Winner Take All

(For a more theological take on this topic, look for the "Spiritual Shortcuts" editorial in the January issue of Christianity Today.)

Vince Lombardi spoke a lot about winning. "Winning is not a sometime thing," Lombardi once said, "it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit." For his legendary championship teams playing on the “frozen tundra” of Lambeau Field, that meant no cutting corners in preparation or performance. Unfortunately, Americans today have absorbed only half of the lesson. We want to win at all costs, but we’re willing to cut every corner to do it.

From Wall Street to Main Street, from academia to the locker room, America is facing an epidemic of cheating. Consider:

Confronted with disastrous publicity and a possible trial, investing titan Merrill Lynch recently paid a $100-million settlement in New York state. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged that the firm’s “supposedly independent and objective investment advice was tainted and biased,” contributing to $4 trillion in investor losses after the crash of NASDAQ.

Three months after the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the Municipal Credit Union of New York faced a $15 million shortfall. ATM users who purposefully overdrew their accounts while the computer tracking system was down had scammed their own credit union.

Celebrity academics such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, and Michael Bellesiles have faced public humiliation for plagiarism or falsified research.

Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, and CBS News are just the latest examples of cheating in journalism.

More than 90 percent of college students say they would cheat to get a job. Donald McCabe, founding president of the Center for Academic Integrity, uncovered a 30 to 35 percent jump in some types of cheating among college students in the 1990s. “Over the long haul, there’s certainly been an increase in cheating,” McCabe says.

According to a 2002 study, 44 percent of 2.6 million job applications contained lies.

Rightly or wrongly, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds have seen their prodigious athletic exploits tarnished because of suspicions over corked bats and performance-enhancing drugs. “For the last 20 or 30 years,” says Charles Yesalis, a researcher at Penn State, “we’ve had this idea that there are only a few bad apples in the barrel. But in reality, in many, many different sports, there are only a few good apples.”

Yesalis told WebMD that the problem is widespread. “We’ve got scientists and professors who cheat, journalists who cheat, lawyers who cheat, and CEOs who cheat,” Yesalis says.

What is cheating? Researcher David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, defines it simply as “breaking the rules to get ahead academically, professionally, or financially.” Callahan, co-founder of the Demos public policy center, detects “a pattern of widespread cheating throughout U.S. society.”

We’ve simply internalized a pernicious bumper sticker slogan I first saw in the 1980s: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Unfortunately, in this post-election period of increased emphasis on moral values, cheating, like the angel of death, has visited the churches, too. Affinity frauds are running rampant in the pews, costing the unwary and the greedy billions in pyramid schemes and the like. Many folks have fallen victim not only to the smooth sales pitches of con artists who claim to share their faith, but also to their own foolish desires to get rich quick. Such gullibility isn’t surprising, when you realize that the Barna Group reports that one-third of Christians say money is very important to them.

Cheating even reaches the pulpit. Earlier this fall the prominent pastor of a megachurch in North Carolina resigned after admitting he used material from other preachers without attribution. Another pastor in Missouri stepped down after admitting he plagiarized sermon material via the Internet.

While cheating is not a new problem, it is more widespread and out in the open. Fewer people today, Callahan believes, feel ashamed.

Callahan blames several factors for what he calls “a profound moral crisis that reflects deep economic and social problems.” First is a preoccupation with money in an increasingly materialistic society. Callahan notes that Ronald Reagan was the first president who extolled the virtues of getting rich (which in itself is fine), and that many citizens in the last two decades have done whatever it takes—legal or illegal—to get to the top.

Second, Callahan says, is a large and growing income gap between the Winning Class and the Anxious Class. He says America has become an increasingly “winner-take-all” society, where the rewards for excelling overwhelm traditional roadblocks to dishonesty such as conscience and community standards. The astronomical salaries of a few sports figures, business CEOs, and actors provide a rough guide to the stratification of American society.

