Her answer: "The first question is: How do you do a tax cut and fight a war, which is what George Bush did." Hello, folks. If Obama is elected president, regardless of what he does in Iraq, he promises to increase military action in Afghanistan. He is proposing to do a tax cut and fight a war.

Speakers talk more about the economy than the war in Iraq. (I predict that speakers at the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul will talk more about the war in Iraq than the Dems talk about the war at their convention.)

Four years ago, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston (before Democrats took over Congress), the war was the overriding moral issue. Now the Democrats run Congress and U.S. troops are still in Iraq.

Where's the outrage?

In 1988, when Vice President George H.W. Bush said, "Read my lips: No new taxes," I was there. In hotel bars that night and in the weeks that followed, the buzz from the press -- I thought unfairly -- was that there was no way Bush would not be able to keep his word.

Obama has pledged to cut taxes for 95 percent of American families. Yet the media don't seem to challenge him as they challenged the Bush 41 -- who simply said he wouldn't raise taxes, not that he could cut them despite a large deficit.

It could be that the press have seen that tax cuts can work, and lead to revenue increases. But I think a larger factor is a change in the media. We expect politicians to pander, not lead. Like the public, we no longer demand that they make difficult choices.