The problem is the lack of evidence for any other core values that any of us recognize as being commonly shared with most Americans

This is patent nonsense. Obama has displayed any number of core American values in his own life. Education, hard work, devotion to family. Community service, recognizing opportunities and taking advantage of them. Public service in the political arena. Advancing himself and his family economically (a self-made millionaire, he did not marry his money).

It is ungracious of you not to acknowledge the fact that Obama has obviously lived core American values and practiced them in his own life across a wide spectrum. If you are going to lecture others on manners, perhaps you should polish your own a bit.

As for "self-promotion", have you called McCain to task for his almost constant references to his experiences as a POW? My uncle fought at Chosin Reservoir, and I have heard him refer to it exactly once in 50 year. All politic ans are self-promoters, as are most people with successful careers.

McCain got a rock-solid and abiding "faith" from his grandfather and father — faith in them, in himself, in the U.S. Navy and the other U.S. military forces,

Unfortunately, McCain's faith in the US military appears to have led him to the conclusion that military force should be an early, not a last option.

Also interesting to note that faith in God is not mentioned, while faith in himself is...

You're a rude and nasty person,

You seem perfectly happy to attack Obama for not having the good fortune to have an Admiral for a father. Perhaps you occupy something of a glass house.

Obama is an impressive self-promoter

Yes. God forbid a black man should have ambition. Exactly how many president have not been self-promoters?

As for Obama pulling himself up by his bootstraps, my essay (which you obviously didn't read) concedes repeatedly that Obama is an impressive self-promoter, and that no one can doubt that the advancement of Barack Obama is among his core values. The problem is the lack of evidence for any other core values that any of us recognize as being commonly shared with most Americans.

Barack Obama's young life, and the people around him then, were filled with unconnected randomness.

Perhaps. Yet it seems a safe bet that Obama accomplishes more between his first 2 cups of coffee than Beldar does in 6 months...

And if one accepts this premise, it makes Obama's accomplishments as an adult even more impressive. McCain was born with access to the highest levels of our society. Obama pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

In fact, in his autobiography, Kansas is mentioned as the place his maternal grandparents twice fled, along with "a series of small towns in Texas," Los Angeles, and Seattle, before they finally landed in Hawaii. If there are actually any Kansas-specific values that his grandparents or mother taught him, they certainly aren't mentioned as such in his book. He never lived in Kansas. And the major metropolitan areas in which he's actually lived as an adult are Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C. — none of them quite as "heartland"-associated as the good brown dust of Kansas that he never actually breathed while growing up.

Saturday evening, I finished an overlong essay of my own entitled McCain versus Obama: "placelessness," faith, and dreams, in which I argue that Noonan was right about Obama, and mostly wrong about McCain. The bold-faced points from my argument are:

Barack Obama's young life, and the people around him then, were filled with unconnected randomness. John McCain's young life, and the people around him then, were filled with deeply shared purpose.

Even if one concludes that they share a certain superficial degree of geographic "placelessness," the candidates' respective book titles thus point out a trite but fundamentally true comparison: McCain got a rock-solid and abiding "faith" from his grandfather and father — faith in them, in himself, in the U.S. Navy and the other U.S. military forces, and most importantly, in all of America — while at best, Obama got only "dreams" from his.

McCain is rooted to the entire United States — and in exactly the same way that he and his father and grandfather weren't fighting as U.S. Navy officers for Ohio or Texas or Nebraska, but for all of America.

BTW/ Lincoln spent his entire adult life in Illinois (ending up in frontier villages and towns occupied by newcomers).

That quote is from 1982, when he was first running for the Senate.

Woodrow Wilson lived in Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and New Jersey before being elected president.

Did Franklin Roosevelt have a sense of “placeness”. He was born in New York but he spent much of his early life in school in Massachusetts.

Is it possible that what Ms. Noonan misses are regional accents? Regional accents have been disappearing in this country ever since the radio industry standardized on a Midwestern dialect for announcers and the practice was later adopted by television. It was abetted by improved transportation until now the regional dialects evinced by Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush (boarding school dialect), Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are pale reminders of what they once were.