Um. Puke.

The Washington Post op-ed page is the high temple of the Village's cult of Broderist centrism, whose members subscribe to the following commandments:

1. Thou shalt never question the motives of White House sources.
2. All who question the wisdom of preventive war are "unserious."
3. Democrats are the source of all partisanship.

With that in mind, behold these lovely nuggets of awful from some of their prime players.

Anne Applebaum asks on Slate, "Will foreigners accept a black American president?" Not that she's concerned about having a black guy be her president, of course. How awful of anyone to suggest such a thing. She's merely concerned that our allies, who aren't nearly so enlightened (last week, she saw a black man walking down the street at night, and didn't summon the police or anything!) might not take him seriously. Sure, he's chief executive of the United States of America, able to summon a dozen aircraft carriers and a flight of Minuteman missiles down on anyone who annoys him, but what would really be important is that he's all swarthy and such.

Robert Samuelson worries that Obama won't be able to govern, since he's just another doctrinaire liberal who hates free trade, profitability, and presumably puppies. Not like that proud centrist John McCain, who voted against his own party 17% of the time, according to (insert eye-roll) The Politico. Wow, 17%! He's a maverick. He doesn't play your partisan games. He stood on principle once, maybe even twice, when the political winds were solidly at his back.

Speaking of McCain, I saved the best for last. As part of their proud centrist heritage, WaPo hired Michael Gerson a few years back. Gerson is qualified to have a national column by his previous job as a Bush speechwriter. Which makes this bit just totally surprising:

"The personal miracle of McCain's presidential run is even more extraordinary. It is obvious -- and therefore often unstated -- that the journey from a 4-by-6-foot Viet Cong cell to the 36-by-29-foot Oval Office would be unprecedented. It would be as though George Washington were captured by the British, who snapped his legs in a torture cell; or Ulysses Grant were nearly starved to death at Andersonville Prison; or Dwight Eisenhower had been interrogated and beaten by the Gestapo in a German stalag. All three, I imagine, would have been honorable, defiant and arrogant enough to survive. But McCain has proved it."

Yes, that's right, folks. Not only is John McCain a supercool centrist who will lead us to a land of joy and wonder, but he's braver and tougher than Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower combined. That is one tough motherfucker, yeah? But it's not all about his massive, hairy balls. No, he's also a uniter:

"...McCain's election as president would, in its own way, be historic -- finally and fully honoring the lessons of heroism that came out of America's conflicted experience of Vietnam."

Far be it from me to suggest that perhaps the wounds of Vietnam would be much closer to scabbed over if right-wing hacks like Gerson hadn't made entire careers out of blaming everyone with a (D) next to their name for surrendering to Ho Chi Minh and destroying our national soul in the process. Not to mention that we'd have had a goddamn Vietnam veteran in the Oval Office by now had it not been for the schmuck who's currently defiling the place.

And now Maureen Dowd is using her column at the Times to declare her desperate fear that those awful anti-Hillary people might well go after Michelle Obama. Thank goodness prominent women in politics have defenders like MoDo, ever vigilant against any hint of media misogyny.