Morning Reading

"After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next." -- David Brooks

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/opinion/23brooks.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1222178398-Z22/4AHrze+niCJhMqpyrA

Mike Allen - at his best

http://www.politico.com/playbook/

Rove - Obama about to take the electoral lead

http://www.rove.com/uploads/0000/0034/McCain-Obama_09_21_08.pdf

It's hard to actively acknowledge the NYTimes as the paper of record (it operates at the "center") and then denounce it as a liberal rag.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13761.html

And it happens on both sides...we like this Joe Biden (start at 4:00):

But then the "handlers/strategists" get involved:

"Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize." -- Senator Joe Biden

The high road is no longer.

Michael Gerson, via Politico Playbook nails it:

THE BIG IDEA -- Michael GERSON on “the death of policy in this election”: “[I]t is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt's more timid, forgotten foils, ‘Martin, Barton and Fish.’ Having last week criticized the role of the Federal Reserve in bailouts -- demonstrating a tin ear of elephantine proportions -- McCain now calls for a bipartisan oversight board to review the government's rescue attempt. Mankind perishes. The world grows dark. McCain calls for a review board.

“Obama has been no better, responding with his usual mix of caution and blame. … The 2008 presidential campaign has become notable for its vacuity … It did not begin this way. Early in the campaign, McCain talked about his un-Republican environmental views and undertook a national poverty tour that brought him to places such as Gee's Bend, Ala., and Inez, Ky. Obama endorsed the outlines of Bush's faith-based agenda and stated in a Father's Day speech at an African-American church: ‘We need (fathers) to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- it's the courage to raise one.’ But those sparks of originality and outreach have been doused.”