Frank Rich hits one out of the park (updated w/translation)!

I will be brief (for once) because this is a call to action. I just noticed that Frank Rich's  New York Times op-ed "One Historic Night, Two Americas" is near the top of the Digg front page. Digging it up will increase the number of eyeballs that see gems such as this:

Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. "No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically," he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking "to the 1960s and ’70s for answers."

More samples below the fold...

Mr. Obama’s deep-rooted worldliness — in philosophy as well as itinerant background — is his other crucial departure from the McCain template. As more and more Americans feel the pain of spiraling gas prices and lost jobs, they are also coming to recognize, as Mr. Obama does, that the globally reviled American image forged by an endless war in Iraq and its accompanying torture scandals is inflicting economic as well as foreign-policy havoc.

Six out of 10 Americans do want their president to talk to Iran’s president, according to the most-recent Gallup poll. Americans are sick of a national identity defined by arrogant saber-rattling abroad and manipulative fear-mongering at home. Mr. Obama closed his speech on Tuesday by telling Americans they "don’t deserve" another election "that’s governed by fear." Of the three candidates, he was the only one who did not mention 9/11 that night.

That part is especially important now, to counter the thrust of McCain's new fear-mongering ad (h/t JedReport). Let's give Mr. Rich's article some more visibility!

Update: by request, here is a translation into the common vernacular. Apologies for the vulgarity, but it's accurate in my experience. (I've been everything from custodian or groundskeeper to a database programmer or math teacher.)

Barack Obama got the Democratic nomination Tuesday night. That started a throw-down between his upbeat looking forward and John McCain's cautious looking backward.

In that D.C.-traditional way, Hillary Clinton is more like McCain than Obama. All three of them gave speeches that night, and Obama mentioned himself half as much as McCain and Clinton mentioned themselves.

In fact, neither McCain nor Clinton gave Obama his props, like they were afraid of his power. Clinton hid deep underground and McCain repeated Obama's mantra of "change" over and over like a magic charm.

All it did was show that "change" ain't nothin' but a word to McCain, whose points were from paisley days. Obama's over all that old shit.

Clinton and McCain are still fighting the long-hairs vs. short-hairs war. Obama just wants to get shit done.

Obama runs it like he talks it, all bottom-up instead of top-down. You can even see it in the three of their websites, where Obama's is the best at getting us together.

We're fucked at the pump because we've been acting like jerks and nobody wants our dollars. That's like duh, so most folks support Obama's plan of using the soft touch first instead of going straight to the trash talk.

That's another reason why Clinton would be a poor fit. Obama doesn't need her; he just needs to not get too cocky after seeing McCain's shitty game.

It's like, what was McCain thinking? His tiny, pale audience reminded us how elitist the Republican party is, and it's not like he gave two shits about New Orleans when they needed it.

Is McCain crazy enough to still want to be seen public with Obama after that disaster? If so, Obama might as well do it; everyone's gonna love him!