The controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s recent speech at a San Francisco fundraiser highlights his most glaring weaknesses as a presidential candidate. To the well-heeled and sophisticated audience, Obama spoke about working class Americans and their hardships under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He then commented, “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Under criticism from both Senators Clinton and McCain, Obama responded by defending his conclusion that voters are, indeed, bitter. “No, I’m in touch,” he commented. “I know exactly what’s going on…. People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington.” 

Of course, this line ignores the most serious questions about his previous statement. 

The right way to pose a challenge to Obama would be to ask: 

“Senator, do you really believe that religion is something people ‘cling to’ in bitterness, or is it something they embrace in joy? 

“Senator, do people cling to guns out of bitterness, or own them proudly as a means to protect their families, in celebration of a Constitutional right? 

“Senator, is ‘anti-trade sentiment’ merely a product of bitterness for struggling blue collar Americans or is it, I’ve you’ve suggested elsewhere, a sentiment you actually share?” 

The truth is, there’s no good way to answer these questions for Obama. He ought to admit he misspoke and expressed himself poorly. His unwillingness to do so—and insistence on defending indefensible remarks-- demonstrates one of his obvious weaknesses as a candidate.  

The fact that Obama delivered his original remarks at a San Francisco fundraising makes them all the more damning and damaging. 

The episode also demonstrates that for all his polish and charm and self-assurance when reading a carefully scripted speech, Obama simply isn’t that great when speaking off the cuff. In debates, Hillary Clinton frequently outperformed him. In interviews he can sound awkward and stilted – if never quite inarticulate. 

Aside from revealing his condescending attitude toward working class voters, Obama’s words in “Bitter-Gate” reveal a candidate whose political skills may not prove as formidable as his adoring minions in mainstream media would have us believe.  

The three candidates for president provided an illuminating contrast with their very different observance of the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on Friday. Barack Obama addressed a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering a vague, detail-free but soaring promise to complete King’s dream by addressing persistent poverty and economic inequality. Hillary Clinton summoned tears to recall her personal reaction as a college junior forty years ago – throwing her book bag across her dorm room and feeling her whole world was shattered. John McCain went to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the civil rights museum on the site where King was actually shot, and expressed his regret for voting against the national King holiday when Congress first considered it in the ‘80’s. He received a smattering of boos and catcalls from the all-black crowd, but also audible shouts of “we forgive you” and “everybody makes mistakes.” After his remarks, Senator McCain – who refuses Secret Service protection – plunged into the once hostile crowd, in the rain, and spent considerable time hugging and greeting its members. In short, Obama provided a stage-managed, effective, but meaningless media event, Clinton embarrassed herself with a narcissistic and oddly self-pitying recollection, and McCain showed why some of us believe that he is a most unusual and intriguing candidate. He knew he wasn’t going to get any votes from a talk to an African-American crowd in Memphis. Of course, most of those who heard him – however moved they seemed to be – will vote for Obama, McCain’s likely rival, in the fall. Nor does John McCain need extra votes in Memphis to carry Tennessee, which looks like  reliably Republican state in November. Nonetheless, McCain made himself look presidential – delivering bracing straight talk about an unhealed national wound in a high risk and low benefit insertion in his schedule. Typically, disappointingly, the media only featured the headline that he acknowledged his mistake in first opposing the holiday, but gave little attention to the substance of the fine speech about the meaning of Dr. King’s work. Aside from the falling barriers of race and gender on the Democratic side, Senator McCain is making his own efforts to make this campaign different, and better, than our other recent electoral contests.

Robert Redford invaded Capitol Hill on Tuesday to confront a House of Representatives subcommittee with impassioned demands for more money for the arts.  

Accompanied by singer John Legend, actress Kerry Washington and other luminaries, the Sundance Kid attempted this daring hold-up in broad daylight –insisting that funding for the National Endowment for the Arts must be restored to its 1992 peak of $176 million, from the paltry 2009 figure of $128 million proposed by the Bush administration. 

After all, Redford reasons, what’s a mere $48 million difference when it comes to the beautiful friendship between the Democrats who control Congress and their well-heeled friends in Hollyweird? 

