Hold On To Your Genre

From TIME.com:

"Ironically, al-Qaeda finds itself substantially weaker organizationally at the very moment where the political conditions for its existence may never have been better. Muslims around the world are far more enraged by the U.S. today than they had been five years ago, fueled by shooting wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. Even if Bin Laden arguably helped provoke the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not managed to capitalize on the resultant outrage. In fact, it is among the active jihadists on some of those battlefronts that his isolation is most palpable." - Tony Karon

I'll buy that.

Looking ahead towards 2008, I'm reminded of a great West Wing quote:
"Because I'm tired of it year after year after year after year having to chose between the lesser of who cares? Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly look at it. They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that, do you?" - Leo McGarry

Dukakis and Gore ran as fixers, as sensible, efficiency-minded technocrats who failed to capture the public imagination, much less the presidency. Kerry and Bush ran as visionaries, though Kerry ultimately could not be taken very seriously, and Bush's visions were marred by general incompetence and a failure to engage opponents intellectually. When will we find our happy balance? A candidate with nuance and inspiration?
I once looked with hope towards the centrists, McCain and Lieberman. But after a year of averting my eyes at the sight of them lustily photo-op-ing while publicly defending the worst mistakes of the Administration, and sanding down their edges to appeal to the center that apparently above all else hates to be challenged or satirized, that hope is dwindling quickly. Even Hillary is actively vanilla-izing her political views for the masses. When did we decide that the American public could not be convinced of anything, that candidates could not change peoples' minds?

The ones I'll be watching in the next couple years: Russ Feingold, Joe Biden, Rudolph Giuliani.