The Big O. on his grandfather in Dreams of My Father:

“Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family moved to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill,” he writes. “But the classroom couldn’t contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again.”

The Big O. in New Mexico on Memorial Day:

“My grandfather marched in Patton’s Army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you.”

The Big O. in a 2002 antiwar speech:

“My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”

He thinks he’s conning people in a South Side church basement.

The Big O. on his grandfather in Dreams of My Father:

“Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family moved to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill,” he writes. “But the classroom couldn’t contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again.”

The Big O. in New Mexico on Memorial Day:

“My grandfather marched in Patton’s Army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you.”

The Big O. in a 2002 antiwar speech:

“My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”

He thinks he’s conning people in a South Side church basement.

“Even old-time Clintonites were appalled” at Hillary’s claim that RFK’s assassination in 1968 justifies her staying in the race, says Robert Novak.

The most important political impact of Clinton’s conduct is to make Sen. Barack Obama’s task as nominee more difficult. For the first time, we hear serious talk among Democrats that the party may not be fully able to join ranks at the convention in Denver in late August.

“The hostility on both sides is intense,” he says, with O. boo’d by pro-Hillary unionists in Puerto Rico and Obama-ites crying “feminists” as their enemy.  “The longer this continues, the more difficult will be reconciliation.”

This doesn’t mean McCain’s ready to capitalize on Dem disunion.

His biggest problem may be failure to realize that the Republican coalition is not fully united behind him. The most recent defectors are lobbyists expelled from his campaign who are not happy about their treatment. We continue to hear complaints from evangelicals, economic conservatives, and other critics of McCain. The refrain continues from conservatives that maybe the country and the GOP need four years of Obama.

Great.

Bill Daley, brother of Richard M., spotted newsman Robert Novak on the convention floor in 1988.  The Dems had handed Rev. Jesse Jackson the spotlight before nominating Dukakis, allowing him to blare forth his message in what Novak wrote was “a triumphal address” that mentioned Dukakis “only in passing.”   

Daley wanted to talk.  From their conversation came this in Novak’s column:

“For those who watched television,” one Midwestern Democratic operative told us, “what they saw looked like a black party.”  That troubled Democrats who are anything but racists.  The depletion of Dukakis’s lead, according to polls released during the convention, is attributable to the Jackson factor.

That’s in Novak’s memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, pp. 450–451.  Novak continues:

Daley was no racist, and there was no more loyal Democrat.  . . . .  But he feared the disastrous candidacies of George McGovern, Fritz Mondale, and now Mike Dukakis posed a bleak future for traditional Democrats.

So it is in our day that the black candidate poses a problem for Dems, as is clear from the “buyers’ remorse” item mentioned below.

Not to mention Newsbusters, with this telling graphic.

Yes, this is the Hillary line, but Dem voters seem not so sure about Obama, in fact are afflicted with “buyer’s remorse”:

In nearly every demographic category since February 19, Clinton percentage of the vote has risen, while Obama’s has fallen. This includes Obama’s supposed “strong” demographic categories such as voters with college degrees post-graduate degrees and voters whose income is above the national median. And Clinton beat Obama in the primaries in March, April and May in most of the major categories.

The argument is offered with beaucoups de charts and graphs by Taylor Marsh, who says she offers “the antidote to right-wing talk.” The link comes from the ever-helpful Instapundit.

From Reader Dick:

The Dems will soon (too late?) realize that Obamamama is carrying too much baggage and too little substance. He knows little or nothing about The Constitution, the Economy, and worst of all, Foreign Policy and Nucleaar Containment.

God save us from his superficial charm and knowledge to match.

Harry Truman left office widely unappreciated and disapproved of:

Like Truman, George W. Bush, in my view, will be seen as one of the few world leaders who recognized the danger of Islamic terrorism and was willing with Tony Blair to stand up to it and not capitulate.

That’s RealClearPolitics columnist and former New York Mayor Ed Koch, quoted in WSJ’s Political Diary.

Big O.’s big change we can believe in could start at his home base in Chicago in this age of federal interference in state and city doings.  He disowned Rev. Wright, what about Emil Jones, the state senatorial president who godfathered him into elective office?

Jones is dipping into campaign contributions, making of them an apparent “slush fund,” per Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, even as he plumps for a pay raise because he needs the money.  Can’t O. at least talk to him about this?

Ditto Winston Cole, the little known South Side sewer superintendent who drove his GPS-equipped city vehicle to the golf course while toting his GPS-equipped city-issued cell phone and was — yes, dear reader — tracked!  He’s on desk duty for the nonce, but hey, it’s been done before.

Eight city clerk’s office employees were caught golfing on city time — with their boss, later convicted of bribe acceptation — in 2000.  This is the governmental togetherness that we all cherish.

Meanwhile, the mayoral cousin who ran a fast track to judgeship six years ago, though barely qualified if at all, whose husband is asst. city building commissioner, hit a minivan (with another vehicle, we presume, not with her fist) in Tinley Park and declined testing for sobriety.  Have one of your people talk to her, O. — if you have time after discussing gun ownership with Alderman Richard Mell, estranged father-in-law of the governor. 

Ald. Mell, caught in violation of a strict gun-registration law dating from 1982, wants a freebie — re-registration of his many guns, currently of lapsed registration.  Mayordaley II wants it too — so he can invite other violators to come forth and be counted.  The Fraternal Order of Police says it would be using a “double standard.”  Your thoughts, O.

Police are also unhappy about their buffed-up superintendent, formerly of the FBI, hand-picked by Mayordaley II, who is taking bank robberies from police and assigning them to FBI agents.  It’s a change in job description that says, cops butt out.  What does O. think of this vote of no confidence by the super?

Which brings us to law enforcement and the near-missing by movie actor Depp of a drive-by shooting near the Green Mill bar on Broadway, per item-purveyor Sneed.  He’s in town shooting (secondary meaning) a gangster film but might have been part of real-life mayhem. 

Now that would have gotten Daley off the dime on anti-gang activity.  Maybe he would take a cue from Chi Trib columnist Dennis Byrne and approach Chicago gangsterism as a form of terrorism, then attack it with a troop surge.  However, D. prefers making it a gun-control issue, referable to state legislators with help of demonstrators bused into the Loop or Springfield from St. Sabina parish.

Or jobs-for-teens in the summer time or church programs.

When all is said and done, however, the Big O. better stay out of all these matters, rehearsing rather the glint in his eye he will have when he talks to Big A. of Iran and other gangsters on the world scene.  We’re the ones who ought to keep Chicago and Cook County in mind when we think of O.