The Washington Post has a front page story this morning that details the intense lobbying effort that persuaded Sen. John McCain to support a land swap in Arizona that benefited one of his principal fundraisers at the expense of the government. A gaggle of former McCain employees worked on the deal in which the government received remote acres of forest in exchange for prime real estate capable of development. Lots of people are going to get rich from the scheme, but the U.S. taxpayer got stuck with the bill.

This is business as usual in Washington. And, sadly, it is business as usual for John McCain too. He has voiced his opposition to the "revolving door" syndrome of former government officials cashing in on their connections by becoming lobbyists. Yet in the Arizona land swap, he was lobbied by Mark Buse, who has just returned to McCain's Senate staff, another former Senate staffer, a former campaign manager and Kurt Davis, a lobbyist who has raised money for McCain's campaigns. Another beneficiary of the deal, longtime McCain supporter Steven Betts, has already raised north of $100,000 for McCain's presidential bid.

"It was just a bad deal – a rip-off to the public," Janine Blaeloch of the Western Lands Project told the Post. This is probably why the normal regulatory procedures for land swaps had to be circumvented and an alternative legislative remedy sought. McCain backed a similar land swap in the 1990s involving the Tonto National Forest and property owned by another political contributor. A spokesman for Arizona's Sierra Club said that despite McCain's reputation as a conservationist, "When the public trust intersects with private interests, basically, he has favored land development."

Arizona land swaps are not McCain's first brush with ethical problems. McCain was one of the "Keating Five" a group of senators who were investigated and reprimanded by their colleagues for their questionable intervention on behalf of a struggling Savings and Loan operator, Charles Keating. Not coincidentally, Keating had invested in McCain's campaigns and given him and his family nine free rides on his corporate jet, three of them vacations to Keating's private retreat at Cat Cay in the Bahamas.Cost to the federal government when Keating's S & L collapsed? More than three billion dollars.

McCain recovered from the scandal and went on to become a champion of campaign finance reform. Everybody loves a convert.

None of this is likely to cost McCain much. Most voters, especially most Independent voters who lack strong ideological convictions, expect at least low-level corruption from their politicians. And, few people can get their heads around the facts of the case: can you close your eyes and envision 35,000 acres? Have you ever witnessed a lobbying effort? Have you ever raised money for a political campaign with a view towards securing a private benefit from a public trust? Me neither. Scandals work when they are precise. George Bush could get away with his argument that the ballooning federal deficit did not matter, but he could not get away with the documented incompetence of his subordinates after Hurricane Katrina. Few people understand the federal budget, but everyone has worked with someone like ex-FEMA head Michael Brown.

So, the scandal of business-as-usual will continue in Washington and it is not likely to tar McCain's presidential bid. True, Obama has refused to take donations from federal lobbyists but that is not the kind of issue that drives voters. Still, the press should be a bit more suspicious of McCain's claims to being a reformer: there appears to still be plenty of room in his political camp for influence peddlers and fortune seekers who care nothing for the public trust.

Michael Sean Winters

The State of Israel celebrates its 60th birthday today. All Americans should take a moment today and think about this anniversary and why we too should join the celebration.

Palestine was stuck in the Middle Ages in 1948. The Ottoman Empire had ruled the area for centuries until its collapse in World War I. A British Mandate governed the territory until 1948 by which time Israel had become a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. But, throughout the centuries, pious Jews had prayed at every Passover seder "next year, in Jerusalem." Israel may have vanished from the political maps. It never vanished from Jewish consciousness or, for that matter, from God's Covenant with the Jews.

As Catholics, our relationship with the Jewish people could hardly be more complicated or more shameful. Antisemitism had flourished within and without the Church. Pogroms in Catholic Poland betrayed this hatred. The Dreyfus Affair in France was largely the work of reactionary Catholic monarchists. And, of course, the sad history of the Spanish Inquisition showed before the Holocaust the irrational extent to which hatred of Jews could lead a people and a nation in Catholic Spain.

The Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II changed all of that. The Council denounced the charge of deicide against the Jews and brought about a new appreciation for the Covenant with Israel and the Hebrew Scriptures. John Paul II went to the synagogue in Rome and called the Jewish people "our elder brothers." (That ghetto had been created by his predecessors to "protect" Christians from the contamination of Jews although, in an odd twist, many Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain came to Rome because Jewish life was less threatened there.) Of all the visual images of John Paul's rock star-like trips, the most poignant surely was of a bent over, aging Pontiff placing his prayer note into a crevice in the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. He also finally ended the diplomatic scandal of the Vatican's previous unwillingness to maintain formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish State.

As Americans, we have a different reason to celebrate Israel. She is our best ally in the world. Part of this is strategic: ever since Harry S. Truman, over the vigorous objections of the State Department, recognized the State of Israel 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state's existence in 1948, Israel and America have been in a strategic partnership. In an often chaotic part of the world, we had an ally that was stable and secure.

But, there is a deeper reason than strategic necessity for the alliance. It has to do with shared values. Israel may have been born physically in what was once Palestine but it was born intellectually in the heart of the West. Its founders were European liberals and socialists, people familiar with the Enlightenment and its views on the proper role of government. In 1948, if you wanted to know what pre-war central Europe felt like and sounded like, the best place to go was not the war-ravaged remains of Berlin or Warsaw, but to Tel Aviv.

Part of that cultural inheritance was a respect for the law of civilization. During the war that followed Israel's declaration of Independence, the fledgling Jewish army was in desperate need of guns. The Irgun, a group of Jewish terrorists, filled up a boat, the Altalena, with weapons and ran the blockade outside the harbor in Haifa. Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel faced a dilemma. His army needed those weapons. But accepting them meant doing business with terrorists, albeit Jewish terrorists, who demanded their share of the weaponry. If he took them, he would be complicit in their crimes. If he refused them, Israel might not survive.

Ben-Gurion ordered the Jewish Defense Forces to sink the Altalena. The order was carried out by a young captain, Yitzhak Rabin.

The first premise of public morality in a civilized society is that might does not make right. In 1948, the fledgling Jewish state joined the ranks of civilized nations and she still stands there. It is a reason for all of us to celebrate.

Michael Sean Winters

Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency had received reprieve after reprieve in New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Unable to surmount Sen. Barack Obama's lead in the delegate count, she needed to at least keep the narrative going: "he can't close the deal, she keeps winning races, don't give up the ship."

The voters of North Carolina and Indiana sent a clear signal last night: It is time to give up the ship.

Obama gets a large share of the credit for his big win in North Carolina and the virtual tie in Indiana. He retooled his message in the past couple of weeks, refusing to get drawn into the daily sniping and negativity that characterized the campaign in Pennsylvania. He showed a steady hand when his former pastor's nationally televised meltdown threatened to derail the campaign again. He undertook a series of more intimate campaign events, Iowa-style, that further emphasized the return of the winning campaign-style of January and February: upbeat, change-oriented, hopeful.

Clinton bears more than her share of the blame for giving Obama the chance to take charge of the race again. Her proposal for a gas tax holiday stands out as the dumbest tactic of the 2008 campaign season. First, it took the media lens off Rev. Wright. Rule #1 of political campaigns: If you opponent is wrestling with an issue that registers all negatives for him and has no impact on you whatsoever, let him keep wrestling. Second, by pandering so shamelessly, Clinton permitted Obama to cast himself anew as the change agent, the candidate who understands that poll-driven quick fixes are what got America into the messes we have and only courageous political leadership will get us out of them. Looking ahead to his race with "straight-talking" John McCain, the gas tax debate positions Obama perfectly as the guy who really does tell Americans what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear.

Clinton may not drop out immediately, but the course for the Obama campaign is clear. They should resist any word or gesture that even hints at disrespect or condescension towards Clinton. If the Clintons try to resurrect Michigan and Florida, Obama should let Howard Dean and other party elders handle that issue. He needs to start unifying the party behind his candidacy and reaching out to the two demographics that have been the core of her support: women and blue-collar, white ethnic Catholics.

In the summer of 1932, looking at ways to sway Catholic voters, Franklin Roosevelt was tutored by his campaign manager Ed Flynn on the principles in Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's seminal encyclical on social justice. Obama would do well to consult the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI as he reaches out to Catholics in the weeks and months ahead. On a variety of issues from immigration to the Iraq War, Obama will find in the pope's words a language that will fit nicely with his own hopeful vision for a more enlightened, less craven politics. Quoting the pope will not be enough to win Catholic support in November. But it is a start.

