REPUBLICAN NADIR WATCH. I just saw David Frum on Rachel Maddow, pleading for a better tone to politics (!), and actually quoting Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

This is the same David Frum who defended Ted Haggard on the astonishing grounds that it was morally better to be a hypocrite than a homosexual; who has declared that if a rightwing comedy fails, it is less important that it fails to amuse than that it fails to "create a conservative institution with cultural power"; who didn't care whether we got Bin Laden because, he said, it wasn't as important to bring justice to the perpetrators of mass murder as to fight a "war with the ideas that animated those people," and many other such outrages against both civility and reason. The idea of this ham-handed political thug playing the meek lamb and quoting Gandhi would be infuriating if Frum were not observably swirling down a drain that was created by himself and his colleagues.

NEW VOICE COLUMN up, taking the pulse of rightwing bloggers, who as you will see are reverting to form in more ways than one: not only spreading smears and policing apostates, but also celebrating (out loud!) the golden era before No-Legs Rosenfeld socialized the country.

I notice also that the brethren are now so steeped in Obama rumors that they're getting insular about them, treating them more like prized collectibles than as urgent dispatches to rouse the sheeple. Ace O'Spades bats around an "Obama girlfriend" story: "Fire is being held as those who know the story try to get someone of import to break it," he informs us -- wingnut insider baseball! The subject is a "major, big-time fundraiser" who "for reasons unfathomable, suddenly shut the shop down and decamped to a little Caribbean island." Now why would a rich person do such a thing? "The story has a Fred Baron. Not The Fred Baron. But actually -- an even better Fred Baron." Who's either Fred Baron? David Horowitz' Discover the Networks (the paranoid successor to Follow the Network, now dark) has Baron I as a former president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and a bigshot in some Democratic Presidential campaigns. Wow, and Baron II is even better than that? Yes, he's from "the dirty Chicago political machine." And get ready for the big finish:

There's another big twist too, which I can't say anything about. I wouldn't even hint about it, really, even if permitted to, because it's so delicious it makes it nearly fantastical -- in the sense of "No one gets this lucky!" -- and actually would be used to denigrate the rest of it. But there is a chance it gets more interesting than even the Chicago Machine connection.

It's delicious, it's self-refuting, it's even more interesting than the Chicago Machine! This one goes on the top shelf right next to Barry is a Muslim and Barry is Not a Citizen, and the autographed Swift Boat -- fine objects of contemplation for when O'Spades is taking ease and hearkening back to the days when he was badgering bigger bloggers to run his stories.

THE HOOVERVILLE TROLLEY. Jonah Goldberg lays out the new conservative POV on our present economic chaos:

...the tragedy is that this election year does look quite a bit like Hoover vs. Roosevelt (and given that choice, I'll take Hoover)...

Other comrades have taken up the call. Please help them spread this around. Maybe it'll trickle up and John McCain will start denouncing FDR and the Social Security Act.

CHARLOTTE HAYS DOES IT ALL. As I frequently tell you, Barack Obama is black and therefore could still lose this election. But if I haven't forgotten it, many of our conservative brethren have, for the moment, anyway. This has got them so flummoxed that some of their writings are like little Rosetta stones of rightwing bullshit, packing much vital information about the tribe and their lingo in a short space.

Take for instance this Charlotte Hays post at National Review. It's got everything! First, the mournful tribute to the Great Bush:

George Bush has probably had the hardest administration since Lincoln. I feel for him.

Then, equally mandatory with wingnuts these days, a swipe at the Great Bush:

But his speech on the economy just now was lackluster.

The enduring faith that spin can conquer all:

Neal Cavuto says he should stay from the cameras for awhile.

(To protect whom, one wonders -- himself, the economy, or the American people.)

McCain, on the other hand, can't afford to be lackluster.

OK, that old dry-drunk's on the slag heap, everyone pump up Maverick!

He has got to make the case that, at a time when some are (optimistically?) proclaiming the end of American capitalism, it would be dangerous to have Bill Ayers's pal reshape the economy.

There's a nice cocktail of rightwing memes: the treasonous Washington Post, by covering doubts about our system, is actually intentionally sowing them, and the last thing America needs with its hyperinflated market thus under siege is somebody whose gigantic circle of acquaintances includes a Weatherman.

