Tom Golisano continues his push for the elimination of the electoral college system.

Earlier today on Morning Joe, Golisano said, "the candidate who gets the most votes in a presidential race, should always win the White House."

Pat Buchanan countered, calling the electoral college system is an "insurance policy" against political machines that can steal elections. At the end of the segment, everyone laughs at the history of stolen elections.

In New York, Golisano has the backing of the New York Times editorial page, but not, so far, the Assembly.

"Women's softball has been associated with lesbians and being gay for a long time," said Mr. Buchanan on MSNBC's Morning Joe about Elena Kagan. "That's been sort of a signal like two men sunbathing together on a beach, or something like that. The immediate implication is that they're gay, and I've known that for a long time."

Talking Points Memo has mashed up highlights from the recent discourse on television.

(via TPMtv)

Looks like Barney Frank isn't on Team Coco. The Massachusetts senator appeared with Jay Leno last night and took the opportunity to offer his take on the Tea Party movement. (Hint: Not a fan.)

One person who might disagree with Senator Frank: Pat Buchanan, who told Hardball's Chris Matthews last night—and we're going to go ahead and present this bit without comment—that "both sides were right" during the Civil War.

That's the takeaway message from a Rasmussen poll this week, which found the former Alaska governor lagging far behind co-G.O.P. front-runners Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in head-to-head trial heats.

Against Romney, Palin's deficit was 15 points, 52 to 37 percent. Against Huckabee, the gap swelled to 20, 55 to 35. But when all three were included in the mix, Palin was more competitive, notching 18 percent—still behind Huckabee (29 percent) and Romney (24 percent), but clearly a formidable presence.

The numbers are notable for two reasons.

For one, they represent a pronounced decline for Palin since her bizarre gubernatorial resignation in July. Her wobbly performance as John McCain's running mate last fall soured middle-of-the-road voters on her, but Palin actually emerged from that campaign with deep support among the G.O.P. base; post-election polls consistently showed her running roughly even with Romney and Huckabee.

But the doubts and unease that poisoned Palin with the middle seem to be seeping into the G.O.P. base, courtesy of her resignation spectacle. The Republican base still likes her plenty, no doubt, but—more than before—they seem willing to admit that she's not exactly presidential.

Second, they establish (tentatively, of course, given the early date) a fascinating dynamic for the '12 G.O.P. race—with Palin poised to loom large in the early going of the campaign, while her opponents duke it out with each other to be the last credible non-Palin candidate standing.

As the numbers show, Palin's support stands out when the field is more crowded. If even more candidates were added to the mix—say, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty—Palin might well be back near the top. She has an intense and undying army of supporters, a core group that is unlikely to dissolve between now and '12.

This is what inspires the comparisons to Buchanan and Jackson, both of whom enjoyed similarly large and loyal bases.

Buchanan established his through his 1992 primary challenge to George H. W. Bush. He won no states and few delegates, but inflicted serious damage on the president with a strong (near 40 percent) showing the New Hampshire primary and emerged as the uncontested leader of the G.O.P.'s economic nationalist wing.

At the same tine, Buchanan's vitriolic brand of cultural conservatism and isolationist foreign policy tendencies marked him as a frightening figure to Middle America—and to a large chunk of the Republican Party. He had a big base, yes, but he also scored alarmingly high negative ratings in polls.

The benefits and limits of this profile were evident in his follow-up White House bid in 1996, when—in very crowded fields—Buchanan nearly won the Iowa caucuses with 23 percent (just behind Bob Dole's 26 percent) and did prevail in New Hampshire with 29 percent. Very briefly, Buchanan was regarded as a legitimate threat to wrest the nomination, but then reality took hold: As the field thinned, his numbers refused to budge, while Dole, his surviving opponent, saw his support swell.

Buchanan stalked Dole all the way to the convention in San Diego, but he ceased to be a credible candidate relatively early in the process; Dole routinely bested him by two-to-one (or better) margins when they went head-to-head in primaries. The final delegate count wasn't remotely competitive.

The same thing, roughly, happened with Jackson in 1988. The base he built through his 1984 campaign helped deliver a batch of victories and near-misses on Super Tuesday '88, when Jackson, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and Dick Gephardt were all serious contenders for the Democratic nod. But when the field was winnowed to just Dukakis and Jackson, the Massachusetts governor began racking up landslide wins.

Rasmussen's numbers suggest Palin is heading in the same direction. When Romney was eliminated, Huckabee picked up the lion's share of his vote, growing his lead over Palin to 20 points. And when Huckabee was eliminated, most of his voters went to Romney. Palin was the odd one out in both scenarios.

