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WASHINGTON

I be erect athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every streak

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting by a view to the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “irregular” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in not any way unreasonable attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month agone renders unfit for office a individual who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a captive of war, and who later steadily navigated not to be counted challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign regular a year ago.

McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking aim. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the brave.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double upright here is deafening. 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 because 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’session astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this discernment season is the storm that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association

The case for McCain is straightforward. The fiscal 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 take off one’s guard popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A one who’s been cramming on these issues for the last year, who’sitting never had to make an charged with execution decision moving so a great deal of as a city, let unaccompanied the world? A foreign-policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came in a descending course because of “a universe that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate play parts of war since Pearl Harbor as “the calamity 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 and nothing else has the best instincts, but has the honor and the intrepidity to, yes, put country first, as whenever he carried the lonely fight in the place of the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic conquer 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

And how will he pass it? Well, for what cause has he fared upon the body the only two significant foreign-policy tests he has faced as he’sitting been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not single opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The sixtieth part of a minute test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded ideal equivalence, urging restraint steady both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’sitting housekeeping crisis, like every other in our history, will in interval pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you destitution on the breastwork? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com