[Vision2020] I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

[No Weatherman]

I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
By Charles Krauthammer

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking
about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before
it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered
conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the
cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe
— neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic
(Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) —
yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go
down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my
bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize
voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in
living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if
McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to
tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came
crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who
demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of
unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily
navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which
was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year
record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double
standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad
falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad
falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in
half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years
of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William
Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by
William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election
season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary)
conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of
Obama's most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev.
Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made
us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is.
We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An
apocalyptic, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in
danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of
revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out
of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been
cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an
executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A
foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most
vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of
"a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate
act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more
appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable,
most serious foreign-policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man
who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage
to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for
the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable
strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week
that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a
crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about
national security and vote on November 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two
significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the
Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not
only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it, and — finally —
deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively
with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides.
McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the
aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time
pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want
on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWRiZTUzNWQ3ZTIwZjViODJlMjc0OWQyODU3NDA4NGY=