William Pfaff’s view is usually pretty spot on. I agree with his take on the election.

There are two major issues relevant he says. The economy and foreign policy. I would add Supreme Court seats as a long-term very important issue.

On the economy Obama’s team is simply better than McCain’s ideological ‘free marketers’.

On foreign policy Obama and McCain are very much of the same track and likely to do the same stupid things. But the real question might be who will learn faster:

The fundamental question that should be put to the candidates is whether they are committed to a program of continuing American unilateral military and political interventions in the Muslim world intended to make despotic and “failed” states into democracies on good terms with the United States. They undoubtedly would both say yes.

That’s too bad for the rest of us, who will be among those paying the price. Such a policy is the conventional wisdom in Washington, and certainly that of the array of former Clinton advisers so far reported as associated with Obama. The people publicly connected with McCain are all or nearly all survivors of the neo-conservative wing of the Bush administration (and not the brightest lights among the neo-cons either).

They all seem determined to press forward with the democracy offensive of the discredited Bush administration. Naturally they intend to make a better job of it, having noticed that under Bush the record thus far consists exclusively of failures.

Since the candidates currently seem agreed on this policy, the final
question is not who would do it better, but which of them would be
quickest to realize that it is impossible. Intelligence isn’t
everything; but Obama is seriously smart and seems to have common sense
as well.

That argument should be thought through by people on the in the possible swing states, who have decided not to vote for Obama. The chance that he may learn that the current failed program of U.S. hegemony must end is certainly there. I think that is a decisive point. If things get really as bad as I expect and he gets enough pressure from ‘the street’ he may tip into that direction.

The Washington Post’s public editor, Deborah Howell, is worried about shrinking circulation.

One reason, readers tell her, is that the Post is too liberal. She writes:

Neither the hard-core right nor left will ever be satisfied by Post coverage — and that’s as it should be. But it’s true that The Post, as well as much of the national news media, has written more stories and more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain. Editors have their reasons for this, but conservatives are right that they often don’t see their views reflected enough in the news pages.

There indeed we have the reason why the Post’s circulation is shrinking. The inability of the editors to distinguish between:

• news: – a report of recent events or previously unknown information

and

• views: – opinions or judgments colored by the feeling or bias of its holder

The editors of WaPo believe that "news" should include "views" and a lot of WaPo reports unfortunately do include biased "views" instead of just factual "news".

As a reader that is not what I want. Give me the facts, the real "news". Spare me the "views" of the reporter or some partisan think tank. Write down the facts, add some figures where available, be clear and precise. Sometimes WaPo writers do achieve that. When they do not, the outcome is usually crap.

And if these facts are biased against conservative views? Well, sorry, despite Karl Rove’s assertions, there is only one reality and it rules.

If there have been more stories on Obama and more favorable stories than on McCain, there might be a good objective reason why this is the case.

There were some thirty fact-free attacks the McCain campaign launched against Obama during the last months. There were less attacks from the Obama campaign on McCain/Palin and most of those were factual.

When reporters pick up on those attacks, they examine the campaign claims and when those are wrong, they report that they are wrong. Mrs. Howell will count those stories as favorable-to-Obama stories, alleging some bias in the writer when the bias is in the facts.

McCain claims Obama will raise taxes on the middle class, when Obama indeed does not plan to do so. A reporter writing about this and presenting the facts as they are, would likely be attacked from the right as not representing their views. But it is not the reporting that is biased, the facts are. Obama does not plan to raise taxes on the middle class. That is a fact. The fact in this case simply does not support the view conservatives favor.

It seems to me Mrs. Howell, and other WaPo editors, do not get that. They want "views" instead of "news" not only on the editorial pages, but also in the news coverage. Unfortunately, more and more WaPo reporters follow their editors’ urging in this.

And that is the real reasons why the Post is going down.