Interesting opinion piece over at Opinion Journal:

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell…

…Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of “The Dark Knight” itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified…

…When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, “He has to run away — because we have to chase him.”

Being a coward is, pro-tempore, easier than being a hero – being a coward only requires that one do nothing; being a hero requires that one act. Of course, failure to act can land you, eventually, in much worse trouble than the immediate risk of acting, but a coward can always rationalise away future risks if it gets him out of the particular spot he’s in. While those who act are those who make things happen (good or bad, depending on the actor), it is only those who act nobly who are subjected to the calumny of the cowards. To insult the efforts of a wicked man, you see, is to take a brave stance – so much easier to call Marines in Haditha cold-blooded killers than to take on the cold-blooded killers the Marines are fighting.

The dichotomy between President Bush and the man who wants to replace him cannot be more stark – Obama is lauded for doing nothing; Bush is condemned for doing something. What did Obama do to garner support which eventually awarded him the Democratic nomination? He spoke out against liberating Iraq before the liberation was attempted. What did President Bush do to earn the hatred of the left? He ordered the liberation not of Iraq, but of Afghanistan. Oh, I know – we’ve spent so much time on Iraq that it seems that Iraq triggered leftwing hatred of Bush…but if you think back on it, you’ll remember that the first “anti-war” campaign post-9/11 was to keep us out of Afghanistan…because the Taliban hadn’t attacked us, because we shouldn’t get into the middle of a civil war, because it is impossible to defeat a terrorist enemy on his own ground, because it would be a humanitarian catastrophe. It wasn’t Iraq; it was the fact that President Bush proposed to do something – that is the source of the hatred.

Had President Bush made a few heart-rending speeches and merely promised the full weight of American law enforcement, he would still be disliked on the left for various reasons, but the hatred wouldn’t be there because in such a response there is no challenge to the cowardly. The coward, being able to look at a mere indictment of Osama bin Laden, can take all sorts of exception with what President Bush did…heck, the coward could even say that invading would be better…but there is no challenge; no forcing of a choice. No contrast between right and wrong. Obama doesn’t challenge – he tells the cowards that they were right, that we shouldn’t have acted – that being afraid to confront evil is the smart thing to do. He tells the coward that he never has to shoulder a heavy burden – that the UN, EU and everyone else on God’s earth will take care of it, but he’ll never be asked to sacrifice, save perhaps in a higher tax bill.

President Bush looked at the rubble of the Pentagon and WTC and was filled with a terrible resolve – that this shall not stand, and that those who did it will be made incapable of doing it again. For a while there, the overwhelming majority was with him – but as hard decision followed hard decision the siren song of defeatism and cowardice took its toll until, now, President Bush is in many ways the most unpopular man in the United States. All too many just wish he’d go away and stop demanding of us a hard courage to face the difficult tasks. Millions who hate President Bush will want him again, if we’re ever attacked like 9/11 again…but for now, they just want him get out, and allow a coward to stroke the ego of cowards.

And the only thing which may prevent this unhappy outcome? Another man of courage – John McCain. We’ll see in November if there is a majority of Americans still in favor of doing what is right, rather than talking about what is right and acting like talking is doing.

Because abstractions are incapable of acting. People act, as Victor Davis Hanson notes regarding Senator Obama’s latest MSM leg-tingler:

With all due respect, I also don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. And I don’t think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which “famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not “the carbon we send into atmosphere,” causes “terrible storms,” just as it has and will for millennia.

Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”

I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons “destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.

The world will not come together. It won’t solve our problems. We, people, have to actually get out there and do things…if what is meant by “the world” is a UN resolution condemning the crime of Darfur, then that is worse than doing nothing…what is needed is for those oh, so liberal people out there to find someone like Kitchener and send a punitive expedition to the Sudan to force the Sudanese government to stop being a bunch of inhuman savages. You want to “free Tibet”? Then gather yourself money and arms and infiltrate Tibet and start to set up revolutionary cells to expell the Chinese invaders. You want to help the poor? Then you can at least donate some money to Missionaries of the Poor…if you’re waiting for “the world” to do it, you’ll be waiting a long time. Its up to you, ya see?

The high flown rhetoric of Obama hides nothing – and not in the sense that Obama’s got nothing to hide; he’s hiding the fact that there’s nothing there. Under a President Obama we’ll have many, many meetings in many, many ritzy areas of the world and we’ll hear from many, many people telling us of the plight of this or that people or thing…and money will be appropriated and Nobel Prizes awarded…and nothing will have been done, because people didn’t actually go and do something about the problem. We had during the 8 years of Clinton lots of talk of doing things and not much action – and the worst offenders are those very same European elites who hail Obama as the man to lead the world…it was the Europeans, after all, who sat on their hands and talked about doing something in Yugoslavia as the horrors of World War Two were repeated, nightly, on their television sets.

What we want in a President is a man who will do something – McCain is that man. He won’t wait for the UN to have a conference, but will dive right in looking for a practical solution that actual people can carry out in a short amount of time. All through Obama’s thought runs the idea that we’ll do things, one day, after we’ve talked about them, for a while…all of McCain’s thought is centered on what we can do, right now, to make things better for people. Think about it for a moment – who has done more for others: the Marine in Anbar or the head of the UN High Commission on Human Rights? The one does, the other talks. Talk is, as they say, cheap.

