Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

George Walker Bush is not a stupid or a bad man. But in his conduct as president, he behaved stupidly and badly. He was constrained by neither the standards of conduct common to the average professional nor the Constitution. This was not ignorance but a willful rejection on Bush's part, in the service of streamlining White House decision-making, eliminating complexity, and shutting out dissenting voices. This insular mind-set was and is dangerous. Rigorous thinking and hard-won expertise are both very good things, and our government for the past eight years has routinely debased and mocked these virtues.

-- RON SUSKIND

Plenty of people can be blamed for the calamity on Capitol Hill on September 29th. Two-hundred and twenty-eight congressmen decided they were ready to risk another Great Depression. Nancy Pelosi made an idiotic speech damning the Republicans. Sheriff McCain claimed that he was going to ride into town to sort out the mess—and promptly fell off his horse. But there is no doubt where the lion’s share of the blame belongs: with George Bush. The dismal handling of the financial crisis over the past fortnight is not only a comment on Mr Bush’s personal shortcomings as a leader. It is a comment on the failure of his leadership style over the past eight years.

-- LEXINGTON

Grow up. If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era -- fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style. A great country acts great when it matters. This is a time when it matters -- for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters.

-- JAMES FALLOWS

In the past half century, racism has morphed from an open wound in the body politic into the mostly unspoken X factor in this year's election. With Obama now holding a solid lead in the polls, the haunting question is how many Americans who would never admit it openly will vote against him because of his race.

Time has caught up the criminality of Simpson in another century, but how much will Barack Obama be punished next month for the offense of being African-American?

-- ROBERT STEIN

I've spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no healthcare, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities. The distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful.

--- BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Palin . . . may be the first conservative politician since Nixon to experience resentment so authentically. For her, it's not so much a political tool as a motivating principle. A trip through Palin's past reveals that almost every step of her career can be understood as a reaction to elitist condescension--much of it in her own mind.

-- NOAM SCHEIBER

There is a time and place for character attacks in politics: August. Every successful character attack in prior elections took place in August and early September - never October. The point is simple: destroy the opponent just when people start tuning in. But when it comes time for the homestretch, pivot back to unifying and positive themes. Bush did this in 2004 as did his father in 1988.

. . . So here we are, with McCain descending further and further into Michelle Malkin-land, invoking far-right conspiracy theories just to rile the base. As Peggy Noonan pointed out today, McCain and Palin just aren't big enough for this moment. Going to the base in October is a sign of weakness. Having a uniformed sheriff from Lee County, FL say "Barack Hussein Obama" is a sign of desperation, not strength. And accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists" while the financial crisis instills real terror into people's hearts is a sign of how out of touch the McCain has become.

-- ELROD

Obama is different. He's biracial. He's got a funny name. He's had a meteoric rise and doesn't have a tremendous amount of experience. He's urban and urbane. He's cosmopolitan, he's Ivy League. In short, he has a cultural disconnect with a lot of American voters, including a lot of traditional Democrats. 'Cultural disconnect' could be a polite way of saying that this country has a lot of rednecks. And it does. But I don't mean that term to be so harsh. A lot of people just have a hard time computing the idea of a guy like Barack Obama being president of the United States. A lot of people have to overcome a feeling of unease or discomfort. And that unease has held Obama's numbers down in both the primaries and the general election.

But, the way I figure it, once someone overcomes that feeling of cultural alienation, even for a moment, and comes to accept the idea of Barack Obama as President of the United States, there is no going back. The argument in his favor is obvious, and no amount of fear-mongering is going to change the mind of someone once they have let their mind be opened. In other words, once a voter gets to the point where they will consider and accept the idea of a half-black president, the biggest obstacle has been overcome. At that point, you have to rely on winning the argument on its merits. You are now judging Obama by the content of his character and the worth of his ideas.

And once Obama convinced 50% of the people to do that? He had this thing won.

-- BOOMAN

Cartoon by Kal/The Economist