We all know Senator McCain’s biography. A naval officer in a line of naval officers. A prisoner of war who suffered greatly for his country. A member of Congress and the Senate with a reputation for straight talk. To that he has added an honorable presidential campaign conducted against great odds.

Senator McCain decided to run in an election stacked against any Republican. Last year, he was given up for politically dead. Rather than get out, as recommended by the “punditocracy” he fought back. And he won. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani capitalized on his handling of 9/11 in New York City. Governor Mitt Romney spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money. Governor Mike Huckabee energized social conservatives. But Senator McCain beat them all.

Still, the general election was a long-shot for any Republican. Senator Obama was a media darling and political phenomenon. The GOP was outgunned financially. President George W. Bush was the most unpopular president since polling began. But Senator McCain did not give up. Instead, he surprised everyone by knocking on our so-called political glass ceiling by choosing Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. This one act rejuvenated his campaign, giving him a lead in the polls after the Republican convention.

Caught at a disadvantage with the implosion of Wall Street, Senator McCain nevertheless refused to stoop to gutter politics. He ruled out attacking Senator Obama based on his connection to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He decreed that there would be no attacks on Michelle Obama. Senator McCain refused to allow ads attacking Senator Obama for not serving in the military. His campaign killed proposed ads attacking Obama for being soft on crime (a la Willie Horton), using children to question Obama’s willingness to fight terrorism, and showing the “celebrity” Obama dancing with a very white Ellen DeGeneres. Nor did Senator McCain ever play the anti-Muslim or anti-race card.

Senator McCain even made a genuine, if ultimately hopeless, pitch for votes from African-Americans. He spoke at both the NAACP and Urban League conventions and, on a special trip to Memphis, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, apologized for voting against making Dr. King’s birthday a holiday.

In his campaign, like the rest of his career, Senator McCain put his country first.

Now John McCain will return to the Senate, where he has much to do. With its ranks badly depleted, the Senate GOP caucus needs tough yet principled leadership. Senator McCain can be a moral, if not the formal, Republican leader.

He is well-positioned to lead the fight against any attempt at over-reaching by his erstwhile opponent. For instance, Senator McCain emphasized the importance of resisting counterproductive tax hikes on those who are most productive economically. He should take up the cudgels against any Democratic attempt to foment class war.

Even more important, Senator McCain has the credentials and credibility to insist that the Obama administration and enhanced Democratic congressional majority protect U.S. security. Although Americans preferred Senator Obama to Senator McCain on economic issues, they consistently believed that Senator McCain would make a better commander-in-chief. That gives Senator McCain a bully pulpit from which to speak.

However, Senator McCain has the ability to be a conciliator as well as a member of the loyal opposition. One reason he had more appeal to independent voters than the other GOP candidates was because he was willing to extend his hand across the aisle.

The problems that we face, from rebuilding our financial system to managing an American withdrawal from Iraq to combating terrorism, are complex and contentious. They can be best resolved through a bipartisan effort that puts country before party, something Senator McCain is almost uniquely qualified to promote.

On November 4, America had two worthy choices for president. A good man won; another one lost. The latter happened to be Senator McCain. Rather than toss him aside, America should seek his continued counsel. He is a leader and a man of honor. The nation needs his service as long as he is willing to serve.

Like this story: She-horrors!-opened a  hotel room door for them wearing a bathrobe because she had been taking a shower when they knocked. “Whore-y,” pronounced an aide. Another aide claimed Palin thought Africa was a country, not a continent. (Does anyone seriously believe this stuff? Oh, right, David Frum and Peggy Noonan probably do.) And a third anonymous “angry aide” described-to Newsweek, no less–the campaign-trail shopping spree Sarah and her family took (at the behest of the Republican National Committee, mind you) as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

Very classy thing to say about a state governor from your own party that’s now kind of dwindling in terms of its elected representatives, folks. How about, say looking in the mirror, “angry” aides, and wondering if maybe the fact that McCain lost might have had something to do with the dumb, unfocused campaign you ran for him. As Michelle Malkin points out:

“Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to come out who would have otherwise stayed home. She touched countless families. I didn’t agree with everything she said on the campaign trail. But two fundamental conservative stands she took mattered greatly to me: She vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy.

“And she did it all with a tirelessness and infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by elites in both parties to bring her and her family down.

“Shame on the smearers who don’t have the balls to show their faces.

“Thank you, Sarah Palin. Thank you for stepping up the plate and serving your country.”

And Jennifer Rubin of Commentary points out that the in-house nastiness oozing from the McCain campaign suggests that maybe it wasn’t so bad that McCain lost: 

“Watching his team engage in vicious, public fighting suggests that perhaps he was never the ideal person for a chief executive role. After all, if the campaign was this bad, imagine what the White House would have been like.”

