Since a vital function of party politics, recently on display in Denver and St. Paul, is that of distraction, we can safely say that Sarah Palin is doing a fine job, admirably bipartisan in her services to Republicans and Democrats. The nomination of the lively and attractive governor of Alaska as Vice President diverts Republicans from dismay at the obvious difficulties of winning an election against an opponent with much more money while saddled with George Bush in the White House and, at the head of the ticket, an elderly and unstable habitué of Washington for more than thirty years running as the foe of big government and the standard-bearer of new ideas, none of which he and the other keynote Republican speakers have been able to identify.

Simultaneously, the idealistic younger voters whose mass turnout on November 4 is vital for Barack Obama deride Palin's enthusiasm for shooting wolves from helicopters, thus distracting themselves from unpleasant reflections on the candidate of hope and change, whose prime foreign policy commitment is to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan and hence the certainty that Afghan children will be shot from the air or blown up by US gunships in steadily increasing numbers.

As Obama said in 2002, he is not against war per se. Wars mean dead children. Now he wants to send 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan. And exactly at the moment liberals were diverting themselves with Palin's shifting posture on pork barrel projects in Alaska, Obama was doing a major somersault of his own. He has joined John McCain in vigorously endorsing the performance of US forces in Iraq, telling Fox's Bill O'Reilly that the surge "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," a craven surrender to Republican mythmaking and a club McCain will be able to whack Obama with in the upcoming debates.

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