In a piece in this month’s Atlantic, Nir Rosen offers a succinct, compelling argument for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

If the rationale for the U.S. presence is to do what’s good for the Iraqis, Rosen reminds us that most Iraqis — even the country’s Shia majority, increasingly a target of terror attacks — want foreign soldiers out of their country, and leaving would allow the Iraqi leadership to promote democracy without being branded collaborators. If the rationale is that withdrawing would embolden America’s enemies, Rosen points out that the insurgency is almost entirely a homegrown phenomenon, driven not by lust for global jihad but by nationalist resistance; it will dissipate without a foreign presence to rally against. If the rationale is that America must put an end to terrorism overseas, Rosen points out that terrorism thrives in a failed state like Iraq, where daily attacks on the occupiers and their perceived collaborators prevent the establishment of civil order. If the rationale is that Baghdad would fall if the troops leave, Rosen maintains that the stronger Shia and Kurdish armed forces would never allow the Sunni resistance to take over the city. And if the rationale is that Iraq would fall apart if America withdraws, Rosen notes that this is happening already: The presence of U.S. troops is encouraging civil war, and the best of the painful options that remain is to leave Iraq alone, allow the Kurds to secede, and give up the dream for now of a purely secular, human rights-loving, democratic paradise in Iraq.

It is a bitter pill to swallow. For one thing, many Americans genuinely want a positive outcome in Iraq, after thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been expended in the name of liberation. They want, above all, an end to the violence. To leave with such uncertainty still looming over Iraq may seem like a defeat. But it is nonetheless the right thing to do. Perhaps the French had similar uncertainties after they helped the Americans vanquish the British at Yorktown: Why not stay for a few decades more, help the Americans with their terrorist problem in the western Indian lands, prevent the fractious new government from falling apart, and protect French interests across the continent? But the French chose to leave, and the American experiment in democracy survived.

For those of us who care about the rights of women and minorities, it would be preferable if Iraq became a truly secular nation, with protections for those groups that are typically oppressed under fundamentalist governments. With stability the most pressing concern in Iraq, that may be too much to demand right now. But this does not mean that progress will never come. America has spent more than three centuries extending the rights of white, Christian, male property owners to a wider circle; perhaps Iraq deserves some time to make a similar transition on its own. With any luck, the example of other countries will move it quickly along that path. But in any case, democracy means allowing the people to decide for themselves what they want. Until America’s troops leave, the Iraqis will never really have that chance.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

In today’s New York Times, Lawrence Downes scrutinizes the legacy of Pat Morita, the Japanese American actor best known for playing the role of sensei to a barely pubescent Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid:

The movie and TV industry has never had many roles for Asian-American men, and it seemed for a while that they all went to Mr. Morita. He made his debut as “Oriental No. 2” in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967 and never stopped working. He hit two peaks — as Arnold the diner owner on TV’s “Happy Days” and the wise old Mr. Miyagi in the “Karate Kid” movies — and spent the rest of nearly 40 years roaming an endless forest of bit parts.

He was Mahi Mahi, the pidgin-talking cabby in “Honeymoon in Vegas,” Lamont Sanford’s friend Ah Chew in “Sanford and Son,” Brian the waiter in “Spy Hard,” Chin Li the Chinese herbalist in “The Karate Dog.”

Whenever a script called for a little Asian guy to drive a taxi, serve drinks or utter wise aphorisms in amusingly broken English, you could count on Mr. Morita to be there.

Those who knew Mr. Morita say he was a man of uncommon decency and good humor. He fulfilled the actor’s prime directive, to keep busy.

But it’s distressing to think that the life’s work of one of the best-known, hardest-working Asian-American actors is mostly a loose collection of servile supporting roles.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Born to migrant farmworkers in California and confined to an internment camp in Arizona during World War II, Morita decided to become a stand-up comic and actor at a time when Hollywood was “interested only in the stock Asian,” Downes writes. Little changed during Morita’s lifetime:

Harold Sakata played Oddjob in “Goldfinger” and was typecast as a mute brute forever after. Philip Ahn played houseboys and villains for decade upon decade.

Some actors — well, a couple — broke out, like George Takei, Mr. Sulu in “Star Trek” [who recently broke another taboo by publicly acknowledging he was gay], and Jack Soo on “Barney Miller.” B.D. Wong’s role on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is a major improvement, but it will be a long, long time before we erase the memory of the bucktoothed, jabbering Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” or Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan.

