In response, the Obama people turn to the Keating Five:

How many years have we suffered through Republicans tarring Democrats as unpatriotic traitors? Yes Virginia, 50% of the country, and a good deal of our public servants are — according to the Republican Party — country-hating turncoats. And when you get down in the polls, the only thing you can do is take the Joe McCarthy approach and smear anyone who disagrees with you as not just wrong, but evil.

There’s been a lot of talk that Keating should be off limits, and Obama largely held his fire on that score for the duration of the campaign. But if someone is going to spread lies and guilt by association, particularly as tenuous as Obama’s non-association with William Ayers, then McCain’s darkest moment is now fair game. McCain did take bribes from Charles Keating and vacationed at his Bahamas estate, and he did give the man legislation that would help his business. That legislation eventually led to the S&L collapse.

One wonders if the Republican classic (”Barack Osama is a America-hating terrorist!”) will resonate as much as the honest fact that John McCain has for the duration of his career been a proponent of the kind of deregulation that led to our current economic fiasco. And nothing better describes this than his relationship with the criminal Charles Keating.

McCain decided to go as dark and negative as he could, and his people should have anticipated this. I suspect that the Keating Five will resonate a lot better than what the McCain camp is slinging.

As a kid, I used to gave longingly at brochures, imagining a place where you’re literally transported back in time to the high middle ages — where knights joust and well-meaning kings and queens hold court over cheerful peasants, urchins and the like.  It looked like the next best thing to slaying dragons, or drinking grog from a tankard.

The reality, however, is something more akin to a theme park with all the overpriced food, souvenir vendors and shows, but no rides.  Well, unless you count a free pony rides, or the chance to climb onto the back of an elephant.  It was a mile walk from the overflow parking lot, through thousands of automobiles parked in the grass.  But once you passed through the faux castle facade, it was hard not to feel charmed by the place.

With a do-it-yourself medieval aesthetic, and vendors with handmade crafts that were vaguely medevil, or at least in the mold of Gary Gygax’s vision of the middle ages for AD&D, you get the sense of what attractions like this used to be — made by real people and not corporations with high-priced imagineers.   A lot of love and care went into the construction of the mock village, with its permanent buildings and thick, lush forest of trees.  If not for the thousands of attendees, one could feel that you were on the set of BBC’s Robin Hood, or maybe a grown up version of the old Enchanted Forest amusement park.

And a surprising number of attendees — sometimes whole families — actually dressed up themselves.  In fact, there were so many people in costume that it was hard to figure out who was an employee of the park and who was a guest.  Even our girls donned flowered circlets, or “princess hats” as we called them.  A part of me looked at the leather armor and hand-crafted wooden swords longingly, wishing for a moment to take part in the full experience, before I regained my senses and realized how ridiculous I’d look.

The only downside to the day was the pony ride, so loved by my girls, but sadly, those poor broken down old ponies filled me with terrible guilt.  All day long, three ponies walked a small endless circle of mud, carrying hordes of small children.  The track was on the side of a hill, and the ponies stumbled slightly on the incline, and at times some refused to walk, requiring the encouragement of their handlers. I have never seen such unhappy animals up close in my life.  My mother’s neighbors keep horses, and they are beautiful, spirited and well-kept.  I’m hardly a PETA activist — I’m a meat eater, a wearer of fur and leather, etc. — but I know that we were participating in the exploitation of those ponies, and I felt terrible for it.

Still, overall I enjoyed my time at the Renaissance Festival.  I even sampled that most historically accurate of all medevil treats, the deep-fried Twinkie.

And we’re both intelligent, educated people, who have similar tastes and interests in other spheres of life.

It scares the hell out of me. There’s so much anger and hatred on both sides, and it’s getting worse and more poisonous each day. I don’t want to lose friends, or be afraid to speak up for fear of losing them. I don’t want to hate any of my fellow citizens, or have them hate me because I have the temerity to not vote the way they do.

I think that no matter how the election turns out, things will get worse, and we will see violence. Things will get progressively uglier.

I realize there wasn’t ever some mythical happy non-partisan past where everyone got along, but in the past we didn’t have the Internet and multiple news channels feeding the partisanship 24/7, poising everyone and damaging our country every single day.

I don’t think our society can survive for much longer, and I wish I believed there was any hope. But I don’t.

