Tropical cyclones have been getting stronger over the past several decades, according to a new report in the journal Nature. This finding supports a theory that storms will get stronger as the surface of the ocean heats up because of global warming.

Listen to it all.

After days of mounting questions about her qualifications, Governor Sarah Palin rallied the Republican National Convention tonight by touting her small-town government experience and ridiculing concerns about whether she is up to the job of vice president.

“Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown,” Palin said. “And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

The remark was a not-so-veiled shot at the career of Senator Barack Obama, who began his public service as a community organizer in Chicago.

In spirited remarks, Palin also took on what she portrays as an elite media establishment unwilling to accept that her government service in a small town and a sparsely populated state gives her the resume to serve at the highest levels of the federal government.

“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” she said in her remarks. “But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Read it all.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Please note that this is the prepared text–for those of you who watched it the quip about the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom is not in there and was off the cuff–KSH.

From July 3 1984:

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?… Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?… Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?… Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy”¦. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen…. Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?… [T]he indispensable credential for a Woman Who [sic] is the same as for a Man Who [sic] ”“ one who helps the ticket.

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I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Every four years, Democrats in the United States make the same mistake. They underestimate the appeal of the Republican Party to Middle America, and then reduce their own appeal by belittling it. Now, Democrats are falling into the same trap again with Sarah Palin, John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee.

Palin is a tremendously popular pick among the party base, which had previously been unenthusiastic about McCain’s candidacy. These are not people who are interested in gender as such; they like Palin for her persona and her politics. So far, though, Palin’s critics have concentrated mainly on her persona. In her speech to the Republican National Convention this week, Palin has a great opportunity to take advantage of these tone-deaf critics.

Most obviously, Palin can benefit from criticism of her family life. Some commentators have attacked Palin for running for vice-president when she has a new baby with special needs. It is ironic for anyone on the left to say that a woman should just stay home with the kids. Never mind that they would never say such a thing about a male candidate (or a female Democratic one). This makes Palin more relatable to working moms, and the families who pitch in to help them. It makes her critics look sexist.

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I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

(ENS) The Rev. Robert Certain, an Episcopal priest who was a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, opened the Republican National Convention evening session on September 2 with prayer.

Certain asked God to “grant wisdom and grace” to President Bush and other U.S. leaders and that the presidential, vice-presidential and other political candidates be granted the “courage to face the rigors of the campaign (and) honesty and integrity to cast a vision of unity, progress and liberty.”

He also asked God to “teach our people to rely on your strength, and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may put country first, elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society.”

He wasn’t quite sure how the invitation came about, said Certain. A few years ago, however, he invited Sen. John McCain, slated to be the Republican presidential nominee, to share his “spiritual journey” at a parish meeting in Georgia.

When asked before his appearance what he was prepared to say, Certain chuckled: “I’m an Episcopalian. Of course, I went to the Book of Common Prayer, to the prayers for the nation in the back.”

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But if the “not black enough” argument has failed to gain traction among black voters, it clearly strikes a chord among some black leaders, apparently at a visceral level. How else to explain the unraveling of Jeremiah Wright except as the case of a black leader so accustomed to the role of challenger that he could not abide Obama’s success as (in his eyes) a bargainer””or, as Wright put it, “just another politician who says what he needs to say.” Jesse Jackson’s charge, accompanied by the n-word, that Obama is “talking down to blacks” when he criticizes absentee fathers, appears to be another complaint of a perennial race-based challenger irritated by the success of someone who thinks he can transcend race. Watching the recent behavior of Wright and Jackson, Steele surely must have felt that his analysis of leadership styles was richly confirmed.

Steele’s deepest worries about Obama are not about his political chances but about his personal authenticity. Whether as bargainer or challenger or some creative mix of the two, Steele thinks, a black leader must don a mask, forging a persona that will charm or manipulate whites. In taking on this task, Steele contends, black leaders lose themselves, for they are never able to locate what they themselves really think. Steele wonders: Is Obama running for president because of his deep convictions or simply because he is aware of “his power to enthrall whites”?

But questions of authenticity can be raised about every politician. The peculiar job of a politician is to fashion repeatedly points of agreement between people with different and shifting points of view and to project a public persona that can elicit action and be the vehicle for people’s hopes. If personal authenticity is your quest, politics is the wrong medium. We can wish for congruence between the inner and the outer person of the politician, but in the end what matters for the voters is the direction of the policies chosen and the decisions made.

Steele must hope, at some level, that his binary analysis turns out to be wrong and that Obama’s campaign breaks open new models of black leadership. We will know more in November.