Watch Rob Schneider play Ula, a leering Hawaiian in the Adam Sandler movie “50 First Dates,” with a pidgin accent by way of Cheech and Chong, and you get the sense that Hollywood still believes that there is no ethnic caricature a white actor can’t improve upon.

Actually, Rob Schneider is hapa, or half-Asian — his mother is Filipina. I’m not sure if that extra sliver of “authenticity” makes his racial buffoonery any better — or just more depressing.

But lately there have been some promising developments on the Asian American cinema front, thanks in part to the growing visibility of new Asian American directors like Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow) and Eric Byler (Charlotte Sometimes). Last night I saw Saving Face, by first-time director Alice Wu, a film that is at once a lesbian love story, an intergenerational Asian American tale of culture clash, and a comedy of manners — all the while playing with genres and conventions to create something uniquely heartfelt, universal, and funny. I recommend you see it, if anything just to gape at Joan Chen’s brilliance as a comedic actor (or just to gape at her, I guess).

As for Morita, we may yet see a different side of the late actor in Only the Brave. This film — now in search of a distributor — tells from an Asian American viewpoint the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a Japanese American unit whose families were held in the government’s internment camps but who nevertheless fought valiantly for their country in World War II. Judged by its size and length of service, the so-called “Purple Heart Battalion” is the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. Morita plays a Buddhist priest imprisoned in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Of course, Morita will probably always be remembered, with genuine fondness, as Mr. Miyagi, that ever-upbeat font of fortune cookie wisdom and helpful car-waxing tips. But hopefully younger generations will place Morita in the context of his times and also appreciate the pioneer he was — and the actor he could not be.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

… to get greedy, reports The Scotsman:

Police arrested a man at a Wal-Mart in Orlando, Florida, after he allegedly jumped a queue to buy a bargain notebook computer and was wrestled to the ground. Shoppers at another Wal-Mart store, in Texas, complained that a security guard used pepper spray when scuffles broke out….

A crowd of shoppers sparked a melee in the rush for the new Xbox 360 video game console at a Wal-Mart store in north-east Maryland, and it took 10 police officers to restore order….

Some customers were knocked down and trampled, though there were no serious injuries. Then Wal-Mart decided to cancel the sale and police ordered everyone to leave.

In western Michigan’s Cascade Township, a woman fell as dozens of people rushed into a store for the 5am opening and several stepped on her.

When the rush ended, the woman and a 13-year-old girl suffered minor injuries.

Put an end to the senseless violence. Support Buy Nothing Day. Because an Xbox 360 is a terrible thing to be trampled for.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Michael Kinsley, in Friday’s Washington Post:

The longer the war goes on, the more Americans, “allies” and Iraqis will die. That is not a slam-dunk argument for ending this foreign entanglement. But it is worth keeping in mind while you try to decide whether American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability can justify the cost in blood and treasure. And don’t forget to factor in the likelihood that the war will actually produce these fine things.

The last man or woman to die in any war almost surely dies in vain: The outcome has been determined, if not certified. And he or she might die happier thinking that death came in a noble cause that will not be abandoned. But if it is not a noble cause, he or she might prefer not to die at all. Stifling criticism that might shorten the war is no favor to American soldiers. They can live without that kind of “respect.”

Instead of focusing on this important question — whether the goals of “American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability” are worth the war’s financial and human cost — our nation’s leaders seem obsessed with appearances. Does criticism of the war in Iraq hurt the morale of American soldiers? Does photographing the coffins of soldiers killed in action undermine public support for the war? Do revelations of prisoner abuse damage the popularity of the U.S. military abroad? Does voting for the war back then and voting for a withdrawal now endanger my reelection chances in 2006?

Does pulling the soldiers out now disrespect the sacrifice of those who have already died in Iraq?

Our leaders tend to dwell on superficial problems. The release of damaging reports, and not the reported situation. The appearance of flip-flopping, and not the circumstances that have changed. The deference paid to sacrifice, and not the sacrifice itself.

Rather than spending so much time on symbols and slogans, we might find it more helpful to deal with realities. Respect, after all, tends to last longer when it is rooted in the real world and not artful illusions. A good leader knows that the best way to show respect for those under his or her charge is making fair, honest, and informed decisions — not pandering to them, not savaging critics, not wishing bad news away.

The decision to stay or leave Iraq cannot be made lightly, pushed along by either the inertia of poll numbers or the incitement of insults like “coward.” It deserves a fair, honest, and informed debate in Congress.

