The Georgia Crisis: Does Obama 'Get' It?

McCain further understood the stakes in the affair. You let the bad guys take out a friend of yours and soon your other friends start wearing nervous looks. What next? In a fight, could they count on America? How much could they count on America? Should they start to think about making terms with potential adversaries?

John McCain knows, sadly, that even if American troops weren't up to their eyebrows in Iraq, we couldn't take on the Russians in their backyard -- a sort of Crimean War replay. He knows something just as important, or so one infers from listening to him. He knows that not to give this Caucasian cause our very best shot is to invite more Soviet behavior of the kind on display in Georgia right now and, ultimately, to make life tougher for all countries wedded to democracy.

Does Obama understand this unquestionable truth? Given his proximity to the White House, one hopes so. Oh, how one hopes! One just can't know what this untried Harvard lawyer -- the budding president we have only lately come to know at all -- believes and understands deep down. Nor have we any real intuition concerning what he can do when he gets a head of steam up. If he does get a head of steam up.

The presidential race, one senses, could be shifting. Will it continue to center on "change"? Or is a new political coloration coming in -- the sense that life in the 21st century has its own menaces and dangers, not all of them susceptible to rich oratory, or even hugs.