Campaign Notes

Just a few notes:

Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who has endorsed McCain, was on NPR last night. He said Gov. Palin was not qualified to step up to the tasks of the Presidency. With endorsers like these....

The campaign nationwide is geting uglier. Not only is Governor Palin trying to separate real Americans from fake Americans, Congresswoman Bachmann (R MN) wants an investigation aimed at finding out who in Congress is really pro America. Chris Hayes (R.Ga ) worries that Obama will appoint judges sympathetic to "the gay," and Liddy Dole accuses her opponent of taking money from "Godless Americans" and even faked her opponent's voice saying "There is no god." (Her opponent is a Sunday school teacher and Presbyterian.)

At times like this we like to comfort ourselves by saying everyone does it and that these types of low brow attacks are just some symptom of a larger malaise. Both sides are at fault, so how can we stop it.

Oh please. That's just something we say to make oursleves feel better.

Even the most causual observer of the last twenty political years can figure out that the low blows have consistently had a Republican character. Democrats did not turn patriotism into a weapon. Democrats did not use abortion and gay marriage as "wedge issues." Democrats do not try to out people they believe are insufficiently American. There were never Democratic Swift Boaters. Democrats did not invent Willie Horton nor have they turned anyone's sex life into an impeachable offense. There is no Democratic counterpart to Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater or Karl Rove. And the Democrats most certainly never had a "Southern Strategy" aimed at appealing to the latent racism of whites. Those are all Republican contributions to American politics.

So the next time you lament the state of politics in America, have the courage to name your enemy. Democrats may be pusilanimous, weak kneed fence sitters devoid of the killer instinct, but by and large they have never gone ugly in national elections.