A CALMER CAMPAIGN?

by RAY FLEMING
WITH three weeks to go to polling day in the American Presidential election there were a couple of signs yesterday that the tone of the debate between the two sides might become more constructive. Barack Obama acknowledged John McCain's advice to his supporters to calm some of their extreme rhetoric and at the same time repeated the tribute he has previously paid to Senator McCain as a man who has served his country with honour. But the more important contribution to the debate the country needs may turn out to be the rebuke issued to Governor Palin by an investigative body of her own legislative assembly in Alaska. In the so-called Troopergate case the investigation found her guilty of being “in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using office for personal gain”. The inquiry by a fourteen strong bi-partisan panel lasted for two months and the report ran to 300 pages. Essentially, Mrs Palin was found to have used her influence as Governor improperly to try to secure the dismissal of a Trooper whose marriage to her sister had ended in divorce.