McCain has also got to say that we have lots to fear but that fear itself is out of control and a contributing factor.

Following up a dark accusation with a plea to abandon fear is a classic conservative switchback, made more piquant by the idea of John McCain as the man to ease the American people through the New Depression.

He must find a way to call for confidence in America a way that the fear-mongering Obama campaign can't pillory.

Again, it's the socialist, market-crash-causing, Muslim, mad bomber Obama who's mongering the fear, and also pillorying ways of calling for confidence which haven't been discovered yet, but which will be if you remember Bill Ayers is a terrorist.

Tall order, but possible. Maybe.

And that's what you get a lot from them nowadays -- that maudlin, vaguely hopeful but mostly premonitory tone, like the odd moment in Sarah Palin's debate summation when she talked about a day in which, under a totalitarian Democratic regime, Americans would look back with longing on the Freedom That Was. It's straight out of old Goldwater-era pamphlets and John Birch Society parables. In their moment of crisis, conservatives are discovering and uncovering themselves.

THE ETERNAL ENEMY. Back in plummier days, Roger L. Simon cheerfully ticked down the last days of the MSM -- mainstream media, to the uninitiated. He would periodically announce "another crack in the mainstream media," assure readers that "people are tired of the forced blabber" of the MSM, and allow as how "I wouldn't be surprised if pretty soon they go on the 'endangered species' list."

What a difference a big lead for Obama makes: after Obama's Rev. Wright speech, Simon now informs us, "I knew we were living in a media-constructed lunatic asylum." Oh, the MSMers are still "pathological" and suffering from "personality disintegration." But they're apparently still very dangerous, which is a shock, considering how long Simon's been telling us they're on the skids.

As long as people need something to read on the crapper, there will be newspapers of some kind. And that's what Simon is banking on: a deathless enemy that is weak and declining when Simon wishes to portray himself and his comrades as strong, and flush with mind-warping power when he feels himself threatened. It's a nice racket so long as the suckers don't catch on.

THE CORNER. The story now is that Obama is causing the stock market crash. Srsly:

Now, it's far more likely that the causation and correlation suggested by some readers is backward: the markets tank for non-political reasons and Obama does well as a result, rather than Obama does well and then the markets tank. Still, I think Pethokoukis' point that Obama's success may make investors more pessimistic about the future has some plausibility to it.

The Pethokoukis reference is to an article called "Is Obama Depressing the Market?" This is a new low, but even more than the other new lows we've seen in this campaign, it's ridiculously counterproductive. Chief Executive magazine declares that "Job Creators Prefer John McCain 4-to-1 Over Barack Obama," and the average American has to think: Job what? The chief petty officers of our ruined economy prefer McCain? If CEOs declared as strongly for air and sunlight, I think at this point most citizens wound opt to live in underground caves.

The current rightwing talking points are expressed with refreshing psychosis by The Anchoress:

There is a reason that this untried, unprepared, not-especially-glib-after-all man has been thrust into such extraordinary prominence at this time. There is a reason why so much seems to be coming together to work in his favor. There is a reason why world markets are collapsing just before this very important election, and why they will continue to do at least until after the vote.

This is the voice of the dead-ender who has found herself in her preferred environment: cornered, her back against the wall, no longer even socially restrained from giving voice to her darkest fantasies, she can at last bust loose. And she's only getting warmed up.

It promises to be quite a spectacle: a battalion of shirtless dorks who think they've turned into the Hulk, threatening to smash.

END TIMES. These are dark, dark days at The Corner, where they now insist that "consorting" with Bill Ayers "alone disqualifies Obama from being president." Mark Levin cries:

How can anyone who actually follows this stuff, who reads Freddoso, Kurtz, and scores of other reliable sources of information, conclude that Obama is not some wild-eyed radical?

This is rather like saying, "How can someone who lives in a urinal not smell like piss?"

DEBATE NIGHT: MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES. I did some liveblogging at the Voice, and also a quick roundup of the usual suspects. I thought Obama did okay, but judging by their bitter responses our rightwing brethren seem to think he won, though they don't have the bad taste to say so.

