The Great National Dice-Roll

First, the Obama agenda, spin it how you will, is government behind the steering wheel I just mentioned, private industry and initiative in the passenger seat, if not the back seat. Obama has designed on paper a program (health care, energy, taxes, investment, etc., etc.) that, if duly enacted would make Americans more dependent upon their central government for happiness and prosperity (if any) than until recently we can have believed possible. Of course, future Congresses could theoretically unravel that dependency, but why put them to the trouble and anxiety?

Second -- here I go again -- not even David Axelrod can be sure he knows how Obama would fare in the mega-pressure chamber to which he begs admission. Has he, in fact, legislative and executive skills? Colin Powell doesn't know. Christopher Buckley doesn't know. The editors of the New York Times don't know. I make bold to say no one knows. We can intuit anyway who ends up running the show if the man nobody really knows should fall on his face. I speak of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid -- names I invoke not for emotive purposes but rather to suggest the stakes in the great dice-roll we contemplate.

The imperfections of John McCain, and of his candidacy, fade into insignificance against the recklessness inherent in choosing Obama: a recklessness that may be set, so to speak, in concrete. Though many still hope not, and with wonderful reason.