My impression - from overseas - is that there is less mudslinging going on between Obama and McCain and that they at least keep some kind of decorum? I remember worse from as far back as Bush Senior ./. Dukakis and Bush Junior ./. Kerry was no warm cherry pie either.
I still don't see McCain as the arch-conservative, God-loving warmonger he now has to depict himself in part to please party folk. Look at the man's voting and political work record in Washington - he is the antithesis to extreme and actually a careful man who believes in old-fashioned, conventional bit-by-bit politics (nothing wrong with that).
Realpolitik we call it here.
Likewise, I find efforts to present Obama as a left winger minorities-only serving radical laughable. This man's career has middle of the road written all over it, in the early seventies radical blacks would have described him as an arch-Uncle Tom. It is also - in a positive sense - a very American career. Not too many sons of African fathers get a stab to lead a Western Democracy, there is some fulfilled American Dream in there. You should be proud of that whether you are a Democrat or not.
European view is that no matter how much you mess up your election this time again (careful with those voting machines, shall we send German engineers over?
), you'll end up with something better than you had in the last eight years. And that is a good thing because the US is better for itself and the world if it acts in accord and consultation with its allies. Both Republican and Democrat presidents have shown that.
And of course
Dave's watchful eye is again all over this thread
which has become - shock, horror, gasp! - political. I haven't given up the idea that people who can agree on the qualities of a Thunderbird here might also be able to disagree in a reflected and polite matter whether Obama or McCain should be the next US President. With the US election on everybody's mind in the next couple of weeks, I find it artificial to keep the Outpost Café "politics-free". If someone oversteps the mark, we can always have his post wiped, but certainly one thread - you don't have to look at it if you don't want to be bothered - should allow a discussion among friends.
Uwe