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This will be one odd Fourth of July. President-to-be-most-likely Barack Obama gave speeches this week on patriotism, on values, on religious groups playing a bigger role (delivered to "Faith in America"! ) in the nation, corralling the center (he hopes), while the stock market tanks, people get loans to fill up their gas tanks, California is burning, fireworks being outlawed, Fox News losing viewers, but old Rush gets a rush from his new many millions contract. John McCain might have trouble keeping the base happy, but not Limbaugh. I listened to him for a year, wrote about it in my '96 campaign book, and am impressed he's managed to triumph over his troubles (drug habit, subsequent hearing loss, fatness, etc.) Rush can't make it on TV, but radio, his audience, at least, loves him. Speaking of seeing, rather than just hearing, most Americans can visualize Barack Obama as President, but they are still trying to focus picturing Michele as First Lady. But, it's equally hard to focus on Cindy McCain as First Lady, too. So all that might end up a wash.

Well, it's unity everywhere, or at least in Unity, New Hampshire, Senators Obama and Clinton smiling wildly at each other. More wild is Bill Clinton, unaccounted for, sulking, his hopes dashed, the boy from Hope hopeless, till he figures how to be the Come Back Kid once again. Meanwhile, Barack Obama already appears to be president, if the press conference he held in Chicago yesterday is any indicator. It seemed like a presidential press conference; Obama exuded a bit of impatience, mentioning that he had answered such questions before, talked in the measured tones of someone with his hands on the levers of power. Reporters differed to him as if he was already elected. Perhaps Obama's performance seemed presidential, since Bush's appearances recently seem slightly surreal, more Bush jokes than substance, Bush kidding around as if he can't wait for his term to be over. Though coincidental, it isn't difficult to watch the disputed election fiasco in Zimbabwe to be an Africanized version of the 2000 presidential election, Florida style, Robert Mugabe taking on the W. role. It's a cartoon version, of course, except for the Zimbabweans, especially those who have been assaulted or killed. Where is Donald Rumsfeld to give his political analysis of this young democracy and say stuff happens, ala Iraq?

Summer's slowing down most everything political, so much so that we're lost in town hall mania, John McCain style. He wants one held most every week, with Barack Obama in attendance, so the old war hero can poke fun at mister smarty pants. And Ronald Reagan's widow has just announced that her husband's library out in a lovely part of California is available as a setting anytime it's needed. Obama's people are a little reluctant to get involved is this love fest of highly managed citizen participation. Way back when, when Joe McGinniss wrote The Selling of the President 1968, these staged formats were Richard Nixon's favorite. But everyone wants a break, a vacation, from campaigning; indeed, exhaustion is being given as a reason that Obama chose Jim Johnson for his veep screening team, now that Johnson has bailed out, given the bad publicity he generated just for being who he is. (My mention of him last week was doubtless the last straw.) McCain has been losing people for months after their biographies are made public; usually it's the long list of lobbying efforts trailing them being the cause to jump. In Obama's case, one commentator on Diane Rehm's Friday news roundup show expressed disbelief that Obama, being a Harvard Law School graduate, didn't have a trusted brilliant lawyer friend to name to his veep committee. She didn't seem to recollect that Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, Yale Law School graduates, had the same problem when they hit town and moved into the White House. It's hard to gain trusted friends when you're accelerating through space so quickly. And some of Obama's Chicago friends were only showing up at the local political operator Tony Rezko's trial, including defendant Rezko himself. It's a problem with hitting the big time so soon. There's likely to be more betrayed friends than trusted friends.

