In the comments to the previous post, Toby writes, astutely:
As with Churchill, he [McCain] hankers after the Empire he knew in his youth. He feels uneasy about the falloff of his country from former greatness. But he is now closer to the Churchill of 1950 than 1940, and the American people are more in the mood the British electorate were in 1945.
Dang, I wish I had thought to write that. It’s true that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t over, but one senses that the public has tired of them and wishes they were and that, as in 1945, there’s a thirst for a new beginning. Obama’s task is to meet exhaustion with optimism.
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