The best reaction of all comes from this commenter on the Hot Air:

“If the Republican party wants to make [Palin] the scapegoat, and is complicit in portraying her to be an idiot, then we don’t deserve to win another election.”

Darned right. If Sarah Palin hadn’t been on the ticket, there’s a good chance that McCain would have lost even more dramatically than he did. Meanwhile, Malkin has posted an online “Thank you, Sarah Palin” petition. Sign it (click here), and show your gratitude to the tough and gracious woman who brought high spirits, street smarts, and boundless energy to a battle to restore faith, personal responsibility, and loyalty to country and its defense to the central place they ought to occupy in American public life.

Michelle D Bernard, a Jamaican American, is president and CEO of the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice. She is an MSNBC political analyst and is married to CNN’s Joe Johns. NMW caught up with the busy woman on Election Day and asked the following questions.

NMW: Why are so many women supporting Obama when he opted not to choose Hillary as his running mate?

Michelle D Bernard: Women are not a monolithic voting bloc and support various candidates from many reasons. Although there are some women who supported Senator Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination simply because she is a woman, the vast majority of women support the individual who they feel is the best candidate. Thus, there was never any real reason to believe that American women who are registered Democrats would abandon the principles of the Democratic party simply because Barack Obama did not select Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. I would suspect that with a few exceptions, Democratic women support Senator Obama and Republican women support Senator McCain.

NMW: What are the expectations of women in particular The African American woman?
MB: At the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice, we believe that all issues are women’s issues and that the concerns of women are no different than the concerns of men. That, being said, all women will be concerned with pocketbook issues related to the economic well-being of their families. Issues such as economic recovery, job creation, energy independence, education, health care, and entitlement reform will be at the forefront of the issues American women are concerned with. African American women also are concerned with all of these issues.
However, in addition to these issues, women of colour will look to an Obama administration to continue the dialogue on the importance of personal responsibility within all communities, with a particular emphasis on this issue as it relates to black America.

NMW: Is an Obama victory as big a deal for you – a successful woman with Jamaican roots – as it would be for the middle/upper-class American black woman?

MB: I am so proud of my Jamaican heritage and as a woman of colour and the mother of two young children, I would be disingenious if I didn’t remark how proud I would be if Senator Obama becomes the next president of the United States. Regardless of one’s socio-economic status, I suspect that the vast majority of black women in the United States would find an Obama victory monumental because if it happens, it will mean that our children can achieve anything in this country.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Blankley explains:

“In regard to attitude, America’s conservatives could do worse than to be moved by those lines of Robert Blake from another place and another time on behalf of a similar sacred cause then not yet realized.

“Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people.”

Conservatives can take heart that the race was much closer than expected. It wasn’t a rout. Byron York notes:

“The vote totals, as of 2 a.m. Eastern Time, show McCain with about 47 percent of the national popular vote. Perhaps that figure will go down a bit, but there’s no doubt that McCain far outshone George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election effort – a campaign undertaken in poor conditions for a Republican, but not nearly as bad as what McCain encountered this time – in which Bush won just 38 percent of the vote. Likewise, McCain outperformed Bob Dole, who won a little less than 41 percent in 1996. And McCain’s percentage of the popular vote might be not too far from George W. Bush’s in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.

“In other words, McCain, facing tougher challenges than his predecessors, yet somehow managed to win more votes. Just not enough.”

Anger is ugly but it’s a great motivator. It animated the netroots which contributed mightily to the Democratic party’s move towards the left and perhaps to last night’s election. But I hope conservatives will not turn to that kind of anger (for one thing, it would be, while admittedly exhilarating, difficult to live with on a daily basis). Michael Novak addresses this in a piece entitled “We Have a President:”

 ”[N]ow is not the time to rehearse the grave doubts about Obama that were part of the partisan battle of the last two years. Barack Obama is now the president-elect of all of us. Now is the time to praise the brilliant, audacious, and wonderfully surprising campaign that President-elect Obama conducted. He overcame many obstacles. He held up better under fire than many of us expected him to do. He deserves much praise.”

One of the ugliest things hatred and anger did was to cause Americans to treat their 43^rd President in a disgraceful manner. As Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a lawyer and investigative reporter who previously interned with John Kerry, notes:

“Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.”

Now is a day to think, not partisan thoughts, but of the future of our nation.

She’s great because she’s her own woman, doesn’t kowtow to those angry and aging feminists who claim to speak for women, and because she’s a leader-and funny. (I loved it when she said San Fransisco is Senator Obama’s “truth serum.”) She drove all the right people crazy, and she never lost her cool. She put up with a lot of indignity, including the very public “Troopergate” non-scandal (she was cleared on the eve of the election, but Michelle Malkin says don’t expect to see this trumpeted from front pages of the nation’s papers today).

She has so much talent that I can’t imagine anything but a bright future for Sarah. I’ll bet she has a rendez-vous with destiny.