The primaries are finally over and the buyer's remorse seems right around the corner. Even Barack Obama has been sporting "How did this happen?" expressions in photographs various newspaper editors have chosen to run. Hillary Clinton's concession speech today, though, apparently was the hottest ticket in town, almost any town, though the event was held in Washington, D.C.. Though Sen. Clinton said she would throw her "full support" behind nominee to be Obama, she's not throwing her delegates his way yet, since she merely "suspended" her campaign, a fund raising ploy and her ticket to mischief in the convention to come at summer's end. And, speaking of mischief, when Bill Clinton called the author of a Vanity Fair article, which insinuates a lot of both smoke and fire on the Bubba behavior front, "slimy," it was a veracity endorsement of sort. The former president claimed there were "five or six blatant lies in there," in the article, though that sort of non-denial denial leaves all the rest of the innuendo certified. The timing of the article and Clinton's tirade, coming as it has on the heels of Obama's elevation, seems to have put another nail into the coffin of an Obama/Clinton ticket. The notoriety of a barely published magazine article screams "Here's What to Expect!" if Hillary is put on the ticket. But, with all of Barack Obama's "Change" theme, one thing he did not change was the makeup of his veep selection team. There is Caroline Kennedy (the next Cheney, the one to pick herself?), Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton (and there was so much good luck in picking an actual attorney general in Bill's administration), and, the coup de grace, Jim Johnson, the former head of Fannie Mae (subprime city now), who was instrumental in picking the wonderful veep choices of both Geraldine Ferraro and John Edwards. Now those were some picks!

Hillary Clinton has been taking heat for her recent remarks to the editorial board of the Argus Leader, a paper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. As usual, she was defending her continuing campaigning and, evidently, said, "You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." So, all media outposts have taken her to task for airing the subject, assigning her an inner wish-fulfillment motive; her own explanation, she said, was having Ted Kennedy's cancer on her mind. What it brings to my mind is the subject of assassination itself and how times have changed.

Why should Hillary Clinton be the veep choice? It isn't just because when the two top primary contenders in both parties, however nasty to each other during the race (indeed, it may be a requirement), they usually win if paired on the ticket--see JFK LBJ, Reagan/GHWB--it is because putting Hillary second would actually disarm the Republican attack machine, remove from its arsenal all the anti-Obama things Clinton herself and her people may have uttered over the long primary season. It defuses criticism by means of the audacity (a word Obama loves) of the choice; hold your enemies closer, etc. The Republicans would have to attack the entire ticket, which they plan to do in any case. They just won't be able to effectively use Clinton clips. The downside criticism one hears is that it would marshal the Hillary haters out there, but even haters find it hard to muster the energy to go after the second name on the ticket with much ferocity. Dan Quayle, who helped George H.W. Bush lose his second term, stands as a counter example; he brought most of his unflattering media attention on himself, by acting like such a boob. The veep candidate has to go out of his/her way to drag down a ticket. And the do-no-harm kind of pick often does harm by omission. John Edwards brought the Kerry campaign nothing; if Hillary became the nominee and not picked Obama, she would have been making the same mistake Obama would make by not selecting her. Some in the past have offered up our Evan Bayh as a possible Clinton running mate; he would have been Edwards squared, though raising the chances, but not to the level of a sure thing, of winning the state .

John Edwards was a failed candidate and he has turned into a failed endorser. Indeed, his "news" did step on Sen. Clinton's victory in West Virginia; that was a plus for Obama, but more so for the larger media, which wasn't going to promote that contest's outcome, except for the white-boys-can't-jump-or-vote-for-Obama angle. Edwards' nod to the senator from Illinois seemed to be the go-with-the-winner sort, a little late in the day, whereas before the North Carolina primary it might have done more good, or not, since Obama was slated to win big there in any case. Perhaps Obama's camp thought it might cost them votes, since Edwards didn't win the state when he was on the ticket in 2004. Hillary Clinton's campaign now seems to be in a holding pattern for the vice presidency. Making nice towards Barack, who she has now deemed presidential enough. And speaking of endorsements, The Catholic League's endorsement of John McCain, via the effusive embrace of Pastor John Hagee's "apology" for his anti-Catholic spiels, is a corker.

