Since I'm in New Hampshire this week, I figure it's appropriate to focus op-edding on opinion pages in the Granite State. So the following columns come from the New Hampshire Union Leader, the largest paper in the state: Barack Obama: The nickel summary of this one is, as you might expect, that you should vote for Barack Obama. But parts of the op-ed are pretty interesting. "You can't at once argue that you're the master of a broken system in Washington and offer yourself as the person to change it," he writes. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America." That's a hard shot at Hillary Clinton, though to folks not paying much attention to the campaign, the absence of her name in the paragraph may obscure the target a bit. But a Clinton does show up in Obama's argument. Only, it's not Hillary. It's Bill. "The truth is," Obama continues, "you can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience. Mine is rooted in the real lives of real people and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change. I believe deeply in those words. But they are not mine. They were Bill Clinton's in 1992, when Washington insiders questioned his readiness to lead." Obama is casting himself as Bill Clinton, and painting Hillary Clinton and the rest of her team as the sort of Washington insiders who once questioned her husband's credentials and experience. There's a lot more going on in the piece, so, predictably, it's the must-read of the day. Kathleen Parker: Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have sufficient experience in foreign policy. Also, I write like I had way too much sugar this morning. Jonah Goldberg: Seriously, folks, what's the point? There's not even an argument in here to summarize. Just a couple disconnected potshots at Hollywood, feminists, and pornographers. It's Goldberg's traditional cocktail of cultural resentment stirred into a desperate desire to appear culturally relevant. Jordan Brown: The government sucks. It can't do anything right, and we should elect Ron Paul so he can dismantle it. Brown, it should be said, is Paul's New Hampshire field director, and to fit this into my larger argument on the nature of Paul's candidacy, the word "Iraq" is mentioned exactly once in the op-ed, and even then, only as an aside. The rest of the piece is about the immorality and inefficiency of government services and the taxes that fund them, and it concludes, "if you are sick of politicians taking ever-larger amounts of your money and giving you less and less in return, vote for a change this January -- vote for Ron Paul."
