Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks during a remote interview on "Meet the Press" from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Aug. 17. Reuters/Meet the Press

The media, especially the Washington Post, have been at pains to define Gustav as a reminder of the failures that attended Katrina, but the calm, cool, and authoritative performance of the thirtysomething Gov. Jindal makes this a different kind of story: There's a new generation of leaders on the Right — and they're pretty good.

This is an important development in the narrative of the campaign because the media and the Democrats have invested their hopes in a particular narrative template, using George W. Bush as a synecdoche for the Republican party and the entire conservative movement. If the rule is Conservatism = George W. Bush, then it's easy to make the unpopular president a millstone around the neck of the entire Right. But if Conservatism = Bobby Jindal, and Conservatism = Sarah Palin, then the political calculus is different.

So when she comes to the defense of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - declaring that Palin has more on-the-job experience than Barack Obama - Lingle, like the Republican vice-presidential candidate a former mayor of a small community, speaks with unique authority.

"As another woman Republican Governor, we know each other very well, and I can tell people in America and all over the world, that she is the unique combination of toughness and grace. She is a proven leader on local level as well as the state level, she's had a balanced budget, she's had to deal with every issue from the environment to energy and healthcare to education and public safety, and she?s done it in a way that every governor does, which is: you make the final decision for which you'll be accountable.

"It's not like being in Congress, where no one might know you're responsible," she told Haaretz. "When you're a governor you're the one to make a decision. It's a great, great preparation for a job such as vice president."

She acknowledges that that many dismiss John McCain's running mate as "only a mayor of a small town" and "governor of a distant state." However, counters the former mayor of Maui, "the Democrats' presidential candidate has zero experience. He's never led any city, never led any state. So our vice-presidential candidate has more experience than their presidential candidate has."

"In the 32-year history of Focus on the Family, we have offered prayer, counseling and resource assistance to tens of thousands of parents and children in the same situation the Palins are now facing. We have always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though there will of course be challenges along the way. That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.

"Being a Christian does not mean you're perfect. Nor does it mean your children are perfect. But it does mean there is forgiveness and restoration when we confess our imperfections to the Lord. I've been the beneficiary of that forgiveness and restoration in my own life countless times, as I'm sure the Palins have.

"The media are already trying to spin this as evidence Gov. Palin is a 'hypocrite,' but all it really means is that she and her family are human. They are in my prayers and those of millions of Americans."

The official statement from McCain:

AP: What inspires you about Obama?

"I was kind of afraid of Obama the first time I saw him. I thought, I've been burned by guys like you before. I've been burned by politicians before that I wanted to believe in and just didn't live up to it. And I was afraid to trust him and I was afraid to have hope when I first kind of became aware of him. It was around the time that he gave his speech on race that I just said 'I can't deny how I feel about you, Barack Obama. I want you to be the president. I want you in the White House.'

TBILISI, GEORGIA – Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

Regional expert, German native, and former European Commission official Patrick Worms was recently hired by the Georgian government as a media advisor, and he explained to me exactly what happened when I met him in downtown Tbilisi. You should always be careful with the version of events told by someone on government payroll even when the government is friendly as democratic as Georgia’s. I was lucky, though, that another regional expert, author and academic Thomas Goltz, was present during Worms’ briefing to me and signed off on it as completely accurate aside from one tiny quibble.

Cry me the mighty Mississippi.

Does it not occur to anybody that when somebody loans you money, they are doing you a favor? Particularly when they loan you money on easy terms at concessionary interest rates, as is commonly the case with student loans. And we define hardship as having to pay them back?

You know what's a lot harder than borrowing money to go to school? Working your way through.

Obama’s latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he "worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in the summer.

... The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, "He had the two jobs I told you about." Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it's a real stretch to claim he "worked his way" through school.

His name is George Hussein Onyango Obama, and he is the 26-year-old half brother of Mr. Obama, the multimillionaire autobiographer who neglected to write that his paternal sibling lives on less than a dollar a month in the outer slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

Delmarie Cobb of Chicago told FOX News Monday that Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, who is often described as Obama’s political “godfather,” hurled the racially charged insult against her late Saturday for speaking out in support of Clinton. Although Democrats at the convention are trying to project an image of unity, there is lingering bitterness between the Clinton and Obama camps, in part because each side accused the other of playing the race card during the primaries.

And this is classic. . .

Initially, Jones denied calling Cobb an “Uncle Tom” and refused to elaborate. However, he is now telling reporters that he called her a “doubting Thomas” and that Cobb must have misheard the remark.

. . .too bad for Jones there are witnesses:

The Chicago Sun-Times quoted several aldermen who witnessed the exchange and confirmed that Jones called Cobb an “Uncle Tom.”