A Tale of Two Candidates

John McCain is clearly in his element in discussing the situation in Georgia. He's displayed a knowledge of the region developed from multiple visits to the region.

The same can't be said of Barack Obama, who has been on vacation in Hawaii in the days leading up to the DNC Convention in Denver. Instead, Obama's people are trying to claim that McCain has somehow acted improperly because a lobbyist has ties to the Georgian government.

History doesn't take a vacation. Neither does the President. I know, folks will inevitably claim that going to Camp David, the Winter White House or anywhere else that the President goes outside of the White House is a vacation, but the fact is that once you become President, you do not have a single day to yourself.

You are on the job 24/7/365 for four straight years.

Crises can occur in the most unlikely of places, and you have to be able to formulate responses and make decisions that can affect millions of people, move economic markets, and have long term consequences.

You almost have to be a masochist to want to be President because of the stress of the job and the decisions that you have to make. Just take a look at photos of the presidents from the past 100 years and compare them to photos taken a year or two later. The amount of stress is incredible.

Obama does himself no favors by sticking to the sidelines as the crisis in Georgia continues. He's issued several statements, but it was of the flip-flop variety. That doesn't help him either.

Even the New York Times has noticed. And if they've noticed, you can be sure that others have noticed as well.

And the crisis in Georgia isn't the only mess on the plate at the moment. You have the situation in Pakistan, where Pervez Musharraf is clinging to power and threatened by impeachment by a Parliament that is out for blood. Not only does Pakistan provide a base of operations from which the US can access Afghanistan, but it is a nuclear power and the Islamists may seek to grab those nuclear weapons, to say nothing of handing them over to terrorists including al Qaeda.

Russia's bellicosity is just one issue facing the US today, but these situations will continue well into the new Administration.