I sympathize with their dolor. Obama was low key and, it must be said, sometimes evasive, but it got him over. I still think that Zen lady at the end deserved an answer, not a stump summation. But McCain did the same thing, and I am pleased that Obama was willing to game the system on his own behalf -- by any means necessary, comrade! Where he took time to explain himself, he was eloquent, at least by TV debate standards. It was wise for him to expect viewers to comprehend his detailed explanation of McCain's insurance portability scam and how it would lead insurers to shop for the least consumer-friendly state in which to do business -- it is traditional to treat them as idiots, but many voters have had to examine credit card statements, mortgages, loan statements, and other such documents, and will respond to a friendly warning about the fine print. (I wonder that McCain didn't jump on Obama's mention of Delaware as an opportunity to attack Joe Biden. Probably he was too busy rehearsing his other slurs. That guy's not very quick on his feet.)

I will add that I had an interesting conversation with Julia about this afterwards, in which she brought up the similarities between McCain's sense of entitlement in these events and Bush's. I think the reversals of fortune that both these worthies suffered in their lives affected the ways both of them have run for President, but to dissimilar effect. Bush's natural self-regard was amplified by his ascent from alcoholism into fundamentalism: it merely gave him a better excuse for the self-regard he already had going in. McCain of course had the more severe and genuine reversal, and I thought his explanation of that at the Republican Convention was convincing: he had been broken down and put back together, in a more meaningful way than AA or whatever achieved for Bush. It was the most attractive moment of his candidacy. But if it gave him a new, better reason to believe in himself, it isn't something that comes across in the campaign. When he accused Obama tonight of talking tough and said that he himself wasn't "gonna telegraph my punches," it was as if he were talking about somebody else -- what kind of man announces that he doesn't telegraph? This may be the problem with the more aggressive campaign that Rick Davis led him into: it forces him to act like a common jingo. I don't think it suits him. Bush of course is ridiculously lacking in self-awareness, and that was his strength in 2000 and 2004 -- his inability to admit error made him look forthright. Might it be that McCain is unconsciously telegraphing, so to speak, a painful awareness that he's not the man he's been asked to play on TV? I hope so -- that man may yet be President.

Also: isn't it interesting that putative Obama supporter Megan McArdle really wants McCain to work the Bill Ayers angle? Now there's someone who hasn't come to terms with what she really wants. Maybe her days on a basketball team constitute her conversion narrative. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough.

GOON SQUAD. After all this time, I've come to think of my rightwing pets -- the Ol' Perfesser, the Crazy Jesus Lady, Jonah "Frrrt" Goldberg, et alia -- as something like real people. So I can't help but feel some embarrassment for them right now. At The Corner right now, do a search of "Ayers" and you'll get over 100 matches. Now consider that this outburst of interest in a minor New Left character is prompted by nothing other than the McCain campaign's decision to publicize him as the key to Obama's personal corruption.

These boys and girls are writers and editors at a prestigious magazine, yet they can be dragooned into this service as easily as felons into a road gang. Sic transit gloria Buckley. Even the loftier ones who try to change the subject ("I think Ayers and Wright are both fair game... But the attack that is most relevant to an Obama presidency concerns his ties to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid...") still have to submit their papers to the proctor to make sure they've repeated the name as required. In the end they're all just low-level employees of the Ministry of Truth.

Oh speaking of which, I did a wrap-up of the week in wingnuttery today. It covers stupidity, racism, and homophobia -- sort of a conservative trifecta.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Barney Frank used to live with a top executive at Fannie Mae. Though this had been reported as far back as 1992, conservatives are working it hard now, perhaps feeling that if their attempt to blame the financial crisis on black people doesn't work, they can get some traction blaming it on manlove.

"PART OF WHY THE USA GOT IT UP THE YOU KNOW WHAT," bellows The Astute Bloggers. "HOMO BARNEY FRANK WAS SLEEPING WITH MALE FANNIE MAE EXEC FOR YEARS." Ace O'Spades is of course on it like Lindsay Lohan on Samantha Ronson, and his commenters spray milk (at least we think it's milk) out their noses ("This sickens me on so many levels"). Dad29 assails "back-door-banditry" and asks, "Why should THEY worry about imposing a huge national debt on children?" (Please don't tell Dad29 they're allowed to adopt now, or he'll wear out his slur thesaurus.)

