Here’s the opening of my column at Time.com (which Kathryn has kindly added to the NRO web briefing):

John McCain is trying to take the halo off Barack Obama and portray him as a typical flip-flopping politician. “He’s a calculating politician,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a top McCain ally, says of Obama in a typical remark. Obama is making the Republicans’ work easy. He is changing position after position, at the cost of sullying his reputation as a man who wants to change politics as usual. The candidates’ strategies dovetail perfectly — which means one of them is making a big mistake.