It's over, at last. The Indiana primary, that is, not Hillary Clinton's march to the Oval Office, though most every outlet has called it quits for the Senator. Their proof, though not often mentioned, is that she has been loaning her campaign more of Bill's lavish, unspeakably high, speaking fees. But she still won Indiana and by winning, however closely, helped Jill Long Thompson to win, however closely, the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, giving her the chance to go up against MY MAN MITCH. "Jillary" was the true insurgent candidate, not supported by the state's Democratic establishment and will give MMM a fight, though he will be able to swamp her with money. But she has a chance, whereas the architect would just have gone through the motions, waiting to get back to his lucrative work. So women had an effect in the Indiana primary, but not enough of an effect to give Hillary Clinton an impressive victory, just a victory. North Carolina was a different case for Obama, but who cares about North Carolina? It has been a Republican state for a number of presidential races. Bush beat Kerry there by over 400 thousand votes in 2004, a 12 percent spread. Does Barack Obama expect to find that amount of new votes for himself there in November? This remains the heart of the Hillary Clinton argument to the Superdelegates to throw their lot with her. I won the states that matter; he didn't. And there's some truth to that. Save Illinois, she has taken most of the big states that Democrats need to win. When one looks at a map of the 2004 election (here's one: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/president/ ) Kerry's states look like just a handful. It is always a surprise to realize Kerry would have won the election had he been able to win Ohio. In the primary contests Hillary Clinton won the contiguous sweep of New York state, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana. Obama won Illinois and Wisconsin. Of course, it is likely Michigan and Florida would have gone, as they sort of did, to Clinton, had the states not altered their primary dates. Again, the Democratic primary season has been haunted by the Ghost of 2000. Obama looks like Gore: he wins the cities and the college towns; and Clinton looks like Bush. She wins the open spaces. That's how Indiana went, as well as most of the states Obama has won. Ties are ties. Obama does look like the putative nominee to be, but he will have a hard time of it in the states Democrats shouldn't have a hard time in. And it certainly isn't clear what Hillary's exit strategy is, if any. But I'm sure she's considering one now. Here's my version of what it may be.

Well, there's four full days left before Indiana turns back into a pumpkin, loses its glass slipper, returns to the small media market scullery. Flaunt it while you can! I heard Mitch Daniels' grumpy interview on NPR yesterday (May Day!), recorded in his state house office. I was waiting for Michele Norris to ask him why he got the cost of the Iraq war so wrong back when he was in the Bush II administration, or why he hasn't taken more credit for the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, all before he broke away to selflessly serve the people of Indiana. My Man Mitch wanted to brag about his budget surplus, the lack of debt, but not once did he mention the privatizing of the toll road and Ms. Norris had the good sense, or ignorance, not to mention it, either. Not only does Mitch expect to be reelected, he wants the people of Indiana to cheer his reelection, thank him for his wonderful fire sale of Indiana's assets, not just pull his lever, rather than Jill Long Thompson's, or vote for the stolid Indianapolis architect, who has agreed to take one for the good of the state. But it is the Democrats that need focus here. It's hard to believe Indiana will end the presidential aspirations of Sen. Clinton. If anything can end anything, it would be North Carolina giving her a victory that would block Barack Obama's march to the nomination. But the question is, one I have myself, is Why should one vote for Hillary Clinton and not Barack Obama?

It's Indiana all Indiana all the time now. Finally, a place in the electoral sun! Obama says it's up to us. Hillary wants us bad. The national media will be pouring into town, snapping up motel/hotel rooms, the Clinton and Obama campaigns will help TV stations' balance sheets, the Hoosier on the street will be hounded for his/her opinions. Primary fever, ain't it grand? The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 is held up as the last time the state mattered, though this time it doesn't feel like 1968. In 1968 everything was darker and one reason for that is much more was mysterious back then. History now has more light shed on it, for whatever good that brings. During Sen. Clinton's victory speech in Pennsylvania, where she gathered twelve, let's hear it, twelve more pledged delegate votes, she said, with some elation, how our country "defies the odds and does the impossible," which only sadly reminded me of 9/11, where 19 jihadists really defied the odds and did the impossible, flying three planes into three targets, two with utterly catastrophic results. That is why this country is still trying to come to terms with 9/11. Our culture usually revers the underdog, the Davids versus the Golaiths, those few who gain victory over the many. One of the worse moments in our collective history mimicked one of our most dearly held popular culture fantasies: See what they got away with!