I don’t hate John McCain. I think he’s misguided, incurious, impulsive and reckless, but I don’t hate him. Please do not mistake my opposition to his candidacy as hatred. If the 2000 incarnation of McCain won the presidency I can in all honesty say that he would have been a great president — but his time has passed, and that man is gone. I just don’t believe that McCain has the temperament or judgment now to run the country in these dangerous times, and his foreign policy is just more of the same neoconservative nonsense that’s crushed this country in the last eight years.

I also don’t hate Sarah Palin — I think she’s unqualified to be vice president (or president) of the United States by virtue of the fact that she’s not intellectually up to the task. She has no demonstrated interest in foreign policy, for instance, and has not proven an aptitude to learn.

Heck, I don’t even hate George W. Bush — I’ve met the man, even worked with his team a couple of years back. I found them to perfectly fine and decent people, but they’re just utterly in disagreement with me on politics. And as much as I blame Bush and his followers for the state of the country today, that’s really saying something.

And you know what, I don’t hate rank and file Republicans, either.

Brief aside: back when I was in college, I met a charismatic Catholic who was completely rigid and uncompromising in his beliefs. He thought I was naive kid, utterly wrong and probably (though he never admitted it to me), a heathen or a heretic or evil. We had a lot of conversations, and they were frustrating for both of us. His inability to be friendly with me, or relate to me despite our differences taught me that I have a responsibility to strive to search for common ground with people I fundamentally disagree with, even if they don’t offer me the same basic courtesy.

Not everyone in the world will agree with you on everything — we’re all different and approach politics and life through vastly different perspectives. Why should you hate someone who disagrees with you? And why would someone hate you for disagreeing with them? I respect the rights and views of those on the right — I’ve certainly got enough friends and family who subscribe to them. The best thing to do, though, is to avoid talking about politics with those people you disagree if you begin to get angry or frustrated or sad. My mom and her sister, after some bitter political disagreements, have sworn off talking politics altogether. Their relationship is better because of it — they discuss genealogy now, family, the stuff of real life, the things they have in common.

Disagreement or political opposition does not necessarily lead to violence, either — after eight years of Bush, there have been no Weather Underground style home-grown terrorists blowing things up in opposition. And trust me, there’s millions of Americans out there who hate Bush and the GOP — and they haven’t done anything violent. The left by and large has decided that the best way to change policy is through elections — that’s why they’ve gone all in for Barack Obama, and why Obama’s team is organizing a tremendous get out the vote effort and one of the best-run presidential campaigns in the history of this country. Because the only way my side can change the country is by persuading a majority of people that we’re right — just as Reagan and George W. Bush did for the Republicans.

To James directly, your writing sounds a lot like what some of my liberal friends were writing back in 2004. There was talk of secession, apocalypse, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. How things have changed since then! Four years ago, I was surfing Canada’s immigration site, wanting to figure out how to get out of town. Now I’m cheering on Barack Obama.

Think back to the 1861 — go back and read David Herbert Donald’s excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln to see a great examination of mid-19th century politics. It wasn’t pretty, either. Even after a civil war and the upheaval of the 1960’s, the country is still here. It will continue to be here after Bush, and McCain or Obama, or whomever. Even after the damage Bush has done to our way of life, our country still survives. It’s bruised, but it’s here.

Bipartisanship is a nice ideal, David Broder certainly writes about it infinitely in The Washington Post, but it’s not practical. There are real differences in America, and you need two political parties to give voice to those views. For a time, one party is ascendant while the other is in decline, but there’s never been a time where everyone in America agreed on everything.

It’s a pendulum, and right now it’s swinging against the Republicans. I know it can feel like there was a consensus when your side was in charge, but trust me when I tell you that a lot of us were pretty miserable over the last 8 years, and before that we had 12 years of Reagan and Bush I to enjoy. Though I was too young to know anything in those days — and better for it. A lot of Democrats thought Reagan was going to start World War III, and due to his popularity felt powerless to change it.

I understand it’s a tough time for Republicans right now — the brand is in the tank, McCain is 7-points down, and the Sarah Palin gambit failed. I’m not without sympathy for you — Al Gore and John Kerry did considerable damage to the Democratic brand, and things were in turmoil for both those elections, too. People were angry and depressed. And there are a number of us that still think that Gore was robbed the election in 2000 — even though I was not a fan of his at the time (back then, I was a supporter of Bill Bradley’s and didn’t feel like I had much of a stake in Gore v. Bush — boy, was I wrong on that score).

But things could still swing back in McCain’s favor — the race can change, and it probably will before November 4. But have faith — even if you lose, even if your worst nightmare of an Obama/Biden administration becomes a reality, life will go on. There’s more things that bind us together as a people and society than politics. And I’m not just talking about a love for Batman, or Buffy, or Supernatural, or anything like that. It’s that we’re all Americans, we all believe in the fundamentals of freedom and the founding ideals of this country.