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It was a quiet night in the Vestry, and no one was coming to see me about the occasional offices; so, my eyes wandered over the book shelves, and on a whim I took down a book most of us will have read, but maybe like me not for decades; C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. When you re-read a good book after thirty years you are, of course, a different person reading it, and different things stand out. Arriving at Letter Seven, Screwtape’s words to Wormwood (written in 1941) struck me as truly prophetic:

I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalize and mythologize their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful.

I would like to spend three months looking at the three things Lewis prophesied: The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of psychoanalysis.

There was a time when we believed in Science: we were going to apply it to every aspect of society, rule the world, and bend it to our will. That the world has not been so bent has made us realize the world is not the mute, inert lump of observable, controllable stuff popular scientism told us it was. Rather than advance to a sacramental view of the world, in which the material can be inhabited by the spiritual, our culture has retreated into pantheism.

God is everywhere and everything; so (particularly if it seems to do you good) it must be God. ‘The Force be with you’ intoned Star Trek’s characters, signalling the acceptance into Hollywood thought of deity as impersonal.

The Life Force is now out there on the High Street, and being paid for by you and me through the Health Service. Does anyone question the long-term effects on us, not just physically but as eternal, spiritual beings, of acupuncture, reflexology and the like? A recent episode of Analysis concluded there was no scientific evidence indicating that reflexology had any discernable effect: but modern Western people, now conscious that ‘the drugs don’t work are queuing up for such remedies, for they are in pain; and the healing of Christ is either unavailable, in the hands of the inexpert, or inconveniently tied up with the reality of sin and the virtues of suffering.

You surrender nothing of your ego or your immorality when you consult Life Force practitioners. Like a man visiting a prostitute, the only conscious sacrifice is financial: the unseen sacrifices are the barriers raised between the punter and the good things of God.

The Bible is in no doubt that the Enemy of Souls has, for the time being, a certain amount of power, which he is willing to trade for our eternal destiny. Follow the story of the Gospel’s spread through the Book of Acts, and you encounter Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8. Study of this incident is instructive, for The Life Force is named as such here: ‘This man is the divine power known as the Great Power’ [Acts 8:10c]. The Scriptures look (through the eyes of Peter) into the heart, however: offering money for the reception of the Holy Spirit [8:18c] Simon is roundly told by the apostle ‘Repent of this wickedness… I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin’ [8:23].

To the early Fathers, Simon was the epitome of Antichrist. Irenaeus [Against Heresies i] states that Simon was the founder of Gnosticism; since Gnosticism was the very air the Greek world lived, this seems harsh judgement, but Simon is certainly held up as a type of all that is opposed to God. Justin Martyr [Apology i, 26] mistakenly ascribes an ancient inscription in the city of Rome to Simon. In the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies the legend about Simon’s becoming the nemesis of Peter is greatly elaborated. Also, the apocryphal Acts of Peter tell how the Christians of Rome were corrupted by this man’s false teaching. All this maybe over-egging the pudding, but it demonstrates this: that in the early Church’s view, ‘The Force’ was not of God.

–From New Directions, July 2008

THE new Bishop of St David’s has this evening been named as the Very Rev Wyn Evans, the current Dean of St David’s.

After less than a day locked inside St David’s Cathedral, 46 members of the Church in Wales named Rev Evans as their choice.

There was said to be “strong support” for the decision.

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I happened to catch this last night coming home from shopping on satellite radio in the car. An important reminder of the daily sacrifice so many in the military and their families make for this country–KSH.

Much has been written why Palin both brings strength to the McCain ticket and is a gamble at the same time. Why then the growing wave of popular sentiment in her favor?

Various reasons, but one I think is that millions of Americans are simply tired of being lectured at by smug elites. Jetting Al Gore made tens of millions finger-pointing at us about our global warming. Obama’s America, apparently unlike Rev. Wright’s Trinity Church, is a cruel, downright mean and dysfunctional place. John Kerry’s United States is one of the half-educated in need of Ivy-League enlightenment and tutorials.

So along comes someone (unlike Biden’s vastly inflated middle-class biography) who really is from the working class. She likes it””and finds snowmobiling, hunting, fishing and living in small-town America not as a wasteful use of carbon-emitting fuels, cruelty to animals, gratuitous depletion of our resources, or proof of parochial yokelism. Instead it is a life of action in an often harsh natural landscape, where physical strength is married to intelligence to bring us food, fuel, and progress.

