The Audacity of Ambition

Like every presidential election in America, 2008 will be a test of our national consciousness, our ability to discern reality from unreality. Our grades of late are not particularly good. Rethuglicans are already deploying their smokescreens and innuendoes this year, trying to re-create the alternate universe that somehow entices Americans into ignoring their own best interests in favor of concentrated wealth.

...there's nothing new about Republicans trying to paint the Democratic nominee as hopelessly out of touch with everyday Americans and to depict their own candidates as a regular, salt-of-the-earth guy. Indeed, they've done it well enough to make George Herbert Walker Bush more of an ordinary Joe than Michael Dukakis, the son of Greek immigrants—and to make Yale Skull and Bones member and Harvard MBA George W. Bush seem like more of a working-class hero than decorated Vietnam combat vet John Kerry.

Still, there is something remarkable about the idea that the first African-American nominee of a major political party, raised by a single mother, whose shaping political experience was as a community organizer on the mean streets of Chicago, is facing a campaign based in some measure on the idea that "he acts like he's too good for us."

If they get away with it this time, we are truly a nation of fools.