Musical-comedy enthusiast Mark Steyn tries to join the fun but fatally buries the lede, so his readers will probably be more incensed that "the 'gay mafia'" are "allegedly in control of 'Doctor Who' at the BBC," and burn their action figures in protest.

The next step, I suppose, will be Sarah Palin talking about Obama palling around with gay people.

COMB IT WET OR DRY? We've examined Jim Lileks' problems with haircutters before. Longtime fans will appreciate his latest attempt to find a stylist who satisfies:

Went to get my hair cut. The nasty sullen stylist wasn’t in, hoorah. The lass who cut my hair was new to me, so we had to find some common conversational ground. Settled on dogs. Then I learned she’d been a stylist on a cruise ship, so that opened up a vast rich rolling field of discursive opportunities . . . or so I thought. Turns out it’s a bit like cutting hair in a mall, except sometimes it rocks back and forth a bit. The drive home after your shift is quicker, though.

I am but a simple peasant, and even I know that if you consider your stylist a "lass" there is no way you will leave the chair with cheer unless she reaches under your bib and jerks you off, which clearly did not happen here.

Previously Jimbo sassed the local do-gooders:

The new Westin Hotel and Condo, bitterly opposed by some. Why? Because it’s tall. People who moved out here didn’t want tall buildings.

Can you imagine? Don't they know that relentless building is the engine of our nation's prosperity? But even Jimbo sees stores in his beloved Southdale Mall shutting down -- "the area next to it is the Abercrombie & Fitch, surrounded by heavy black shutters that give off the GO AWAY PARENTS vibe of a teen’s closed bedroom door." And the barberettes aren't doing it for him. Where o where is the succor of Scottsdale? We guess, like all our dreams of uplift, gone with the boom. Now Jimbo finds himself in a mall that is contracting, not expanding. No wonder lileks.com offers so few new posts these days. When you're simultaneously a fan of the go-go boom and a nostalgist, how painful it must be when future is slamming you from the front and the past, once safely secured in old matchbooks and photos of men in hats, looms to remind you that it was not just a showroom of pleasantly retro styles, but a real place where the Dow never reached 10,000 and the money was never easy, and where you may soon be forced to live.

DEBATE! I'm gonna try drunk live drunkblogging this thing from the Voice site. As a mainstream media website, it's not as easy to use as Blogger, so I may have to come back here, but please check it out anyway.

UPDATE. Made it! Both combatants were obviously coached: Biden to refrain from smiling or condescending and to focus on McCain, Palin to be perky, drop her g's, and rattle off talking points wherever possible. Biden solemnly made his case, and Palin gosh-doggonily evaded hers. I can't say how Americans will take this, but I do think it will have something to do with whether or not they think this election is important. If they do, nothing can help McCain, and if they don't, nothing will stop him.

UPDDATE II. Ann Althouse: "On the split screen, when Biden is speaking, Palin looks like she's brimming with ideas she's just waiting to express." Advantage: Bughouseosphere!

I'M THE ONE WHO DROVE HER OUT OF HER SEAT. I'M THE ONE WHO PROVOKED THE LETHAL BARRAGE OF T-SHIRTS... BUT THERE'S NO POINT IN PLAYING THE BLAME GAME. Some days back Kathleen Parker wrote at National Review that Sarah Palin should depart the Republican ticket for the good of the party. Parker is a reliably conservative writer who sometimes takes a mildly contrarian angle, presumably to preserve her marketability.

With the Palin column she went a little far, though, and to hear her tell it (at the Washington Post -- mission accomplished!) got a predictable response:

I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself...

I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening.

Some of my usual readers feel betrayed because I previously have written favorably of Palin. By changing my mind and saying so, I am viewed as a traitor to the Republican Party -- not a "true" conservative.

These columns tend to run long, and seasoned fans of the genre will have already guessed where she goes from here, but let's pull a quote anyway:

The mailbag is about us, our country, and what we really believe.

That we have become a partisan nation is no secret. This week has provided a vivid example of where rabid partisanship leads with the failure of Congress to pass a bailout bill vitally needed to keep our economy from unraveling.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a partisan speech, blaming the credit crisis on the Bush administration (omitting the Clinton administration's role in launching the subprime lending debacle). Republicans responded by voting against the bill.