The demands associated with national “Arts Advocacy Day” (sorry if you missed it) display enough gall to be divided into three parts.  

If Tinseltown titans want more funding for the arts, then why don’t they spend their own damn money? Considering the tens of millions of dollars raised in Hollywood for the Obama and Clinton campaigns, Redford and company easily could come up with double or triple the proposed federal expenditure to create their own “endowment for the arts.”  

In addition to privatizing an utterly useless (and totally wasteful) government boondoggle, this new venture could also display more expertise in judging artistic projects (with funding and supervision by creative people themselves) than the silly federal bureaucrats who currently control the “official” arts programs. 

Congress and the executive branch have enough time evaluating what military equipment deserves funding, or which environmental programs require more money. It’s insane to put these same federal office holders in charge of deciding what documentary films, and performance art, and poetry readings, and literary magazines, and public sculpture deserve taxpayer money. 

The whole idea of “official” federally approved art goes against the notion of free expression that most pop culture potentates claim to promote. Opposition to government sponsorship hardly amounts to imposition of government censorship. Communist dictatorships granted great power to “arts commissars” to nourish useful creativity that served the regime; decadent monarchies have also stolen money from the oppressed populace to establish lavish court theatres and orchestras and art collections to glorify the name of the ruler. 

We don’t need to operate in that style in the world’s greatest Republic. In his prepared testimony, Redford modestly cited his own Sundance Film Festival as an example of artistic endeavors promoting economic development. But wouldn’t it be absurd to suggest that this glittering, lavish, celebrity-saturated annual event requires taxpayer funding for its survival? 

Then again, when it comes to Redford’s latest film project -- the talky, tendentious anti-war snooze fest “Lions for Lambs” (also starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise)-- the public rejected the film so decisively (making it one of the biggest turkeys of recent years) that some retroactive government grant might constitute its beleaguered director’s only hope of ever recouping some of his losses.  

Defenders of Rev. Jeremiah Wright suggest that those of us who have criticized the man should look deeper into his past and his character, to reach the conclusion that he’s not at all the hate-filled fringe figure portrayed by hysterical excerpts from two dozen different sermons and columns.

   With that investigation in mind, I’ve come across a letter from a year ago (March 11, 2007) that shows precisely the sort of raging, out-of-control, demagogic creep that’s appalled the whole world with the deranged rantings featured on U-tube.

  Last month, Dr. Wright wrote to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times to protest an article she had written on the Obama campaign based in part on an interview with the pastor. In the course of that letter, Wright never claimed he had been misquoted or that the Times had misled its readers about his sentiments. He objected, rather, that Ms. Kantor had used only a brief segment of a two-hour interview – a common journalistic practice, obviously.

  Nevertheless, he began the letter with the following declaration (underlining in the original):

Dear Jodi:

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years .

   He went on to ramble about the lavish praise for Obama that he had conveyed during a lengthy interview but which Ms, Kantor failed to report, and then to denounce her for selecting only one portion of their conversation:

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

  Surely, even Rev. Wright’s apologists must find this hyperbole a bit troubling. The man has been a controversial public figure for years, for decades. Is it really possible that he has “never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before”? If so, then Reverend Wright has led a charmed life indeed.

  Even more worrisome, is his summary of Obama as “this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.”

   To Pastor Wright, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t honest (sorry, Honest Abe)?

   George Washington, not honest (a slave-owner, yes, but one who made arrangements to free all his slaves in his will)?. John Adams (the HBO mini-series accurately shows a fearlessly honest leader)? Theodore Roosevelt? Harry Truman? Dwight Eisenhower? Ronald Reagan?

  Or what about all the defeated candidates – none of them honest? Not William Jennings Bryan, or George McGovern, or Barry Goldwater, or Jesse Jackson, or Norman Thomas, or Barack’s fellow Illinoisan, Adlai Stevenson.

    It’s only natural for Obama enthusiasts to describe their golden boy as the best candidate ever to “offer himself” but it’s something else again to describe him as “the first (and maybe even only) honest candidate.”

   It’s precisely the sort of fringe perspective, the wacky, feverish, apocalyptic derangement that comes across in Pastor Wright’s sermons as so disturbing and unwholesome.