Because trust me when I say this, I’ve lived through 8 years of my worst nightmare. And I’m still here — the country’s a mess, but I have my family and my health. You will be here at the end of an Obama or McCain administration. None of us may be here if McCain gets in, suffers a heart attack, and the keys are handed to Sarah Palin, though. In that scenario, I envision us all as radioactive dust, those of us who aren’t wandering the burned out remains of our country, trying to avoid the cannibals. In that world, only Mr. Smith and his talking roach companion remain, traveling the wasteland, righting wrongs, helping people in peril.

That was a joke.

Sort of.

Okay, maybe not.

Although he started out rough, Biden recovered about thirty minutes in and ended up commanding the debate.  I know I’m a partisan, so take that for what it’s worth.  Palin did as well as I expected her to — she was reading from notecards and answering questions with talking points, even when those talking points didn’t actually relate to the question (such as her WTF answer to the “achilles heel” question).

I find her folksiness, her use of phrases like “doggone it,” “hockey mom,” and tendency to substite “ya” for “you” annoying and fake.  I don’t think the vice president of the United States should be cute and adorable, but that’s what she’s shooting for.  She wants middle America to think she’s just an average mom running for an extraordinary job.  It’s the Bush strategy of using folksy jargon to connect with the voters, but I don’t think it’s going to be very successful this year.  Palin overdoes it and seems canned to me.  She’s a hockey mom robot, programmed with a few key soundbites that she regurgitates ad nauseum.

I’ve swung back and forth on how I feel about Biden over the years — he is verbose, and he can be self involved.  His use of his time at the Alito hearings was largely wasted.  But he has a clear understanding of the constitutional limits of the role of the vice presidency, and he’s often been right on foreign policy.

When Palin was talking about her sacrifices at the mom, implying that Biden did not know that burden, I think he felt genuinely offended.  Anyone who knows Biden’s biography knows the tragedy he suffered, which elicited perhaps the most genuine moment of the entire night:

Palin, of course, didn’t know how to react. Instead she turned to the old standby talking points, choosing to ignore the emotional moment that just transpired. It was her chance to show that she could think on her feet, but rather than think, she just went back to the same old well of nonsense.

Salon has a piece today about the David Foster Wallace suicide.  It’s worth a read.

The polls seem to be trending in Obama’s favor — but as with McCain’s advantage two weeks ago, any kind of advantage in popular opinion so far out from Nov. 4 (which would mean any day other than Nov. 4) should really be taken with a grain of salt. This is going to bounce back and forth both ways until the election, and then it’ll come down to enthusiasm, GOTV, and Diebold’s representatives in Ohio.

Politico has a story up today about how race is impacting Democratic voters and their support for Obama. This is hardly a surprise, after all. An acquaintance of mine who has long been involved with political campaigns (and ran for congress himself many years ago) told me as early as last spring that this race will come down to whether or not white working class voters can bring themselves to vote for a black guy. If anything, this Politico story proves the point, but I if Obama’s core supporters — ie young people — are as underrepresented as I suspect they are in polling, the level of disadvantage may not be what people presume. I’m not saying it isn’t, I’m just saying that the outcome maybe surprising. We’ll see.

Robin Williams, who is rarely funny these days, had a moment of brilliance on the Late Show with David Letterman last night where he addressed the greatest fears of these voters about Obama. I’d post the YouTube if it was available, but it made me laugh. Let’s just say Williams revealed that Obama is secretly DMX.

I’m still kind of bummed about David Foster Wallace’s suicide. Stories about him continue to trickle out over the Internet and depress me whenever I read them.

I’ve been playing the SOCOM: Confrontation beta all week. It’s got a lot of problems still, but it’s more playable. If only my damn Bluetooth headset wouldn’t keep running out batteries …

Not sure how this news hits me — I greatly enjoyed Wallace’s essays and short stories. Infinite Jest was something I struggled to finish, and ultimately abandoned, but I appreciate his talents and the things he brought to literary fiction (such as copious footnotes). He certainly had great ideas and a unique command of language — he was a huge young literary star in the mid-1990’s only to be supplanted by David Eggers, Michael Chabon and the young writers of the McSweeny’s movement. But you couldn’t have had McSweeny’s without Wallace to pave the way.

One wonders why he decided to take his own life. It’s saddening, and of course, it adds to my overall sense of melancholy.