That would be the best way to honor the sacrifice of those who have died.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a conservative Democrat who received two Purple Hearts as a marine in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, gave a speech on Thursday in which he laid out the case for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. As a sort of pilgrim’s progress from hawk to heavily armed dove, Murtha’s speech is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to focus on an excerpt:

I believe with the U.S. troop redeployment the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted — this is a British poll reported in The Washington Times — over 80 percent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces, and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice. The United States will immediately redeploy — immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that’s controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target.

All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free — free from a United States occupation, and I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process. My experience in a guerrilla war says that until you find out where they are, until the public is willing to tell you where the insurgent is, you’re not going to win this war, and Vietnam was the same way. If you have an operation — a military operation and you tell the Sunnis because the families are in jeopardy, they — or you tell the Iraqis, then they are going to tell the insurgents, because they’re worried about their families.

There are two points worth emphasizing here. One is that the insurgency feeds on the presence of U.S. troops. No longer is it just an extremist fringe that opposes having foreign soldiers in the country: The vast majority of Iraqis want them out. Almost half believe attacks on American troops are justified. In such a poisonous climate, U.S. soldiers will find it harder to tell friend from foe; more innocents will be imprisoned or killed; and these wrongs will fuel further hatred and further bloodletting.

The second related point is that the United States cannot win a guerrilla war in Iraq without the support of the population. The insurgents know the terrain and enjoy the protection of local communities who either approve of their actions or are too frightened to resist. It is difficult to root them out, and the general population’s distrust of the occupiers means that the insurgents can easily recruit more followers.

America faced a similar situation in Vietnam, as Murtha alluded to. But perhaps the more telling example is Afghanistan. There, a communist regime with the overwhelming balance of military power and no apparent vulnerability to popular protest at home was unable to beat down a determined guerrilla resistance. The Soviets expended 10 years and 15,000 of their own soldiers in their quest to keep Afghanistan communist, and in the end they still failed. Iraq is quickly becoming the third modern example for military historians of why the better-armed, better-trained forces do not always win.

Those who want to stay the course in Iraq assert that “cowards cut and run.” It’s true that good soldiers stand their ground. But it’s also true that good leaders do not send their soldiers into battles that cannot be won. Foolhardiness is no way to respect the sacrifice of young lives.

A man of some intelligence once said, “It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.” In his speech last week, Murtha had the courage to acknowledge the facts on the ground in Iraq — that Iraqi support is minimal, that the occupation is toxic, that the U.S. military is weakening. Murtha has been bitterly attacked for his words. Meanwhile, an administration blind to danger, unpleasant news, and the consequences of its own mistakes continues to slog through the Iraqi morass, showing at every lethal bend in the road rashness instead of valor, obsession instead of leadership.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

It seems to be a signature tactic in the Karl Rove playbook: Anytime your guys get attacked, find a way to beat your enemy over the head with the same blunt object. Cast the two sides as morally equivalent; if the results are not to your liking, rinse and repeat. Take, for instance, the debate over whether the Bush administration misled the nation into invading Iraq with trumped-up charges of biological, chemical, and nuclear arms. The administration and its clone army of pundits keep hammering their talking points: The Democrats looked at the same intelligence. They came to the same conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. How dare the Democrats play these blame games! Yes, it may be true that the Bush administration controlled the gathering of intelligence … selectively presented the juiciest morsels to Congress … pushed contrarian views into footnotes … blatantly mischaracterized the degree of dissent in the CIA and elsewhere … parroted Iraqi defectors known to be liars … but we, the poor, helpless executive branch, were just as duped as you were!

In the past several days GOP leaders have been using this tried-and-true strategy to do another sort of damage control. The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA was holding terror suspects at secret prisons in eight countries, including several Eastern European democracies, in violation of the laws of these countries and the most meager standards of international human rights. But instead of saving their fire-and-brimstone for an executive branch that had chosen to conceal this information from Congress, Republican lawmakers decided to launch a formal investigation into who had spilled the bad news to the media. The investigation will also examine the leaking of the identity of a CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame, whose husband had criticized the Bush administration; that disclosure brought about the indictment of one of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aides last month. The implicit message of the Republican-led investigation is that the two leaks are morally equivalent: Blowing the whistle on government misdeeds is just as evil as perpetrating government misdeeds to savage your opposition.