Michael Sean Winters

Readers of this blog will know that it would be inaccurate to describe me as a fan of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet it is impossible not to admire her tenacity, the sheer gumption with which she has approached her ever-diminishing odds of being selected as the nominee of the Democratic party, her never-say-die spirit.

After her dismal third place finish in Iowa behind both Barack Obama and John Edwards, the press was virtually drooling over the prospect of her imminent collapse. Her "firewall" in New Hampshire appeared to disappear in a matter of hours, a poll showed Obama opening up a ten-point lead in the Granite state, and the fight for the nomination appeared to be ending as quickly as it had in 2004. But, then, a funny thing happened. Hillary got teary-eyed about the prospect and women turned out in droves to vote for her. They seemed to be saying "you can pick Obama, but do not, repeat do not, throw this woman to the curb." Clinton won New Hampshire.

After Obama pulled off 11 straight victories in February, and was seen to be fast closing her lead in the polls in Texas, Clinton again managed to pull out a victory in the Lone Star state, as well as in Ohio, and the nomination again appeared up for grabs. Within days, however, the hard math of the nominating process took hold of the commentariat, and they prematurely announced the collapse of Clinton's quest for the nomination. She pulled off a win in Pennsylvania.

Different people support Hillary for different reasons. Women especially feel a sense of loyalty to her, an identification with her cause, and recognize that while her gifts may have long existed in the shadow of her husband, they were gifts nonetheless and of an extraordinary character. Indeed, her tenacity mimicked nothing so much as the never-say-die spirit of Bill's 1992 campaign. Lesser politicians would have folded after Gennifer Flowers or the Draft letter, but not Bill, and lesser candidates than Hillary would have folded after a third-place finish in Iowa. The core of her supporters - women and working-class, ethnic Catholics without a college degree – know what it is to be counted out and dismissed and they, too, fought for their own future against cultural trends that marginalized their contribution to society. In Hillary, as in Bill, they found a vehicle for powerful emotions.

The political class never understood this about Bill Clinton. They were aghast at his penchant for women not his wife, his desire for fast food, his "Bubba" qualities. But it was precisely those qualities that made middle America warm to him. They liked his intelligence and his wonkishness. But they also saw how his Bubba-ness softened him and humanized him just as that tear-eyed moment in New Hampshire softened and humanized Hillary.

I have given up guessing what will happen on primary days in 2008. And, the truth be told, it really doesn't matter anymore. Hillary really can't catch Obama short of a meltdown on his part, and after weeks of incoming fire over Bittergate and Rev. Wright, it is hard to imagine what else might trip him up. Still, I have discovered a grudging admiration for Hillary that I did not have before. I still think she should have dropped out long ago for the good of the party. I still could never, ever bring myself to vote for her. But, I cannot help but acknowledging that she is a fighter and Americans like a fighter, and she has earned the right to stay in this race until all the primaries are finished.

Michael Sean Winters

Was that Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" yesterday? Instead of the usual offering of gotcha questions and decades-old quotes, all designed to put the interviewer's prey into a meltdown, Russert asked thoughtful, persistent questions of Sen. Barack Obama and even gave him sufficient time to answer.

It is a shame that most Americans were not watching because some of Obama's answers got at the heart of the choices facing the electorate. On the gas tax holiday, he cast the narrow issue of the efficacy of the proposal into the larger and more important issue of how politics has been practiced in Washington for the past several decades. In the event, Obama was right that it matters more to politicians to score electoral advantage than it does to actually solve one of the nation's problems. It is anyone's guess whether the persuasive phenom would be able to change the ways of Washington if elected. It is beyond guesswork that the person who most effectively runs against Washington, who casts him- or herself as the anti-politician, is the person most likely to win the next election.

Obama's finest moment came in response to Russert's questions about Iraq and Iran. Whatever you think about Obama, there is no denying the sharp learning curve of his political skills. One year ago, his answers to foreign policy questions were halting and often disjointed. Yesterday, he was fluent and fluid in his replies. More than style points, he diagnosed the original and ongoing strategic problem of the Iraq War – there was no way it was not going to strengthen Iran. And, in contrast to the open-ended commitment that Sen. McCain has proposed, Obama suggested that if the Iraqis could not learn to put their house in order in seven years, why should we think they would be able to heal their religious and ethnic divisions in fourteen or twenty-eight or fifty-six years? He did not go all the way and endorse Sen. Joe Biden's proposal to divide Iraq into three distinct groups, but it is difficult to see how he could make a withdrawal work without such a separation of warring populations.

