Colin Powell's Endorsement of Barack Obama

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was about as thoroughgoing as this dinosaur could have hoped, the general’s polite qualifying phrases aside. He demolished Senator McCain’s potential closing arguments for the last few weeks of the campaign: the “experience and c-in-c prep argument,” the economics argument (though McCain had already ruined that one himself), the character attacks alleging radicalism, and the insinuation of an unacceptable degree of “otherness” in Obama’s person and background. McCain isn’t likely to change many minds from here on out, especially since his running mate and high-level supporters keep declaring whole swaths of the country “un-American,” claiming that our core values are hunting and fishing, insulting us by lying to our faces about things that have already been proven several times over against them, and so forth. They just can’t help saying transparently blockheaded, alienating things because if they didn’t say them, they would have nothing at all to say. For once, we seem to be showing some collective determination to invalidate the cynical judgment that “nobody ever lost a nickel underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” (Either P. T. Barnum or H. L. Mencken said that, I believe.) What I’m seeing – based in part on those huge St. Louis crowds Barack is drawing now, and the amount of money he raised in September ($150 million, mostly from small donors) -- looks like a genuine upwelling of healthy regard for participatory guv’ment. Still two weeks to go, but at present things are looking good. Maybe humans aren’t so bad after all, though I still think things were better and simpler in the Jurassic. We didn’t have politics at all because we had already achieved Aristotle’s dream of “the good life.” Bloody asteroids!