Given the trajectory of her overall poll numbers, that trend will probably intensify in the months ahead: More and more Republicans seem to be realizing that nominating Palin would, as John McCain's old campaign manager put it, be "catastrophic" for the G.O.P. This means that, if she does run (and it's certainly possible she won't), she'll be a contender in Iowa and some other early states—and she may even pull off a few wins. But once it's down to her and one other candidate, the party will unite to stop her.

“They were crackling with tension and dissent and anger and raw emotion,” Mr. Buchanan recalled recently to The Observer. “When Richard Nixon walked out there, it was the Colosseum, and everybody’s thumb was down. It was something worth covering and worth watching.”

Six months into Barack Obama’s presidency, White House press conferences have proved to hold little potential for combustibility. Instead of hand-to-hand combat, those who have tuned in on TV have been treated to the stultifying sight of a White House lullaby. Mr. President, what enchants you the most?

“Obama has an adulatory press corps,” said Mr. Buchanan. “There’s no real tension there. It’s convivial.”

And nearly unwatchable.

On Wednesday, July 23, Mr. Obama strolled into the East Room arena and proceeded to deliver arguably the most listless televised hour of his current term. With Congress still mulling over various plans for health care reform, Mr. Obama came to the American people with nothing specific to sell. Perhaps as a result, it was an affair with little seduction. In the absence of passion, Mr. Obama offered up a seemingly long series of mild-mannered rebuttals of ideas and charges from persons not in the room.

“I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to ‘go for the kill,’” said Mr. Obama. “Another Republican senator, that defeating health care reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”

It was an admirable stab at stirring up some drama, at creating some excitement around a topic and a debate that fail to inspire much emotion in Americans despite the fact that health care is a vital issue. But the effort fell flat. Worse, the president gave his best lines to his unnamed adversaries. In the end, those who welcomed him into their living rooms were left to suffer a bore. Mr. Obama didn’t exactly vomit on the rug, to borrow a phrase from The Selling of the President. It was more of a dry heave.

No wonder, then, that with each passing press conference, fewer and fewer Americans are re-issuing the invitation. Since the start of the year, President Obama has held four prime-time press conferences. According to Nielsen data, each successive foray onto national television has attracted significantly less total viewers than the last, from February’s 49.4 million on the stimulus plan to March’s 40.3 million on the economic recovery to April’s 28.8 million on the first hundred days to this most recent outing—24.6 million viewers for a press conference about the stupidity of the Cambridge police, er, health care.

Recently, The Observer spoke with a handful of seasoned political operatives who have advised various presidents over the years about media strategy. Everyone agreed that the president should be concerned about his plummeting ratings. Opinions differed, however, on where things had gone wrong.

Nicolle Wallace, the former director of communications for the White House under George W. Bush, told The Observer that she thought the president’s plunging television ratings were a symptom of other problems.

“The unpopularity of his policies is catching up with him,” Ms. Wallace wrote to The Observer via email. “He is and will probably remain very personally popular. People like him and people historically root for their president. But the country didn’t change its basic values and fundamental philosophies last November. They were intrigued by Obama and furious at the party in power. Obama has misread his ‘mandate.’ The public doesn’t want the federal government to run American companies, hire and fire CEOs or take over their health care.”

And then there was a stylistic problem: “The reliance on the prompter makes it very boring and unemotional TV,” Ms. Wallace added.

David Gergen, political consultant and adviser-to-many-presidents, chalked up Mr. Obama’s struggles last Wednesday to the subject matter. “Health care is such a complicated subject,” said Mr. Gergen. “My impression is that he handled it with great depth. But it’s hard to hold people’s attention.

“Given the complexity of the subject, he might have been better advised to give a speech with charts and graphs,” said Mr. Gergen. “Then there would also have been a structure. Here’s what’s wrong with the current system. And here, in three or four steps, is how we plan to fix it. The very nature of a press conference is that you jump from one subject to the next. It’s hard to have a logical presentation.”

But the main problem, Mr. Gergen believed, was one of frequency. The White House is scheduling Obama TV way too often. “People can get a little numb,” said Mr. Gergen. “By comparison, Franklin Roosevelt, a superb communicator, had three fireside chats in his first six months. History suggests that even the best communicators, if they go too often, wear out their welcome.”

Mr. Buchanan agreed. He suggested that Mr. Obama’s strategists should learn to use their top TV draw more sparingly. “Nixon would always tell me that he was a great admirer of the Gauls,” said Mr. Buchanan. “The sense of reserve—of distance between the head of state and the people—is something that provides a magnetism and an attraction.”

He recalled the quotation from the English essayist Walter Bagehot: “We must not let daylight in upon the magic.”

“You see this happen with the British royal family,” said Mr. Buchanan. “Familiarity breeds contempt. It loses its luster. It’s a bore.”

fgillette@observercom

Mr. Buchanan was zeroing in on John McLaughlin's annual Sunday brunch. The place you traditionally go after the weekend of frenzied socializing to see and be seen one last time and to wash down your ibuprofen with eggs and Champagne in good political company.

