Our snarky friends from across the pond

We're doing something different here today, owing to the fact that I am currently across the pond in London. I plead jet lag, and the press of other work duties, for my decision to kick back today and share with you the latest British commentaries on the presidential election. I lived in London for three years during an earlier incarnation, and one of the abundant joys was to read seven daily newspapers every morning. All seven still exist. The writing is still characteristically trenchant and snarky. Nobody does snark like the British. So without further ado...

: "Sarah Palin is the queen of misinformation, delivered with faux folksiness as authentic as a three-dollar bill. She is not the pit bull in lipstick of popular myth; she is Deputy Dawg with a forked tongue, engaged in a war against intelligence. By any normal yardstick of political discourse - substance, accuracy, coherence - she is a bust...This (candidacy) shows how far we have come. Intelligence is now viewed as a threat. Isn't that how Pol Pot operated?"

: "Armed, glamorous, and possessed of unfashionable opinions, Caribou Barbie brieflty seemed an alluring alternative to dishwater politicians. But her flaky pronouncements this week have removed the mote - as her beloved Bible puts it - from our eyes. She's a bonkers, parochial creationist whose more ambition than substance, and her glasses aren't even that nice. What were we thinking?"

: "So where is Hillary when we need her? She appeared to have no trouble getting in touch with her inner redneck when she was still fighting for the nomination - but now that there's a candidate (Palin, naturally) who really deserves a mauling, she's gone quiet. And probably only Hillary could stick it to Sarah without risking accusations of sexism. I'm aching for a cat-fight."

: "An unfair but potent effect of the vogue for stage-wandering is that it suits younger politicians better than older ones, who just look as if they forgot where they put something. Age has been Mr. McCain's Archilles heel throughout the campaign, and (Tuesday) night it was unforgiving. He resembled one of those sprightly pensioners in Viagra ads. Elderly teeth were bleached to the same iridescence as Joe Biden - is there a bipartisan dentist making a fortune in Washington, D.C.?"

: "Tall and languid as (Obama) is, it was still tough to see his heart. But languid is surely better than tottering....It is even possible that some viewers felt sorry for Mr. McCain. Sorry for a man who couldn't stop fidgeting when his opponent spoke, like a cocktail guest not sure if anyone at the party liked him."

: "There will be many victims of the financial crisis, and one of the most prominent could be John McCain... (who) is finding it increasingly hard to make up ground on Barack Obama. But it was less their policies for dealing with economic calamity than their demeanor that provided the most noticeable difference between the two men during their second televised debate on Tuesday night. Mr. Obama appeared calm and confident; Mr. McCain seemed uncertain, tired, and tetchy. It felt, admittedly from afar, like the modern-day equivalent of the famous clash between John F. Kenned and Richard Nixon."

: "The United States has been at war with itself in recent years. They call it the culture war. It has generated more hot air than most wars in history. John McCain has now turned to its red army tactics to rescue himself from impending defeat. (But) the world needs the United States to get over its cultural civil war, and get over it fast. Not that these moral, cultural, and social issues are unimportant...but they are also among the most private things. The central business of government is to provide public goods such as national and personal security, the regulation of markets so that free enterprise can flourish, the international development that is in all our national interests, and a clean environment using diversified, sustainable energy supplies. That's what the United States needs from its new president, and that's what the world needs from the United States."

Tell it, Timothy. I'll reclaim this space tomorrow.