Everyone's to blame, by the way.

This reminds of me of something Menachim Begin said about the outcry over a massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians, allegedly with the complicity of the IDF: "The goyim kill the goyim, and then run to hang the Jews."

For conservatives, everything is the fault of liberals, except when there is no possible alibi for conservatives. Then it's everyone's fault. These days, even bipartisanship is mostly an angle, something to be tried when all else fails. No wonder it didn't take them long to warm to Maverick John McCain.

UPDATE. Here's the lesson Crunchy Rod Dreher took from Parker's column:

If liberals are concerned about this -- and they should be -- then they should urge the Obama campaign to stop mobbing radio show phone lines to stop discourse when Obama critics appear on talk shows.

If one of those Freepers throws a brick through Parker's window, I suppose Dreher will call for the arrest of David Plouffe.

UPDATE II. Commenter Jay B says, "You know, other than coming to the near-certain realization that we'll soon be in a depression and i'll probably lose my job and my family will be destitute -- this has been one of the best weeks in awhile."

I take his point, though I wouldn't say it was objectively "good" in any way. I think what makes us bomb-throwers and objects of opprobrium among our right-wing brethren is the fact that we can see the justice of something that may harm us. Again, I don't wish for collapse, just as I don't advocate "surrender." But when our country does something stupid it's just going to catch up with us. That's not a happy result, it's just the one you can expect when you pretend that what isn't so is so. If there's any upside to what's happening, it's that revelation is a good thing, however dearly purchased.

But asserting that up is up and not down makes you a traitor among those who have made a career out of denying the existence of gravity, centrifugal force, and other forms of objective reality, and made common sense a form of treason.

It's not so new -- Malcolm X, I believe, said something about chickens coming home to roost and got a hard time for it -- but I don't remember it being so complete as it has become in recent years. No wonder when Paulson comes to Capitol Hill demanding a bribe for the good of the country, they're so confused. The last bit of sense they had left was in their wallets, and now they're being asked to give it up.

VOLUNTARY CONSERVATION OF HOUSEHOLD ENERGY IS LOOKING PRETTY DAMN GOOD ABOUT NOW. Well, looks as if they heard me. But there's no point in celebrating -- some version of the "crap sandwich," almost certainly with extra crap, will pass this week. Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Jose Serrano and a few others may be dissenting in earnest, but I'm sure most of these guys are just working angles.

Playful as I have been on this subject, I don't really want things to get worse even to get better. I'm still convinced that a big bath is coming, and the current shenanigans will only postpone the inevitable, but I honestly appreciate and sympathize with the candor of Ross Douthat when he says, "If the defeat of the bailout is a victory for liberty, it's a victory whose costs I'm not prepared to bear." Maybe that's because, like Douthat (though for different reasons), I'm accustomed to read the crackpot millenarian Rod Dreher, whose hope for a brotherhood of godly paupers after the collapse of the world economy usually stirs me to reactionary consumerism. If our dysfunctional politics has made it impossible to strike a balance between the good and the bountiful, I'd rather reform the politics than celebrate the collapse as a way of getting back to neutral. (Interestingly, I see Dreher now wants us all to "pray for stability.")

The problem with the payoff plan is that it allows an end run around reform. To this moment, conservatives are more dedicated to the go-go economy than to the citizens who are supposed to be its beneficiaries. Megan McArdle compares the anti-bailout movement to the mice of fable who resolved to bell the cat, but had no means to do it. That's a hell of an analogy: the citizens of an alleged republic are mice and the economy a monster that will kill them if they attempt even the slightest modification of its lethal power.

I'm sorry FDR isn't around to get a laugh out of it. Hell, maybe I should send it to Jimmy Carter -- and include some of the columns in which McArdle tries to scare us with stories of 70s inflation -- to whom it may give at least a rueful chuckle. After all, he was the guy we blew off in order to embark on our long binge of deregulation and market-worship. Maybe the spectacle of an MBA President vainly trying to get fellow Republicans to support a Wall Street bailout has already got him doubled over. At the very least he must be thanking God for allowing him to live this long.