Callahan says many people simply can’t cope with the flood of advertising images extolling what is defined as the good life and believe they are entitled to more than they can legitimately earn. There is a lot of pressure to finagle on a tax return or fudge on a resume because the gaps between winners and losers are so great. And often technology–such as the Web–makes cheating much easier than in the past.

Third, Callahan cites a hobbling of government watchdogs. To some extent, he’s right. The still-unfolding mutual fund scandal occurred under the watch of a weakened Securities and Exchange Commission. The market, for all its virtues in rewarding innovation and creating the highest living standards in history, is not completely self-regulating. Just as our highways need safe and courteous drivers to function, they also need external restraints to destructive selfishness, such as stop signs and traffic lights. The same goes for our financial markets and other areas open to the manipulations of selfishness and greed.

Fourth, Callahan cites the decline of traditional American virtues, saying that “individualism and self-reliance have morphed into selfishness and self-absorption.” Financial wags say Wall Street runs on fear and greed—as Gordon Gecko said, “Greed is good.”

Callahan suggests several solutions, some more helpful than others. These include beefing up law enforcement, emphasizing character and skills development over a win-at-all-costs mentality, and reducing social inequalities through higher taxes on the “super-rich” and government spending to provide more opportunities for people lower on the economic scale to move up.

(This last suggestion smacks of communism, which on a practical level sought to make people equally poor. Meanwhile, Callahan skims over the demonstrated failure for four decades of Great Society liberalism to lift people out of poverty. He also apparently ignores the fact that the top 20 percent of wage earners already pay 80 percent of federal taxes.)

Christians need to address not just the moral and structural dimensions of this epidemic, but also the spiritual ones. If the recent election shows we are entering a new era of respect for moral values, then obviously Christians must lead in this realm, too. We cannot just talk the talk, but we must walk the walk. Yet Barna reports that half of all Christians say, regardless of how they feel about it, that money is the main symbol of success in life. While we acknowledge that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, our actions betray who our real master is.

At its heart, cheating involves fear and greed: a lack of contentment with what we have and a coveting of what does not belong to us (greed), and a lack of trust in God to provide for all our needs (fear).

How ironic. Like all sins, cheating delivers far less than it promises. In research for the book You Don’t Have to Be Rich, Jean Sherman Chatzky found that there is little difference in happiness between people who make $50,000 and those who earn over $100,000. Why then do we wear ourselves out, and cheat others, for wealth?

The apostle Paul, whether he had much or nothing, learned the secret of being content—cultivating a living relationship with Jesus Christ, who for our sakes became poor that we might become rich.

Unless we Christians do the same, the cheating epidemic will continue to kill both civil society and us. And we’ll all be the losers for that.

Just Wondering 1

(After discovering that Thomas Sowell already has a commentary feature entitled "Random Thoughts," I have decided to rename this one.--SG)

Do Satanists want to go to hell?

When the liberal political cartoonist Pat Oliphant depicted Condoleeza Rice as a brainless bird with large lips, Jesse Jackson, the NAACP, and other “civil rights leaders” said nothing. Is there any doubt the reaction would have been different if Carol Mosley Braun–a black woman of less accomplishment–had been so depicted?

Too bad Chicago Bears receiver David Terrell didn’t do the racy opening bit with Nicollette Sheridan for Monday Night Football. No doubt he would have dropped her.

A recent study shows that college professors are largely Democrats. At one end of the spectrum, in anthropology, profs showed a 30-1 spread for Democrats. At the other end, in economics, profs favored the Democrats by 3-1. Who knew there were so many Republicans on campus?

If George W. Bush is such a dunce, what does that say for the Democrats he keeps beating?

Democrats chose John Kerry during the primaries because he was supposedly the most “electable.” Keep in mind that this is a man who couldn’t excite his own base, who was a “war hero” who had given aid and comfort to the enemy by accusing fellow soldiers of committing atrocities, who because of all his flip-flops couldn’t clearly differentiate himself from Bush, and who was rated more liberal than Ted Kennedy. The only advantages he possessed were about style (a smoother debater and “better hair”), not substance. If John Kerry was the most electable Democrat, what does that say about the rest?

