Oh, wait. . .

Someday a clever president will figure out that he (or she) will do better by talking less. Not This One.

If this story has legs on Sunday and Monday morning, watch for the stock market to rally. Which Obama really needs.

Cue Jon Lovitz: Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.

But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead, emphasizing that Proposition 8 was about marriage, not about attacking gay people, and about restoring into law an earlier ban struck down by the State Supreme Court in May.

“It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong — the less we refer to homosexuality, the better,” one of the ward training documents said. “We are pro-marriage, not anti-gay.”

Pardon the name dropping, but I asked George Will on Thursday whether he thought Newt would make a good chair of the RNC.

He visibly shuddered.

In other words, what we’re facing now isn’t just an economic crisis; it may also become a crisis of the family, a crisis that could have significant political and moral consequences. I don’t have to explain what could happen to parental authority when parents can’t provide for their children. And I don’t think that it’s adequate to say, for example, that people who can’t keep their homes in the face of this downturn probably shouldn’t have been in them in the first place. It’s perhaps true enough: many of them were bad credit risks. But more than their credit score is now at stake. If Democrats ride to their rescue with a statist rescue package, they will have accomplished a morally and politically significant result. If they come to be seen as conservators of the family, it will be Republicans who will be writing books about what’s the matter with Kansas. And the Kansans, God bless ‘em, might be right to look to the Democrats to protect the family from the vagaries of an undisciplined and threatening marketplace.

So while I might take some comfort from the prospect that today’s Obamaniacal politikids might grow up to be Palindrones or Jindalists or to have a Huckabee in their bonnets, I’m also worried that our current credit crisis might recast the political scene altogether. Both parties have a large stake in addressing the current economic insecurity of our middle class and working class families. Republicans should remember that the market ought to be a servant of the family, rather than its master, and that the moral fabric of the republic depends upon its continuing integrity.

I also wrote another longish rumination on the election, which is set to appear in the forthcoming issue of The City. (You can sign up for a free subscription on the page to which I’ve linked. There are plans to provide web access, but things haven’t yet proceeded to that point.)

Why doesn’t the feddle guvmint just buy up GM and Ford lock, stock, and barrell (and union contracts), and save the taxpayers money (at least for a while). I’m sure the feddle guvmint can run the auto industry at least as well as Amtrak and the Post Office.

Terrance Byrne
Matt Siders
John Presnall
Tom Moore
Sara Whitis

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"I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World."

This election was a lot like 1980 and 1932. The victories of Reagan and FDR were both repudiations of the clueless incumbent and affirmations of their personal qualities of leadership. 1936 and 1984 were ratifications of the CHANGE they were responsible for in the country's direction. Obama is clearly thinking BIG CHANGE that will be rewarded by a similarly positive reelection landslide.

But there is more to the story of motherly advice offered and motherly advice sought. There is also the story of the promised and not yet delivered assistance to Mrs. Clinton from the Obamas for her sizable campaign debt to vendors (and don’t even get me started on that topic!). This all adds yet another interesting dimension to the story and one wonders whether Mrs. Clinton would be equally eager to assist Mrs. Obama were such assistance not so desperately required. But one must assume that humanity would, in the end, prevail. Still . . . it makes for a different dynamic when one’s hand is outstretched.

Make no mistake about it: there must be something delicious for Mrs. Obama in seeking out this advice from Mrs. Clinton on the subject of being First Lady and raising kids in the White House when, according to every expectation of a year ago, it was to be her husband who would be coming to Mrs. Clinton (some time in the distant future) for advice about being President in the White House. How ironic (and also sad) that in the fullness of time, Hillary is to be regarded as expert in the one capacity for which she has demonstrated any real competence but for which she has voiced, on more than a few occasions, a not-so-veiled disdain. This one episode may illustrate the tragedy of Mrs. Clinton’s life: her burning ambition will serve to make her dissatisfied with the one thing that ought to be her glory and her epitaph: she has been a good mom.

As someone mentioned here yesterday, everyone should run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore to get a copy of Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man. One gushing reviewer called it "the finest history of the Great Depression ever written."

To fill the time as the attorneys were putting together the jury at the end of the long day, the judge (recently reelected to his second term on the bench) felt compelled to lecture us about this great country of ours. You see, he grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia (in the shadow of Mr. Jefferson’s University). From his house, he told us, he could see the Rotunda and Monticello. I’ll let go for a moment the fact that he told us that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in Charlottesville, but I can’t let go his claim, from the bench, that America finally sealed its greatness as a nation last Tuesday. I wonder how he would have filled the time if John McCain had been elected.

I should add that the judge was unopposed for reelection, and I doubt he’ll ever have opposition. I typically don’t mark the ballot when I know nothing about the person running for office. I don’t know whether I did it in his case or not last week. Next time, you can be certain that he won’t get my vote.

A bit further on in the article Kristol writes:

Obama was, naturally, asked about the promised-but-not-yet-purchased puppy at his press conference Friday. (If one were being churlish, one might say that it was typical of a liberal to promise the dog before delivering it. A results-oriented conservative would simply have shown up with the puppy without the advance hype.)

I don’t want to make too much out of the dog story . . . but I think it is illustrative of Obama’s ability and the GOP’s stunning lack of ability to connect with citizens (forget about voters) in a way that seeks to open up the path to friendship. Political friendships are built upon common interests and shared goals and political conflicts are begun because of a differences in one or the other or both. Obama will not be satisfied with merely coming out on top of this most recent political conflict. He wants to build a new and thoroughgoing political friendship that keeps him and his closest friends on top of that conflict for generations to come. Kristol suggests that leading GOP contenders consider bringing home puppies for their kids . . . Sure, fine. Bring home a dog if you want. But contrary to the old saw that "talk is cheap" I’d say that, in this case, that the result is cheap. Talking about it (and all things that open up the ties of friendship between themselves and those who don’t yet consider the GOP their home) is crucial. Talk in this instance is anything but cheap. It’s golden.