   For most Americans who have so far resisted the Obama kool-aid, there’s something unavoidably creepy in a “movement” that swings wildly between the twin polarities of ruthless political operation and glassy-eyed, messianic cult.

For cultural conservatives, the good news is that nearly all Americans –87% -- still believe in the concept of sin, but the bad news is that we’re deeply confused on how to define it.  According to a 2007 study by Ellison research, an overwhelming 81% percent think adultery is sinful, and almost as many –74%-- say that “racism” is a sin. But when it comes to getting an abortion, only 56% think it’s a sin. More Americans consider it sinful to “use hard drugs” or even to “not say something if a cashier gives you too much change.” The public considers “swearing” or “watching pornography” similarly sinful to destroying a baby in the womb--- an indication of the tough work ahead for the pro-life movement. We stand more of a chance of changing the law by changing hearts, than we do by changing hearts through changing the law. We need to make the case that abortion isn’t just a case of moral sloppiness—like accepting the wrong change ---but a cruel act that destroys a life, inflicts pain on a defenseless being, and stops a beating human heart. Once the overwhelming majority of the public agrees that abortion is profoundly wrong and destructive, then and only then can we succeed in changing its legal status.

PBS has committed four hours of broadcast time in the next month to a project called “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” The series looks at official statistics showing that the richest 20% of Americans have a life expectancy  4 years longer than the poorest Americans. Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have spoken out on these disparities and introduced legislation requiring that they be reduced. Actually, the biggest reasons for wealthier people living longer lives reflect healthier habits: less smoking, better diet, more regular exercise, less divorce, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, and so forth. Educated and privileged people also get more and better information about protecting their own health, as well as more access to preventive care. The “inequalities” in life expectancy don’t indicate some profound injustice – in fact, it would be unjust and illogical if people who had created more wealth were unable to use those resources to secure better health outcomes. Alarmists who overreact to the new figures also ignore the old sociological principle that “correlation does not equal causation.” In other words, more money may contribute to good health, but it’s also undoubtedly true that good health helps produce more money: people with serious illnesses or chronic conditions will always find it more difficult to compete in a free market economy. In the final analysis, it’s actually the same set of habits and attitudes – deferred gratification, focusing on long-term goals, self-discipline, avoiding destructive addictions – that contribute to both long life and financial success. Meanwhile, rather than wringing our hands at the fact the people who’ve succeeded in life enjoy better health than those who’ve faced frustration and tragedy, we ought to congratulate ourselves on the improvement in life expectancy for every American at every income level. In the last twenty years, it’s true that the life spans of the richest group went up most sharply (3.4 years) but even among the poorest Americans there was a notable rise – from 73 years to 74.7 years. Despite the concerns of PBS and the Democratic presidential candidates, there’s nothing unnatural about a connection between wealth and health.

While John McCain tours the Middle East and European capitals, then comes home to give a serious, sober speech on the housing crisis, his Democratic rivals seem lost in their own battle of “gotcha” sound-bites. Obama scores against Hillary when she conjures up a silly fantasy of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia; she hits back by making clear she would never have chosen Jeremiah Wright as her preacher or teacher.

While this duel seems to substitute trivial one-ups-manship for serious discussion of issues, both of these embarrassments profoundly undermine the two campaigns.

For Hillary, her ludicrous misrepresentation of her trip to the Bosnian war zone exposes the fundamental lie of her campaign: she toured as a typical First Lady, kissing children and smiling at local dignitaries, not – as she pretended – as a battle-ready commander-in-chief. Her exaggerations about this visit parallel her overall exaggeration of her background in making “policy”: other than the health care debacle, she served only as an informal advisor to her husband and as a “good will ambassador” in the tradition of other presidential wives. Her claims to superior experience for the White House rest only on her four more years of Senate service than Obama –but still twenty years less experience in Congress than McCain.

