My Sunday column

Barrack Obama should be ahead by 15-20 points in the national polls.
Lady Clinton has finally been dispatched and in theory, at least, all the Democratic Indians are back on the reservation.
Certainly the national press has been adoring and the money continues to roll in faster than you can say “forget public financing.”
Yup, Obama should be pulling away big right now. But, he’s not.
I’ve got a secret for you. A lot of folks — and I don’t mean just us uneducated, gun totin’, potted-meat eatin’ hillbillies — have serious reservations about the senator from Illinois.
You see, Obama talks real pretty but he doesn’t really say anything. That’s enough for a lot of folks, including yellow dog Democrats, old Trotskyites and college students who have never had to meet a payroll.
But for a lot of other people the flowery rhetoric is starting to wear thin.
Eventually, even the national media will catch on and at that point, Obama may finally come in for a long-overdue, sustained grilling. (Then again, maybe not).
John McCain won the Republican nomination fair and square. His perseverance during the dark days of the campaign was impressive. On the ropes and seemingly headed to oblivion, he hung tough and outlasted a crowded field.
Inspiring.
Unfor-tunately, it’s about the only thing inspiring about him.
To be fair, I’ve never been a fan. McCain has an reflexive authoritarian streak, which doesn’t always mix well with his oft-chronicled testiness. However, I don’t really care that he’s a crabby old man. In fact, I kind of like that about him and hey, being a jerk didn’t hurt Harry Truman in most folk’s eyes.
My problem with McCain is he’s often wrong on big issues like campaign finance and the Bush tax cuts. And his current take on the whys and wherefore of those bad votes is less than convincing.
But he’s right on Iraq. Or at least a lot more right than his opponent, whose school marmish take on the war on terror would be laughable, if not so dangerous.
The other night an ABC newsman pressed Obama on his pre-surge public assertions that the additional troops would not matter and that, in essence, the cause was lost.
Would the senator, the newsman inquired, now admit he was wrong?
Heck no!
Obama shuffled uncomfortably, offered a painful platitude about our troops doing their usual great job and then gave most of the credit to some mysterious shift in the Iraqi zeitgeist. I’m willing to give Obama credit for recognizing that there is more nuance to what has happened in Iraq than many lunkheads can grasp, but his failure to acknowledge the pivotal role a reinforced U.S. military played in the last year’s developments in Iraq is saddening and worrisome.
It is this failure, or refusal, to recognize the harsh realities and demands of the war which should concern most Americans. How can we ask our troops to carry the fight to a skilled, tenacious and remorseless enemy while our commander in chief sews white flags out of sheets taken from the Lincoln bedroom.
Which reminds me, Obama claims the Great Emancipator as his favorite president.
Excellent.
He would so well to study Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War. There is much good and bad in the story. Valor and fear. Brilliance and foolhardiness. Great victories and crushing defeats.
But in the end, Lincoln won.
By God, he won.