Wisconsin as a battlegound

Lots of people are assuming that Barack Obama has wrapped up Wisconsin. Certainly the polls suggest that Obama has a safe lead here and the fact that the Republican Party has stopped spending money on television ads here reinforce that impression.

But, as we all know, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day and we really don’t know how this will end.

With that in mind, I call your attention to a video developed by the Washington Post capturing some of the diverse opinions and attitudes here in Wisconsin.

It’s more than eight minutes long but I think you’ll find it as captivating as I did. The focus is on race and whether it will confound the results predicted by the polls.

What I found most compelling about this video was the broad disparity of beliefs and attitudes across our state. Not that it should come as a surprise but it still makes your jaw drop.

So, in a democracy, anything can happen when people go and vote. That’s why our system of government is so attractive and so difficult. You have to pay attention and take action.

And that’s why that other guy from Illinois who ran for president called our country “the last, best hope of earth.”

Lincoln’s words, quoted out of context, seem to reek of nationalistic hubris.

But when you read the text of Lincoln’s speeches, especially the greatest one of all, his Second Inaugural Address, you can’t help but sense his humility and respect for every individual, friend or foe.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I mean does it get any better than that?

Roger Johnson in The New Statesman, draws an interesting contrast between the evocation of Lincoln’s words in Obama’s speeches and the repeated references to Ronald Reagan by John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Kind of makes you think.

And then there’s this analysis of Lincoln by Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago from 2002. Check out this concluding passage:

More than a hundred years later, there is no point in hoping for another Abraham Lincoln. But one may hope that we have not entirely forgotten the possibilities of political and moral leadership that he exemplified.

Wow. From 2002!

So, remember, it’s a democracy.

Who do you want as your president?

And, finally, here’s a little comic relief. Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles has a little fun with the McCain campaign’s use of robocalls.

Only 11 days left. Make sure you vote.