As to Obama, the ongoing Jeremiah Wright embarrassment also reveals the underlying deception in his campaign: he initially ran for president as a “post racial” candidate with a rich, complex background in all ethnic communities, but he’s increasingly exposed as a radical black nationalist in the tired and discredited tradition of Al Sharpton. His much-heralded speech on race relations couldn’t obscure the fact that he’s chosen for twenty years to worship and to raise his two children at a black supremacist church that views white society as incurably racist and forever guilty. He says he decries statements that the government deliberately infects African-Americans with AIDS, or hooks them on drugs in order to keep them suppressed, but then his tax returns (published today) reveal that he donated more than $27,000 to this same church (while his overall contributions remained below 1% until his election to the U.S. Senate, but that’s another story). How could any serious individual claim to give the lion’s share of his charity to a cause and an ideology which he now says he disapproves?

For both Obama and Clinton, the current imbroglios amount to more than distractions. The “side issues” now tying up the two campaigns each contradict the chief pitch of the candidates, exposing Hillary as no war-weary veteran of foreign policy decision-making, and Barack as no healing, multi-ethnic figure who’ll bring America out of its race-obsessed past.

They’re both much more conventional – and deeply flawed – political figures than they pretend to be.  

Press bias against Republicans and conservatives is so ubiquitous and so obvious that we’ve been anesthetized to all but the most glaring and outrageous examples of slanted coverage. 

The Seattle Times, however, recently provided a demonstration of partisan coverage that’s so clumsy and laughable that it deserves special recognition. 

On March 14^th, announcing the conclusion of the recent legislative session at the state capital, the front page headline declared: “IN OLYMPIA, INACTION WAS PART OF GAME PLAN.”  Under that headline is a smiling photo of the Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives (Lynn Kessler) with an inspiring quote: “If you take too many bold steps, you’ll no longer be in the majority….If we don’t have the majority, we get nothing done.” 

And then the lead in the piece (by veteran political reporter David Postman): “Gov. Christine Gregoire and the Democratic-controlled Legislature accomplished pretty much what they set out to do in the 60-day session that ended Thursday. In other words, nothing flashy.” The interior headline for the continuation of the article also hailed the Democrats for their lack of achievement. “Inaction Part of Democrats’ Game Plan: Lawmakers put daunting to-do list off until next year.” 

In other words, the Dems who run our government in the state of Washington are going to wait until after they get re-elected (they assume) before they do anything at all.  

If Republicans controlled Olympia, do you think the headlines would look the same? 

It’s easy to imagine how the Seattle Times would have covered the same inaction under a Republican legisture: “OLYMPIA GRIDLOCK SHOWS FAILURE OF G.O.P. PLANS” or “G.O.P. DODGES BIG ISSUES TILL AFTER ELECTION.” 

The amazing thing is that the Seattle Times is actually the less liberal, less biased of our major local papers (The Post-Intelligencer is vastly worse). 

Nevertheless, only in the world of liberal media would “inaction” by state legislators draw admiring press coverage.  

The biggest mystery about Barack Obama’s relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright is why the ambitious young politician ever chose to affiliate himself with such a controversial and radical congregation in the first place? 

With all its emphasis on “blackness” and loyalty to “black values” and “black leadership,” its “non-negotiable commitment to Africa” (rather than the USA that nourished and privileged him), why would Trinity United Church of Christ appeal to a bi-racial rising star, raised entirely by white relatives, who seems so sincere in his emphasis on trans-racial unity and patriotism?

In an excellent column in today’s Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer Riley provides the answer by quoting Obama himself. “As Mr. Obama recounts in his memoir,” she writes, “he went to meet Pastor Wright because he was advised that it would ‘help your (community organizing) if you had a churchhome…It doesn’t matter where really.’ So he became a member of the largest black church in the neighborhood thereby furthering his activism and eventually getting the votes of Trinity’s 8,000 congregants. Which is fine, but such an attachment is more utilitarian than religious. And sooner or later its true character will show.”

In other words, Obama’s never felt particularly committed to the Afro-Centric ideology of Pastor Wright and his church – with its stained-glass windows highlighting the life of a black-skinned Jesus.

This may reassure the public about his racial attitudes, but it’s hardly reassuring as a testimonial to his character.

We’re left with only two alternatives to consider this odd relationship, both of them highly unflattering to Senator Obama.

