THE MOMENT

Posted at 7:18 a.m. ET

We've said before at Urgent Agenda that the word "crisis" is overused.   Ronald Reagan used to ridicule the crisis-every-minute crowd, noting that most problems roll into a ditch long before they reach you. 

With that in mind, though, we have to be concerned about the current moment.  Today may well be the most important day of the current presidential race.  Sarah Palin's performance in tonight's debate may well determine whether John McCain's campaign can be relaunched again, as it was when she was first selected, or whether it will sink into mutual accusation, backbiting and fading numbers.  Never has the performance of a vice presidential choice been so crucial - largely because it reflects on the person who made that choice.  Expectations for Palin are low.  We hope for a surprise.  We need one.

It is perhaps symbolic of the absurdity of the moment that the proceedings will be presided over by one Gwen Ifill.  I'm reminded, as I am often, of Humphrey Bogart's line in Casablanca:  "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."  Of Ifill we can say:  "Of all the journalists in all the news outlets in all the world, they picked her."  As we noted here yesterday, Ifill has a huge conflict of interest - she is publishing a book on inauguration day whose sales depend on Obama being elected.  And yet, she is chosen to moderate a debate that may determine if that result will occur.  As Greta Van Susteren wrote, in law that would cause a mistrial. 

And yet, the profession of journalism seems unconcerned about Ifill's conflict of interest, and Ifill's haughty dismissal of public concern - see yesterday's last story below, "Ms. Ifill Regrets" - is symbolic of the slipshod standards of our time.  Why couldn't they simply pick someone else to reassure us that the debates will be held to the highest standard, not the lowest?  The first person who should ask for a switch of moderators should be Barack Obama.  That would be change we can believe in.

This occurs against a backdrop of economic trauma.  It occurs against a din of threats, some of them dire, coming from abroad.  None seems as important to our journalistic guardians as whether Sarah Palin once accepted a small gift as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Victor Davis Hanson, the resident historian of the age of terror, sums up brilliantly the condition in which we find ourselves.  With all due respect to the Gipper, some of these problems don't seem headed for any available ditch:

Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence. We've been reminded of that classical wisdom these last three weeks.

In a manner not seen since the Great Depression, Wall Street went into panic mode from too many bad debts. The symbolic pillars of American monetary strength for years -- AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Shearson-Lehman and Washington Mutual -- in a matter of hours either went broke, were absorbed or were reconstituted. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed like the house of cards that they were.

And, the implications:

Allies trust that the United States is the ultimate guarantor of free communication and commerce -- and they want immediate reassurance that their old America will still be there. In contrast, opportunistic predators -- such as rogue oil-rich regimes -- suddenly sniff new openings.

We've seen the connection between American economic crisis and world upheaval before. In the 1930s, the United States and its democratic allies, in the midst of financial collapse, disarmed and largely withdrew from foreign affairs. That isolation allowed totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia to swallow their smaller neighbors and replace the rule of law with that of the jungle. World War II followed.

We are seeing the result:

It was no surprise that an emboldened Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again last week called for the elimination of Israel. He's done that several times before...

...And he spouted his Hitlerian hatred in front of the United Nations General Assembly -- in New York, just a few blocks away from the ground zero of the Wall Street meltdown...

...Flush with petrodollar cash, a cocky Iran thinks our government will be so sidetracked borrowing money for Wall Street that disheartened taxpayers won't care to stop Tehran from going nuclear.

Hanson is right.

At about the same time, a Russian flotilla was off Venezuela to announce new cooperation with the loud anti-American Hugo Chavez and his fellow Latin American communists. The move was a poke in the eye at the Monroe Doctrine -- and a warning that from now on the oil-rich Russians will boldly support dictatorships in our hemisphere as much as we encourage democratic Georgia and Ukraine in theirs.

And more...

The lunatics running North Korea predictably smelled blood as well. So it announced that it was reversing course and reprocessing fuel rods to restart its supposedly dismantled nuclear weapons program.

Our historic role:

The natural order of the world is chaos, not calm. Like it or not, for over a half-century the United States alone restrained nuclear bullies, kept the sea lanes free from outlaws and corralled rogue nations. America alone could provide that deterrence because we produced a fourth of the world's goods and services, and became the richest country in the history of civilization.

Finally...

Should that heart of American financial power in New York falter -- or even appear to falter -- then eventually the sinews of the American military will likewise slacken. And then things could get ugly -- real fast.

And who will we choose to lead us through this chaos?  We will decide a month from Saturday.  Will we choose a devoted, if somewhat eccentric public servant whose dedication to his country cannot be questioned?  Or will we choose a kid from the Chicago machine whose dedication to his own ambition also cannot be questioned?  On that choice will depend our fate for the next four years. 

October 2, 2008.