The October Surprise before this year’s election turned out to be Osama bin Laden. But instead of a bomb, he sent a video.

Is the mainstream media’s lionizing of Arafat, the inventor of modern terrorism, really surprising?

If Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, why are so many of the terrorists fighting us there?

Now that the election is over, where have all the peace marchers gone?

What government subsidizes, it gets more of. That goes for marriage, home ownership, and charitable giving. Are we sure we want to subsidize “gay marriage”?

If homosexuals are so proud of their behavior, why do they hold so many “gay pride” parades? When was the last time you saw a “heterosexual pride” parade?

The founder of Islam conquered by killing. The founder of Christianity conquered by dying.

If Islam is a “religion of peace,” why are Muslims kidnapping civilians, slowly sawing off their heads, and chanting praise to Allah?

If moral values are so important to Red state voters, why is the divorce rate higher in the conservative Bible Belt than it is in liberal Massachusetts?

If Democrats have a corner on compassion, why are citizens in the Red states bigger givers than those in the Blue states?

Who else is tired of Tom Hanks movies?

Now we have one–Polar Express–in which he has five roles. Where is the outrage?

Who else is happy they stopped airing the “Wild Thing” Viagra ad?

Dejected Democrats are getting counseling for Post Election Selection Trauma. For the rest of you, try to feel their pain. And no gloating.

Some liberals are applying for Canadian citizenship, saying they cannot live in an America run by Republicans and evangelicals. Anyone want to start up a collection for bus fare?

An Evangelical Wish List

As America continues to sort out the meaning of the November 2 elections, there is a growing consensus that evangelicals and traditional values-minded voters carried the day.

For liberals who have spent the last four decades widening the so-called separation of church and state into a chasm, that is a scary thought. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman fretted, “We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.”

But the more pragmatic among them recognize the brute fact that there are far more Christians in this country than secularists. Despite unquestioning support in the mainstream media and academia, Democrats can forget about returning to majority party status as long as they treat Christians as the ugly stepchild. Are the Democrats getting religion?

“It’s important for Democrats to be able to connect with people where they live,” says Barack Obama, the newest liberal senator from Illinois. “We should be able to engage and willing to engage in discussion about morality and values.”

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and a possible Democratic Party candidate for the presidency, saw her husband connect with Christians. “I don’t think you can win an election or even run a successful campaign if you don’t acknowledge what is important to people,” she said last week in a speech at Tufts University. “We don’t have to agree with them, but being ignored is such a sign of disrespect, and therefore I think we should talk about these issues.”

Hillary said Democrats should use the Bible when discussing issues such as poverty. Robert Edgar, the head of the liberal National Council of Churches and a reliable Democrat, says much the same.

“The religious right has successfully gotten out there shaping personal piety issues–civil unions, abortion–as almost the total content of ‘moral values,’” Edgar said. “And yet you can’t read the Old Testament without knowing God was concerned about the environment, war and peace, poverty. God doesn’t want 45 million Americans without health care.”

Aside from the fact that there are almost no Americans without health care (because even the uninsured in this country get treatment), it appears that the Democratic leaders want to take on evangelicals on their home turf. As John Kerry would say, “Bring it on.”

Meanwhile, evangelicals and others concerned with traditional moral values are sorting out the implications of being political insiders with a seat at the table. This newfound responsibility can be disorienting, and, contrary to popular misconception, evangelicals are not a monolithic group.

Some, like James Dobson of Focus on the Family, have already warned the Bush administration that they will withdraw their support from the Republicans if they do not see action on a specific list of issues. While Dobson’s threat is understandable (after all, Christians who don’t see any good result for all their grassroots mobilization will not be enthused about turning out the next time), such a bald statement of political power is not likely to sit well with people already suspicious of our intentions.

Others fear limiting ourselves to such a quid pro quo relationship with Caesar. Says Charles Colson, a former Watergate insider who now heads Prison Fellowship, “I disassociate myself from anyone who says, ‘Now we voted for you, it’s payback time. Give us our due.’ That’s what special interest groups do, and we’re not a special interest group. We vote our conscience and what we believe is in the best general interest.”