Either (as Ms. Riley argues) he joined the church out of political convenience, rather than faith or else he this week jettisoned the long relationship with Pastor Wright out of convenience rather than conviction.

There’s no sense that he can claim he was sincere and honest in both his initial attraction to the church and his current efforts to distance itself from its black supremacist stance.

It’s possible that both decisions reflect political calculation rather than heart-felt faith, or that one of the two shows his true feelings, but there’s no credible way to claim that he was completely straight and genuine in both his original decision to join the church and his recent denunciations of the intemperate extremism of its spiritual leader.

So, Senator, which is it—you were either a phony when you joined Trinity, or you’re a phony now – or else you’ve spent all of the last twenty years manipulating  symbols of faith for political convenience.

None of the available choices make the presidential candidate look good, let alone heroic and fresh as an agent of messianic change.

This week, Harvard Law School announced a new policy meant to bribe its students to choose careers in government or other forms of “public service.” Concerned over the low percentage (barely 10%) of graduates who choose to go to work as public defenders, prosecutors, or legal aid attorneys, the nation’s second-ranked law school (yeah, Yale still wins) decided to offer free third year tuition for any student who commits to five years of government or non-profit work, shunning the big bucks at the big firms. The saving in tuition fees for a full year of Harvard Law would typically amount to more than $40,000 – a tempting offer to some future legal eagles, no doubt. Elena Kagan, dean of the Law School, estimates that the new policy will likely cost Harvard some $3,000,000 a year, while providing only the intangible benefits of encouraging more “idealism” among the hard-grinding student body. 

With its legendarily lavish endowment, Harvard can certainly afford to give some third year law students a big break, and the university has every right to encourage its graduates to pursue careers deemed more valuable to society. Nevertheless, the new offer reveals one of the crucial mistakes of leftist thinking: the unquestioned (and, in some circles, unquestionable) assumption that government work is always and invariably more valuable than work in the private sector. 

Harvard obviously assumes that taking a job in some legal aid society, suing landlords or employers or polluters or some other designated “bad guys,” will benefit society more reliably than taking a job at a big firm and earning big money. But the corporate job will generate more tax revenue – and may well assist job-creating, wealth-producing businesses that help the community at large. Moreover, if a young man or woman comes out of law school and gets a well-paying job in the corporate world, that new attorney will bring himself or herself that much closer to the ability to start and support a family.  

It doesn’t take much imagination to think of government bureaucrats (at federal, state or local levels) whose work serves to impoverish people and to impede wealth creation, rather than enriching the larger community. Though it may sound like heresy to Harvard, there are government jobs that hardly deserve encouragement or subsidy. 

The instinctive assumption that students who select “public service” are better, more noble, and more worthy of reward than those who choose corporate work represents one of the false, dysfunctional values too often transmitted along with an Ivy League education. 

When a TV network offers new programming that’s entertaining, inspiring and substantive it’s enough to renew our faith in miracles. HBO’s epic eight hours on John Adams is precisely that sort of pop culture miracle: a lovingly-rendered tribute to the most misunderstood, most under-rated of our founding fathers. Aside from admirable attention to historical detail, the HBO miniseries offers perfect casting—with Paul Giamatti as an Adams who’s simultaneously brave, pompous, and selflessly patriotic. The luminous Laura Linney captures Adams’ wife Abigail, with dialogue based frequently on actual letters, providing a singularly moving portrait of a romantic, richly functional, lifelong marital partnership. The series also stresses the nobility of politics – without which, even battlefield heroism could come to naught. David Morse is appropriately noble, charismatic and dignified as George Washington while Tom Wilkinson enjoys the role of Ben Franklin nearly as much as Franklin himself enjoyed his long life. Every American over the age of ten should see this rewarding piece of work – while prepared to see brief, disturbing glimpses of war time violence. The John Adams miniseries runs on HBO every Sunday night through April.

In the Jeremiah Wright affair, Barack Obama is most certainly lying about something. 

He now insists that he is “shocked, shocked” (in the style of Claude Raines in “Casablanca”) to hear that anti-Americanism had anything at all to do with Wright’s ministry. 

