president

For those of you without TV and only the internets...

1) Obama rightly points out that we choose our presidents on their past judgment, not, as McCain would have it, from what they would theoretically put forth once the Presidential Crown was placed upon his head on Jan. 20, 2009. CHECK.

2) Obama addresses McCain directly, man-to-man, like an unembarrassed leader. McCain smirks, never looks towards Obama and begins to squirm and yelp when Obama drives home his point. CHECK.

3) And just to drive that point home one more time, take it away Obama: "If the question is: Who is best equipped as the next president to make good decisions on how we use our military, how we make sure we are prepared and ready for the next conflict? Then I think we can take a look at our judgment." CHECK.

Last night, I watched (for the first time since high school) Sir Laurence Olivier's Henry V.

It's a 1944 movie that actually made me tear up about WWII and the Battle of Britain a couple of times, all the while thinking about the much more anti-war overlay of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V of 1989.

One thinks about war, leadership and the differences between those who have courage and those who do not when watching Henry V. In the scene in Act IV in which King Henry walks through the camp, disguised in Sir Thomas Erpingham's cloak, I was much struck by the words of one of the soldiers, who's telling the king (without knowing it's the king) his views on the responsibilities of the king towards his men who die in battle.

WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle.

So. Is the cause good? Is it just?