"David Brooks, August 2000:

'So I am planning to vote for George W. Bush because he is a nice guy. As a nice guy he will attract and retain the loyalty of outstanding administration officials, and together they will promote policies that are smarter and bolder than we ever would expect, just from looking at Bush himself. As a nice man, he will prove remarkably adept at working with Congress, with Democrats, with the media and with all the other different people you need to handle as president. He will set a tone of bonhomie that will grease the machinery of government; things will actually get done in Washington again.' "

Thank you for posting this amazing quote - made my day. I've been trying to identify the beating heart of David Brooks' slippery idiocy - this'll do.

Gotta be. If I was Sarah Palin, that's what I'd read.

McCain just wants to be president before he dies (don't we all!), and the rest of us are in the way. And that's really annoying.

'It's Over.'

And Palin's the nail in the coffin.

(Repeat until Nov. 5)

would be a great tragedy, if it wasn't such a farce.

McCain has abandoned any high ground left around him like one of his disposable jets. It's stunning to see someone who had at least a tenuous claim on being a straight-shooter go so hard and so fast to the dim side. McCain and Palin are neck-deep in the swamp. This is how an American hero acts? How a pious Christian makes her case?

The Democrats have a great candidate, a decent, intelligent man who knows how to fight fair, and yet is nobody's fool. Thanks to jebus for that.

beat McCain's Prevenge* any day. Smart guy, O, and sharp campaign.

(*Thanks to They Might Be Giants for the concept.)

You are COMPLETELY out to lunch. I've thought for years that you were an unreliable witness, but YIKES! To complain about Biden's smiles without even once hinting about Palin's down-low winking at the audience and hickster-drivel cranked up to 11.....Oh my goodness are you full of it. You are IN LUB, baby. L. U. B.

Camille, you say it isn't sexual, but your pen positively quivers. Amazon, my eye. You and Rich Lowry got Hit in the Futurehead with those funky little Starbursts, and you haven't come down yet. Maybe the Starbursts are like black holes, I don't know, but sweetie, get help.

PS: Madonna is not an icon anymore. You need deprogramming, seriously.

With all due respect to Ms. Didion's artistry, I'm not ready to aestheticize this election cycle so quickly, nor to dismiss race as a red herring. Both race and class still keenly have the power to hurt, powerfully, and the prospect of the first (partly) African-American being elected president seems hardly the occasion to elicit resigned and detached yawns.

I don't really need "stories" about financial hardship either, with ironic quotes or without - my parents are losing their retirement savings daily, as are millions of others, and they're hardly worrying about lipstick. They're not in a coma - they're in shock. Nor is Chris Matthews my idea of an effective bellwether of this moment, if his idea of an omen is Fred Thompson's scent.

This election may seem like another, and another, to those whose job it is to pass along disengaged assessments elegantly - but I dare say to many people it's as unlike others as they come, and it's deeply engaging. The fact that a man with the strangest name on the block may get elected, breaking a 232-year mold of waspish hegemony, is news. His grass-roots backing is news. Creationism throwing our diminished education system in high relief - that too is (potentially) news, inasmuch as a highly visible problem can be engaging too.

The impact of Ms. Didion's piece is to suggest a resigned equanimity as to who ends up leading us for 4-8 years, that the problems are fathomless and our attention is forever elsewhere. Maybe so, the last, but I thought we proved conclusively in 2000 that sometimes "who" matters.

For the last 232 years, every single president and vice-president - save one - has been white anglo-saxon-adjacent or dutch - the two predominant original settler profiles. Kennedy and Reagan pushed the Irish and Catholic edges, but only Greek-American Spiro Agnew has been outside the British/Dutch male paradigm.

This year we had the amazing candidacies of a woman, a Mormon, an Italian-American, and one amazing candidate who soundly pushes us into that increasingly rich questionnaire category - "other".

For decades now, photos of Republican victory celebrations have looked less and less like polyglot "America", and more and more like a frightened rear guard. It's extremely poignant that we have a choice this year of another well-connected (and quite angry) WASP and a "sojourner", who in his best moments, seems closer to the temperament of the founding fathers than anyone else on the field.

Diversity has always been our strength. A good time to be an American, and to be "all of the above".