Thank you, Mr. Buckley

I was in Germany when I learned that Ronald Reagan had died. Having been born midway through his first term, I never "experienced" Reagan first-hand. I have a smattering of memories of seeing him on television, along with a memory of my grandparents' neighbor saying "Reagan's speech last night was a damn classic." Due, however, to the soulless ravages of Alzheimer's disease, he left public life well before I could have appreciated him.

Having not been old enough to understand President Reagan in his own time, I was left to rely on second-hand stories, transcribed speeches, and later, his autobiography. This led to the creation in my own mind of a larger-than-life, legendary, almost mythical figure. Thus, when I learned via CNN International that he had passed, it was as if I had lost a third grandfather. It was not surprising by any means, but still carried the same sadness and finality -- it starkly marked the end of an era.

A similar event happened yesterday. William F. Buckley, by all accounts the Father of Modern Conservatism, died. He was found at his desk, presumably doing what he loved. It, too, starkly marks the end of an era. Few people outside the realm of conservative politics know Bill Buckley's name, but all people -- whether they know it -- are aware of his influence. Buckley's stated goal with he founded National Review was to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." Though there is still little patience for those standing athwart history, there are many more -- millions, I would guess -- people willing to do so. Such is Buckley's legacy. As George Will said: "Before Reagan there was Goldwater. Before Goldwater, there was National Review. And before National Review, there was Bill Buckley."

On a more personal note, Mr. Buckley is a major influence of mine. He was one of the reasons I got into journalism -- particularly conservative journalism -- in the first place. His calm demeanor, his stingingly acute wit and his prodigious vocabulary are all things to which I -- quite poorly -- aspire. The way he could calmly and civilly yet forcefully and utterly dismantle a political opponent is something I can only hope to attain, as well as something I believe is sorely lacking in today's political discourse.

Bill O'Reilly's red-faced confrontations, Sean Hannity's inelegant arguments, even Rush Limbaugh's most intellectual orations appear boorish by comparison. To borrow a term from Rush, Mr. Buckley makes all of his successors look like "rank amateurs."

I never had the pleasure to meet the man personally, but he is universally regarded -- even by those with whom he adamantly disagreed -- as a class act and genuinely decent person. Again, something sorely lacking in today's political climate. Our country, and indeed the world, is vastly different due to William F. Buckley, Jr. having lived. It is all the more dull and vapid without him.

Obama's message: Changeity hopeity changeity hope! Hopeity changeity hopeity change!

After another series of votes, it seems like Barack Obama is coasting to the finish line for the Democrat nomination. This is where it gets interesting. As it becomes clearer to the Clinton Machine that they're losing, I expect them to get all the more desperate, negative, and vicious. I almost expect any of the following issues to come up in the next two weeks:

-Charges of corruption from his past in Illinois.

-The fact that he has no relevant record of which to speak.

-Michelle Obama's senior thesis in which she writes about how the U.S. was founded in crime and hatred and the "ineradicable racism" of whites.

-Digging up (again) his drug use and possible drug-selling.

Hillary does this, however, at her own peril. So-called "Obamania" is at a point now such that anyone who dare speak ill of it invites the spurn and wrath of its fervent believers. As it stands now, with Obama up by about 150 "pledged" delegates, I see no feasible scenario in which Hillary catches up to him. So, Hillary will unload on Obama but still likely lose. As a Republican, I don't particularly mind. It's the best of both worlds. Hillary goes nuts, the Clintons suffer a total meltdown, Obama wins but is incredibly weakened for the general election. Sounds good to me.

I've noticed an interesting trend lately in the media. Several articles have popped up lately that highlight Obama's lack of substance and the waning of the frenzy surrounding him.

I've thought for a few weeks now that Obama is running the risk of peaking too early. It's hard for me to imagine him being able to keep the fervor at such a high level for the next eight and a half months, particularly with Hillary going down swinging -- presumably below the belt -- followed by five or six months of Republican pounding.

The main criticism of Obama is currently that he lacks substance. I suspect that once he starts attempting to be more substantive -- as he did last night -- people will begin to see that his calls for change and bipartisanship are not reflected in his policies. It should be fairly easy for McCain and the Republicans to poke holes in Obama's plans. With McCain being a spending/deficit hawk, he should have no problem pointing out that the majority of Obama's plans would involve higher taxes, bigger government, a larger deficit, more debt, a slower economy, etc. Those sort of things simply do not resonate with the vast majority of the American people.

Moreover, many people have described Obama as the next JFK. This boggles my mind. Are we talking about the JFK that cut taxes and was adamantly anti-communist? Who said "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?" Obama has no intention of cutting taxes -- especially if he intends to implement more government programs. He also apparently has no desire to deal with radical Islam -- this generation's version of communism. And he certainly isn't asking what people can do for their country. Quite the opposite -- he's promising people that the government will do many things for them.

If I've learned anything in this election cycle, it's that predictions mean nothing. But it seems to me that the shine is going to quickly come off the Obama apple, and that the younger voters we've been hearing so much about lately will be as dejected as ever come November. I suspect that either one of two things will happen: either Obama rides his rhetoric wave as far as it will go and people tire of it, or he will do his best to be substantive and lose moderate voters, while young voters get bored. It's just as well. Government needs to be run by adults.

The State of the Race -- Everybody wins!

Full disclosure: I did not vote in the D.C. Republican primary yesterday. John McCain has effectively sewn up the nomination, I couldn't bring myself to vote for Huckabee, and it's a closed primary so I couldn't vote for a Democrat. Not that I would have. At any rate, there was no incentive for me to brave the ice storm, so I didn't.

In reviewing the results from last night, there were no real surprises. Both McCain and Obama swept the three races. It does, however, have different implications for the two parties.