He has also claimed to be a “devout Christian” who attends church every week and is deeply involved in the life of Wright’s congregation (where he’s been a member for twenty years). 

It’s simply not possible that he could be an active member in the church without hearing something about sermons in which the pastor blamed 9/11 on America’s past sins, or called down curses repeatedly (“God D---n America!”) on his own nation. I’ve been involved in synagogue life for more than thirty years, in three different congregations in two different communities. If any of the rabbis who served those congregations ever delivered sermons that were even vaguely controversial, I would have heard about it without question (even on those occasions where I wasn’t present to hear the talk myself). Given the number and intensity of wildly offensive Wright sermons, it’s ridiculous to argue that the first Obama learned of the anti-American bent of his self-described “mentor” was last week in news reports. 

And if we assume for the sake of argument that it’s true that he had no idea how Wright really felt about crucial questions like the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, then how can we accept Obama’s insistence on his devout faithfulness and active church membership.  

Hey, Barack—it’s either one or the other: either you were lying when you talked about your deep, soul-changing involvement in Trinity United Church of Christ, or else you’re lying when you say you never had any idea (until last week) about the crazy and offensive and sickening contents of the pastor’s diatribes from the pulpit.  

My guess is that Obama is actually telling the truth about his deep involvement in the church, but lying (very badly) about knowing nothing about its pastor’s excesses.

The idea that he didn’t realize until a few days ago that mainstream America would view Wright’s remarks (which even Barack himself now describes as “appalling”) as explosive and unacceptable is a troubling indication of Obama’s enclosure in a politically correct bubble, and his profound estrangement from the faith and patriotism commitments of ordinary Americans.  

Americans face real hardships in a darkening economy, while liberal politicians stage silly stunts that make the situation even worse. A perfect example is in Washington State , where the legislature is set to approve a “sales tax credit” that would send checks in the mail to low income families.  

Starting in October, 2009, couples earning less than $40,000 could fill out a complex series of forms and qualify for a $240 yearly check. This would theoretically reimburse them for some of sales tax they paid buying necessary items. The cost to the state, slated to rise to $165 million per year, would force tax increases or cuts elsewhere in an already strained budget, while $240—$20 a month—won’t make a huge difference for any family.  

At a time when the business climate suffers from too much taxes and regulation, Democrats plan meaningless giveaways teaching struggling households to game the government, rather than working toward a better economic environment for everyone.

(originally published in USA Today on March 12, 2008) 

On Monday, tens of millions of Americans of every race and background will join together to celebrate a uniquely cherished ethnic holiday — a tribute to despised, destitute Hibernian hordes whose descendants eventually claimed pride of place as the most popular of all immigrant groups. With mass immigration once again a contentious issue in our politics and culture, the St. Patrick's Day formula — combining Irish pride with unabashed, flag-waving Americanism — offers hope that current controversies might someday achieve similarly satisfactory resolution. 

There's little doubt that our annual "Great Day for the Irish" draws more attention than festive commemorations of other national origins (Columbus Day, Pulaski Day, Cinco de Mayo, Israeli Independence Day, you name it), complete with shamrock decorations turning up nearly everywhere, big city rivers sparkling with emerald dye, and school kids featuring green in their wardrobes under serious risk of pinching. The mostly positive images and emotions toward the Irish say as much about the character of the USA as they do about the sons and the daughters of the Auld Sod.  

Initial hostility  

In part, we love the Irish because we instinctively embrace underdogs. The Emerald Isle suffered hellish torments during 800 years of oppression by the English — the same arrogant colonialists we defied in our own Revolution. When the starving Irish began to arrive en masse during "The Great Hunger" of the 1840s, they initially faced fiery hostility from nativist Americans and encountered occasional posted notices declaring, "No Irish Need Apply." Agitation culminated with bloody riots against churches and convents, with the virulently anti-immigrant "Know Nothing" Party electing numerous governors and mayors and even running a former president (Millard Fillmore) as a credible contender for the White House. Despite such obstacles, Irish arrivals persevered, establishing a vibrant Catholic community, dominating police and fire departments within a generation, and playing the lead role in organizing labor unions and big-city political machines.  

