Am I wrong to assume this is preposterous? If so, the senator needs to explain how at the debates. Both he and Senator Obama need to provide detailed and incisive answers, not rote snippets from their stump speeches. Perhaps this is the race in which voters will not be charmed by affect or ripostes. After all, eight years ago, the American people embraced a good ole boy at the polls and wound up with a man neither insightful nor intellectual enough to manage the nation.

The presidency was once aspirational. Voters wanted someone smarter, better informed, stronger than they were.

It can't possibly be that we've become so insecure about our power, our primacy, our place in the world that we can't bear a person who stands on principle. It can't really be that America has become a nation so small-minded that intellect must be belittled. It can't really be about likability, can it? I don't need the president to be my friend. I have friends. What I need is someone to clean up the mess George W. Bush has made of the country I love.

At a moment like this, to discuss who is the pig and who the lipstick in a shopworn simile is a sign that you've gone down a dark road and wound up in a cul-de-sac. Who cares if you like Sarah Palin, if your kid plays hockey and so do hers? Here is the only thing about anyone's kids that matters now: every time you vote you make your kids a promise. It's a promise that you will look past cheap slogans and lazy alliances to try to find a way to make America worthy of a new generation. And if we keep that promise in November, we not only keep faith with our children, we keep faith with the country.

© 2008