Excellent interview, Walter. I think you successfully took the temperature of the man. While some believe he burns hot and others say he's stone cold, I think you showed us that he's somewhere in the middle.

Hardly. Americans are anxious and uncertain about the meltdown in the financial markets. Hiding away in Washington to shuffle some papers is not the way to reassure them. Having an open and honest discussion about how the two tickets propose to right the economy is.

McCain's stunt only plays into the narrative -- which George Will articulated very effectively earlier this week -- that he's erratic and prone to risky decisions. (I'm looking at you, Sarah Palin.)

Sadly, this once honorable man has demonstrated that he simply doesn't have the temperament to be president.

At least this will give FOX News something to obsess about, now that Reverends Wright and Pfleger are dimming from memory and Hillary has played her last card. (We hope.)

Certainly one of the most positive results of this compromise -- which now effectively ends Hillary's hopes to secure the nomination in 2008 -- is that she will never have the opportunity to bring people like Harold Ickes to the White House. This guy is virtually a microcosm of everything that was wrong with Hillary's campaign: his flexible ethics, his tenuous grasp of the truth, and, above all, his inability to grasp how ridiculous his arguments sounded.

From Ickes to Howard Wolfson to Mark Penn to Tery McAuliffe, Hillary had a knack for hiring craven mediocrities who were completely oblivious to nasty things like facts and math. At least we never have to worry about her having the opportunity to assemble a cabinet or nominate Supreme Court justices.

Thank you, DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee. You've spared the country another eight years of incompetence.

For Democrats to conclude that Hillary is the stronger candidate, they would have to do the following:

1. Overlook the fact that her personal negatives are in the stratosphere and that this campaign has not done anything to improve her image.

2. Ignore the fact that all of her scandals and questionable financial dealings (and those of Bill) will not get reheated by the Republicans.

3. Forget that Hillary is the GOP's number one fund-raiser and could bring new life to a party that's been on life support. (Those Republicans haven't been participating in "Operation Chaos" simply for the fun of it.)

4. Believe that blacks -- who've been the party's most reliable voting bloc and have been deserting Hillary in droves -- will come back to the fold, even after her very racially-tinged campaign.

5. Assume that Hillary's so-called "experience" (including her false memories of sniper fire) will compare favorably to a three decade veteran of the Senate who is also a genuine war hero.

6. And, most sadly, turn their backs on an extraordinary new talent who has brought more new voters into the process, built more enthusiasm and raised more more money from more people (1.5 million contributors today, in fact) than any other candidate in history.

If Democrats can allow themselves these flights from reality, they richly deserve another electoral loss.

Just reading the comments here, you get a big taste of how deeply unpopular Bill Clinton has made himself during the course of this campaign. And rightfully so. He and Hillary have been unable to move past the nasty, epic battles of the 1990s that defined so much of his presidency and have conducted their campaign accordingly. Sadly, they've been tone deaf to the change in the electorate and the deeply felt desire to heal and move on. Employing a "kitchen sink" strategy to try and stop a candidate who clearly connects with voters in a way that no one has in at least a generation has only served to make the Clintons look small, mean and desperate.

Sure, there are still plenty of voters out there who respond to Bill because his administration looks so golden after seven years of George W. Bush, but increasingly the prospect of a Clinton restoration feels more like a Bush third term than an authentic break with the recent past.

...I think Obama's efforts to connect with working class voters may have just gotten easier since it was reported by politico.com last night that the Clintons -- in spite of their $109 million earnings -- have drawn an additional $8 million in taxpayer funded perks. (BTW, that's equal to what the other two living ex-presidents get combined.)

Joe Six-Pack might be willing to overlook the Clintons making obscene amounts of money for book deals and speaking engagements, but doing so while drawing millions in public support surely won't sit right.

The premise of this piece is so ludicrous that it barely warrants a response. The nominating process was agreed to by all the parties at the beginning and it's preposterous to start reapportioning the votes near the end of the process in order to reach a different result.

Senator Clinton had every opportunity to adjust her strategy to fit the realities of the contest. That she didn't shows that she was a poor manager -- and probably not ready on Day One.

As expected, this speech played right into Obama's core message of unity and getting past the partisan divide of yesterday. I think it was a slam dunk. He took a nasty racial debate and turned it on its head, voicing the concerns of both whites and blacks and challenging every American to move beyond the old divisions that have paralyzed the country for so long. He's completely changed the narrative.

I'm sure that the conservative fringe (Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Hewitt, Dobson, et al) will continue to snipe, but this was an extraordinary speech that will be recited for a generation. Only a hardcore cynic invested in continuing the politics of the last 20 years could find fault with it.