On the Republican side, the winner-take-all, survival-of-the-fittest nature of the contests means that McCain won all of the delegates despite Huckabee's respectable showing in Virginia.

For the Democrats, however, the bullshit pussified proportional nature of their contests means that, despite Hillary's unmitigated ass-kicking last night, Obama didn't exactly land a knock-out blow. Granted, he did well enough to take the delegate lead, but it's not yet convincing. On a side note, I think this is just what the Democrats deserve with their whole "everybody's a winner" mentality. What is this, tee-ball? Sorry kids, there's only one trophy to hand out this time. But I digress.

Hillary has since pinned the fate of her campaign on the Texas and Ohio primaries -- which, to me, sounds suspicious like Rudy Giuliani's "Florida Firewall" campaign that crashed and burned.

Obama currently leads in the delegate count by about 40, depending on who you ask. Given his momentum, the structure of the upcoming races, etc., I really don't see how Obama falls behind in the delegate count. Having said that, however, I also don't foresee him totally running away with it.

This prospect provides an interesting dynamic for both the Florida and Michigan primaries. For those of you who are less politically nerdy than I, you might not be aware that Florida and Michigan do not technically have delegates due to punishment by the Democrat National Committee for moving their respective primaries ahead of February 4th. Hillary Clinton "won" both of these primaries. She won Michigan because she was the only name on the ballot and she won Florida because it was agreed that none of the candidates would campaign there. Which she didn't -- wink wink, nudge nudge.

If Hillary finds herself a few delegates behind come Convention Time, she very well might petition to have the delegates from Florida and Michigan seated. That is to say, have them count for her. Simply campaigning to have those delegates seated, I believe, would cause a major rift in the party. If they actually were seated and it gave her the delegate lead, it would be absolutely incindiary. As a Republican, I'm actually rooting for this outcome. It benefits Republicans for the Democrats to have a contentious, volatile primary complete with burned bridges and bruised egos.

This is to say nothing of the "superdelegate" shenanigans. Again, for those who actually have lives and don't know such things, there are about 840 delegates at the Democrat convention who can vote however they want. These "superdelegates" also have the potential to throw the convention into a tailspin. If Hillary is close in the delegate count at the convention, and a majority of "superdelegates" break for her, she could still feasibly become the nominee -- albeit undemocratically. This, too, I believe would be suicidal for the Democrats. Which is why I'm also rooting for this as a Republican.

As I said before, the roles in this election have been completely reversed. It was supposed to be the Democrats that settled their nomination early while the Republicans cannibalized themselves through their covention. It's much to early to make any sort of prediction, but thus far this election is going better for Republicans -- or, perhaps more accurately, worse for Democrats -- than anyone would have guessed six months ago.

State of the Race, post-Super Tuesday

If there's one thing I've learned in this election season, it's that predictions mean nothing. At the start of this, everyone assumed that Hillary would walk away with the Dem nomination and the Republicans would cannibalize each other through the convention. As it stands now, things are pretty close to the exact opposite. John McCain has all but captured the nomination for the Republicans -- though not a mathematical certainty, it seems unlikely that any other challenger will be able to mount any sort of comeback -- and Hillary and Obama are locked in a dead heat.

I'd be lying if I said that I was excited about a John McCain nomination, but I'm slowly forcing myself to come to grips with it. When many of my more conservative friends were claiming that they would rather vote third party or simply not vote for a President Giuliani, I told them that they were insane, they shouldn't let the perfect become the enemy of the good, etc. It would be somewhat hypocritical for me to do the same with McCain. There are plenty of things on which I agree with McCain. He's a deficit hawk, and that makes me giddy. The thought of a balanced federal budget makes my nerdy conservative heart flutter. But he's never been that big on taxes, so to think that he'd raise taxes in order to achieve said balanced budget terrifies me. He's also a security hawk, which is another one of my issues. However, his apostasies on immigration, climate change, free speech, etc. are, as yet, deal-breakers for me. If he were to pick a veep that allayed some of those fears, I might be less reluctant to vote for him, but that remains to be seen. If he picks Mike Huckabee as his veep, it makes it that much more likely that I'll be staying home on election day. However, a McCain-Thompson or McCain-Steele ticket is something I could potentially get excited about.

At any rate, Senator McCain plans to address the Conservative Political Action Conference tomorrow. I plan to listen with an open, albeit apprehensive, mind.

On the Democrat side, the race has gone on longer than most people ever thought it would. Certainly longer than I thought. As little as a week ago, I thought the Obama hysteria was due for a harsh dose of reality on Super Tuesday. Not only was Super Tuesday not decisive, it appears that Obama may have eked out a victory. That's huge. It puts a gaping hole in Hillary's air of inevitability and gives Democrats hope that they don't have to vote for Hillary. It's my experience that most Democrats/liberals don't want to vote for Hillary, but are doing/did so because she thought that she was the only one that could win. As Obama shows that he's capable of winning elections, I think more people will gravitate toward him -- particularly in the upcoming primaries and caucuses. The schedule from here on out is much lighter, which means that Obama can campaign more thoroughly in all the upcoming states. That thought should keep Hillary up at night. It also doesn't help that Obama absolutely obliterated Hillary on the fund raising front in the last quarter. Hillary is likely tapped out, while Obama still has resources from which to draw. I'm quite wary of underestimating the Clinton machine, but it seems that the Obama camp has the momentum, the money, and a favorable schedule. Having said that, however, I treat Hillary like a zombie in a cheesy B movie horror flick -- don't turn your back on her, because once you do, her eyes snap open and she eats your brain from behind. Or something like that. Suffice it to say that I won't believe that Obama gets the nomination until he makes his acceptance speech at the convention -- and even then I'll be suspicious.

More on this later.