And so, my friends, is Obama – just a man who moralises on the cheap and never puts himself out to actually do something. Afraid of his own shadow, Obama hides behind a mountain of words which sound sweet in the ears of those who want others to do the heavy lifting…but which disgust anyone who has ever done anything.

UPDATE: Gerard Baker has a hilarious send up of the Obama phenonema. A sample:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

Read the whole thing.

While Presidenator Obama (D-Utopia) practices the poses he’ll strike on January 20th, 2009, Senator John McCain continues to act like there’s actually an election to get through before the coronation of His Anti-Imperialist Majesty, Barack I:

McCain Makes Significant Gains in Key Battleground States

Majority of Voters in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin Favor Keeping Troops in Iraq, According to Quinnipiac-washingtonpost.com-Wall Street Journal Survey

Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama’s trip to Europe and the Middle East this week.

McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota while the Illinois senator has a more comfortable double-digit edge in Wisconsin, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal during the past week. Only in Colorado, however, does McCain hold a greater percentage of the vote share than Obama.

About that wall-to-wall coverage of Obama overseas – I wonder if its really helping matters for Obama? Certainly his goal was to give himself foreign policy credentials (as if waltzing ’round Europe makes one a regular Bismarck in foreign policy)…but the way he’s acting like he’s already President is, well, nauseating…and I think it starts to grate on people.

In keeping with Obama’s delusions of Presidential grandeur, what he’s doing is running like he’s the incumbant President – a “Rose Garden” strategy of loftily ignoring his opponent and allowing his stellar record in the White House carry the day for him. Its a great idea, but Obama would be better advised to use it in 2012, supposing he wins in 2008. Believe it or not, Senator, you actually have to win in November – and there isn’t a single poll out there since the absurd Newsweek poll showing anything other than a tight electoral battle (and I do wonder if, perhaps, Obama believes the Newsweek poll?).

The advantage still, barely, lies with Obama – call it a 52% chance of an Obama win. Last week, if the election were held then, I figured Obama for a winner…this week? Not quite so sure anymore.

Who think of themselves as men of destiny are a high risk for high office, as Nevada Pundit notes.

Youth will have its way with the world, but a wise man never lets mere youth to have its way because it is young.

Would be, well, idiocy, if this quote from Germany is anything to go on:

“This is a rare event,” said Alla Samkova, 68, a native Muscovite who has been living in Berlin for 45 years. “In the end it doesn’t matter what he says; it only matters that he’s here.”

That is all there is to Obama – the fact that he’s Obama.

November might well end up with all kinds of surprises.

Wow. Now this is audacity of a dope.

Republicans are, smartly, seizing upon this report from Der Spiegel (which has become a must-read this week):

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

The optics here are not good: Obama has time to get in a workout and give a speech to a crowd mostly comprised of Europeans, but can’t be bothered to visit American troops wounded in action recovering at a military hospital.

Obviously, Obama found it more worth his while to rally for Europeans to get that media coverage of him being a rockstar in Europe than it was for him to meet with members of the military whom he wants to be the commander-in-chief of.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the Obama campaign’s excuse for dissing our troops doesnt’ hold water

“The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign,” explains spokesman Robert Gibbs.

This is a sticky wicket for Obama.

On the one hand, he’s been criticized for the (laughable) contention that the trip is not related to the campaign. To clearly delineate those elements of the tour that are related to his role as a senator and those that are undeniably political would seem to be a way to respond to that critique and seperate church from state. Moreover, he’s being doubly safe by avoiding the perception of campaigning in a military hospital and using wounded troops as props.

But then how many politicians include official stops in the course of a trip otherwise related to a campaign (think POTUS or a member of Congress doing fundraising and public business on the same day). Further, Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this, the campaign-funded, part of his trek. If that was deemed ok, than are we to assume that each of his get-togethers with European leaders is political in nature?

Assuming their rationale was on the level and not just cover to give the candidate a breather, the easier move may have been to still visit Rammstein and Landstuhl but keep the press behind.

Of course, if Obama cared to visit the troops, he’d have made the effort to see them… even without the media.

In Germany today, Barack Hussein Obama had this to say about his “actions” regarding Iran. As Powerline notes,

Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.

But Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Obama just made that up so he could count the committee’s action as one of “my deeds.”

How is it that a U.S. Senator, one who is supposedly made of the “right stuff” to lead this nation on a glorious path toward…uhh.. change, doesn’t even know on which committee he serves? Is he that dense? Or is it that Obama is just that brazen a liar, in the knowledge that his fawning, sycophantic media posse will provide the needed cover?

In either case, it may behoove you Obamatons to really think, and think hard, before pulling that lever in November.

CORRECTION: I mistakenly stated that Obama made the quoted speech in Germany; in actuality, Obama made the speech yesterday at Sderot, Israel. Thanks, Casper.

