed Obama.

We will. It just won't be Hillary - not now.

Once upon a time, I counted Hillary Rodham Clinton a role model as a champion high school debater mulling law school. Having a first lady with a career was about three decades behind, I thought, never figuring out why she dropped the idea as quickly as her maiden name. In the end, I decided I hated money, hence my esteemed career as a writer.

And while I owe generations of women who came before me a debt of gratitude, I am profoundly tired of the identity politics wars that have decimated the left for a half-century. I am sophisticated enough to know the narrative of history is not gender (nor race); it is multifaceted and broad, terrible and triumphant.

If you don't get that, you don't get anything.

So when Clinton lauded herself Tuesday for launching a campaign that inspired parents to tell their daughters, "See, you can be anything you want to be," I tittered at her trademark vanity at first.

But she's right. May they grow up to be far more honorable leaders than she.

Obama checks McCain in Michigan

WARREN - John McCain left the door ajar in Michigan last week with a lackluster town hall - and Obama busted right through it with his own here on Wednesday.

Fresh off a walloping in West Virginia on Tuesday, Obama hit Macomb County to talk trade and jobs with those elusive Reagan Democrats. He'd obviously had a heart-to-heart with former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, the patron saint of organized labor who endorsed him last week and started a stampede of superdelegates.

By the end of the day, no one was mentioning the Mountain State and Michigan was on everyone's lips. It was a brilliant tactical move.

For the presumptive Democratic nominee, Macomb is the mother of all political symbols, crammed with blue-collar workers aloof to his charm and even hostile after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal.

McCain blew his chance to shore up support in the Wolverine State on May 7 with a rambling speech on child pornography and human trafficking in Rochester Hills.

But Obama got that it's all about the economy, baby.

He ditched the soaring rhetoric, long speeches and stadium crowds for an invitation-only town hall meeting for 200 at Macomb Community College.

Obama obliterated Hillary Clinton's hokey critique that he's "all hat and no cattle," outlining detailed plans for jobs, energy, health care, manufacturing, trade agreements and education, like a $150 billion investment over 10 years in clean energy.

"People are anxious about the future and rightfully so," said Obama, his barely-blue sleeves symbolically rolled up.

He even gave a shout-out to Michigan's 21st Century Jobs Fund, saying we should "replicate that all across the country."

He won over folks like Dave Sahlaney, a 67-year-old shuttle driver who was just laid off from St. John Macomb-Oakland Hospital. The Warren grandfather of nine voted for Clinton in the primary and frankly says working-class and white voters have reservations about Obama. But he thinks the senator can win them over.

"He's a real straight-talker; he hits on issues that affect all Americans," Sahlaney said. "I'm disappointed he doesn't go personal with Hillary Clinton's attacks on him, but I respect him for it."

Then Obama capped it off with rock-star rally for 15,000 in Grand Rapids, where John Edwards, the highest-profile "hardworking white American" (as Clinton recklessly described her base) flashed his trademark toothy grin and endorsed him. Bonior's imprint was there again, as Edwards' former campaign manager.

"I felt guilty about not campaigning here," Obama grinned at the crowd, which started lining up more than 12 hours early. "... I decided that in my first full day in Michigan that I wouldn't be fooling around, the same old thing."

I couldn't help but think of Clinton mocking Obama's message of hope, back in February when people still took her and her campaign seriously.

"The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect," the empress brayed in a singsong tone.

And lo, that is indeed what appeared to happen to both Obama and Michigan this week.

It's ironic that Obama, whose name wasn't even on the ballot, is finally bringing a positive glow to the state, as opposed to the Democratic primary hatched by U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell that only elicited ridicule. Maybe that's why Dingell appeared so dour in Warren, but it could just be because the state party's girl seems down for the count.

One thing is clear: If Obama wins Michigan after a yearlong absence, he'll have Bonior to thank.

Let's not forget that the frontrunner's last foray here was an admirable but combative speech at the Detroit Economic Club on the Big Three's obstinacy on fuel-economy standards. On Wednesday, Obama wisely pivoted, praising their strides in hybrids and vehicle quality while subtly slamming the Bush administration for throwing manufacturers to the wolves of the global economy.

Obama vowed to spend "every day in the White House fighting for you," ending his Warren speech on a note of humility: "I hope you guys will give me the chance."

His Michigan coming-out parties looked like Bonior checking Chuck Yob, McCain's co-chair who's consistently bungled operations here, starting with a 9-point primary loss. With the Democrats' mangled contest, the state was the GOP's to win, but Yob cares only about wooing the far right and West Michigan.

Obama, who sports the finest political operation since the Kennedys, didn't even bother sending three scraggly college kids to keep hope alive here. That was a big misstep, which will cost him some Mitten State delegates. All that changed last weekend with his drive to recruit 1 million volunteers, including an electric event in Detroit.

Bonior acknowledged Obama has ground to make up, but assured me "he'll be coming back on a regular basis." Smart man.

If it comes down to Bonior vs. Yob in Michigan, I'd bet the farm the state stays blue.