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I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Does the world really need another Web browser?

Google thinks so. Chrome, its new browser, was developed in secrecy and released to the world Tuesday. The Windows version is available for download now at google.com/chrome; the Mac and Linux versions will take a little longer.

Google argues that current Web browsers were designed eons ago, before so many of the developments that characterize today’s Web: video everywhere, scams and spyware, viruses that lurk even on legitimate sites, Web-based games and ambitious Web-based programs like Google’s own Docs word processor. As Google’s blog puts it, “We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser.”

What this early version of Chrome accomplishes isn’t quite that grand. But it is a first-rate beginning.

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Civil rights split the Democratic Party. A part of the Democrat base, the poor South, split off to support the Republicans, who had been, more or less, non-combatants in the war over civil rights. Since the day of LBJ’s lament on the White House lawn there has not been a successful Democratic presidential candidate from the North, and the Republicans have won almost twice as often as their opponents. Only once in the past ten elections has a Democrat polled more than 50 per cent of the vote (Georgia’s Jimmy Carter received 50.08 per cent in 1976). The long period of ascendancy for the Right in America was an uncovenanted bonus from a bitter bout of political infighting.

And now the advantages of that bonus are coming to an end. America is changing and the Democratic liberals might be able (just) to win a national election without the overwhelming support of the alienated white working class. If such a victory doesn’t happen this time, it will soon. America, like Britain, is seeing the rise of what one might call a mass chattering class.

The US census shows that a record number of Americans – more than 80 per cent – now complete high school or go to college. There is also, for the first time, a mass class of millionaires – 7.3 million Americans belong to this group, with more than a million dollars of assets. If you include their primary residence in the calculation there are many millions more. More than half of the country now considers itself middle class and is working less and enjoying more leisure time. Lyndon Johnson’s voters in the poor part of Texas did not have electricity. Last year more than 80 per cent of Americans went online.

With this change in economic fortunes has come a revolution in social attitudes – a mass class that is more tolerant, broadminded, socially concerned. And Democratic.

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The number of teen suicides has fallen slightly, but the rate remains disturbingly high, possibly fueled by drug warnings that have scared many from using antidepressants.

The suicide rate was about 4.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the most recent data available. That follows an 18% spike the previous year that alarmed experts when first reported.

That’s because until then, suicides among 10- to 19-year-olds had been on a steady decline since 1996.

Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont, said the report suggests a “very disturbing” upward trend that correlates with a decline in teen use of antidepressants.

That decline stems from the Food and Drug Administration’s 2004 black-box warning label because of reports that the drugs can increase risks for suicidal tendencies.

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(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Willams, has expressed profound distress at the extreme violence being used in Orissa following the murder of Hindu leader, Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati.

In a letter sent today to the Moderator of North India, the Most Revd Joel Mal, Dr Williams called for an end to the violence in Orissa and for intense prayer for the suffering churches.

The Archbishop said of the situation:

“I hope that Christians and people of faith around the world will make known their horror at this violence, their support for the rebuilding of lives and the churches, orphanages and schools destroyed, and for work towards future reconciliation”.

Tom Donilon, the Washington lawyer who did the delegate-counting for Jimmy Carter in 1980, has a bit of practical wisdom that he has offered over the years to many other Democratic presidential hopefuls.

“There is no learning curve steeper than your first race for national office,” Donilon has warned those who have turned to him for counsel, many of whom have survived tough races in their home states. The difference between the scrutiny that applies to contenders for president or vice president and candidates for any other offices is so great that shocks are inevitable, Donilon advises.

The Donilon maxim is about to be tested — in spades — by Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old freshman governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain as his running mate.

Over the next few weeks, starting this evening with her acceptance speech, then with her first solo campaign trips, her first news conferences and interviews, and finally her Oct. 2 debate with Democrat Joe Biden, Palin will be tested as never before. Nothing she has experienced in her home town of Wasilla, where she was mayor, or her state capital can really prepare her for this.

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Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he wasn’t surprised with the Lambeth Conference’s call for a moratorium on actions that have led to divisions over sexuality. He said that bishops needed to be honest that this has been “a huge, huge challenge to implement.”

Archbishop Hiltz said that the moratorium and other recommendations are matters for the Canadian house of bishops and the Council of General Synod ”“ the church’s governing body between General Synods ”“ to discuss. Bishops were also presented with a proposal to create a pastoral forum that would create a “safe space” for conservative Anglicans who have left their churches.

