Obama/Biden. Not bad. This ticket strikes me as one that will only appear better with time, over the next several weeks. There may be concerns at this moment based on what we know about Biden, such as foot-in-mouth tendency and he loves the spotlight, but the good chemistry between he and Obama is very palpable, and Biden is no dummy and will quickly learn to modify his behavior to better fit the role of VP.

The zealous right may look to jump on Biden for his supposed plagiarism incident in 1987. Then it was laughable and today it should be considered that much more a ludicrous accusation. There's nothing to it, much as there was never anything to the Al Gore-invents-internet nonsense.

However, there is very much something to McCain's latest fetish for telling a POW story that to many people appears to have been "lifted" from the recently deceased Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Yes, McCain has been retelling a story ("Cross in the Dirt") that Solzhenitsyn wrote more than 30 years ago. McCain had never recounted this story in his biography and actually only started to tell it a few years ago concerning another POW, not McCain himself. It's only in the past year or so that McCain twisted it further to have it apply to himself. So the story has been plagiarized and over time McCain has changed the focus of the "borrowed" story to himself. And he's criticizing Obama's judgment?

Many months ago, McCain decided to flush his integrity and self-respect down the toilet. He embraced the Rovian tactics that were used against him in 2000, tactics that he harshly criticized then and with good reason. But as with Ralph Nader, who's done a wonderful job at soiling his once admirable reputation, McCain has managed to do even more damage to his own historical standing. To paraphrase that well-known saying, for some men the lure of power corrupts, absolutely.