Barrel Strength

A well-conceived comparison of John McCain and Winston Churchill in careers, strategic thinking and temperament. While the Greatest Briton remains in his own class, McCain could lend to our times some of the badly needed grit of the old bulldog himself.

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that the US Presidency is the seat of leadership for the Free World and not another of Oprah’s Favourites:

With Hillary, Obama looks youthful and invigorating. But beside the scarred old veteran McCain, he will appear inexperienced and wet behind the ears. Putin’s comment that Hillary didn’t have a head reminds us that the problems in the world are not, pace Obama, due to misunderstanding or miscommunication, but because thugs like Ahmadinejihad, the Chinese apparatchiks, Assad, Putin, Chavez, etc. profoundly dislike the impediments the United States poses to their respective carnivorous agendas. McCain gets it, the others don’t (cf. his Putin KGB quip compared to Hillary’s ‘duh’ redundant remark that Putin didn’t have a soul.)

These creepy leaders are more like beady-eyed wolves that wish to break into the global hen-house and prey on the European, African, Asian, and Latin American chickens inside - and so pace back and forth, eyeing the trigger finger of the farmer with the shotgun at the door. They know exactly what they want, and how to get it, and can’t wait for the guardian to sit down, discuss their hunger, and invite inside them for discussions - and some lunch