This could not be farther from the truth. In the Plame affair, the leak was the crime. But in the case of the CIA-run prisons, the actual crime dwarfs any harm caused by the act of whistleblowing. Establishing secret prisons in a far-off country where you can torture as you see fit is morally indefensible. It pushes us into the shadows of tyrants past — the Latin American dictators who would “disappear” their enemies, holding them in extrajudicial limbo where their torture and execution could occur unseen, or the Soviet “Evil Empire” with its secret police operations, labor camps, and prisons (ironically, the CIA has reportedly used at least one Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe for its hiding and interrogating). Whether or not the Bush administration can find a convoluted legal justification for its actions, the fact that it has chosen to outsource its dirty work to foreign lands shows nothing but moral bankruptcy: Who other than a two-bit criminal would cross the border to escape a rap? If we can’t do these things within the borders of the United States, why are we doing it in Poland, Romania, or, for that matter, Guantánamo, Cuba?

Morality aside, the secret prisons pose risks of a distinctly pragmatic nature. Nothing has been more harmful to the U.S. effort in Iraq than the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. The scandals have strengthened extremists and radicalized moderates in Iraq and across the Arab world. So, when will the Bush administration realize that it needs to balance its short-term tactical need to acquire intelligence with its long-term strategic need to win over the moderate Muslim world? It can root out as many terrorist cells as it likes with the information it obtains from interrogations in secret locales, but if more terrorists rise up with every new allegation of Soviet-style secrecy and abuse, how is that progress in its war on terror?

The politicians who are so angry with The Washington Post should read The Gulag Archipelago and ask themselves whether they want to be following old Joseph Stalin’s lead on this one. Maybe some more ethics classes would help, too.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The science radio show Explorations recently rebroadcast an interview with energy expert Tom Mast that is worth listening to if you’re more than a tad concerned about rising gas prices and heating costs. Mast, a mechanical engineer who has worked in the oil industry for decades and is author of the book Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage, offers the best analysis I’ve heard about what today’s high oil prices mean and what we should be doing about it. Instead of getting caught up in secondary questions like automobile fuel efficiency or drilling for oil in Alaska, Mast focuses on the key problems: the supply of oil is finite; the world will experience oil shortages within a decade or two; and the current crop of energy alternatives are either too unreliable or too polluting to replace oil.

“The high prices of crude oil — and therefore gasoline — these days are a symptom of the problem, and not the real problem,” says Mast. “The fundamental problem is that the worldwide supply of oil is having a hard time keeping up with the demand.” About half of the world’s oil reserves have been used up in a single century of production and consumption, Mast notes. Given an ever-increasing world population with ever-increasing energy needs (China alone accounted for 40 percent of the growth in oil demand last year), there’s every indication that we will blow through the remaining half of the world’s oil reserves much more quickly. Conservation, increased fuel efficiency, new oil production technologies, drilling in not-yet-exploited wildernesses like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which lawmakers seem intent on opening up) — all these tactics may buy us a little time, but in the absence of a serious, “Man on the Moon”-style government initiative to develop alternatives, we will soon arrive at a worldwide energy crisis.

When that oil shortage strikes, we’ll have much more to worry about than having enough juice to feed our SUVs. Oil accounts for 38 percent of the world’s energy — by far the largest chunk — and the consequences of a shortage would be catastrophic for the economies of every country. Scarce oil supplies would sharply increase oil costs and slam inflation into high gear. It’s not just commuters who rely on oil-based fuel, after all: The price of shipping every sort of good, from groceries to TV sets, would increase, making businesses of every niche less efficient and ultimately leading to nationwide recession or depression. The United States would suffer in particular, because a substantial portion of its trade deficit — 35 to 40 percent — is devoted to oil imports. With oil prices rising, the country’s debt would mushroom, weakening the dollar and wreaking further havoc with the economy. Finally, a shortage of oil would inevitably worsen relations between gas-guzzling nations who have grown dependent on cheap energy but suddenly have no easy way of obtaining it. (The much-anticipated, much-feared future clash between the United States and China, in fact, may not be over Taiwan but over oil: An expansionist China sniffing everywhere for oil is already butting heads with the United States in central Asia.)

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has not yet made the search for energy alternatives a priority. Instead, it seems to approach the impending oil shortage with the same faith-based reasoning that it applies to global warming (and that it applied, until this past week, to the influenza danger): Nothing bad is going to happen. Why worry? If the oil crisis of the 1970s taught us anything, it was the danger of not being prepared for the unexpected — of not having a Plan B. These days, we’re dealing with the very-much-expected — and yet we’re still woefully unprepared.

(To listen to the Mast interview, click here. The interview starts at 28:48 in the program — right after another interview worth listening to about the dangers posed by bird flu.)

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.… I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb. That may be the right thing to do.

—Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, offering a modest proposal Wednesday on a Nevada talk show. Another panelist on the show, State University System Regent Howard Rosenberg, suggested that Goodman “use his head for something other than a hat rack.”