That said, evangelicals face a tremendous opportunity to influence American society for the good. What follows is not an ultimatum, but a wish list, not only for evangelicals, but also for the country. (I acknowledge my debt to author James Jewell and Robert Andringa, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, who have already circulated their own lists. The one below, however, is my own.)

1. Supreme Court. Christians have a right to expect President Bush to keep his campaign promise to nominate conservative jurists to the nation’s highest court, judges who will interpret–not invent–the law. With observers expecting as many as three or four high court vacancies during Bush’s second term, and given the Democrats’ past stonewalling many Bush nominees to lower federal courts, this is a critical time to rein in liberal judges on issues such as abortion and homosexual marriage.

2. Culture of Life. Besides working with the majority of Americans who would like to see some commonsense restrictions on abortion (including partial birth abortion and parental notification), Christians should help make the president’s commitment to building “a culture of life” a reality. That means increasing funding for tools such as ultrasound machines (which clearly show moms and dads the humanity of the unborn) and supporting public and private abstinence campaigns (which have been proven to curtail the spread of AIDS and delay the onset of sexual activity). We also support adoption, believing that government should remove the barriers that make it so difficult.

3. War on Terror. Christians and all Americans should expect the administration to continue going after terrorists here and abroad to keep America safe. But as disciples of the Prince of Peace, we need to push the Bush team to pursue war as a last resort, only after peaceful options (as in Iraq) have failed. We need to stay in Iraq until that country’s citizens have a stable democracy. We hope war can be avoided in Iran and North Korea, two outlaw states pursuing nuclear weapons and with known ties to terrorists. Christians also need to scrutinize any attempts to curtail the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens.

4. Religious Freedom. In recent years Christians have taken a leading role in support of religious liberty and human rights worldwide, through prayer networks, advocacy via groups such as the World Evangelical Alliance, and participation in bodies such as the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. We have seen substantial legislative progress regarding Sudan and North Korea. The Bush administration must be continually reminded that religious liberty, both here and abroad, is the first freedom.

5. Marriage. To stop an expected flurry of lawsuits seeking to force the states to recognize gay “marriages” performed in other states via the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit clause, we support the Federal Marriage Amendment. The FMA allows the people of each state, rather than judges, to have the final say in this pivotal social issue. Recognizing the nation’s critical need for strong marriages, we also support efforts to strengthen the family, including covenant marriages, premarital counseling, and stronger enforcement of child support.

6. The Poor. Recognizing that robbing the rich to pay the poor hasn’t worked, we are suspicious of government welfare schemes. We support welfare reform that links benefits with work and that provides job and life skills training that enable people to find employment. We support both educational reform that links funding with higher standards, as well as vouchers that allow poor parents to take their kids out of failing schools to the private or religious schools of their choice. We support President Bush’s faith-based initiative to allow religious groups that effectively bring help and hope to their communities to have a fair shot at federal money.

7. Energy and the Environment. Believing that we are stewards and not owners of God’s creation, Christians support developing the earth’s resources for the common good while being careful not to waste or destroy them. We also think that in today’s world careful use of existing supplies of oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power is a good way to lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy while keeping prices down.

8. Medicine. To bring down health costs and encourage more people to buy insurance, we support giving people more access to health savings accounts. We do not support nationalized health insurance, believing this will drive up costs and worsen service. We support tort reform, believing that frivolous lawsuits drive up costs and force competent physicians who cannot afford their malpractice premiums out of business. We also support removing unnecessary government barriers that slow down the approval process for life-saving drugs and that have made obtaining flu shots so difficult.

9. Taxes and Spending. We believe the American people have a right to the money they have earned and know best how to save, invest, and spend it. Taxes should be low and easy to understand. Low taxes also have the virtues of discouraging unneeded and wasteful government spending while encouraging entrepreneurship and job creation. The tax code should encourage behaviors that strengthen the society, such as marriage, parenthood, charitable giving, and home ownership. The government, except in times of national emergency, should live within its means. Among other things, this means we must reform Social Security and Medicare so they will be available for future generations.

10. Public Decency. Seeking to promote a culture of kindness and respect as we raise the next generation, we support stricter enforcement of broadcast decency standards and renewed prosecutions of obscenity.

The Democrats say they need to open lines of communication with evangelicals. Are they sincere? Let’s find out. As Kerry said more than once during the campaign, words must be accompanied by deeds.

As Christians pursue these or other agenda items, we need to treat both friend and foe with respect and humility, seeking common ground wherever possible. Republicans and Democrats who engage us on these issues should give us a fair hearing–and expect one in return.

The Democrats’ Choice

For Democratic Party activists basking in the deceptive warmth of those skewed early exit polls, winter came early this year. Expecting a Kerry landslide, George Soros, Michael Moore, and Teresa Heinz Kerry instead were buried in an unexpected election avalanche.

Despite a relentless propaganda campaign from CBS News and The New York Times (remember the forged documents and the trumped up non-story about the missing explosives in Iraq?), John F. Kerry still lost. Despite an unpopular war and more than 1,100 soldiers “coming home in body bags,” Bush improved his percentage in nearly every state.

Despite an uneven performance in debates against a more polished opponent, the president moved from a narrow loss in the popular vote in 2000 to a 3.5-million-vote majority in 2004. Despite all their natural advantages, the Democrats saw Republicans pick up seats in the House and Senate (including the defeat of South Dakota’s obstructionist Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, the first time in 50 years a Senate leader failed to win re-election).

In an era of war and wrenching economic dislocation, the issue that mattered the most was “moral values.” Yet people of faith were unimpressed with Roman Catholic John Kerry, who repeatedly reminded them he was a former altar boy. According to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press, George W. Bush won 78 percent of the white evangelical vote, 52 percent of the Roman Catholic vote, 57 percent of the Protestant vote, and 61 percent of the vote of people of all faiths who attend services at least weekly.

Liberals, needless to say, are in shock. They are also extremely angry. Guess who they’re blaming? (Hint: It’s not John Kerry.)

Normally level-headed Times columnist Tom Friedman said he is “deeply troubled.” “[W]hat troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support by people who don’t just favor different policies than I do–they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.”

“The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule,” wrote fellow Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “… W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq–drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals … by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.” (On stem cells, Bush has actually taken a moderate approach, opposing federal funding for research on new embryonic stem cells lines–which involves the destruction of innocent human life–while placing no restrictions on the more promising research based on stem cells from adults and umbilical cords.)

Historian Garry Wills linked the results with the 1925 Scopes trial, in which fundamentalist Christians, led by William Jennings Bryan, were discredited for their simplistic opposition to evolution, causing many to withdraw from the larger society. Wills called the vote “Bryan’s revenge,” asking, “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an enlightened nation?”

Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State warned darkly, “The culture war may go nuclear,” because “millions of Americans oppose the theocratic agenda of the Religious Right.”

These commentators seek to paint the election as a secret rightwing coup of America’s unwashed masses engineered by Karl Rove. To the contrary, Bush’s 4-percentage-point, 31-state victory has rightly sparked talk of a mandate. Meanwhile, prohibitions against homosexual marriage won a clean sweep in all 11 states that held referenda. This includes Oregon–a liberal state taken by Kerry–with 57 percent.

One look at the county-by-county returns shows a nation (as in 2000) awash in red, with small blue outposts on both coasts and in the Upper Midwest. It is not the religious conservatives who are out of America’s mainstream, but the secular liberals, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Human Rights Campaign. They have transformed the Democratic Party, traditionally strong on religious issues such as civil rights and concern for the poor, into a no-God zone. It is not conservatives, but they, who must move to the center.

Few if any nationally prominent Democrats are pro-life (although 40 percent of Democratic Party members are). They can’t afford to be. While John Kerry and Al Gore can say they are “personally opposed to abortion,” the activists who run the party will not tolerate actual votes to restrict it. Remember how they kept former Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey from the platform at the Democratic National Convention because of his opposition to abortion? So much for the party of tolerance and diversity!