There is something histrionic about some of Obama's more sweeping claims, his ambition to enlist average Americans and their voices in a campaign that will achieve large goals like universal health insurance, a goal that has eluded every Democratic president since Harry S. Truman. There is a great deal of self-confidence in his belief that he can change the political culture within the beltway, maybe a little hubris even. And, Lord knows, all Americans are well advised to be suspicious of such claims when we remember that George W. Bush promised he would be "a uniter, not a divider."

Still, there is still something authentic and real in this man's smile, and he clearly believes in the largeness of his promises in part because they are large. One of the ways to avoid being tagged as histrionic is by being genuinely historic. It is hard to believe Obama can deliver on the hopes he has raised and Americans have fallen in love with politicians before only to be disappointed. But, it is difficult to foretell what effect the election of the first black president would have on the nation's psyche, let alone that of the rest of the world. It was not so much Barack's performance on "Meet the Press" that suggested how profound those effects could be, it was Russert's. He was thoughtful in ways he is not always thoughtful, he listened in ways he does not usually listen. Whatever else he has done in this campaign, Barack Obama has elevated the political discourse in America, even for Tim Russert. Maybe we should dare ourselves to hope again.

Michael Sean Winters

Nobody likes paying the exorbitant price at the pump and both John McCain and Hillary Clinton are trying to cash-in politically on Americans' cash-out experience when they fill up. They have proposed a tax holiday from the federal gas tax for the summer. Clinton offers a windfall profits tax on oil companies to pay for it. McCain, who needs to consolidate his base and cannot raise taxes in any way, shape or form, simply adds the cost to the federal budget deficit.

Barack Obama rightly got hammered for condescending remarks he made about the bitterness of rural voters in Pennsylvania. But he has resisted the temptation to that particular form of condescension known as the pander. Clinton's and McCain's proposals for a gas tax holiday are a classic pander, a feel-good policy that does nothing to address the underlying issue. More significantly, Obama is betting that voters are smart enough to see through the other candidates' pander. P.T. Barnum said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," and perhaps Barack's bet will not pay off. He gets high marks for placing the bet anyway.

The problem with the gas tax holiday is not only that it distracts from Washington's persistent, bipartisan inability to craft a comprehensive national energy policy (no small thing that), but that there is no guarantee it would lower prices. "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept...by the suppliers and is not passed on to the customers," Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw told the Washington Post. A slew of other economists have likewise ridiculed the gas tax holiday idea.

Clinton is trying to argue that Obama is out of touch and his argument that America needs a long-term solution not a short-term fix demonstrates an aloofness to the daily struggles of average Americans. That mud may stick, it might not. Indiana and, even more so, North Carolina, are not the economic basket cases that Ohio and Pennsylvania are. In a smart analysis on Politico.com, Joel Kotkin notes that Indiana's "18.5 percent job growth rate since 1990 stands well below Wisconsin's healthy 28.5 percent, but well above Ohio's 11.1 percent, not to mention the phenomenal 32.8 percent growth in the other May 6 battleground, North Carolina." Obama won Wisconsin, lost Ohio, and is leading in North Carolina.

It is refreshing after days and weeks focused on Rev. Wright and snipers in Bosnia to focus on a real policy difference, and a policy difference that illustrates different approaches to government. Pandering sometimes works in an election, but if this really is a "change election," they should register their mandate for change by refusing the gas-tax holiday as the kind of feel-good politics without substance that got us in this mess in the first place.

Michael Sean Winters

Yes, Virginia, there is a Republican candidate. Amidst all the press coverage of Barack Obama's crazy pastor and Hillary Clinton's craven gas tax holiday, you can be forgiven for forgetting that John McCain is running for president too. But, his campaign is taking shape and doing so in ways that still make the Democratic nomination a thing worth having.

McCain rolled out his health care plan this week. He described it as a "market-based" solution to the nation's health care system. Aides called the plan "radical." McCain promises to give people "choice" and to introduce a greater degree of "competition."

Unfortunately for McCain, the plan was described by news accounts as "similar to one that [President George W.] Bush put forth in his 2007 State of the Union address." Being linked to George Bush, whose job approval sits at 28% according to the most recent Gallup poll, is the kiss of death for McCain in the general election.

But, what else can he do? In various ways, Bush has divided the GOP. Fiscal conservatives shudder at the growth of government spending in the past few years. The more isolationist wing of the party has grown disgusted by the endless war in Iraq. The anti-immigrant base of the GOP bucked Bush on comprehensive immigration reform. The two areas where Republicans still agree are taxes and government regulation of industry. So, McCain flip-flopped on taxes, now supporting the Bush tax cuts he voted against in 2001. And, on health care, he proposes a "market-based" solution to a problem the market has consistently made worse.

McCain misreads the voters on health care. Especially with the economic downturn, they are looking for security, not competition. They would love "choice" but they have come to recognize that the current market-based system has diminished their choices in favor of corporate profits. And, by proposing to scrap the employer-based system we currently have, the "radical" part of the plan, he makes even those who are happy with their health care plans nervous.

The debate on health care is a debate worth having. At a time when most of us look to our elders with envy because Medicare works better than any private health care plan, the idea of greater government involvement is not so scary. Democrats can usefully claim the moral high ground of offering plans that not only do something to help the poor and the ill, but which remind Americans that on some issues, we are all in this together and that only a solution that involves everyone can meet this pressing national concern. Some issues are too important to be left to the dictates of the market: McCain is not proposing that we privatize the war on terror, is he?

The preamble to the Constitution says that government is formed, among other reasons, to promote the general welfare. For too long, the health care system has promoted the specific welfare of a few large insurance and pharmaceutical companies. McCain's plan is a disaster, and the kind of disaster that is necessary and predictable for a GOP nominee. I do not see it swaying many independent voters in November. Anytime McCain finds himself linked to Bush, he should be nervous.

Michael Sean Winters

One of the words Pope Benedict repeated the most during his sermons and speeches while visiting America was truth, although when Benedict uses the word, my mind's eye sees it with an upper-case T as Truth. The phrase "dictatorship of relativism" from his sermon to the cardinals before the conclave that elected him is clearly one of the central concerns of his pontificate. Nowhere is this concern more necessary than in America, and the Democrats would do well to examine why this is so.

A recent article in the Washington Post catalogued the variety of ways in which American culture posits that truth is up for grabs. For starters, when researchers entered some 100 terms drawn from U.S. history texts into the Google search engine, 87 times, the first hit was for Wikipedia, the on-line, consumer generated encyclopedia that is, well, not exactly authoritative. The article also noted that 11,000 different websites credit Abraham Lincoln with a quote he never said. The quote itself speaks to the phenomenon in question: "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

The religious consequences of this view of truth as something humans manufacture are obvious enough. But, the political consequences are also troubling and worthy of examination. N.B. The Washington Post ran its story about truth in the Style section.

Barack Obama especially needs to help Truth make a comeback. Polls consistently show that 10% of Americans think he is a Muslim. His former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has given voice to the absurd proposition that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to extinguish minorities. And, this week's cover of the National Enquirer blares the headline "Obama Marriage Explodes" with the promise of photos and love notes inside.

For years, Democrats have been winking at the idea that truth is a relative notion. Men were not supposed to have an opinion about abortion because they could not get pregnant. A white man could not speak on racism because he was not black. But there are no privileged hermeneutics in a democracy. One man's opinion has as much value as another's and everyone casts a secret ballot where they can mark their preferences without having to give an account of their motives to anyone. Only if the culture itself puts a premium on truth v. opinion, on knowledge v. information, only then can our democracy function and flourish.

As he comes to terms with the various slanders hurled against him, Obama could do worse than to quote Pope Benedict. Freedom divorced from truth can become a form of slavery that is especially pernicious because it is not without its allure. "Pushing the envelope" and "being edgy" are seen as good things in the market-driven culture of the 21st century. Obama, and the Democrats more generally, need to reassure Americans whose sense of security has been shaken by the economic downturn, that they understand that they, too, are responsible to truths that are greater than their own self-advancement. This is an opportunity for the Democrats. They should seize it.

Michael Sean Winters