Baracktopussy.(happy warrior)(Barack Obama)

BY the time many of you read this, the winner of the presidential election will be known--assuming, that is, that the result is sufficiently non-close that it's beyond the margin of lawyer. So, before we close the book on this election season, let me quote one of the most dispiriting asides on the subject. Daniel Craig, the star of the new James Bond movie The Audacity of Solace--no, wait, A Quantum of Hope--was being interviewed by Kevin Sessums for Parade (that supplement thingy that's free in all the local newspapers), and as a final question was asked which of the two candidates would make the better 007:

 
   Craig doesn't hesitate. "Obama would 
   be the better Bond because--if he's true 
   to his word--he'd be willing to quite literally 
   look the enemy in the eye and go 
   toe-to-toe with them. McCain, because 
   of his long service and experience, 
   would probably be a better M," he adds, 
   mentioning Bond's boss, played by 
   Dame Judi Dench. "There is, come to 
   think of it, a kind of Judi Dench quality 
   to McCain." 

Oh, great. John McCain has survived plane crashes, just like Roger Moore in Octopussy. He has escaped death in shipboard infernos, just like Sean Connery in Thunderball. He has endured torture day after day, month after month, without end, just like Pierce Brosnan in the title sequence of Die Another Day. He has done everything 007 has done except get lowered into a shark tank and (one assumes) bed Britt Ekland and Jill St. John.

And yet Daniel Craig gives him the desk job.

On the other hand, Barack Obama has spent his entire adult life chit-chatting with "community organizers" and campus lefties--and he's the last action hero? It's true he's offered "to quite literally look the enemy in the eye" without preconditions. But, given that he looked the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the eye for 20 years and failed to notice he was an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiter peddling insane conspiracy theories, and that he looked William Ayers in the eye for almost as long and failed to notice he was an unrepentant terrorist, and that he looked Tony Rezko in the eye for an extremely beneficial real-estate deal and failed to notice he was already being mentioned in the Chicago papers for various unsavory activities, I'm not sure Senator Obama is the go-to guy for in-the-field intelligence work.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

As for his plan to fly to Tehran to "go toe-to-toe" with President Ahmadinejad, one can't but feel that 007's famous exchange with Goldfinger pretty much sums up the cross-purposes: