Man, it is tough to talk about the campaign these days.

COLUMBIA, S.C. A key black political leader in South Carolina has offered an apology on top of an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race.

State Senator Robert Ford is backing Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He and another lawmaker, State Senator Darrell Jackson, tell The Associated Press they believe Clinton is the only Democrat who can win.

Both say they’d been courted by Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Ford said if Obama were to win the nomination, that would drag down the rest of the party because — quote — “he’s black and he’s the top of the ticket.”

Later in the day, Ford said he had been besieged by criticism and apologized for his characterization of Obama’s chances. Ford said if Clinton doesn’t win the nomination, any of the other candidates are well suited to take the White House.

Okay, this is silly on several levels. While I believe that an African-American can win the presidency in today’s America, I don’t think it’s inherently outrageous or racist to be a skeptic of that notion. If Ford thinks, “nah, the country’s not ready, and an underperforming presidential candidate will hurt us in other races,” he’s got every right to say that, and he ought to if he believes it. Should he remain silent if he thinks his party is making a terrible mistake?

Secondly, “any of the other candidates” are well suited to take the White House. Oh, really? Kucinich? Chris Dodd? Joe Biden? Tom Vilsack? Wes Clark?

I was going to begin this post, “If you’ve been laying awake nights wondering which presidential candidate has the most endorsements from members of Congress… you really need a hobby.” But perusing the list from The Hill, I admit I’m surprised Mitt Romney is ahead on the Republican side, 26 to 21 for McCain. Not bad for a guy from outside the Beltway with absolutely no Republicans in his state’s congressional delegation.

Among Democrats, Hillary leads Obama, 13 to 8. Chris Dodd has 6, by the way.

Okay, maybe I need a hobby.

Peter Beinart makes the case for Biden in the primary: He’ll keep everyone else honest.

Biden just wants his opponents to be honest about what they’re proposing. Because, if they are, they will have to begin a highly unpleasant and urgently needed debate about how to handle the awful consequences of a necessary withdrawal. No one really knows how an all-out Iraqi civil war will affect the Middle East, but, as the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman recently argued, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and even Iran could be destabilized by waves of refugees, weapons, and jihadists. Keeping those countries from buckling may require aggressive diplomatic, financial, and even military intervention (not to mention a generous refugee policy for the Iraqis whose country we have helped destroy). It’s little wonder that top-tier Democratic candidates avoid discussing this for fear of being labeled defeatist. But, if they do, they’ll be allowing George W. Bush to do further damage. Four years ago, the Bush administration didn’t plan for how to keep the peace in post-Saddam Iraq. Now Democrats must begin a debate about how to keep the peace in the entire Middle East.

If Biden can force his presidential opponents into that discussion, he’ll be doing the country a service. It’s not the role he probably imagined for himself. But it’s crucial and honorable. And it’s why he should stay in the race. 

And considering how Biden launched his campaign with some scoffing and mockery of his rivals, Maureen Dowd writes something intriguing today in her subscription-only column poking at Obama:

For some of us, it’s hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit. But his friends say it played into this Harvard grad’s fear of being seen as “a dumb blond.” He has been known to privately mock “pretty boys” (read John Edwards, the Breck Girl of 2004).

Is this Dowd putting words in the senator’s mouth? Or does Obama mock Edwards when he’s off the record?

This is a fine how-do-you-do this morning – an e-mail from Pollowitz saying, “The Other One’s Gone – you have to stop sleeping.”

Melissa McEwan, who blogged at Shakespeare’s Sister has also departed Edwards’ campaign, resigning from her role as a technical adviser. She says this is not the back end of a deal from last week, and I suppose we should take her at her word, but what a surreal sequence of events.

Judging from the reaction on the lefty blogs, I think yesterday’s suggestion that this has been a lose-lose for Edwards is looking accurate.

Is the lesson of this, “when your blogger embarrasses the campaign with controversial statements, fire them immediately”? Because if Edwards had done that last week, he would have made enemies among the netroots and perhaps won some respect from Catholic Democrats and folks tired of overheated rhetoric. And we would be talking about something different today. Instead, it’s been a weeklong story, nobody’s happy with him, and it’s been a perfect drip-drip-drip narrative. Marcotte and McEwan couldn’t even resign on the same day; now it’s a story for another day.

And we used to joke about Kos going 0-for-21 or whatever in general elections; clearly in 2006, the Netroots had a better year with wins by some of their favorites like Webb and Tester. (Or did they just get lucky in an overall good year for Democrats?) But have the netroots proved decisive enough in enough races to really throw around that much weight among Democrats? Is Edwards really going to pay a supreme price among them for the sudden departure of the two bloggers? Or is the situation muddy enough that enough netroots types will believe that Edwards did right by them?

An illustrative statement from Chris Bowers of MyDD: “Throughout this entire incident, Amanda Marcotte has been just about the only person who acted like any normal person would act.”

Arrgh. Get me back to the USA. This time difference is a pain in the neck; I go to bed and awaken to find Amanda Marcotte has resigned from John Edwards’ campaign, and everyone in the blogosphere has already analyzed this and picked it apart.

On the discussion thread underneath the resignation announcement last night, Marcotte explained that her “apology” of last week wasn’t really an apology.

On the why did I apologize thing—I never apologized for my opinions or beliefs. I do feel bad if people read my comments out of context and are hurt, but I don’t think that’s my fault so much as the fault of people who take my writing out of context.

Got it? If you’re offended, it’s your fault, not hers. Why Edwards ever associated with this character is becoming exponentially more baffling.

Something seems quite odd about this sequence of events. As of last Friday, we can presume that Marcotte really didn’t want to leave the campaign. She was willing to “apologize” and presumably didn’t offer her resignation when the controversy was coming to a boil.

We can presume that the review of “Children of Men” and a prominent Catholic Democrat essentially saying, “Hey, Edwards, this is getting ridiculous,” were triggers to last night’s events. Ben Smith lays it out:

[From Marcotte's review:] “The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels,” she writes, contrasting that to the movie’s re-interpretation.

Brian O’Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader, who attacked Edwards the first time round, just came out with a statement: ”The blogger’s continuing hostility to Catholics and other Christians, especially in the centrality of the Virgin birth, is both morally wrong and, for Senator Edwards, politically stupid. Senator Edwards was horribly flawed in refusing to see the importance of how offensive the blogger’s earlier comments were to people of faith. This latest so-called review, published after Edwards refused to fire her for earlier anti-Catholic writings, should now wake him up and lead him to finally do the right thing as his campaign tries to move forward. Bigotry of any kind should have no role in the Democratic Party, or in any presidential campaign.”

O’Dwyer, also, is hard to cast as a GOP hitman. He’s the chairman of the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, the Democratic Party’s official white-ethnic grouping; close to some labor union leaders; and a leading member of a prominent New York Democratic family.

As Ace notes, “And Edwards is even more on the hook for this [stuff] now — not only did he hire her, he re-affirmed the decision to hire her.”

Again, I don’t quite get it. Edwards had his chance to distance himself from her way-out-of-the-mainstream disdain for organized religion, and he chose not to; instead he accepted the most unconvincing apology in recent memory.

Did Marcotte decide she preferred being a “martyr” for her cause than the paycheck from the Edwards campaign?

Was this not quite a resignation? In other words, “did she jump or was she pushed”?

On paper, Edwards would seem to get credit from the lefty blog community for not firing Marcotte. But the early reaction is mixed; there are some accusations that Edwards “knuckled under.” It’s being scored as a win for Bill Donahue. On the other hand, everyone who was offended by the fact that Edwards would hire someone who makes semen jokes about Mary now knows that, as a rival Democratic campaign put it, “he’s more afraid of the netroots than the Catholics.”

Did this turn into a lose-lose for Edwards?

Another comment from MyDD: “The only thing missing from Marcotte’s statement was her desire to spend more time with her family.”

Also, she had additional comments last night:

Thanks, all. I’m the writer that I am because I am, but in my real life, I’m someone who keeps her head down and works hard at what I do. Above all else, the fact that this was putting a wrench into my abilities to do the job I was hired to do was killing me. I was eager to get to work talking policy, garnering support, you know—my job. At this point, I bet Bill Donohue would jump into a Wendy’s and stand on the counter and start saying, “I WILL STAND HERE BLOWING NOXIOUS FARTS UNTIL YOU FIRE THE ENTIRE STAFF.” For no reason.

Wow. Yeah, that’s one talented writer that Edwards lost. Also, she writes:

Todd, I 100% agree that this was a targeted hit on atheists in politics.

Yeah, that was the issue. Finally, her final comment of the evening was:

All people claiming to be good Christians who agitated for me to be fired, one question: Who would Jesus witchhunt? 

Think hard before answering, [a-word]s.

Don’t you hate these “witch hunts” and “smear campaigns” that consist of quoting someone accurately?

Presuming it was a genuine resignation… if you’re a Democratic candidate, don’t the netroots look like heavily-shaken nitroglycerin right about now? Think about it, you embrace them, they embarrass you by alienating a demographic you’re courting; you consider firing them, they raise hell and promise campaigns of vengeance; you stand by them, take the hit… and then they quit on you, and everybody thinks you fired them anyway.

With scenarios like this floating around, how in the world is embracing the blogs worth the trouble?

The issue isn’t the technology; it’s the temperament.

UPDATE: The drama continues. Another blogger at Marcotte’s site is encouraging readers to file complaints against the Catholic League to the IRS, claiming that it violated its nonprofit status by engaging in “a political campaign intervention.”

As a commenter on that thread notes:

From the IRS fact sheet on political campaign intervention, FS-2006-17:

 

“The political campaign intervention prohibition is not intended to restrict free expression on political matters by leaders of organizations speaking for themselves, as individuals. Nor are leaders prohibited from speaking about important issues of public policy.”

 

Unless you can show that Mr. Donohue: a) asked his supporters to vote against John Edwards; and b) made his request in an official capacity — at an organization meeting or in an organization publication . . . then there’s nothing to see here. Mr. Donohue was within his rights to say what he did. With respect, all of you should move on.

 

Did Donahue say, at any point, “Don’t vote for John Edwards”?

I think Ben Smith is making a bit much out of one reference to the “mainstream media” by Obama.

Barack Obama used his first news conference after announcing his run for president to accuse the media of ignoring his substantive record and falsely depicting him as a lightweight.

“The problem’s not that the info’s not out there,” he said of his record on policy issues. “The problem is that that’s not what you guys have been reporting on. You’ve been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit.”

Obama’s peevish comment reflected an ambivalent relationship with the national media, rooted in his transformation from an obscure Chicago politician into a bona fide celebrity over just 2 1/2 years. Obama has been the subject of almost entirely favorable coverage from the national media, and his aides acknowledge that he’s parlayed that new profile into his presidential campaign. But Obama also espouses a new brand of politics aimed at transcending the celebrity obsessions and superficiality promoted by modern 24-hour news cycles. …

At the Ames press conference – the only such event of the weekend of his announcement – Obama departed from the standard question-and-answer exchange to assert his displeasure with what he said he sees as a developing storyline in the “mainstream media” – a term typically employed by its critics.

“One of the narratives that’s established itself among the mainstream media this notion, ‘Well you know, Obama has a pretty good style, he can deliver a pretty good speech, but he seems to prioritize rhetoric over substance,’” Obama said. “Well, factually, that’s incorrect.”

Is Obama actually exhibiting a “peevish” attitude toward the media, as the headline claims? Or is he basically saying, “Don’t call me a lightweight?”

Similarly, one can ask, “if Barack Obama is complaining about his press, doesn’t this pretty much mean every candidate is always complaining about his press?”

Yesterday, in response to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that she never voted for pre-emptive war, we asked, “what, exactly, she thought President Bush was going to do with the authority to use military force against Iraq?”

This is likely to be the biggest issue facing Clinton’s campaign in the coming months.

Matt Yglesias is reaching the “don’t lie to me like I’m Montel Williams” stage of incredulousness:

The interesting question is why Clinton’s campaign thinks she can get away with it. Most presidential candidates at least feel the need to nod in the direction of the anti-war liberals who will cast most of the primary votes. Team Clinton, however, seems to think that the liberal base – particularly African-Americans and women – are so entranced by her starpower that they’ll swallow anything, including the bizarre up-is-downism implicit in her revisionist history of the war.

Mickey Kaus:

…that’s a bit different than simply stubbornly refusing to apologize for your support; it’s trying to deny that you have anything to refuse to apologize for! And it’s kind of pathetic. Hillary’s had a long time to think about what she’d say in this situation. Not even her husband could get away with that much slickness.

Edwards has already jabbed at Hillary over the war. I wonder if, or when, Obama will take a shot at this fairly easy target.

We’re all familiar with the senatorial curse in presidential campaigns – last senator elected was John F. Kennedy; failed runs by Kerry, Dole; former senator Gore fell short, McCain, Hatch, Biden… etc. By comparison, we’ve been on a roll with governors and former governors – George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter…

Anyway, there are many theories about this, but generally they boil down to the sense that governorships are executive branch leadership positions, little mini-presidencies with motorcades, bill-signing ceremonies, rose garden addresses in the executive mansion, vetoes, inspection of disaster sites… they often set the agenda and are always in the spotlight, at least in his or her state. By comparison, a senator is one of a hundred voices that spends all of his time reacting to the agenda of the Senate leadership, and often ends up making some enemies along the way by voting the wrong way.

A recent Giuliani speech illustrated the advantage he (and Romney, and Richardson) have that McCain, Brownback, Hillary, and Obama don’t have. (Hat tip, RedState.)

“In the business world, if two weeks were spent on a nonbinding resolution, it would be considered nonproductive,” Giuliani told the lunch crowd, setting off a burst of laughter.

He called the concept “a comment without making a decision.” America, he added, is “very fortunate to have President Bush.”

“Presidents can’t do nonbinding resolutions. Presidents have to make decisions and move the country forward, and that’s the kind of president that I would like to be, a president who makes decisions.”

The true anti-war crowd are irriated with these resolutions, because they won’t really change anything. The pro-war crowd are irritated, because they see the resolutions as a great big “we think you’re doomed” message to the troops. And the resolutions keep changing – from Biden’s, to Warner’s, to McCain’s… any senator has to react to this constantly-shifting debate and vote decision on a resolution that is, ultimately, pretty meaningless.

On Meet the Press yesterday:

MR. RUSSERT: Howard Kurtz, no parsing, no denial, saying in his own words, not being coy, that’s somewhat unusual for many politicians when they clearly change their mind.

MR. HOWARD KURTZ: Clearly you just wore him down, Tim, he got tired of saying no to you. He figured he may as well run or he’ll just keep getting these questions. Look, I haven’t seen a politician get this kind of walk-on-water coverage since Colin Powell a dozen years ago flirted with making a run for the White House. I mean, it is amazing. You know, you, you could say the chord that he has touched in the country, but also in journalists, but, at the same time, a guy with all of two years experience in the United States Senate getting coverage that ranges from positive to glowing to even gushing.

Can we acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, Americans as a whole and the press in particular would really like to see an African-American president? And that with all of this enthusiasm, this not-so-subtle cheering, this yearning for an African-American to give us a real-life David Palmer, that maybe it’s getting a little silly to ask whether Americans are ready for an African-American president?

Later Roger Simon (not the blogger, the other one) points it out directly:

MR. SIMON: Yes. He is not the candidate of Washington. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of Washington. That’s his message. He does not want to be the Washington insider. And in fact, he changed his mind about running when the analysis that he made and the polling he did showed that Hillary Clinton was beatable for the Democratic nomination. Also, I think, the, the real theme of this campaign is that it has become a litmus test for how much racial healing has taken place in this country. He says it’s audacious. He says it’s improbable. By implication, it is. If America actually nominates him and then votes for him for president and elects him, this will be a sign that we are a good and decent country that has healed its racial wounds. Now, Jesse Jackson had a same subtext, but Barack Obama is a much different politician than Jesse Jackson—much less threatening, much more appealing, and he actually has the ability to carry this off.

Of course, the inverse of this is the suggestion that if Obama loses, then we are not a good and decent country that has healed its racial wounds.

Bob Novak reports that Hillary is losing Hollywood to Obama.

The buzz in Democratic circles for the past two weeks has been over the decision to raise money for Sen. Barack Obama by two or three multi-millionaire liberals from Hollywood, who were previously thought to be supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. An explanation that this is the movie industry’s delayed reaction against some of President Bill Clinton’s policies is not credible. The real reason for the defection is more troubling for Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

My first instinct was “the movie industry’s delayed reaction against some of Clinton’s policies”? Like what, somebody’s invite to a Lincoln Bedroom sleepover got lost in the mail? But Novak explains:

Two theories for these defections have been put out by Democrats favorable to Clinton. First, the gay community in Hollywood is seeking revenge against President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy restricting open homosexuality in military service. Second, the entertainment industry still harbors resentment about Clinton-Gore Administration criticism of the material that is presented to children.

But these explanations defy reality, in the opinion of Democrats not yet committed to any candidate. Hollywood, including the DreamWorks producers, was solidly behind Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996 and then Al Gore’s campaign in 2000.

And then Novak homes in on a word that we’re going to hear associated with Clinton a gread deal over the next year or so: “caution.”

I wonder if Hillary Clinton learned the lesson of her health care debacle too well. Having been burned by being too radical and proposing a sweeping change, she has been inclined to propose boring gradual half-measures ever since…

While Obama was announcing in Illinois, Hillary was in New Hampshire this weekend. Continuing to listen to voters. And, you know, talk to them, too. The Post tells us:

Clinton veered away from drawing simple conclusions on issues such as the war in Iraq and health care, insisting that each is a complex problem that does not lend itself to a simple solution.

No easy answers – hooray! Somewhat seriously, that can’t be what the party’s base voters wanted to hear.

Meanwhile, Don Surber notices that Hillary is insisting that when she voted for the Iraq War resolution, she’s claiming she “wasn’t voting for pre-emptive war.” I think I will have a rare moment of agreement with her critics on the left who are asking, what, exactly, she thought President Bush was going to do with the authority to use military force against Iraq?

Senator, your explanatory options are A) you didn’t really read the resolution before you voted for it B) you are being disingenuous, and hope that no blogger or voter actually goes back and checks what the resolution said or C) you have been afflicted by amnesia.

On a related note, something I’ve been wondering about Hillary’s unexpected “conservative” initiatives of the past few years: Does Hillary Clinton honestly believe that a skeptic who sees her as liberalism incarnate is going to look at her proposals to ban flag-burning and Grand Theft Auto and say, “whoa, I was mistaken there – she’s really a moderate”?

And maybe I’m projecting my policy priorities onto the rest of the country, but is there any American for whom flag-burning and violent video games are their top two priorities? Top two out of, say, top five?

So Barack Obama jumped into the presidential race with both feet this weekend, in an announcement speech that was probably one the best, and most enthusiastically received, in a long time. A quick reaction to various sections:

The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we’ve changed this country before. In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees. In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free. In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty. We welcomed immigrants to our shores, we opened railroads to the west, we landed a man on the moon, and we heard a King’s call to let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

That’s what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people. It is because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we are no longer divided, North and South, slave and free. It is because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people — as Americans.

Did I just detect the slightest of brushbacks against multiculturalism?

What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

I’m about halfway there, Senator. I’m getting a little tired of the “smallness of our politics”/partisanship as a bogeyman theme; but I’m with you on the “chronic avoidance of tough decisions” (entitlement reform) and “distracted by the petty and trivial” (plastic turkey!).

For the last six years we’ve been told that our mounting debts don’t matter, we’ve been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we’ve been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight.

And… he lost me. Okay, Senator, let’s see some quotes. Who in American politics has said, “the anxiety over rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion”? I know some people have argued that wages are growing. But I don’t think I’ve heard anyone on either side of the aisle declare that our anxieties are illusions. And even the most ardent war supporter argues that America needs “ill-conceived wars” (what are well-conceived wars?) or who argues that America doesn’t need diplomacy and strategy. And foresight is easier when you back the status quo. Life, particularly in international relations, is inherently unpredictable.

Die, straw man, die!

And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what’s filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who’ve turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we’re here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It’s time to turn the page.

Skipping ahead a bit…

Let’s recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability.

This should be interesting. What constitutes “accountability”, Senator? Because we’ve seen plenty of funding and pay hikes over the years, but waiting for the teachers’ unions to embrace accountability is like waiting for Godot.

I’ll skip over the next section and simply refer you to David Frum, who picks apart Obama’s other promises the way Peyton Manning picked apart the Bears’ defense – going after the soft, exposed underbelly.

Obama seems like a really decent guy, and it’s nice to hear a candidate who seems to buy whole hog into some old-fashioned notions, such as the greatness of this country and the nobility of our Founding Fathers. We get the occasional sop to conservative ideas, like  “when a child turns to violence, there’s a hole in his heart no government could ever fill,” “more money and programs alone will not get us where we need to go. Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility.” And it’s really nice to see a Democratic candidate come along and essentially renounce Howard-Dean-ism, the angry, red-in-the-face politics of “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.”

But Obama laid out a tall order in this speech, an ambitious agenda to make dramatic improvements in all sorts of areas of American life. And when he did give a dash of policy prescriptions, there’s very little to differentiate the Illinois Senator from any other standard-issue Democrat.

He’s earned a long look from the American people, and he’ll get one. But right now, it remains to be seen if he’ll live up to the Audacity of Hype.

On paper, we should be entering the most interesting part of the primary season. Everybody begins with the same cliché-ridden announcement speeches – come with me to a better tomorrow, let’s build a bridge to the 21^st Century, or “crown thy good, America, crown thy good.”

In the closing weeks before the Iowa caucuses, everybody will be too busy pointing out that once, twenty-seven years ago, senator so-and-so once lamented, sotto voce, that he doesn’t really care about ethanol that much and thus demonstrated a lack of compassion for the hard working American farmer.

What we should be enjoying right now are the candidates unveiling the first broad outlines of their policy proposals. In their announcement speeches, every aspiring commander in chief laid out that they want – surprise! – a better America, and lately that means (yawn) a safer and secure country, a strong economy, energy independence, a cleaner environment, blah blah blah. They’ve explained the what; now they have to lay out the how.

This is why it would be good to see candidates announcing their First Draft Plans.

Andrew Ferguson made the argument last year that negative ads are good for you, in a sense that the difference between a negative ad and a positive one is that a negative ad has a fact in it. When a candidate runs an ad showing him in front of implausibly cheerful schoolkids declaring, “I want better schools for our children, because I believe the children are our future; teach them well and they will lead the way,” there’s nothing for the opponent react to (other than the grave offense of echoing Whitney Houston lyrics). The candidate is just talking intentions and desires. And since few candidates campaign on promises of worse schools, higher taxes, lousy public services, etc., the campaign turns on who has the more appealing-sounding platitudes.

A negative ad – “My opponent voted to cut school funding” at least has some sort of past decision by a candidate that can be criticized or defended. The discussion gets beyond intentions to actual decisions and consequences.

John Edwards came out with some details to his health care plan a little while back. The problem with unveiling a detailed plan is that it provides actual ideas and facts to pick apart, and if a candidate is honest enough to include the fine print, it will inevitably include some sort of unpopular flaw, like tax hikes on incomes that few would define as “the rich” or benefit cuts or denying any federal aid to anyone left-handed or what have you.

So if Edwards comes out and realizes, “wow, this part of the plan doesn’t seem like a good idea,” if he withdraws it, he’ll be accused of flip-flopping. This encourages even more caution and lack of detail in policy proposals.

It would be nice if a candidate could come out and say, “yeah, I dropped that idea, the response suggested that it would just never pass.” So I propose every candidate gets at least one free pass, one bad idea that they can throw out to the public as a trial balloon. Presumably the candidate and his advisers are engaging in self-critique and thinking these things through, but they deserve the liberty of risking a bad idea. And after seeing the reaction and having their proposals picked apart by policy experts, think tank issue gurus, columnists, etc., then the candidates, closer to those first primaries, can offer their Revised Plans that they can be held more accountable for.

Greg Pollowitz, the Sixers guy, notes that John Edwards’ blog is allowing user posts to go through, including someone who posted Iowahawk’s parody of a memo from Amanda Marcotte to John Edwards. (Warning, graphic language. As you might expect in a parody of her.)

Greg observes, “If you’re using your blog, as Edwards is, as your primary window to the world, you can’t let this stuff get on.  There’s something broken in his campaign that allows these two to get hired in the first place, as well as allows profanity laced commentary to get posted to his site.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Not Ready for Prime Time Bloggers!

You listen to enough announcement speeches, and you begin to get a sense of what’s garnering praise in the focus groups, and what isn’t. Here’s what I figure the ideal speech would sound like:

“Energy independence by [future date year]: I will figure out how later, but I think it will involve windmills. Perhaps tilting at them.”

“I will denounce the administration for being way too optimistic in its planning about Iraq, and offer my own plan for withdrawal, which requires LSD to achieve the wild-eyed optimism necessary to believe it will work without ending in an even bloodier mess.”

(You know, something like, “The great drawback of my own position is that it requires the United States to stand back as genocide takes place.” Kudos for honesty, but that little drawback ought to amount to more than a footnote in the arguments of the withdraw-now crowd.)

“Health care is a right, not a privilege, and thus, I am willing to throw out the entire concept of fee-for-service and compensation for health care workers out the window, and force doctors into treating patients for rates that I as Supreme Leader of America will deem fair.”

“I support our troops. I think their mission is wrong, doomed, illegal, and I will instinctively believe every tale of their misdeeds on al-Jazeera, but other than that, I support the troops.”

“As President, I will give you free stuff, and make sure somebody else pays for it.”

Fallout from the Edwards bloggers:

“We’re completely invisible to this debate,” said Eduardo Penalver, a Cornell University law professor who writes for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal. He said he was dissatisfied with the Edwards campaign’s response. “As a constituency, the Christian left isn’t taken all that seriously,” Penalver said…

“We have gone so far to rebuild that coalition [between Democrats and religious Christians] and something like this sets it back,” said Brian O’Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader who chairs the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, a Democratic Party group. O’Dwyer said Edwards should have fired the bloggers. “It’s not only wrong morally – it’s stupid politically.”

O’Dwyer e-mailed a statement to reporters saying: “Senator Edwards is condoning bigotry by keeping the two bloggers on his staff. Playing to the cheap seats with anti-Catholic bigotry has no place in the Democratic Party.”

In a comment that several Catholic Democrats told The Politico they found particularly offensive, Edwards aide Amanda Marcotte asked, in a posting to her personal blog, ”What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?”

…And so religious liberals find themselves in a quandary. They have no interest in associating with the likes of William Donohue, the Catholic League president who is closely aligned with the GOP and led the charge against Edwards’ aides. Donohue said Thursday he would take out newspaper advertisements attacking Edwards as anti-Catholic. But religious liberals also think Edwards’ aides merit more than a slap on the wrist.

“I thought his explanation was not satisfying,” said Cornell’s Penalver. “It’s obvious that they did mean to give offense.”

“You imagine a similar kind of comment directed at the Jewish community or at the gay community – something at this level of intentional offensiveness — and I have a hard time believing it gets resolved in the same way,” he said.

I feel for these Catholic Democrats, I really do. For one reason or another, they don’t feel at home in the Republican party, and would prefer to stay in (I’ll bet) the party of their fathers and grandfathers, the party of the first Catholic president, the party that used to be dominated by hard-drinking Irishmen like Tip O’Neill, the party that put Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket.

And now it’s the party where the cost/benefit analysis of whether having a Mary-semen joker is worth keeping on staff concludes that it’s risker to fire them than to keep them on. It’s not enough that the party’s policies on gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, school vouchers, etc. probably rankle on these Catholic Dems. Now they’ve got to warmly embrace those who wouldn’t hesitate to call them “Christofascist”, and then pretend that “no offense was intended.” (See, this is where I have trouble with the whole, “turn the other cheek” teaching.)

It’s not just that they have to share a party with people who loathe their faith; they have to play along and pretend that these two “didn’t mean to give offense.”

Me? I couldn’t do it. But talk to me when somebody on the GOP side is speaking at Bob Jones University.

UPDATE: An unnamed adviser to a rival campaign, on Slate: “Apparently they’re more afraid of the bloggers than they are of the Catholics.” Do you smell a future attack ad brewing?

Barack Obama is skipping the Nevada Democratic Party forum in Carson City this month.

I’m with you, Senator. Hold out for Vegas.

In other news, Donatella Versace is offering Hillary Clinton fashion advice. Insert your preferred punchline here.

Edwards issues a statement, declaring that while he was personally offended by what his bloggers wrote, he will not be firing them.

Marcotte also did not comment publicly until the campaign’s statement was released. McEwan defended herself Tuesday in a two-sentence posting on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, that noted her vote for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

“I’m not going to say a lot about this right now, but suffice it to say that the fact I cast a vote, without hesitation, for a Catholic during the last presidential election might suggest I’m not anti-Catholic,” her post read. “My degree from Loyola University might also suggest the same.”

It might suggest that; or it might suggest that she is only respectful to Catholics who agree with her. Once she encounters someone who believes in the doctrine of the faith, she mimics scenes from “The Exorcist” in terms of vulgar sneering and snide sexualization of figures central to the faith like Mary.

McEwen also posted the statement that the Edwards campaign distributed on Shakespeare’s Sister on Thursday. Her portion said that she doesn’t expect Edwards to agree with everything she’s posted, but they share “an unwavering support of religious freedom and a deep respect for diverse beliefs.

“It has never been my intention to disparage people’s individual faith, and I’m sorry if my words were taken in that way,” McEwen’s statement said.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Marcotte’s statement said her writings on religion on her blog, Pandagon, are generally satirical criticisms of public policies and politics.

“My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics,” Marcotte said. “Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are central rights, and the sum of my personal writings is a testament to this fact.”

Sigh. Why? Why can no one say, ”I’m sorry I offended you,” instead of “I’m sorry you were offended”? The former says, “I did something wrong.” The latter says, “I’m sorry you’re too sensitive.” Why, why, why?

Good luck, whoever the ultimate coordinator for “Catholics For Edwards” is.

Via Instapundit, we learn that the average cross-country flight in a private plane produces three times the amount of CO2 emissions in six hours than the average American does in a year.

This factoid ought to be thrown in the face of every lawmaker, activist, and do-gooder who wants to restrict economic activity by the masses and raise taxes on energy use. When society’s elites are willing to give up their private planes, I’ll be willing to make more sacrifices.

When the campaigns start attracting larger entourages, it should be fun to see who’s calling for the most stringent restrictions on CO2 emissions, and then to calculate which candidates are actually generating the most emissions during their campaign by flying around the country…

Of course, Nancy Pelosi is/was scheduled to take a Chevy Tahoe (15 miles per gallon in the city) from her Georgetown home to a hearing on global warming. (There is some possibility that she or her staff will wake up to the ludicrous double standard and take a hybrid or something.)

On the discussion thread of the link above, a reader makes the security argument for Pelosi, as she is third in line for the presidency, and the weight, size, and space of an SUV offer security benefits. That’s a fair point, but when she and other environmentalists rail against SUVs, (and then are excempted from federal gasoline taxes for work travel), it reinforces the argument that the elites believe in one standard for themselves and another for the rest of us.

Quinnipiac University pollsters took a look at Pennsylvania and released the results this morning.

Pennsylvania voters back former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani by a narrow 47 – 44 percent over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Arizona Sen. John McCain gets 46 percent to Sen. Clinton’s 45 percent, a tie. In other matchups, Clinton leads 53 – 34 percent over Romney; McCain leads 46 – 39 percent over Obama; McCain leads 47 – 42 percent over Edwards.

In a Pennsylvania primary, Clinton leads the Democratic pack with 37 percent, followed by 11 percent each for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards and former Vice President Al Gore.  Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden gets 5 percent.

Giuliani leads the Republican field with 30 percent, with 20 percent for McCain, 14 percent for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 4 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Not many surprises here; obviously Romney needs to boost his profile a bit compared to McCain and Giuliani, and anyone who wants to challenge Hillary has a ways to go. But, as I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s early. Really early.

UPDATE: I meant to link yesterday to David Weigel’s exploration of Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and Hillary’s 2006 Senate campaign. Against opponents so weak they might as well not exist, Obama demonstrated considerably more crossover appeal.

Obama could actually have a secret slogan very appealing to conservatives: “Together, We Can End The Hillary Presidency Before It Starts.”