Mr. Buchanan walked into Teatro Goldoni, a nouveau Italian restaurant facing K Street, and surveyed the room. He was early and the place was mostly empty. Historically, Mr. McLaughin, the blustery dean of Sunday morning political roughhousing, has held the affair on the roof of the Hay-Adams hotel looking down on the White House. But this being 2009, things had been scaled down a bit.

A few minutes later, Mr. Buchanan stood in a corner, alongside his wife, who was chitchatting with Wendy Diamond, a New Yorker, who writes about pets for a living. (Manhattan life, huh?) Ms. Buchanan was wearing a shiny brooch, in the shape of a cat, on her lapel. The conversation turned to the subject of a late beloved kitty of the Buchanan household.

Mr. Buchanan launched into a reminiscence about those heady days of the early '80s, when a young Ronald Reagan took hold of the presidency and a young kitten wandered into their lives. After one particularly promising day on Capitol Hill, Mr. Buchanan, had arrived home and joyfully named their new pet after the president.

Gipper, he said, had been one hell of a cat.

A woman in a flamboyant Sunday hat charged across the room. "Hello, everybody," she said. "Thank you for coming."

Cristina Vidal McLaughlin, second wife to John, introduced herself and said hello. What parties had people gone to the night before? Ms. Diamond said that the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair after-party at the French Embassy had been amazing. Much nicer than last year's shindig at the Costa Rican embassy. Remember the leaky roof?

Ms. McLaughlin asked if anyone had ever been to Costa Rica, which, by the way, doesn't even have an army. She said that before meeting John, whom she referred to as "my shining knight," she had grown up in the Dominican Republic, which did have an army. Though sometimes she wondered why.

All of which got her started on a roundabout story, the payoff of which involved an American military gentleman, a West Point graduate, speaking insensitively about America's involvement in the Dominican Civil War of 1965. That war, Ms. McLaughlin noted, had taken the lives of some of her countrymen, her people.

"Well, not too many people died," offered Mr. Buchanan.

As it happened, he knew a thing or two about the Dominican Civil War, too. At the time of the skirmish, he said, he had been living in Washington writing editorials. L.B.J. couldn't just sit back and let another Cuba emerge in our backyard, he explained.

"Ah, the days of the empire," said Mr. Buchanan, mock wistfully.

Ms. McLaughlin frowned.

"We were protecting you from Castro!" said Mr. Buchanan playfully.

More frowning.

"Maybe I shouldn't have gone there," Mr. Buchanan said sideways to The Observer.

It was time for somebody to change the subject. Ms. Buchanan noted that John McLaughlin himself had once done some cat-sitting for the Gipper.

Some twenty-four hours earlier, the marathon round of D.C. kibitzing, that sometimes awkward mix of the professional and the personal, had kicked off at Tammy Haddad's annual garden brunch, in the verdant backyard of her home in upper northwest. In anticipation of an Obama-induced boom year, the party was outfitted with a red carpet for paparazzi on a patch of grass overlooking the driveway.

Here and there, under a steamy tent, actors stood alongside journalists and politicos: Val Kilmer, Janet Napolitano, Jake Tapper, Christian Slater, Ed Henry, Chace Crawford, Ed Schultz, David Gregory, and on and on. The Observer bumped into Bill Wolff of MSNBC.

Where was Rachel Maddow? She was skipping out on the dinner this year, said Mr. Wolff, to go to a Red Sox game and to enjoy a walking tour of gangster Whitey Bulger's old haunts in Boston. Nearby, a gossip columnist marveled at Luke Russert's outfit: Salmon shorts, loafers and a baby-blue-and-white-striped jacket. Very St. Albans Goes to Nantucket.

NBC's Ann Curry took a microphone and tried to get the crowd interested in some humanitarian causes. She was met with little response. Eventually, Ms. Haddad implored the crowd to hold up their blackberry's in the air. "Or iPhones" said Ms. Haddad. "I'm not prejudiced." Ms. Curry then proceeded to choreograph a simultaneous Mother's Day tweet. People kept drinking.

That evening, after a nap, the same crowd (plus many, many more) reemerged in formal attire at the Washington Hilton, where spirits were flowing freely at an slate of pre-dinner cocktail parties. Much to everyone's horror, the lovely, open-aired back patio was under construction, forcing the partygoers into the warren of drab, windowless rooms in the basement of the building.

Pretty soon, the hallway between the Newsweek and ABC News parties had turned into a mosh pit of power brokers and their sweaty handlers. Michael Bloomberg, Jon Bon Jovi, Chris Wallace, Natalie Portman, Stevie Wonder, