Raise your hand if you don’t quite understand this whole financial crisis.

It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really. The part about the housing crash seems simple enough. With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

Because these loans go to people stretching to afford a house, they come with higher interest rates — even if they’re disguised by low initial rates...

Investors then goosed their returns through leverage, the oldest strategy around.

Obama's speech in Philadelphia yesterday made this argument as well as it could be made. He condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's views in strong language -- and embraced Wright as a wayward member of the family. He made Wright and his congregation a symbol of both the nobility and "shocking ignorance" of the African American experience -- and presented himself as a leader who transcends that conflicted legacy. The speech recognized the historical reasons for black anger -- and argued that the best response to those grievances is the adoption of Obama's own social and economic agenda.

It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways.

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of African Americans. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.

Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man.  

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past," Mr. Obama said.

Democratic voters are having a hard time choosing between two strong candidates. Here's an idea that could help them decide: debates.

Had enough of those, you say? After 20 Democratic debates, the last three one-on-one between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, even the most diligent voter could be forgiven for not being enthused. No one craves another seminar on the merits and drawbacks of an individual mandate to buy health insurance.

My modest proposal is different: The Democratic candidates should debate John McCain.  

But why would the candidates agree?

Start with McCain, who's arguably got the least to gain here. After all, the longer and nastier the Democratic battle, the better off the Republican nominee will be. But while McCain has the luxury of pacing himself, raising money and coalescing the party while the Democrats bicker, he's also out of the spotlight during this stretch. Hard to imagine a better way than this to get some attention.

In any case, if Clinton and McCain were to agree to a meet-up, this would be an offer Obama couldn't afford to refuse.

Ron Paul says the legions of newcomers his presidential campaign brought to the Republican Party are getting the cold shoulder from John McCain and from the party.

Mrs. Clinton said she wants to start bringing home troops within 60 days of taking office in January, and mocked the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, for saying that U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for 100 years — in much the same way that they have stayed in Germany, South Korea and Japan for decades after the end of active of combat hostilities. "Senator McCain and President Bush claim withdrawal is defeat. Well, let's be clear, withdrawal is not defeat. Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years," Mrs. Clinton said.

Mr. McCain, who has been on a fact-finding trip to Iraq, responded succinctly to Mrs. Clinton's broadside: "I just think what that means is al Qaeda wins." Mr. McCain is exactly right. But he is far too gentlemanly to explain how nonsensical Mrs. Clinton's "100 years" comment really was. Does Mrs. Clinton really mean that keeping U.S. troops in Iraq a century in non-combat conditions roughly analogous to those faced by U.S. troops in Germany today would be a "defeat" for the United States?

"I am the same man and do not alter, it is you who change, since in fact you took my advice while unhurt, and waited for misfortune to repent of it . . . But you must not be seduced by citizens like these nor be angry with me -- who, if I voted for war, only did as you did yourselves."

-- Pericles's funeral oration, "The Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides

In Iraq, America was surrounded by enemies who were sure from the start that the great foreign power was destined to fail. They could not be given the satisfaction of a hasty American retreat. The stakes had grown: We were under the gaze of populations with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. It was apt and proper that the leader who launched this war did not give up on it.  ...

Mr. Bush made freedom in Arab-Islamic lands his cause. He rejected laments that Arabs do not possess a freedom gene, and that they are fated to tyranny. "The liberty we value is not ours alone," he told this Nashville convention. "Freedom is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to all humanity."

...  Grant Mr. Bush his due: He upheld his belief that liberty can stick on Iraqi and Arab soil, in the face of great doubts and misgivings.

...five years on, this endeavor in Iraq is taking hold. The U.S. military was invariably the great corrector. In their stoic acceptance of the mission given them and in the tender mercies they showed Iraqis on a daily basis, our soldiers held out the example of benevolent rule. (In extended travel in and out of Iraq over the last five years, I heard little talk of Abu Ghraib. The people of Iraq understood that Charles Graner and Lynndie England were psychopaths at odds with American military norms.)

In the past five years, the passion has drained out of the war's defenders and critics alike. Our soldiers and envoys are there, but the public at home has moved onto other concerns. Still, the public is willing to grant this expedition time, and that's for the good. There is no taste in this country for imperial burdens and acquisitions in distant lands. But Americans also know that the lands and sea lanes of the Persian Gulf are too vital to be left to mayhem and petty tyrants.

One of the most painful memories for Democrats is the 527 votes that gave Florida, the election, and the presidency to G. W. Bush in 2000. As we approach what is almost certain to be another close presidential election, Florida stands a chance of once again deciding the matter. (Why should Ohio have all the fun?) If the Democrats lose again because of Florida, the wound for them will be deep, painful, and self-inflicted.

He obviously either doesn’t fully grasp the degree to which his intimate relationship with a peddler of hatred offends Americans; or he feels that the Wright narratives are merely a wink-and-nod part of the local Chicago African-American landscape, and thus not that big a deal; or he finds some sort of psychological fix in listening to a surrogate provide a vitriolic, vicarious payback; or he is so indebted to Wright for providing him the requisite racial fides to start his career that he simply cannot say, “I was wrong to have been a part of Rev. Wright’s church; it is divisive and at odds with what I have tried to achieve in this campaign, and I’ve resigned from it.”