When Harvard-educated millionaire John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, barely 110 years had passed since the American arrival of his famine-fleeing great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy. That's the sort of poverty-to-power, rags-to-riches tale that has always inspired Americans in this nation of fresh starts and second chances.  

The other key element in the appeal of the Irish involves their instantaneous affirmation of American patriotism. Many other immigrant groups experienced a sense of divided loyalties, torn by nostalgic connections to old country nationalisms. In Ireland, however, English overlords ruthlessly suppressed expressions of national pride or distinctive culture (including Gaelic language) so that immigrants embraced Yankee symbols and customs with scant hesitation. That redoubtable patriotic ditty It's a Grand Old Flag came from Broadway composer George M. Cohan, simultaneously proud of his Irish heritage and his status as the original Yankee Doodle Dandy.  

German-Americans count as even more numerous than Irish-Americans (with 49 million claiming German ancestry, compared with 35 million saying they're Irish). But Ireland never became a rival world power or fought the United States in two brutal wars — preventing any contradiction between loyalty to origins and unquestioned love of the new homeland. John Ford, the legendary filmmaker whose classic westerns forever defined our cowboy heritage, proudly claimed that he began life as Sean Aloysius O'Feeny, the son of immigrants from County Galway. In addition to all the soul-stirring John Wayne horse-operas, Ford also made magnificent films (The Quiet Man, The Last Hurrah) celebrating Ireland and Irish-Americans. 

That same blend of heartfelt Americana and Emerald Isle nostalgia characterizes the annual revelry on St. Paddy's Day. Unlike other ethnic holidays, the festivities seem more familiar than exotic, more mainstream than multicultural. Irish names, accents and melodies have become inescapably American — not some demonstration of diversity or distinctive difference. Irish-ness feels comfortable, even cozy, in part because the sons of the Shamrock have been here so long (the first St. Patrick's Day Parade took place in New York in 1762) and most of them had arrived speaking English.  

For other immigrants  

It's impossible to imagine a sentimental hit song called When German Eyes Are Smiling, despite the countless contributions of German-Americans to our culture.  

Sports teams choose their names to convey a sense of classic American pluck, so it's unthinkable that the legendary Notre Dame football squad would call itself "The Fighting French" — even though it was French priests (honestly!) who founded that Indiana university in 1842. By the same token, in modern Boston immigrants from Italy have played almost as large a role as Celtic immigrants from Ireland, but the great basketball dynasty isn't known as the "Boston Italians."  

When St. Patrick's Day parades energize cities across the country, those processions feature marching bands, drill teams, floats and service clubs at least as likely to wave Cohan's Grand Old Flag as to carry the green-white-and-orange of the republic of Ireland. In fact, the festive frenzy of this now international holiday mostly began in the USA, and then spread back across the ocean to Dublin and communities of Irish migrs around the world.  

More recent immigrant groups can surely benefit from the Irish-American example, understanding that the enthusiastic, unequivocal embrace of American identity need not undermine pride in heritage and kinship durable enough to flourish for centuries. Amid all the happy sailing on waves of foamy green beer, Irish-Americans (and fellow celebrants) acknowledge no inconsistency between remembering a distinctive history and cherishing American patriotism, and no clash of colors between shamrock green and the red, white and blue.

Islamo-Nazis have continued their world-wide attacks in the midst of U.S. elections, forcing Americans to choose one of three approaches toward our deadly enemies: negotiation, isolation, or confrontation. Obama stresses the negotiation option – suggesting we can reach understandings with anyone. But how can we compromise with stateless killers who seek our society’s total destruction, and won’t come out of hiding? Ron Paul supports the isolation option – arguing that pullback from international engagement and Muslim lands will force Islamists to leave us alone. But when the West attempted this strategy in Lebanon and Gaza, it produced more violence, not less, and withdrawal inevitably resembles retreat and surrender. Finally, there’s the McCain strategy – maintaining the offensive against terrorist cells and jihadist ideas. As with the Cold War against Communism, victories won’t be quick or easy, but stalwart commitment against Islamist fanatics is not only the right course but by far the safest alternative of the options before us.