There was wide agreement that moratoria on same-sex blessings, the ordination of gay bishops and cross-border interventions by conservative bishops would help to heal the conflict engulfing the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury warned that failure to heed the call would put the Communion “in grave peril.”

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New York officials should recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries where they are legal, even though New York State does not allow gay marriage, a state court judge ruled on Tuesday.

Justice Lucy Billings rejected arguments by the national Alliance Defense Fund that New York Gov. David Paterson overstepped his authority in May when he instructed officials to recognize same-sex marriages conducted outside New York.

“Nothing is more antithetical to family stability than requiring (couples) to abandon that solemnized commitment,” Billings wrote in her decision.

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Social scientists map the social topology of a school by having students rate their peers on various measures, including likeability. For instance, the question “Who would you most like to hang around with on a Saturday?” quickly reveals a list of those who are considered the best company (potential dates excluded). This is a different measure of popularity from prominence ”” the quarterback and the cutest cheerleader may or may not qualify ”” and identifies a gifted class of a different kind.

Some 15 to 20 percent of high school students fall into this category, according to Mitchell Prinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, and it’s not hard to find them. They tend to have closer friendships, to excel academically and to get on well with most others, including parents ”” their own and their friends’.

In a continuing study of 185 students in a school in Charlottesville, Va., researchers led by Joseph P. Allen of the University of Virginia have concluded that this group is “characterized by a degree of openness to strong emotional experience” and optimism about their relationships, past and future. “These are very, very socially skilled kids who are really able to master the intricacies of diverse social situations,” Dr. Allen said in a phone interview.

Surveys suggest that about 50 percent of students are average ”” that is, they have good friends but are neither especially liked nor disliked by classmates. The remaining 30 to 35 percent are split between low-status or “rejected” students, who are on the bottom of the heap, and neglected ones, who don’t show up on the radar at all.

Yet most youngsters in any school know who their popular, likable peers are, and can learn by observation in a dynamic social situation that, after all, lasts four years. “We have evidence that the neglected kids are the ones most likely to move up, or to move between groups,” Dr. Prinstein said. “These are the ones with no established reputation, they kind of blend into the woodwork, and this can give them a kind of freedom.”

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SPRIT: So where from here?

+JMS: It depends much on the will of the Communion. Bishops acting unilaterally do not help this. The future of the Communion depends on those who are willing to forgo what they perceive to be their rights and their prerogatives and agree to live with and for others. We’ve been deaf to that call. It just depends on the will of those who are in leadership and who say, you know, the time has come to work together in unity. As far as I’m concerned as diocesan bishop, we have strong ties and relationships with the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Global South. The Global South bishops invited both Bishop Paul and me to a meeting with them. We cherish those relationships, and we will continue to witness and carry out our part in the Anglican Communion.

+PEL: I don’t know how I can expand upon that. We need to be faithful to the Scriptures and our Lord’s command to go forth into the world, but one of the things I’m trying to live into is what it means to be faithful to the vows I took when I was consecrated. There are some significant vows there. I think the House of Bishops and all bishops would do well to read those every day.

+JMS: It’s hard to know exactly what happened there until ”” it’s one of those odd things. It’s hard to know what happened at the meeting until you get well beyond it.

+PEL: It’s not unlike Jacob wrestling with God at Peniel (Gen. 32:30). He didn’t know it was God until after the fact. And that’s what sometimes happens during crises. You live into that crisis and do the wrestling ”” and we did some. I mean, it wasn’t all fun and games. Some hard things were said in those indaba groups.
+JMS: I like that. And I can think of Moses’ supporters saying to Moses after he had gone up on Sinai, “What happened?” We’ll see. It’s sort of the nature of God. God says to Moses, “I will be with you. That’s my name.” That’s all we can do ”” live in faith that God will be faithful.

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Men who are lacking in the romance department may have a new excuse to offer their wives or significant others: They can blame it on their DNA.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that a certain gene variant found in some men is linked to less bonding and more trouble in a long-term relationship.

The story of this gene starts not with men, but with prairie voles ”” small, furry rodents that have underground burrows. Prairie voles stay with one mate to raise their little ones. That’s intriguing, because other species of voles don’t do that.

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Listening to the Democratic leadership respond to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, one hears echoes of the Alaska Republican leadership from just a few years ago. Barack Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, put it this way: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Former mayor? If you’re going to skip over her job as governor and, before that, her job heading the commission that oversees production of the largest petroleum reserves in America, why not “former high school student”? Bah, what does it matter: She’s just a small town mayor, just a hockey mom, just a beauty pageant queen. Palin has never shunned these belittling monikers, in part, I imagine, because the camouflage has served her so well. Soothed by the litany, her opponents tend to sleep too late, sneer too much, and forget who it is that hires them.