I pass on the fifth option that someone like Obama really believes the Wright lunacy.

Geraldine Ferraro, with the good grace to acknowledge that her own place on the 1984 ticket was due to gender, stated that Obama would not be where he is if he were not black. It’s a fair point that has been obliquely remarked upon in various quarters, but generally a point no one wants to make a big deal out of.   

I watched yesterday a 20-acre nectarine orchard—already pruned and cultivated—yanked out by a bulldozer in north Fresno, ostensibly for more tract development. As I drove by, the news reported $108 a barrel oil, and the French Foreign Minister suggested that the magic of America was over. All this comes as a consequence of a pathetic dollar, huge foreign debt, mounting national debt, sizable annual deficits, and a mortgage crisis.

At some point as I watched the trees fall, I thought have we Americans forgotten we must eat and need fossil fuels still to live? Here in California we are tearing out some of the world’s best farmland—with ideal weather, good loam soils, gravity-fed Sierra Nevada water, skilled farm managers—to build houses that could otherwise either be put on marginal soils, or in greater density to discourage the paving over our national assets, and a time when food grows scarce and expensive.

In terms of energy, we continue to delay coal plants despite our vast reserves, we dither on nuclear power, we won’t drill off the California coast or in tiny parcels in a vast Alaska, while we talk grandly of wind and solar and hydrogen and all the other solutions that are decades away from contributing in major ways to our energy needs—while our enemies in the Middle East are building trillion dollar reserves that will find their way into the hands of those who want to kill us. Do we think Nigeria or Russia is easier on the environment than we are when drilling oil, or that the Chinese have cleaner coal plants? If we really live on planet Earth, then isn’t it incumbent on us to exploit our own resources safely to ensure others less careful do less damage to our shared globe?

Can’t we find a single Presidential candidate who says: ‘Hang on. We are going to get serious. We our going to build coal, nuclear, more hydro-electric plants. We want as many Americans as possible to buy a second electric plug-in car for urban driving; we want more efficient gas and diesel engines; we are going to cut spending, radically so, to balance the budget, pay down the debt, pay off our foreign debt, and raise the value of our currency. Tighten your belts: federal spending is frozen for five years; we are going to raise the Social Security retirement age and reform the system. The borders are going to close, and citizenship is going to mean something again.’

Should McCain say that, it would trump ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and the 1960s tired old agenda, adopted by both parties, that got us in the mess we’re in.

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see someone white and feel relieved."

Iraq’s presidential council has withdrawn its objection to a provincial elections law. The announcement on the fifth anniversary of the war gives a major boost to U.S.-backed efforts to promote national reconciliation.

The move comes three weeks after the law was rejected because of concerns by Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Wednesday’s statement says the council approved the bill after talks with legislators and political blocs. The decision paves the way for a national vote on Oct. 1 that the United States hopes will give the Sunnis more political power.

The approval comes days after visits by John McCain and Dick Cheney. Whether either of the men had any influence on the decision is not yet known, but the timing certainly implies that either or both put some pressure on the Iraqis to move. If so, McCain can claim an important foreign-policy victory even before he stands for election.

Rep. John P. Murtha has announced his endorsement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, bringing his clout as a 17-term member of the House and a prominent anti-war Democrat to bear with more than a month until the primary here in his home state.

Only 6 percent of the national press corps describe themselves as “conservative” in a population that includes reporters, editors and producers from major television and radio networks, daily newspapers, news wires and online sources…

In contrast, 36 percent of the overall population generally consider themselves conservative.

There are more conservatives in broadcast than print — 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Among online journalists the figure was 8 percent.

The majority of nationally ranked journalists — 53 percent — described themselves as moderate, 24 percent were liberal and 8 percent “very liberal.”

...the most intriguing thing about the speech in the National Constitution Center here, near the statues of the founding fathers who signed the document declaring that “all men are created equal,” was not even the part about black and white. It was the new color that Obama unexpectedly wore: gray.

The black and white plaguing the Obama camp was not only about skin color. Facing up to his dubious behavior toward his explosive friends, he had his first rude introduction in his political career to ambivalence, ambiguity and complexity.  ...  Too much idealism can blind a leader to reality as surely as too much ideology can.  ...  With the Clintons, we expect them to be cheesy on ethics, so no one is ever surprised when they are.  ...  Gray is a welcome relief from black and white.

Newly alert to the perils of not seeming patriotic enough, he ended a speech in Pennsylvania the other morning with “God bless America!”

The superdelegates will not override the will of the voters unless Obama is in jail.

Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?

He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.

What Obama needs not to do is to resort to the kind of Clintonian fudging that animated his interview with Keith Olbermann. By saying "I wasn't there" and "I didn't know" and "I didn't hear him say it," he will invite contempt and derision. If he were to continue in that vein, he would buy himself a controversy akin to that which drowned John Kerry in the facts and allegations of his service in Vietnam.