Nothing like getting “backs agains the wall” to shake a person up and make them realise that they’re in the fight:

Two influential American Evangelical leaders have taken a new interest in the 2008 presidential race, with one saying that he leans toward the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, while another plans to host the first head-to-head meeting of the two leading contenders for the White House.

Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, told a radio audience: “While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.” Dr. Dobson, who commands a wide following among conservative Evangelicals, had previously said that he could not support McCain because of the senator’s support for embryo research and his failure to back a constitutional amendment protecting marriage.

However, Dr. Dobson said that the “radical positions on life, marriage, and national security” taken by Senator Barack Obama were pushing him toward McCain.

Meanwhile Rick Warren, the leader of one of America’s largest “mega-church” congregations, the Saddleback Church in California, has announced plans to hold a forum that would hear both Obama and McCain. Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, will bring the Democratic and Republican candidates together for an August 16 event that, he says, will be “an unprecedented opportunity for America to hear both men back-to-back on the same platform.” Warren, who has not previously taken an active role in partisan politics, will be the only person questioning the candidates at the August 16 event.

There was much talk as McCain emerged the clear front runner for the GOP nomination about sitting this one out – Evangelicals because McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view ) and movement conservatives because, once again, McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view). My grandfather had a saying that I’ve laid to heart – better to have 10% of something than 100% of nothing. Whatever McCain may or may not do in the White House, we can rest assured that Obama will be worse for Christian conservatives and movement conservatives….there is, actually, not one position Obama has staked out which can be called by conservatives and conservative Christians better than the McCain position.

As for me, I’ve grown “re-comfortable” with McCain – he was, after all, my main serious choice for 2000 (Bush came in after him, one other person came in front of McCain, but mostly for fun on my part). McCain did much to annoy me since 2001 – most notably on refusing to back the tax cuts and the “gang of 14” nonsense in the Senate (immigraiton reform? Sorry, but I backed the McCain/Bush proposal, and still do), but I am one of those who understands that people are, well people and I’m certainly not perfect and if I’m going to refuse to support anyone but the perfect conservative then I’ll never be able to support anyone. McCain is a good man, a war hero, a solid patriot, a man of moral courage – these are the qualities I want in a President and, at any rate, I love a respectful, intra-party fight anyways, so I’ll still battle President McCain on such things as CFR. For me, McCain wasn’t my first pick, but he’s an excellent pick, all the same.

Given such things as Obama’s support for the fanatic, pro-abortion proposals and other Obama policies directly contravening basic Christian teaching, it is no surprise that Evanglicals are starting to swing behind McCain in a serious way. America can’t afford four years of Carter, Part Two. Obama is a catastrophe in the making – but one we can un-make, if we’ll just rally ’round the man who is best for President in 2008, John McCain

Might as well just mark down each Obama position and flip it over – from Byron York over at NRO’s The Corner:

The McCain campaign is pointing out that it was one year ago today, during a Democratic debate, that Barack Obama was asked the famous would-you-meet-Ahmadinejad-without-preconditions question. This was it:

QUESTION: In the spirit of…bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration – is ridiculous.

This morning, in Israel, Obama was asked whether he would still give the same answer. His response:

I think that what I said in response was that I would at my time and choosing be willing to meet with any leader if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America. And that continues to be my position. That if I think that I can get a deal that is going to advance our cause, then I would consider that opportunity. But what I also said was that there is a difference between meeting without preconditions and meeting without preparation.

You can check out the transcript of the whole 2007 debate here. Obama just didn’t talk about preparation.

The official word is still that Obama is a sure-thing to win…but he’s still only barely up in the polls and shows no signs of breaking out of his 45-47% range of support. The reason Obama isn’t walking away with this election? Because he’s proving himself ever more dishonest and nakedly ambitious for personal glory. People still don’t like the GOP and still aren’t sure about McCain, but outside the left and, naturally, African-Americans, the Obama myth has worn thin. None of this, in and of itself, means that McCain will win – McCain has a very hard fight in front of him and only a four in ten chance (at best) of winning it in the end – but Obama’s vulnerabilities are massive, glaring and growing…and one wonders just how long adulatory MSM coverage will keep the shine on the Obama apple?

Possibly, very short list?

ROCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) – It’s VP tea leaf reading season, and a Republican source who attended a small private meeting with John McCain Tuesday in New Hampshire tells CNN that the GOP candidate dropped a serious hint about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

The Republican source said “out of the blue” McCain told the gathering that he thinks they are “really going to like” Pawlenty.

As Chairman for the national McCain For President Committee, the perceived degree of possibility of Tim Pawlenty as a possible Veep pick for McCain has vacillated wildly since February of this year; at times it looked like he was a definite pick, at other times a longshot. Don’t get me wrong. I like Governor Pawlenty. But a Pawlenty pick would do very little to shore up McCain’s conservative bonafides. A pick of a true-blue conservative such as Bobby Jindal, on the other hand, would take the McCain campaign light years toward healing the obvious rift between conservative purists and some of the uncomfortably left-leaning policies of the McCain platform.

***UPDATE***

I guess a Bobby Jindal candidacy is not in the cards.