Unfortunately, for him, he put his lot in with the Rove team when the country has moved on. Schmidt is fighting on the turf of 2000 and 2004, and the landscape has drastically changed.

Even when they write this:

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these problems, and we are far from being his fiercest critic.

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these problems; we have been his fiercest fellators and fellatrices.

The editorial is a masterpiece of finding the middle and plopping it in oatmeal.  Bland, undistinguished and indistinguishable.

Moreover, and more risible, is their insistence on both McSame's opposition to torture, and on their worries about detention policy and torture.  I think a very old lesson is starting to dawn on them, and they do not like the picture they see.  That lesson?  

When a government sets aside the bounds of civilization - law, manners, precedent, experience - and allows the baser side of human nature to take over, torture, unlawful abuse, extrajudicial expediency and plain unbridled thuggery become the norm.  That slide often begins with dipping a toe in that nasty, filthy pool.  And it works quite well so long as your side is in control.  But, the minute the other side is in control, it becomes the worst thing in the world.*  But the other lesson elites forget, invariably until it is too late, is that once they loose the thugs, the thugs are smart enough to know that they can take over, because the very elites who loosed them are not themselves thuggish enough to keep them in line any more.  And it is the very elites who turned the thugs loose who suffer the worst fates at the thugs hands.

Just ask all the Communist Party members who made the 1917 Revolution, only to die in Stalin's work camps for ... well, whatever reason.  Among other things, they might have had sufficient rations supplied them, save for the fact that the thugs in their midst took their lunch.  And their blankets. And their warm clothes.  And made them do the thugs' work quota.

I think that realization is starting to dawn on the Village, and they are not happy about it.

• 
  
• So, look for Obama The Torturer to be a theme coming up say, January 21.  He'll be blamed for all the crimes of the Bush Administration, just as Clinton was and still is.  

i'm glad that obama is likley going to win. but let's not kid ourselves that we are voting for him based on his experience or his qualifications. it so happens that his greatest proved talent so far is getting elected despite his lack of experience. nd he has many legitimate virtues that we can vote for.

does this mean he wont be a good president? no.

palin would be a bad president b/c she's a certain kind of republican. and if her presence on the ticket is destroying mccain, then we should be glad we didnt run her off when she was nominated. and we should be careful of making a martyr of her.

It makes me wonder, had McCain not picked Palin, would the Post still have endorsed Obama?

scribe and bob somerby pretty much nail the wp
(and the nyt's, for that matter): the "village" can admit no wrong.

unlike the wp, i do blame bush for the problems the country is currently facing. pres. bush is a deeply flawed man, his presidency deeply flawed as well; a man who truly believed that god wanted him to be president. maybe this was god's idea of a joke, and he is aghast that we took him seriously?

hysterical laughter, or deep sobbing seem the only reasonable responses to the complete, utter disaster that the bush presidency has been.

i watched a repeat of a history channel program on pres. lincoln today. the difference between him and bush is just staggering. upon election, lincoln publicly expressed his concerns about being up to the task before him, and hoped that a higher power would see fit to help him.

bush, on the other hand, assumed god wanted him, and he expressed no reservations whatever about being capable of performing the job.

the difference between a smart person, who recognizes his weaknesses, and a profoundly delusional one who doesn't.

I actually think it was a more effective endorsement given that they DO disagree with Obama on some issues.  (For the same reason I didn't mind when Obama said he agreed with McCain sometimes--it made his criticism of McCain seem truer when he did that.)