Seriously

In a column over the weekend Paul Krugman stated that with the current economic crisis "Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness" to the detriment of McCain's "deeply unserious" campaign. Certainly McCain's focus on the issues of triviality have been the mark of his campaign and underlined his desperation, and with this focus on the unserious comes the illumination that there is nothing there for him to run on. McCain's only hope is to keep bringing up issues that will tear Obama down, scare voters and further distract the electorate with issues that really don't affect their daily lives and muddle the issues of what should be important to them. Of course, the politics of distraction have worked before and we have to hope that this time they will not. As Krugman notes, "when the world seems to be falling apart, you don’t turn to a guy you’d like to have a beer with, you turn to someone who might actually know how to fix the situation." This is what "independent" voters should most remember when going to the polls next week. It seems here to be a good time to give kudos to Paul Krugman for his recent Nobel Prize in Economics. In these last eight years his thoughtful, insightful, brave and illuminating words from his columns, his book The Conscience of a Liberal and his blog have all been tonics for the world we have been living in. Congratulations, Paul.