A Reagan insider's take on the flap over celebrity, race

This analysis from Ed Rolllins, an architect of Reagan's 1984 campaign and of Huckabee's this year, is IMHO the best of a Washington Post posting asking political consultants and insders for their take on the "celebrity" ad and its aftermath.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com I get disturbed when I hear McCain operatives say this campaign is all about Obama and that they have to define the Democrat as "not ready to lead." This race is also about John McCain. Is he ready to lead? Is he willing to have the courage to move the country in a new direction? The first test will be whether he has the courage to run an honest, "uplifting" campaign. Or will we be going to have more "negative tactics" from the Rove junior varsity. We need to demand that each candidate look us in the eye and tell us how he gets us out of the mess we're in and the direction in which he will take the country. If they spend their TV millions doing that, the country will be well served. And, finally, the news media need to be covering the race, not rerunning political commercials.

Rollins, in contrast to the other pols queried for this piece, seems to remember that there is something more going on here than using the tactics and strategy that gives you the best chance for winning -- we are electing someone to spend the next four years trying to undo a daunting set of crises and structural problems, and we might want to have some sense of how each man would handle the job. And the news media might want to remember that their job isn't just to opine on the shrewdness of various tactics. Kudos to Ed Rollins (something I can't quite believe I'm typing).