During a radio talk show in Chicago right before the election, a caller who was a union man scolded a party operative because the Democrats had walked away from him on key issues. When the operative naively asked, “Which issues?,” the caller replied, “Abortion and gay marriage. Want me to go on?” The operative said those were “rightwing” concerns–thereby inviting many traditional Democrats to take their votes elsewhere. And they have. While mocking Christian values may be good sport, it is lousy politics.

If Democratic leaders don’t jettison their hostility to Judeo-Christian values, they risk being in the minority for the foreseeable future. It’s their decision, but time is short. Already core voters among blacks, Hispanics, and Jews are beginning to abandon them.

Some Democrats are courageous enough to admit that the problem is with them, not some “American Taliban.” Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine said many liberals are “trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the right.” Said Democratic Congressman Rahm Emmanuel, a former aide to Bill Clinton, “We need a nominee and a party that is comfortable with faith and values.” It’s about substance, though, not style. Visiting churches once every four years to troll for votes is not enough.

Some journalists are beginning to acknowledge their color-blindness, too. Last year Times columnist Nicholas Kristof admitted, “I can’t think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization.”

Legendary journalism guru Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, said that the “churched people” who supported Bush are “invisible” to him. Clark wonders whether “there is something fundamentally myopic about how I see the world.” There is.

Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi, Al Franken, Dan Rather, and Bruce Springsteen seem to suffer from the same spiritual nearsightedness. It caused them to stumble unprepared into last Tuesday’s avalanche. Until Democratic Party leaders once again start to take seriously the concerns of people of faith, they can expect to be buried for a long time.

Kerry's Finest Moment

In the Democratic Party’s hall of hate, before there was George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, there was Richard Nixon. A tremendously able president known as “Tricky Dick” by his opponents, Nixon was impeached and removed from office, his name forever linked to a “third-rate burglary” and to his profane, pitifully self-absorbed comments captured forever on the White House tapes.

There was more to Nixon than Watergate, however. Recall 1960 when Nixon, the sitting vice president, lost the presidential election by the narrowest of margins to a relative political upstart, John F. Kennedy. Adding insult to injury, there was clear evidence that electoral shenanigans by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago (home of the phrase “vote early, vote often”) may have tipped the election to JFK. Yet Nixon chose not to contest the results, believing that would be bad for the country.

In 2000, another sitting vice president failed to show this kind of nobility. Instead, Al Gore and his legal team—including the Florida Supreme Court—fought to keep counting chads until they got a result that would move Gore to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The unthinkable and incredibly divisive nightmare lasted for over a month. Only a commonsense ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court stopped Gore’s legal assault on the democratic process, but to this day large numbers of gullible Americans believe that George W. Bush “stole” the election.

With the closeness of last night’s vote, many Americans were poised for a similar legal battle from team Kerry. (After all, the Democrats had strategically placed 10,000 lawyers in the swing states, all of them ready to litigate any cases of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, real or imagined.) The Democrats have developed a bad habit of seeking social change in the courtroom whenever they cannot get it at the ballot box (abortion and gay marriage come to mind).

John F. Kerry’s demagoguery during the campaign (claiming that Bush planned to reinstate the draft and to destroy Social Security) gave rise to fears that the junior senator from Massachusetts would stop at nothing to gain power. I certainly didn’t think the fact that this time Bush had won a clear majority (the first presidential candidate to do so since 1988) would stop Kerry. The senator’s refusal on Tuesday night to concede that the president had won Ohio only fueled those fears.

But I was wrong. Today Kerry, facing insurmountable electoral odds, conceded the race in a phone call to Bush. Perhaps sensing the historical weight of his decision, Kerry, who spent the past year tearing down Bush and his policies, said now it is time for unity and common ground. For those of us disheartened by the Democrats’ mudslinging, those are welcome words.

Kerry’s running mate, Senator John Edwards, called the Democratic nominee a “great American.”

On this day at least, in defeat if not in victory, he is.