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Joan Didion has written a memoir of personal loss, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she describes the twin tragedies that seized control of her life at the end of 2003 — the sudden, grave illness of her only child; the sudden, anguishing death of her husband — and the year that followed of questions, delusions, and relentless unknowing. Her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, had been her partner in life and letters for nearly 40 years; her daughter, Quintana, would die shortly after this book was finished.

With her memoir in my head, I went back to one of Didion’s earlier works, the celebrated collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which was first published in 1968. There, Didion depicted the American moral wilderness — a society fragmenting in a thousand shards of culture and counterculture — with prose steeped in the prophetic gloom of W.B. Yeats: “The widening gyre, the falcon which does not hear the falconer, the gaze blank and pitiless as the sun; those have been my points of reference, the only images against which much of what I was seeing and hearing and thinking seemed to make any pattern.” Her latest book in a way returns to this theme of unraveling, but now Didion wanders in the wilderness of her own grief, circling personal totems — sickness and mortality — that she, too, finds blank and pitiless.

In one of the earlier book’s essays, a piece titled “On Going Home,” you will find sketches of her husband and daughter, and this remarkable snapshot of Didion celebrating her baby’s first birthday:

It is time for the baby’s birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.

It is a thin and shadow-slight immortality that writing grants, but it is some comfort nonetheless: Quintana lives, nameless, limitless, in her mother’s hopes for her.

Things fall apart. A writer puts the pieces back together.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Americans constantly tell pollsters and journalists that they dislike the slickness of today’s politicians. That, above all, was the criticism thrown at Bill Clinton. “Slick Willy” was a little too adept at gauging the political winds, triangulating and out-Republican-ing many of the GOP on issues like welfare reform and deficit reduction. When faced with this sort of ideological maneuvering, however justified by the politics of the moment, voters turn cynical. It’s no surprise that, when asked to rank professions in terms of honesty and ethical standards, Americans place politicians near the bottom of the heap.

The problem is the desire to find that rare politician with integrity and honesty bumps up against our other compelling desire as voters: to find that rare politician who shares all our views on policy, government spending, taxes, the American flag, violence in video games, the wearing of boxers vs. briefs, etc., etc.

When those desires conflict, we’re left in a quandary. Do we want politicians who offer moral leadership, or do we want politicians who pursue our particular interests? Do we want politicians who stick to their core convictions or politicians who cater to our every policy whim?

It’s not surprising that politicians tend to go with strategy #2:  appease the finicky voter. It’s easy to craft a political platform that perfectly matches the views of the poll-tested and focus-group-approved majority in your district. It’s easy to give the appearance of integrity with a few sound bites written by your handlers and rehearsed until you approach eloquence. It’s hard to stick with your personal beliefs — beliefs that will inevitably differ from the views of the majority unless you were born in a cookie-cutter and fed Gallup reports from birth. It’s hard to weather the criticism that comes from either the opposing side’s partisans or the ideological commissars of your own party.

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine decided to stick with his personal belief that the death penalty is wrong. Of course, he’s a politician and he’s found a way to massage that politically unsightly knot on his record: He insists that he’d uphold the death penalty if elected and, when pressed by a journalist, conceded that some murderers “may deserve” the death penalty. But, in the kingdom of the integrity-less, the man with a half-ounce of character is king. A Democrat and a Roman Catholic, Kaine has long held that the death penalty — and abortion as well — violate the sanctity of human life. The fact that Kaine has not repudiated his anti-capital punishment views in spite of the intense political pressure to do so should be cause for praise.

Instead, Kaine is being assailed as a treacherous, effete liberal, a friend of Hitler and murderers everywhere. His opponent, Republican Jerry Kilgore, has paid for ads putting forth these charges and featuring the father of a murder victim. Never mind that Kaine has pledged, if elected governor, to enforce execution orders. Never mind that he has the courage to think unpopular thoughts in a state that — as Leonard Pitts Jr. points out in this excellent column — “executes people with a gusto.”

It is, ironically, Kaine’s very integrity that makes him untrustworthy. “I don’t trust Tim Kaine when it comes to the death penalty,” says Stanley Rosenbluth, the father of a murder victim, in one of Kilgore’s ads. Why? Because Kaine has a belief that Rosenbluth doesn’t like.

If Tim Kaine loses the Virginia gubernatorial race because of these attack ads, it will prove a sad truth about American voters: We really do get the politicians we deserve.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

A reader KS responds to one of my posts from last month:

My thanks to KS for taking the time to write a thoughtful critique.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen