OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS. "Dems rally for Obama at Ohio congresswoman's memorial." Quick, call out the Republican mourners-in-absentia. The schtick they used in 2002, when they denounced Paul Wellstone supporters who paid tribute to the late Senator's political causes at his memorial, may work again. Everything's in place: Some Democratic splitters are already on it, and Free Republic and Lucianne Goldberg are roiling the swamps. All that's needed is a credible mainstream figure like Peggy Noonan to don the mantle of propriety and cry "shame." (No, this guy doesn't count, but he's got the right idea.)

The fact that the office at issue this time is not the same one held by the deceased makes no difference. It's a national election, and every little helps.

PLEASING THE AFFILIATES. Stop the presses: "Ross admits he's rooting for Palin to succeed. I should admit it too: I can't think of the last time I've wanted a politician to succeed more. She may turn out to be a disappointment one way or another. And I think I've been evenhanded about the political risks here. But just so folks know, lest they can't figure it out, I really want her to pull this off. " -- Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Who on God's green earth wondered whether Goldberg wanted the Republican ticket to win? His assurance comes right after a post in which he actually argues that "Alaskan governors deal a lot more with international and national security issues than, say the Governor of Arkansas. There are all sorts of treaty issues, missile defense stuff, bases, etc up there." (His source points out that Palin has negotiated placement of a gas pipeline through Canada and is "commander of the Alaskan National Guard," and that her state is located near Russia.)

This is certainly part of National Review's constituent service -- that is, a show of responsiveness to the right-wing nuts who write them letters. The magazine is a lightning rod for folks who have become aware that some high-end vendors of conservative guff -- including a few in the Review's own pages --have decided to defend their own long-term prospects as such by complaining about the decision to nominate Palin.

Populism is a tough gig, whoever's doing it. The mob, sometimes dignified with the name "base," recognizes Palin as a right-wing folk hero in the mold of Dale Evans, and wants no message diversity from the pointy-heads allegedly in their camp. When they see posts in friendly precincts that are not full-throated roars of approval for the new Queen of the West, they sense wetness and man their mail applications.

It is soothing for them, and instructive for the rest of us, to be reminded that these journalists owe their first loyalty to movement troops, and not to anything like independent judgment. The Review writers have insulated themselves from the base's complaints against the insufficiently on-board McCain with regular assurances that they share them. But the Palin nomination opened a window of what-the-fuck that shows just who rules that particular roost.

A CHICK ON THE SIDE. Well, so much for the end of identity politics.

The Anchoress, having previously complained that Democrats are too solicitous of race and gender distinctions, now complains that the Obama campaign lacked "generosity of spirit" because they didn't acknowledge the allegedly historic nature of Palin's nomination as McCain had noted that of Obama.

But the Obamans were clearly in the right: seen from the perspective conservatives are constantly claiming to take, Palin's nomination is an insult to Obama, Biden, and the electorate. Obama muscled his way to his nomination against a sharp-elbowed opponent; Palin has been gently placed in hers as a lure for Hillary Clinton voters. She isn't even the first woman to run for the office and, from the speech she gave today, her primary qualifications are that she has a nice family and doesn't put on any airs. Yet the same people who said Joe Biden's vast experience would make people think of Obama's lack of experience ("a presidency-on-training-wheels") are now saying that Palin's slim credentials -- as the former Mayor of Wasilla and first-term governor of a state with a population about half that of The Bronx -- will have the same effect.

We'll see if voters fall for it. Meanwhile, among the perpetually falling-for, my favorite so far is Noah Millman, who races all over the map to justify a candidate he frankly admits is "totally unqualified to be President" -- even suggesting at one point that "If McCain were to die in February 2009," Palin should "appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President," and then arrange to switch places with him or her. Imagined laughter already roaring in his ears, he explains that this would obtain under a Parliamentary system of government. Then he suggests that, if McCain's heart can hold out till February 2012, Palin might then be ready to execute her Constitutional duties. Then he says of the Vice Presidential office itself, "arguably, it's not for anything at all," then decides that it can serve as "on-the-job training" for the Presidency. He also seems to believe blogs are for publication of rough drafts. In the end, Millman finds Palin "an excellent choice" for this mysterious office, and the Democratic argument against her nomination "suicide." For added comic value, Millman says he's "undecided in this election." I guess he figures that as long as he's telling us things we can't possibly believe, he might as well go all the way.

UPDATE. You just have to imagine Rod Dreher singing "FETUS" like Flo & Eddie singing "PENIS" in 200 Motels.

UPDATE II. Also glad to learn via no less an authority than Matt Welch that "libertarian" means "devoted to making abortion illegal." I knew there was something I didn't like about those guys. Besides the constant stimming, I mean.

SALESMANSHIP. Everyone expected a strong speech from Obama, but its unexpected and best quality was confidence. He sold the package -- traditional Democratic values with a dash of new-generation pizzazz -- without any trace of doubt or apology, as if the Republicans hadn't been going ahead of him for months, doing negative advance work. Though he was energetic, he was also unusually sober in his demeanor: He didn't flash that famous smile much, probably because he wanted to defeat any sense that he was trying to sell himself rather than the package, which salesmen sometimes do when they're nervous. In fact he more often went with a small, are-they-kidding grin when describing his opponent's inferior product. He looked like he expected to make the sale, because what he was offering was clearly better suited to the customer. Despite the grandiosity of the setting, he did the job like a real pro, and when he mentioned Kennedy and FDR, it was as politicians rather than statesmen that I recalled them. In other words, he did exactly what he needed to do.

As for the policies, we'll see. (I hope.) But he did one thing that was both transcendent and canny. When he said American troops had "not served a blue America or a red America, they served the United States of America," I thought: How long have we waited to hear something like that from a Presidential candidate, or for that matter, a President? At the 2004 Republican Convention President Bush didn't spare even a line to speak to the divisions in this country. Of course, he was working from a script written by Karl Rove, whose strategy relied on division. It's nice to hear some political speech that suggests there's more to be gained by pulling people together than apart.

Conservatives are already sweating the small stuff ("What about those food stamps? Was it once? Was it for a month? For a year? How long?"), and pretending to have watched disinterestedly so their disappointment will seem genuine, though on whom they imagine they're putting it over is hard to fathom. That's how they keep their spirits up. They'll be doing a lot of it in the days to come.

FIRST READ. New rightwing site Culture11 is open. In the current edition: Conor Friedersdorf lashes out at a DJ who played L'il Jon (aka Lil John) at his friend's wedding. Friedersdorf listened to Snoop back in that day, which raises the question: "Is gangsta' rap uniquely degraded?" Some posts are fun, which is I guess an essential feature of New Toryism; on the other hand, they let Rod Dreher write long, which is pretty much the opposite of fun: It's as if H. Allen Smith had gone totally mad and joined a back-to-the-land cult. They also have a video of Bill Bennett lecturing on the Great Books, which I couldn't bring myself to watch, though I did scan it and heard "canon" and "furniture of the mind" and saw that the producers had chosen to enliven it with a picture of Allan Bloom. I do look forward to his promised discussion of Macbeth, which I expect will be full of references to the Clintons.

CONVENTION, CONT. I wrote about Hillary Clinton's speech here. Bill Clinton, well, he did his thing, a little rougher of voice than in years past, and maybe with less native energy, but he's been at this a long time and he's good at it. I hear he would have preferred to talk about economic rather than foreign policy, and no wonder: his arguments in those matters wouldn't make as simple a sale as his pitch at the 2000 Convention, when he ran down the economic disasters Republicans said his Presidency would create, and then said with a little grin, "My friends, time has not been kind to their predictions." But tonight Clinton craftily focused on Obama's policies and defended those rather than his own, mainly comparing his own youth and inexperience at their time of nomination (of which their critics, in both instances, tried to make an issue) and his place "on the right side of history" with Obama's. Till this year, Bill Clinton has been very fortunate in his enemies, and his best gift to Obama was let him share them.

If John Kerry had been this energized in 2004, he might be President today. It's interesting that he mentioned Karl Rove, into whose box Kerry put himself when he stuck to a statesmanlike tone in that last election. "Talk about being for it before you were against it" was a very good line, though not as startling as hearing old, droney Kerry asks the crowd, "Are you kidding me, folks?"

Biden was surprisingly telegenic. The characteristic flashes of righteous anger were studiously tamped down, though at times, when he was denouncing some Republican injustice or other, and with his hair so carefully slicked back, he made me think of Jerry Brown's bullet-headed conviction in 1992. But he also spoke with quiet urgency about the problems faced by citizens, bringing a much-needed sense of dynamics to a heretofore declamatory event. And the "Not change, more of the same" and "McCain was wrong" chants he led had the advantage, for viewers like me anyway, of being old-fashioned political guff that is actually related to the issues, in contrast to the idiotic "flip-flop" chant of the last Republican Convention.

The surprise guest thing was a clever appetizer for the big speech. It was nice to see him effortlessly light up the hall for a few minutes before taking his act to the giant stage at INVESCO Field. It's like the Stones playing a club gig before one of their stadium shows.

AMATEUR HOUR. I have the show on, but I haven't been paying close attention. The first night of Convention is usually a loss anyway, and the recent Republican onslaught has had the desired effect of making politics tiresome to me.

What those operatives, and the speakers themselves, can't manage to ruin, TV commentators make up for. After Nancy Pelosi's dazed homilies, I saw David Brooks explaining that what he wanted to hear was a clear message about who exactly Barack Obama is, and that Nancy Pelosi hadn't done it for him. First of all, I hadn't previously imagined that even Brooks was dumb enough to seek counsel from Nancy Pelosi about anything, except maybe how to make his eyes look fresh after a long night out. Second, who on God's green earth believes David Brooks is open to any such argument as he describes, or that his lively curiosity about Obama -- still unsatisfied after dozens of speeches and interviews, and reams of commentary -- resembles that of the average citizen? Maybe Brooks imagines that he has been among ordinary Americans enough for research purposes that he can pass for one: has he not explicated the inadequacies of the Bobos, and thereby earned some down-home cred? I mean, I have to admit that George Will knows a lot about baseball, but who would want to go to an actual game with him?

It was nice to see Ted Kennedy vertical, and able to repeat the tropes and cadences, and achieve the volume, that made his reputation as a speaker, but his performance was the oratorical equivalent of Hitchcock's Family Plot. Jesse Jackson Jr. is a good amateur speaker, but he started high and stayed there: he ran the gamut from Y to Z.

The wife of a Presidential aspirant need only resemble a likable human being, and this Michelle Obama achieved. She was also complicated enough to hold interest. She too is only an amateur speaker, but she has just enough poise to draw our admiration, and not so much that we don't appreciate the effort she expends in maintaining it. I was aware that her address was crafted to appeal to a wide audience, but the patriotic tells didn't bother me, because I could see that she wasn't there for her own sake, or even just for her husband's or her family's. The harsh necessity of countering the ugly stories that have been circulated about her may have forced her into a speech more programmatic than she, or even we, would have liked, but it would take more than a little boilerplate to conceal that she knows both how fortunate and how worthy of fortune she is. People tend to like a person like that, even if they first encounter her when she's giving a speech at a Rotarian dinner.

Outside of that, I heard that we're going to give the middle class a break and end the war in Iraq. Not ideal, but it'll have to do.

THE NEVERENDING STORY. I'm back to doing that thing, you know, that weekly rightwing wrap-up thing at the Voice.

CONVENTION IN FLAMES, REPORT RIGHTWING COMMENTATORS. Jammie Wearing Fool says of the Clinton die-hard presence at the DNC, "Just imagine if you had massive amounts of Republicans defecting from the GOP and declaring they'd be voting for Barack Obama. You'd have a nonstop deluge of Obamacan stories flooding the media." He cites the New York Post and Politico in defense. Clearly the MSM isn't spiking stories like it used to.

The Ole Perfesser approves JWF's comment, cites the Washington Times, Politico, CNN as further evidence of media blackout.

Meanwhile over at Google News:



Other citizen journalists in Denver see mostly demonstrations, and when things are too quiet on that front, their powerful friends try to liven things up.

Special correspondent Jim Lileks is also in Denver; has found Starbucks, but no Target. Feel the excitement!

UPDATE. I didn't mean that Lileks reported the absence of a Target, but that he didn't report finding one, which he would certainly have done if he had.

BIDEN FOR VEEP. Obama picks Biden -- liberal media reacts (via memeorandum):


No one said it would be easy, but you'd think Obama would get some traction out of having a white guy on the ticket.

Conservatives come out with popguns blazing. Jonah Goldberg criticized the Obama campaign for issuing its cellphone update at 3 am. Michelle Malkin noted that Biden had earlier "said he 'wasn't the guy.' Starting his VP candidacy off with a lie." They'll be getting on his hair plugs soon... UPDATE: As usual I am way behind the curve.

But I'm not the only one: the more general argument that longtime Senator Biden does not represent the sort of "change" represented by the Obama cause is absurd, given that we are in the thick of a campaign already wholly devoted to meaningless symbolism of a more traditional kind -- military cred, elitism, populist blather, etc. Conservatives who have been dunning Obama for portraying himself as an alternative can't seriously believe that choosing an ideologically appropriate running mate from the old school -- instead of, what, a female or Hispanic politician, or someone even more new to politics than Obama -- is a betrayal of anything except the caricature of Obama they've painstakingly crafted. But they've been working with that to good effect lately, so I guess it's worth a try.

Last year I noted that in the Democratic debates Biden was "difficult to follow when he is being genial, but extremely lucid in his bursts of anger" on subjects (mainly in foreign policy) that animate him, and wondered if this were "the kind of behavioral mix voters trust with the football." Certainly Biden is gabby, and we'll see how voters react to his style of discourse now that they have to pay attention to him, more or less, for the next eleven weeks.

Me, I owe Biden a vote for helping to keep the dangerous lunatic Robert Bork off the Supreme Court.

UPDATE. Now here's a new one: Biden "should be named an honorary soldier in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps" because he once voted no on a "sense of the Senate" resolution that would have named the IRGC as an official terrorist organization. Also, Biden "threatens a sitting president of the United States with impeachment" and "warns against striking Iran." This appears in the Canada Free Press, so we may consider it an out-of-town tryout for some new right-wing ordnance in case the hair plugs thing doesn't work out.

IN THE LAST DITCH. Indeterminate Number of Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters continues his bilious streak with an unusually brief and at least more-than-usually incoherent rant on Georgia:

WAR doesn't change anything! How many times have we heard the claim from self-righteous leftists protected by their betters?

Tell the dead in Georgia.

Pausing, even only for a moment, ruins nearly all of the General's arguments, and in this case even interventionists would have to wonder upon reflection what righteous act of war would have saved the Georgians from their fate. The one Truman et alia were too chicken to declare on Red Russia, back when only America had the Bomb? Or the one Bush is too chicken to declare now?

Attend: the answer is blowin' in the General's wind. Condi Rice doth "huff and puff," NATO dithers. But the "hardcore Left," without any of Rice's and NATO's power, is always worse, for one thing because it mocks the General:

Over the years, as I've tried to explain the human reality I've encountered, the leftist response has been "Shoot the messenger!" (presumably, with a water gun). When I wrote that a dangerous minority of men enjoy tormenting and killing others, the response was that I obviously believed killing was good.

I've never even kicked a cat.

This is a startling admission from an author who has never, in my experience, seen or heard of a difficult situation that he didn't think would be improved by a whole heap of killing. (Or maybe he's just saying that he's fond of cats, the way Patton was of Willie.)

When the General asks, "what solutions does the war-doesn't-change-anything Left bring to the party now, in Georgia?" he's just offloading his own disgust with the current Administration, whose huffing and puffing he obviously considers no more efficacious that whatever the Berkeley City Council would propose (or Barack Obama, whom the General fantasizes "gobbled up in one bite" by Putin -- as opposed to Bush, whom one imagines would take longer to digest, at least when Putin got to his liver).

Maybe, because Bush's and NATO's officers don't wear distressed denim or love beads, the General feels protective of them. Or maybe he's just protecting himself. "I don't think a military response at this point would do any good," the General admits, "only more harm." What then does the General bring to the party? Only a deep-seated faith in force, regardless of its usefulness in the present situation, and an equally profound lack of faith in, or perhaps understanding of, anything else.

"THE HARROWING ADVENTURES OF PRESIDENT OBAMA." You may get a kick out of this.

REPACKAGING. I've had a laugh or two with Reihan Salam's and Ross Douthat's Grand New Party, but I haven't read it. Thankfully Patrick Ruffini of the forward-looking The Next Right has condensed it for me:

Want cheaper energy? Drill now, expand refinery capacity, go nuclear, and diversify into renewables...

Want cheaper consumer products? Fight protectionism and forced unionism.

Want cheaper food? Get rid of ethanol subsidies.

Want cheaper health insurance? Get rid of irrational regulations and frivolous lawsuits, and let people buy health insurance across state lines...

Want cheaper government? Cut spending.

Want cheaper tax bills? This is self-explanatory.

Ruffini then took the words right out of my mouth: "Most of this is not new. " But in his explanation he actually does come up with something fresh and different: "Republicans have largely been unable to capitalize on wanting things to cost less because the country was relatively prosperous and inflation has not been a real concern for a generation. With the country now facing tangible inflation in the food and fuel sectors, an affordability agenda for the working class is now much more salient."

It had been my impression that Republicans avoided using affordability as a come-on because, since Reagan days, they have showcased a hyperactive stock market, fueled by enormous corporate profits unwinnowed by taxes, as proof of their superior government stewardship. Gushers of cash and credit were the wind beneath their wings. Now that the bottom is falling out of that racket, Ruffini wants to position them as efficiency experts, using the same not-new philosophy and tactics as they had in the go-go era. It's as if a faith healer, having exhausted the credulity of his client, suddenly announced that he is also a trained surgeon.

The resemblance of modern politics to marketing is long established, but you rarely see it as plainly as herein:

In 2008, the recession is all about consumers -- be they consumers at the pump, homeowners, or at the grocery store. The recession is hitting all of us a little (rather than just some of us a lot, through lost jobs). This makes it psychologically more damaging, but also more open to a free market populist agenda centered around lower prices for goods in the private economy.

If we can get out from under the dead weight that is 28% Presidential approval, the economic issue environment can be turned against the progressives.

They'd better hope that not many people are watching "Mad Men." This reeks of the glad hand, seeking opportunity in crisis. I would say God go with them if they were not so obviously resistant to changing the formula along with the ad campaign.

STABBED IN THE BACK! The veteran money-followers at Open Secrets find that U.S. troops serving abroad have contributed six times as much to Obama's campaign as to McCain's. Like Hamlet said, we who have free souls, it touches us not. Using the troops as campaign window-dressing was cheap during the last campaign, and it remains so. In a week or two McCain will find a wounded vet who denounces Obama, and everyone will be talking about arugula and whatnot again.

But though we are above trying to embarrass our opponents with this information, we do not disdain to notice when they massively embarrass themselves.

We enjoy, for example, the close analysis of Wizbang's Jay Tea, which reveals that the servicemembers have spent very little on campaign donations overall, allowing Tea to brush off these warriors' contributions as "statistically irrelevant." He adds, "I think I kinda like that 99.9% of our troops aren't spending at least $200 on presidential campaigns."

This is a startling admission. When the Bankruptcy Bill was debated in 2005, the Democrats tried to put in an exemption for military personnel, and the Republicans voted it down. "One of the most common cases I see as a legal assistance attorney in the Army," writes a JAG soldier/lawyer, "is a soldier in debt." We pay them shit and give them no breaks, so I'm not surprised that the troops don't have a lot of scratch left over for campaign finance, but I am surprised to hear Tea admit that he's happy about it.

Michael Goldfarb at John McCain's own blog says that "most of those troops are likely too busy doing the important work of defending this country to make political contributions." Busy working second jobs, maybe? Goldfarb adds that McCain has far more "retired admirals and generals" endorsing him than Obama. Who's the elitist now?

Speaking of elites, a visibly flailing Allahpundit takes comfort in the fact that "the one branch where McCain leads Obama in contributions is the one most likely to see the hardest action — the Corps." This is fairly classic: as the weaker units desert, Allahpundit puts his faith in a hard core of loyal followers who will follow the flag unto death. Godwin's Law forbids the obvious comparison.

Say Anything points out that McCain loses by less when you include soldiers serving here in the states, where treason can't get at them. Also, "I think the lopsided contributions speak more to conservative dissatisfaction with McCain than outrageous amounts of new support for Obama," which servicemembers of course express by contributing to Obama. Then he throws a chair and runs.

This is feeble even by their usual low standards, but you have to be forgiving. They've been working the support-the-troops scam for so long that they might actually believe it. If you're a liberal, you have to imagine black people saying that Brown v. Board of Education was a big mistake to get some sense of how this is hitting them.

ATTENTION NEW YORKERS. At the Voice blog we are soliciting reminiscences of the 2003 Blackout. You are welcome, nay, invited to leave yours there.

Mine were recorded for posterity here.

POPULISM WITHOUT POPULARITY. The perfectly sensible point that the rich, well-born John McCain has got at least as many elitism points as Obama reaches perfectly mad Victor Davis Hanson, who responds:

Even adroit spinners and handlers can't manufacture elitism; it is not necessarily connected with wealth. The very wealthy Bush no doubt was brought up in greater splendor than was Kerry; but fairly or unfairly, he was more at home at NASCAR and Texas than wind-surfing. And the people sensed that even without Karl Rove's ads. John McCain in a wet suit seems unimaginable.

J. Pierpont Morgan is also unimaginable in a wet suit. But if he were living today and had a set of image-handlers, they would teach him to drop his g's and dress him in cheap windbreakers, and tell plain folks how much more old J.P. has in common with them than has that too-skinny glamour boy, Tom Joad. This would not, of course, change Morgan's business and political interests, though it would make them harder to see. Elitism isn't body language, but a way of looking at the world.

Liberals and progressives are far more vulnerable to charges of elitism, since they are prone to the additional charge of hypocrisy. Right-wingers, as the catastrophic election of 2006 showed, are more easily exposed as hypocrites when they preach family values and are caught in Rev. Haggard-like positions, or abuse drugs and drink. But liberals, 'two-nations' men and women of the people, who rail against the unfairness of an uncaring system and the perniciousness of wealth and privilege, far more readily suffer charges of elitism when their populist rhetoric is contrasted to private jets, 30,000 sq ft. homes, or 11 mansions.

The problem here, of course, is that both candidates engage in "populist rhetoric." When John McCain visits a kitchen cabinet factory and promises to "keep jobs here at home and create new ones," or goes to a biker rally and says he prefers the "roar of 5,000 Harleys" to the cheers Obama received in Berlin, or talks about "lobbyists and special pleaders" and comes out against lavish CEO salaries, he might as well be Huey Long. McCain's own campaign advisor calls him a "populist." This is categorically different from conservatives making fulsome "values voter" pitches and sermonizing on sexed-up Democrats while fucking prostitutes and harrassing teenagers on their cell phones. The latter is hypocrisy, the former is parity.

Personally I think it's a good thing that people are pointing out that both candidates are rich. It's a good first step toward some real populism.

SEMANTICS AND PEDANTICS. Joe Lieberman pretty clearly said that Obama doesn't put his country first -- "Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not" -- which is a sentiment that is uncontroversial in a college libertarian bull session, but highly offensive in a Presidential contest -- and Don Surber says, as they always do, that liberals are silly, but adds, perhaps for purposes of page length, a metaphor ex machina:

Ever have a bad tooth?

I have. There comes that time when you bite on it just so, it hurts like heck.

Liberals have a bad tooth that I will call, for the sake of this post, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

Lieberman hit the liberal bad tooth yesterday.

This mangled bit of wordplay pays tribute to the example of Dean Wormer in Animal House ("The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me"). Or maybe Surber's point is that, like teeth, Lieberman and liberals have many similarities, and are animated by the same forces, but underneath liberals are rotten.

In any case it's better than his actual defense:

I parse it as saying put the country first in legislation, which is not questioning one’s patriotism but rather a common parliamentary elocution; we must put our country first, and compromise on campaign reform. McCain has reached out across the aisle many, many times. Obama hasn’t.

