And Crown Thy Good With Brotherhood. Please.

Yes, there are robo-calls" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> of the vilest nature going out in such battleground states as Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Maine. (Audio here)

And, yes, just in case we were at all unclear on what the McCain/RNC folks meant to imply with the calls, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann stared at the camera last night on Hardball, with an expression that called to mind a smiling female Chucky doll and, in a swoon of McCarthyesque delirium, said of Barack Obama that she was “…very concerned that he may have anti-American views.” (She also opined that the press ought to investigate to find out who else might be hiding out in the halls of Congress harboring similar anti-American views.)

And, yes, earlier this week, the official Web site of the Sacramento County Republican Party featured such fun-loving political material as the exhortation to “Waterboard Barack Obama” together with an image of Obama in a turban next to bin Laden and a caption: “The difference between Osama and Obama is just a little B.S.”

(Fortunately cooler heads in the California Republican Party told the Sacramento repubs to take the material down and, by Wednesday, it disappeared.)

And, yes, on Thursday Sarah Palin told the audience at a North Carolina fundraiser that she really liked campaigning in small towns, which she characterized chipperly as the “pro-America areas of this great nation.”

(Okay, Sarah, so….I guess that means that the non-small town, urban-ish areas of this great nation would be….? Okay, quick: what’s the opposite of pro-America? Help me out here.)

And yet…..and yet…

Although this election is not even close to a done deal (speaking personally, my nails are bitten down to my armpits), when 100,000 Americans are willing to stand for hours underneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis—as they were today—-in order to hear a candidate who makes a better American future sound genuinely possible….it is a good omen.

As some of you may remember, about fifteen months ago, I drove through the small towns of the American west on my way from Los Angeles to Montana, interviewing whomever I could corral along the way. I often think back to that experience during these accusation-scarred days we inhabit now, and I hold tight to the memory as a talisman. Although I drove through blue states and red (mostly red, Idaho, Utah, Montana, in particular) I repeatedly saw the good sense and the decency of ordinary working Americans shining brightly as diamonds—along with their bewilderment and growing anger at the fact that their needs always seemed to be low on the list when it came to Washington’s political priorities.

In the end, I believe that it will be this decency that shows up in greater numbers at the polls on November 4, not the lies, hatred and fear.

I have to believe it.

The Los Angeles Times put it well in its first-ever endorsement of a Democratic candidate for president in its 120-year history (and it’s first endorsement of any presidential candidate since 1972 when it endorsed Richard Nixon):

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama’s critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

The Chicago Tribune was equally eloquent with its first ever endorsement of a Democrat for president:

Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S.

He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions.

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren’t a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation’s most powerful office, he will prove it wasn’t so audacious after all….

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*By the way, if you still need a fact check about the whole Bill Ayers thing, here it is.