I have no faith that the current batch of Democrats can put even a little more muscle in the bill, but I wish they'd try. Conservatives are reduced to trying to convince people that the system is in collapse because Democrats made banks give money to Negroes and hire homosexuals. If not now, when?

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED... A recent rightwing outrage du jour was Obama's soldier bracelet, mentioned during the debate. Apparently the soldier's mother had asked Obama not to use it in the campaign. But it turns out Mom was okay with Obama's citation of the bracelet in his reply to McCain.

A million all-caps emails have probably already been circulated, but these guys have to make a gesture in a public forum, so Jonah Goldberg avails one of those "reader emails" that occasionally spice up The Corner:

Since the mother is an Obama supporter, I expect right about now Obama is contacting her and instructing her to say he had permission to mention her son's name in the debate. It's a total lie, but, as always, he'll get away with it.

Damn Obama and his dark power to cloud grieving mothers' minds! Oh well, back to calling him a Muslim.

DEBATE CLUBBING. I have a new Voice column today wrapping up rightwing blog reactions to Friday's debate. We already got a head-start on this subject here, but as you might imagine, Obama's post-debate poll jump has just made things more entertaining.

DEAL ME OUT. In a brilliant New York Times front-pager, Gretchen Morgenson shows how an AIG subsidiary called AIG Financial Products created "collateralized debt obligations" that provided a further layer of insulation between the global insurer and the increasing debt it was covering:

Because the underlying debt securities -- mostly corporate issues and a smattering of mortgage securities -- carried blue-chip ratings, A.I.G. Financial Products was happy to book income in exchange for providing insurance. After all, Mr. Cassano [AIGFP's head] and his colleagues apparently assumed, they would never have to pay any claims.

AIGFP saw huge, apparently insubstantial gains from these debt packages, and their shakiness seems to have somehow gone unnoticed by the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision, whose duty it was to monitor them. When AIGFP's packages came a-cropper, AIG found itself called upon to make good, which precipitated its downward spiral.

Morgenson reveals also that Goldman Sachs had a fat hand in AIGFP's dealings, which the more cynical among us may suspect influenced the willingness of Treasury Secretary and former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson to move quickly to pick up AIG, as a straight bankruptcy would have left the Goldmanians with pennies on the dollar.

Now both Democrats and Republicans -- some of the latter dragging their feet for whatever slim plausible deniability it may give them -- are getting the big Bush bailout rolling, with only a few Congressmen resisting. And from what I'm hearing, in order to pass it bipartisan-like, the Democrats couldn't even keep in a provision that would give homeowners some relief.

They say it's necessary, and in this atmosphere of panic there's no one reliable who can tell us whether it is or isn't. But fuck it. This financial system is rotten and nothing about the bill (including whatever "oversight" provision they come up with) is going to change that. As an old man I'm in sympathy with the urge to postpone the inevitable, but in this age of internet speed I doubt the inevitable will tarry as it did in olden days. Either use the $700 billion tide to lift all boats, including those of mortgage holders, or keep it in the bank and let the free market wreak its creative destruction at the top end of the food chain for a change.

UPDATE. The House server is slow, but I got the sectional summary of the current plan (the full plan pdf shows up blank for some reason). Section 110, we are told, "Requires federal entities that hold mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve to develop plans to minimize foreclosures. Requires federal entities to work with servicers to encourage loan modifications, considering net present value to the taxpayer." It will be interesting to see how this requirement and encouragement is supposed to work and be enforced.

NEWMAN'S OWN. Paul Newman has passed after a long and productive life, and his philanthropies and political activism are as worthy of celebration as his titanic film career, if not more so.

What stands out for me about Newman on screen was his knack for revealing the intelligence of characters who were not always book-smart. Actors like Brando or DeNiro would submerge themselves into incoherent characters, and let their brutal energy carry them; even when playing Rocky Graziano or the young Fast Eddie or Cool Hand Luke, Newman made a point of showing the wheels turning in their minds, and it may be that his anti-heroes were so popular because he made them appear reasonable. (Played another way, Luke's will might have looked like a tragically uncontrollable force, but Newman's Luke had made friends with his own rebelliousness, which invited others to make friends with it, too.)

