Spending a month away, among people who had a lot of questions about where the United States is heading, made me realize more than ever what a colossal, nearly impossible job the next president has. Not only have Bush and Cheney driven the country into a ditch, the wheels have pretty much come off the car. And we all know how expensive it will be to fill it with gas.

"It's hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'This made men more just to one another or this saved the life of one Jew or one Vietnamese'...The difference between us and the artists of the Twenties is that they thought that such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was their naivete that they could think so, but it's our loss that we cannot."
Robert Hughes, The Shock Of The New

With Hillary Clinton preparing to endorse Barack Obama, the punditocracy and political class has immediately begun wondering about the possibility of a Obama-Clinton ticket. She's apparently receptive to the notion, and at least one of her supporters plans to openly push for it. The idea of the nominee combining with his closest rival has precedent: In 1960, John Kennedy teamed with Lyndon Johnson and in 1980 George Bush joined Ronald Reagan. It's the quickest and simplest way to unify a party: It shows respect to the supporters of the runner-up and demands that the runner-up campaign actively for the ticket. In the case of Hillary Clinton, Obama would tap into a formidable organization and donor base.

Barack Obama entered the annals of history last night when he claimed victory over Hillary Clinton in the long march to the Democratic party nomination. In a powerful speech pointedly set at the site of the upcoming Republican National Convention, a determined-looking Obama paid tribute to his rival before looking ahead to the general election.

The following letter -- apparently written in all seriousness -- appears in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"The news from Iraq is increasingly good and hopeful, so what are the media talking about? Scott McClellan's denunciations of the Bush administration. McClellan himself admits that the final product is not the book he set out to write and that he is a recent convert to his current views. My guess is that he succumbed to pressure from his anti-Bush publishers and sold out his soul for big royalties and media buzz. Certainly the media are hungry for new anti-Bush material.

So, former Bush Administration press secretary Scott McClellan has written a tell-all account of his experience. In the memoir McClellan drops such bombshells as these:<div>

• the White House was in a "permanent campaign" mode in which the electoral calendar was the preeminent factor in the most minute decisions;
• the Iraq war is "not necessary" and was sold to the public by means of a "political propaganda campaign;"
• a disaster-numbed White House botched the response to Hurricane Katrina, in part by hoping that it wouldn't be that bad;
• Karl Rove and Scooter Libby may well have met align their testimony in the Valerie Plame trial;
• as press secretary, McClellan often made statements that he later discovered were (gasp!) misleading.

Eric Alterman writes of the misconception that conservatives revere and support the military while liberals largely disdain it.

A couple of weeks ago, we joined ten other people and toured the Katrina-damaged areas of New Orleans. This amounts to 80 per cent of the entire city, an expanse of 144 square miles, or the size of seven Manhattans. Katrina-related damage extended to four parishes: Orleans, Jefferson, Placquemines, and St. Bernard's.  As we discovered on the tour, little of it need have happened: Although touched off by natural forces, Katrina was largely a man-made disaster caused by the failure of the federal levee system.

Last year, my wife and I had the unadulterated pleasure of spending a day driving through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

Think for a moment about the magnitude of Obama's achievement.

Hard as it is to believe, Peggy Noonan displays more than her usual banality by writing:

A saloon in the Old West hires a Shakespearean actor to declaim a few lines from Othello. He arrives on the noon stage; a pair of town drunks waylay him immediately. They fire their guns at his feet and order him to dance while the whole town looks on. Through no fault of his own, the actor becomes the lead player in a demeaning spectacle. This pretty describes the gravitas level at Wednesday night's Pennsylvania primary debate.

The two most inane and vacuous performances of the debate season came last night in Pennsylvania. I'm writing, of course, of ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson. Both were pathetic.

Yesterday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton participated in a Faith Forum in Grantham, Pennsylvania. (John McCain declined an invitation.) They answered questions about abortion, human rights, and global warming. But the most important issue concerning faith and politics never came up, so I'll phase it here:

Many people believe that an individual's faith or lack thereof is a personal matter, something private that should be kept out of the public sphere. They believe that one can easily infer candidate's values from the positions they take, and that public professions of religious belief amount to pandering. Furthermore, they look at the historical impact of religious fundamentalism -- be it Christian, Islam, or anything else -- on public policy and find it largely negative. My questions: What distinctions do you draw between personal values and religion? Are they one and the same, or is religion one of many possible influences on personal values? At what point does religious faith become an inappropriate influence on public policy? Has this ever happened with Christianity in the United States? Has it happened recently? Please cite examples...

The U.S. Navy in its infinite wisdom promises that Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca Dickinson will never "wear her uniform again in the service of our country." "Service" is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, as Dickinson's offense involves moonlighting as a call girl for the D.C. Madam. Which begs the question: If the Navy discharged every sailor who had been to a whorehouse, just how many would they have left?

General Petraeus' testimony yesterday was a linguistic maze of gobbledegook that said little and committed to less. Would that he and Ambassador Crocker could face the American people with a fingernail-sized sliver of the courage that his soldiers show in battle -- we and they deserve no less, although it was hardly in evidence. Nonetheless, politicians and press continue to quail before anyone in a brass hat: Coverage of the hearings was muted and the political response was more frustrated and resigned than anything else.

In yesterday's disgraceful testimony before Congress, General David Petraeus recommended that the troop "drawdown" from Iraq cease for a minimum of 45 days after the surge force completes its stint. Will the troop reductions recommence after the 45 days are up?

Last week, Pete Palmer, the son of longtime friends, filed suit against the Waxahachie (TX) Independent School District for violating his First Amendment rights. Last September 21, Pete had the temerity to wear a "John Edwards '08" t-shirt to school. He refused to remove the shirt after school officials informed him that it violated the Student Code of Conduct. Apparently, the same Code of Conduct that would allow him to wear a Dallas Cowboys jersey does not allow him to express a presidential preference. (It would also allow him to wear a jersey from the Washington Redskins -- the Cowboys' hated rivals -- which might well have put him in physical danger. But I digress.)