POST WATCH, PART II

The Post’s third Obama apologist, Marc Fisher, has a wonderful snark-filled entry (For Working Moms, ‘Flawed’ Palin Is the Perfect Choice) for the “Palin is Average” contest.

Eight working mothers from the Virginia Run development in Centreville went together to the Palin-McCain rally yesterday because Sarah Palin is "just like us." This is something new. Nobody ever accused Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan of being just like us.

Perhaps it's because they weren't snobs disdainful of the little people clinging to their Bibles and guns.

In this time of "American Idol," bedroom bloggers and the belief that experience, knowledge and education don't necessarily mean a whole lot, Palin is a symbol, a statement that anyone can make it if he or she really tries.

Isn’t that the American dream?

The crowd, which I counted at 8,000 but which police estimated at 23,000, gathered at Van Dyck Park in Fairfax City represented votes for John McCain but passion for Palin... [D]id the man who might be the next president know that hundreds would start streaming out of the park as soon as Palin finished speaking, leaving a noticeably sparser audience to hear from the top of the ticket?

Heh. Thanks, Marc, for reminding of us of the “The One.”

Think of whomever you consider the greatest presidents, and odds are, they were about as far as you can get from being like the rest of us. They tend to have come from wealth, power, fame, the pinnacle of our education system or all of the above.

Abraham Lincoln. Harry Truman. Lyndon Johnson.

In this hyperdemocratized society, the national conviction that anyone can succeed is morphing into a belief that experience and knowledge may almost be disqualifying credentials.

No, Marc. What is happening is that the nation has finally come to recognize that the elite – “those from wealth, power, fame, the pinnacle of our education system” - don’t have a lock on intelligence, courage, conviction, common sense, knowledge, or experience, for that matter.

Reader Rebecca F. Benner swallows the average meme whole. Lauding Fisher in the (9/13) Letters section she writes: “It astounds me that [just like me] is one of the qualities that most people desire most. After all, we do not want our doctors, lawyers, airline pilots or electricians to be just like us.” and “I want a president who is smarter, better educated, more even-tempered and far wiser than I am.”

Rebecca, there are differences between being trained, being smart, and being wise.

[UPDATE 9/13] Power Line links to a post by Steven F. Hayward:

Give 'em Hell, Sarah
Like Truman, a natural-born executive

Lurking just below the surface of the second-guessing about Sarah Palin's fitness to be president is the serious question of whether we still believe in the American people's capacity for self-government, what we mean when we affirm that all American citizens are equal, and whether we tacitly believe there are distinct classes of citizens and that American government at the highest levels is an elite occupation.

Exactly right.

POST WATCH

Part One of a continuing series (well, continuing until I can no longer stomach reading the Washington Post editorial page).

The Obama apology twins are back, whining through their lipstick.

Here’s EJ Dionne, Tiptoeing through the mud:

The campaign is a blur of flying pieces of junk, lipstick and gutter-style attacks.

The media bear a heavy responsibility because "balance" does not require giving equal time to truth and lies. So does McCain, who is running a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion.

and Eugene Robinson, Listening to the scream machine:

I hear McCain's amen chorus screaming, "Lipstick on a pig! Lipstick on a pig!" But they're well aware that Barack Obama was unambiguously talking about McCain's economic ideas, not his running mate. It seems incomprehensible that the McCain campaign would make so much noise about an allegation that clearly doesn't hold a drop of water -- until you realize that the noise is the whole point.

As long as people are talking about barnyard beauty tips, they're not talking about substance. Any day spent arguing about meaningless ephemera is a small but significant victory for a campaign that has nothing to say.

Uh, huh. Just who made the “lipstick on a pig” comment, anyway? Let’s be generous and assume that the lipstick comment was “unambiguously about McCain’s economic ideas” (a stretch) and Obama is half as smart as the Democrats think he is. Just how smart do you have to be to realize the implication of that comment when one-half your opponent’s team is female?

Back to E.J.:

Yes, Democrats are a gloomy lot, inclined to see ... the other side as tougher, meaner and more manipulative.

Tough? Well, yes, Republicans are tough. Progressives might be able to figure that out if they’d abandon their stereotype of red America as filled with gap-toothed hillbillies too stupid to look out for their own interests and look anew at the people who are actually building this great nation.

Mean? Well, if by “mean” Dionne infers that Republicans fight back with all the tools* at their command, then yes, I guess Republicans are “mean.”

But manipulative? Oh, come now, E.J. Hunters don’t manipulate their prey into a trap; they shoot straight for the heart.

So, yes, Democrats have a right to be gloomy.**

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*Sarcasm is a tool. So is humor. Both are more effective than obscenity and whining.

**Gotcha!