Obama's critics are right that the Democrats were in bed with Fannie and Freddie, and fought harder than the Enron auditors to keep passengers calm while the ship went down. In fairness, however, you have to understand their motive.

Fannie and Freddie performed an important function in making housing available to the poor -- a societal choice we made several years ago in lieu of more bricks and mortar for public housing "projects", and/or outright purchase of aging housing stock by the government.

It is easy for the Wall Street Journal to rail against Fannie and Freddie, as well as their Democratic protectors, but they must ask: without home ownership, what is their alternative? Hint: they don't have one.

It is too much to expect John McCain, who admits to not understanding the economy, to get his arms around the big picture above and reduce it to a sell-able 30 second sound byte. It is also too much to expect Obama to be candid in acknowledging his party's responsibility for the mess.

As for the 800 pound bogeyman -- deregulation -- it too is part of the problem. But there again, one has to ask: if you tighten up the regs so the lenders won't make risky loans, where do the people go who fail to qualify? That, my friends, is the ultimate reason the next president will preside over . . . a new round of deregulated, risky, low income mortgages. Ain't democracy grand?

I increasingly agree that McCain 2000 is a completely different candidate from the man of 2008. I am less sure, however, that he is going to lose.

We can look, on one hand, at lovable moderate losers, from Ford in '76 to Dole in '96. We can also see, in George H.W. Bush, a moderate who changed positions on abortion, chose a controversial conservative running mate, and hit his opponent under the belt repeatedly with racially tinged attacks. All of those things led to . . . victory.

Does today's media loathe the new McCain any more than it detested the Willy Horton ads or the trips to flag factories? Was its "coverage" of Dan Quayle's stint in the National Guard materially different from its "coverage" of Sarah Palin's teenage daughter? (Both led to media wails for the "Eagleton option" in the midst of the RNC).

McCain's biggest problem may be that he keeps reverting back rhetorically to the '00 model at the least opportune times, like his muttering about bipartisanship and reaching the across aisle during the debate. Doing so makes him sound conflicted and dull, when he should be punching below the belt -- playing to win. We'll just have to see.

I hear the word "cynical" thrown around a lot in describing Sarah Palin. The word also had some coinage back in 1988. I recall Peter Jennings stating ruefully that Dan Quayle was chosen as VP for the "basest, most cynical reasons."

In the case of Quayle, people may not remember this, but there was a big reported "gender gap" running against Bush (the fact that an opposite, male gender gap was running against Dukakis was never mentioned), and the pre-selection Quayle was touted as something of a Robert Redford Republican. I remember Sam Donaldson saying on ABC: Bush might just pick him to appeal to the ladies. So, that's what Jennings seemed to mean by base and cynical.

Now, with Palin, you could say it's cynical to appeal to the "evangelical base." But that is sort of like saying it was cynical for Kennedy to pick LBJ to appeal to Texas, or Nixon picking Agnew to pick off border states from Wallace, or Obama choosing Biden to appeal to those who cheat in college or plagarize speeches (sorry, I couldn't resist). You get the point. Every nominee appeals to someone.

Is it cynical because she is a woman? If so, I remember a lot of media types saying in 1984 that Geraldine could pick off Republican women on the basis of identity politics. It was called strategy, not cynicism. It didn't work of course, but no one knew it wouldn't when she was selected.

Long story short, please help me define "cynicism" in this context. Is it something other than: "we don't like the conservative." What would a non-cynical selecton of someone like Palin look like, seriously?

Gee, sorry to give offense.

I would call Dole '96 and McCain '00 moderate in comparison to Goldwater '64 and Reagen '76. You are right that after 1980, differences between "moderate" and "conservative" Republicans are more one of tone than of substance. They also are distinguished by how nasty they fight.

Recall the '96 VP debate when one of the first questions asked of Jack Kemp was what he thought of Clintonesque ethics, and he said he had no opinion? That was not so much moderate, as pathetic, but it certainly earned him media chits as a "decent and honorable man" -- unlike the dirty bastards who actually win. McCain '08 is fighting like its 1988, which is why his MSM treatment is so much crappier than it was before.

Oh, come on. You are kidding yourself if you think these troubador performers have any brains. Look even at someone like Katie Couric, who reads cue cards and teleprompters for a living. She has already been fired from her anchor job -- she is on a slow walk out the door scheduled for 2009 -- and she sits on a high horse questioning whether others are qualified to do theirs. That said, Katie is actually an improvement over Dan Rather, who was too dense to realize his bogus Guard memos might make the internet and be instantaneously identified as frauds, even as his producer worked hand in hand with the Kerry campaign to coordinate their release with Kerry's press statements. These arrogant prigs really take the cake, time after time. I can't believe the country doesn't wise up to it, and discount their outlooks accordingly.