Of course those characters were also charming, because Newman had charm, buckets of it. That part came effortlessly, but I never noticed him coasting on it. At worst (e.g. the end of The Towering Inferno), he sometimes used it to rescue scenes that had no other hope of salvation.

In fact, in my favorite Newman performances -- Nobody's Fool and The Verdict -- he played the trick of submerging his charm early on and letting it creep out as the character made progress. The beginning of The Verdict is so brutal because you see a Paul Newman who has lost his charm, squandered his gifts and become a miserable legal grifter, surviving on the vestiges of his good manners and skills. His pursuit of a hard, righteous cause is genuinely thrilling because you can see that accepting it hasn't turned him into a superman -- he makes foolish mistakes and actually has a humiliating panic attack when Charlotte Rampling strikes at his still-soft center -- but has forced him into the confrontation with himself that he's been avoiding his whole life. Once again Paul Newman has walked into harm's way, but not breezily, and with everything on the line. In his quietly amazing summation ("Act as if ye had faith, and faith will be given to you") he is both reduced to his humblest essence and ennobled.

Imagine some other stars in the role. There have been many actors who, like Newman, could seduce the audience just by presenting themselves to it, but few who could at any stage of their careers draw us into a journey like that. He really was more than just a pretty face.

PLAYING PARTISAN WHEN POST-PARTISANISM DOESN'T WORK. At the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan says she wants McCain and Obama to explain to people why they are respectively a Republican and a Democrat. I expect Noonan is influenced by the current bailout situation, in which Republicans who built and prospered from the go-go, lightly-regulated economy are positioning themselves for the moment as rebels from its bailout -- though, as tipped by McCain's remarks tonight, they will cave as soon as they think they are sufficiently covered politically. It's standard-issue Noonan jiu-jitsu -- to call for something that can't possibly happen because of her own party's tactics, and hope the uninformed will find her lofty and wise rather than disingenuous.

Of the many things that are ridiculous about this, a few scream to be mentioned. First, as we just saw, the Presidential debates, which McCain lately endeavored to evade, are meant to explain this -- or, more usefully, to explain why the parties are properly represented by them. Second, I recall that Noonan used to swoon over George Bush, who was allowed to distance himself from his party as a "compassionate conservative" before he went on to embody Republican principles so thoroughly as to discredit them for all time, and even force Noonan to renounce both Bush and the Republicans (though I think their refusal to hire her had something to do with it).

Both parties have evolved, not to say been shifty, and their candidates have prospered by playing for them and against them as they see fit. I can't imagine Noonan, who despite the paucity of her paying gigs with the GOP of late is still a reliable tool, would be suggesting this party-identification program if McCain were leading strongly. Then, as always, she and her colleagues would be doing the identifying -- Democrats treasonous and spendthrift, Republicans butch and economically sound, and so forth.

It must also be mentioned that Noonan wonders at Obama's slim lead, and attributes to it to Obama being "unusual, singular," "not your basic Dem," and "exotic," without ever mentioning that he's black. This too is audacious, but only in a familiar way.

MORE REACTIONS FROM AROUND THE BUFFOONIVERSE. Megan McArdle's pretense of support for Obama notwithstanding -- I think it has/had to be some sort of social networking gambit -- she's really bending over for McCain tonight. She gave Obama a hard time for momentarily stumbling over McCain's name ("Who's having senior moments again?"), but when McCain couldn't quite get the name of the President of Iran, whom he wishes to bomb, she "thought it was rather charming." Chalk it up to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

"Obama Implodes in Debate," says Confederate Yankee, which is the sort of ooga-booga you have to expect from someone who calls himself Confederate Yankee, I guess. The myth of Obama's black rage is strong with these people, and impervious to such externals as the evidence of their senses.

The Ole Perfesser, as usual in situations where there is no believable talking point for his side, punts, sighing that "it's hard to believe that these two are the best that a country of 300 million can produce." Even reliable partisans are reduced to making fun of Obama's pronunciation of "Pakistan." It seems only paid operatives and religious maniacs are sufficiently motivated to tell themselves and anyone else who'll listen that McCain was the overwhelming victor. But in a national contest in which one of the candidates is black, that may be enough.