Watching Palin operate over the past few years has been like witnessing a dramatic reading of All the King’s Men. In 2002, Murkowski had interviewed but passed over Palin in selecting a replacement for the senate seat he vacated to become governor. In a grand act of nepotism, he chose his own daughter instead. Palin was tossed a bone: She chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees the production of petroleum in Alaska. When she reported conflicts of interest and other ethical violations by another commissioner, she was ignored by Murkowski’s chief of staff and ultimately resigned in frustration. One can imagine how the quick double dose of corruption–insiders having their way with the polity and its resources–sickened the young Palin. It also fired a savage competitiveness that is not, perhaps, apparent at first glance.

Read it all and then read Christopher Orr’s response to his friend from Alaska.

Speaking of the vice presidential nominee, what a breath of fresh air Governor Sarah Palin is.

She is from a small town, with small town values, but that’s not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family.

Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union — and won — over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.

Let’s be clear … the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment.

Sound like anyone else we know?

She has run a municipality and she has run a state.

And I can say without fear of contradiction that she is the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field dress a moose … with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt.

She and John McCain are not going to care how much the alligators get irritated when they get to Washington, they’re going to drain that swamp.

But tonight, I’d like to talk to you about the remarkable story of John McCain…

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For Muslims such as Nadia Aslam, the tradition of fasting from dawn to dusk during the lunar month of Ramadan is a treasured experience of sacrifice and spiritual resolve.

“There’s a different feeling in Ramadan. I just feel closer to God,” said Aslam, 26, who lives in Glendale Heights.

But when Aslam entered Ramadan seven months pregnant in 2006, she faced the difficult decision of whether it would be in the best interests of her and her unborn child to observe the tradition of going without food, drink or medication during the daylight hours of 29 or 30 days.

For the first three days of Ramadan, Aslam said she followed the example of older relatives and tried to fast, but she found that it made her feel lightheaded and ill. When she consulted her obstetrician, her doctor recommended that she end the fast, news that Aslam initially found difficult to take despite the Quran, Islam’s holy book, giving pregnant women an exemption from fasting.

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The Promenade Shops at Dos Lagos opened two years ago in Corona, aimed at serving the legions of people moving into upscale new housing tracts in the surrounding hills.

Discount center it isn’t. This is where you go to find a $3,300 home espresso machine at Sur La Table, a $500 handbag at Coach or a $6 cup of Pinkberry frozen yogurt.

Harder to find are paying customers. On a recent weekday afternoon, most stores had fewer shoppers than salespeople.

Outside the Starbucks, Melissa McVicar was selling sunglasses from a cart, $12 a pair. Five hours into her shift, McVicar had sold only six pairs. And most of her customers weren’t paying cash.

“People are buying on credit, even if it’s only $12,” she said.

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As someone living happily ever after in the secular West at the beginning of a new millennium, it is hard for me to imagine anything more elemental: First comes love, then comes marriage. Bad news, matrimonial romantics.

In her delightful book, I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage, journalist Susan Squire traces roughly the first 5,000 years of marital behavior, and the real matrimonial axiom is not nearly as catchy: First comes proof of paternity, consolidation of property rights and the occasional ravishment (sorry, Sabine ladies!); then comes marriage.

Squire’s long history of connubial blisslessness starts in the caves and proposes that the marital relationship didn’t really become complicated until our ancestors had an epiphany: All that humping in the fields? It wasn’t just to pass the time between hunting and gathering.

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THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION is alive and vibrant.

It has survived another Lambeth Conference, a bit bruised, battered and fragmented. Bishops at Canterbury rallied around pertinent issues of social justice, poverty and the environment, and they reached the only conclusion they could on human sexuality: compromise.

That is what happens within a healthy family: members listen to each other, give a little, take a little, and reach a compromise. The result: both poles in the human sexuality debate are left frustrated and eager to battle another day, but it is the “middle road” ”“ via media — that has won the day.

The Anglican Communion emerged ”“ as it always does after a Lambeth Conference — a church struggling to be faithful to scripture and relevant to today’s society. Theologians and church leaders will debate the importance of Lambeth 2008 for some time to come; a sort of ecclesiastical navel-gazing. This issue of The Journal is dedicating an entire supplement to Lambeth.

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Yuck.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to ”” not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Read the whole piece.