Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Washington Post news analyst Dan Balz has written a missive to the campaign press corps urging them to, well, there's no other way to put it: start holding Barack Obama to a higher standard than his opponent. Balz is one of the most prestigious members of the Washington press corps, and his commentary has already been fronted by conventional wisdom-arbiter The Page, so it's likely to be influential.

Why should the press train its sights on Obama? Balz says because the election is all but over:

He leads nationally in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll by 53 percent to 43 percent. He leads, too, by a wide margin in estimates of the Electoral College. Virtually all of the closest states left at this point voted for President Bush four years ago.

The presidential race is not over, but at this point, Obama has a better chance of becoming president than McCain, and as a result, the questions ought to be going toward him as much or more than McCain

In other words, Balz argues, Obama should be treated as if he's already president, rather than as one of two candidates for the presidency.

-- JONATHAN CHAIT

What narrative will be forged to forgive McCain's egregious sins? My guess is that one strand of it will reflect the theme of Jorge Luis Borges' story Three Versions of Judas. McCain, it will be discovered, is so honorable that, in a display of honor greater than any ever witnessed before in American political life, he completely sacrificed his own personal honor for what he understood to be the sake of his country.

-- PAUL CAMPOS

McCain's campaign is now at the point – seven, eight points behind with just three weeks remaining; also, unsure of its message and direction – where the political pros in the party start making choices. They look at the amount of money the party is bringing in. They look at the state of McCain's campaign and start making sober calculations about the chance of his winning. . . .

If McCain can show by next weekend that he's nudged the needle in [swing] states in his direction, his campaign managers will probably be able to persuade the party's money people to keep the infusions coming.

But if he can't, history shows that they'll start cutting their losses and moving their spending to the protection of congressional incumbents. As you read blind quotes from GOP operatives over the next few days, keep an eye out for hints of this.

-- MICHAEL TOMASKY

McCain has struggled to settle on a consistent message as he enters the final month of the campaign with an unusual predicament before him: an enthused Republican base in his corner - but Democrats and independents whom he once included in his "McCain Majority" drifting from reach. One moment he is an eager vessel for the disenchantment of riled conservatives who fill his crowds. Minutes later he is making the case for bipartisan consensus and establishment mores.

-- SASHA ISSENBERG

John McCain should offer himself to the voters as the guy who would check and balance the Democratic Congress. Since it was clear that the Democrats would control both chambers in 2009, who better to tame their most liberal impulses than a Republican president?

. . . The "check and balance" argument is being pitched to swing voters – many of whom historically, have embraced the concept. Voting experts have told me for years that people generally don’t go into the booth consciously intending to check and balance, but the results are irrefutable. Roughly two-thirds of the elections since the World War II era have either produced or sustained divided government.

-- DICK POLMAN

We've hit the three-week mark and a new strange and sad phase of this political campaign. We've reached the stage where you can make any kind out of outlandish attack and your opponent and the media have little time to correct the record.

-- BOOMAN

[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with . . . He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that.

-- MATTHEW DOWD

An Obama election will mean changes – not all of them for the better. So be it. We will fight like hell against what we believe to be wrong. But we not do it by trying to delegitimize the elected president. Get personal, sure. Satirize and make fun of him, absolutely. Argue on the merits, most definitely.

But when push comes to shove and crisis erupts somewhere in the world involving American interests – and no president in recent memory has escaped such a challenge – I plan on backing my president’s play. I may give voice to skepticism about the path he chooses. This is our right and duty.

But I will not wish that he fail nor will I work to see that he does. The fact that I even have to mention this shows how foreign an idea this is to both the right and the left. The unbalanced hatred on the right directed against President Clinton was followed up by the even kookier and dangerous rage by the left against Bush. Perhaps its time for all of us to grow up a little and start acting like adults where the survival of our republic depends on the two sides not trying to eye-gouge their way to dominance.

-- RICK MORAN

Photograph by Stuart Carlson/Milwaukee Journal