The potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader

...[Obama] is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Sorry, Dad, I'm voting for Obama (Christopher Buckley, The Daily Beast, 10 October 2008)

Yeah, that about sums it up.

November 4th will not mark the first occasion that I've voted for a Democrat--I've done so many times in my adult life, for candidates at the local and state level--but it'll be the first time I've ever voted for the Democratic Party's candidate for President.

It's Palin for VP

I think McCain made a canny choice. It was a bold one, anyway: this move is either going to look nuts or brilliant in under a month.

Depending on the polls you believe, between 20% and 30% of Hillary Clinton voters were self-reporting as "likely to vote for McCain," and that's *before* JMC picked a woman as running mate. So there's the obvious, transparent and cynical appeal to disgruntled Clintonistas. But the thing is, this might work!

Independents are still very much in play. McCain himself, though pro-life (as is Palin) can best be described as a moderate social conservative with occasional tendencies towards actual tolerance, and Palin has been described as "as libertarian as you can get and still be on a major ticket" by no less than the editor of Reason magazine.

Plenty of people have modestly libertarian views (including many independent voters!) - economically conservative but socially tolerant.

Best punditry I've seen so far:

Michael Barone

Marc Armbinder

TNR: Neo-McCain

Nowhere has McCain's willingness to question his own previous assumptions been more dramatic than on foreign policy. When he first arrived in Washington, he was essentially a realist, arguing that U.S. military power should only be used to protect vital national interests. Since the late '90s, however, he has joined forces with neoconservatives to support a crusade aimed at overthrowing hostile and undemocratic regimes--by force, if necessary--and installing in their place democratic, pro-American governments. Unlike many Republicans, he enthusiastically backed Bill Clinton's intervention in Kosovo. Moreover, he was pushing for Saddam Hussein's forcible overthrow years before September 11--at a time when George W. Bush was still warning against the arrogant use of American might.

And therein lies my McCain dilemma--and, perhaps, yours. If, like me, you believe that the war in Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, then you are likely disturbed by McCain's early and continuing support for it--indeed, he advocates sending more troops to that strife-torn land--and by his advocacy of an approach to Iran that could lead to another fruitless war. At the same time, he has shown an admirable willingness to reevalute his views when events have proved them wrong. The question, then, comes down to this: Is John McCain capable of changing his mind about a subject very close to his heart--again?

The making of an überhawk: Neo-McCain, by John Judis, The New Republic, October 9, 2006