Similarly, when I say that Don Surber eschews liberal ideas and is not a heterosexual, I mean that he prefers to keep with his own intellectual kind, and not that he is a big gay guy who likes to have sex with men.

He does get points, though, for using the idea of a "screaming" toothache in the traditional association of liberals and screaming. It's so elegant I tend to think he cooked the whole essay up just to use it.

APOLOGIES for the sparse posting. You know how it is with a new job. Eventually I hope to learn time management skills from fatigue and methamphetamines, and give you lovely people the attention you deserve.

CURTAIN CALL. I sort of like the Guardian slideshow of President Bush Olympic LOLs, but something bothered me about it. At first I thought it was because the style was pretty transparently ripped-off of LOL President. But LOL President is itself a rip-off of LOLcats, so I guess by now it's just an hommage without attribution. (You know, like my Shorters!)

Then I noticed that LOL President was moribund, posting nothing since June 4. And I think I know why. There had been some funny Obama and McCain bits in recent months, but nothing brings the lulz like a good Bush photo funny.

This is made painfully clear by the President's behavior at the Olympics. I actually watched him during the Opening Ceremonies. He seemed impatient and petulant during the big parade, thwacking his flag against his leg and looking around as if for a beer vendor at a ballgame. And of course we've all seen him discomporting himself around Misty May Treanor.

I don't normally make much of the President's many social liabilities, which are irrelevant and pale in comparison to those of his governance. But it hit me: this is all he's got left. While the nation attends our ridiculously personalized Presidential contest, looking for displays of elitism or senility, the star of our national drama is mostly becalmed, sullenly reading statements and puttering around the White House. And he's actually a very successful performer, and one who seems to enjoy his effect on people, even when (maybe especially when) it annoys them. For years he seemed tickled that his repertoire of frat-boy stunts and cowboy posturing held the nation's interest. Now, for the most part, he has to lay low, lest he remind voters already disenchanted with the Republican Party of the grim results of his Presidency, or international war crimes prosecutors of signs of depraved indifference that may be used against him in a court of law.

The Olympics provided Bush with a golden opportunity to reinsert himself into the public eye like a sharp stick. As the effect had no domestic political resonance, he could let it all hang out. I'm sure nobody who wasn't extremely high has had as good a time anywhere as Bush had in Beijing. Politics to one side, it was almost charming.

HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS. I go off the grid for a couple of days, and come back to find I've lost my bearings. Though I'd covered the spectacularly dumb "Celeb" McCain spot, I was totally unprepared for his latest goofy ad. It seems to me that as Russia invades Georgia, the market convulses, Kashmir heats up, Musharraf falls, and our President, after fucking off to the Olympics all weekend, makes obviously toothless grimaces over South Ossetia while much more effectively sabotaging the Endangered Species Act, that even the Republicans would find it hard to tell people that their greatest danger comes from a Presidential candidate whom people like too much.

Given the circumstances I think the McCain campaign is consumed by the political equivalent of a fit of nervous giggles. There's nowhere else for McCain to go but negative, but the normal Republican negative routine of dark, dystopian portrayals of Democratic rule -- Dukakis' filthy Charles River, Mondale's unattended Russian bear, etc. -- would just remind voters that we are on the verge of dystopia already. The only course left is evasion, not merely of current political realities, but of reality, period. So they fixate on the one about the Obamessiah, and ring endless variations on it, as if it were the Holy Grail of comic material, impervious to wear, tear, and overexposure.

No matter how simply and directly critics point this out, the second-line McCain operatives have a single ready answer: that the critics are just projecting -- which is a mildly intellectualized way of saying that they don't get the joke. But even if we concede that there were something to the joke -- and that's a big concession, given how overstrained the right-wing laugh factory has gotten -- a sensible person would have to acknowledge that we are getting past the point where even a good joke would do. Normally I would assume they had something stronger prepared for phase two, when we are all within sight of the day of decision and have to face facts, if for no other reason than self-preservation. But I have a feeling that there is no Plan B. I should be happier about that, considering how I'd like the election to go. But as the examples of tulipmania and the Great Awakenings show, mass delusions, even when contained, wind up playing out badly for everyone in the end.