I don't see Obama in the Apollo Creed role. Remember Creed became a close friend of Rocky. I don't see this in the real world version. Perhaps the Mr. T character Clubber Lang? Can't you see McCain taunting Obama with, "you ain't so bad..." taking blow after blow and then drilling the upstart?

I still prefer to hold out the possibility of potential future friendship. After all, we are all Republicans--we are all Palinistas.

Obama's more like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV because he hates America.

Obama as Apollo Creed? Obama as Clubber Lang? WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!! Apollo Creed was the World Champion; he DID something. Even Clubber Lang was a real fighter. In any boxing analogy, Obama would be the glass-jawed prettyboy with the mafia goons who try to intimidate his opponent into giving up.

Some caller on the Dennis Miller show did quip that Sarah Palin did more than break the glass ceiling; she also broke Obama's glass jaw! In this case, if we are looking for mafia goons we'd better keep an eye out for what the Clinton's are up to these days. One possible unforseen effect of the Palin nomination is that we just gave the Clintons a great reason to take seriously their efforts on behalf of Obama. Hillary's got a longer shelf life than 8 years and, anyway, they might need that much time to take down Sarah before '16.

If Sarah Palin can be vice president and be cast to the tune of Daniel Boone and Rocky then why can't women take on combat roles? And notice that there is no good answer to this question. If you say: why not? this annoys an already marginalized group and if you say that intense physical jobs are by nature more suited to men, well then you have some of an answer for why men are falling behind in college graduation rates. Which is why it is instructive that the view of Alaska as frontier is captured by Ice Road truckers and Dangerous Catch, men doing physical labor in defiance of nature. That the beauty queen became governor is thus an indication that such government work is paper pushing beneath manly aspiration.

It would be in a certain sense be strange that most men aspire to excel in sports and physical activities while women take over paperwork, executive leadership and governance.

I see no reason not to be clear about what breaking the glass ceilling means. When demographic facts concerning law school admissions are coupled with the promise that Palin will someday be on the top of the Republican ticket... republicans are promising in effect that the old veteran McCain will no longer be representative. The old guard will pass. And what is the real change you can believe in? Well the women will take power, and men will be stuck doing manual labor. To break the glass ceilling in this sense means to encourage more of the same. Only in this sense do I grant to liberals the idea that opposition to Obama is based upon racism. If the promise of Obama is in part that he can save black culture (along the path already begun by the woman Oprah) by in effect encouraging more african americans to aim higher, then overt opposition to this intended effect would constitute racism.

The question then is to what extent Obama and Palin act in the capacity of glass ceilling crashers primarily as role models.

On one level one could measure the proposals of Barrack Obama and find them lacking, but this is a different calculation from the intangible question concerning if he is capable of spuring hope and bringing motivation. In other words what if the promise of Obama is backed not just by the policy of Obama, but by a renewed and invigorated commitment held by his followers, one that they are willing to back with action and not just words. In other words since you political science experts put stock in words like "momentum"/"rallying the base"/breaking glass ceillings" what is the carryover (not in terms of slight EV shifts) but in terms of being a motivating force within society?

If this depression is not purely "economic" then does a Barrack Obama presidency spur the economy in ways not measured conventionally?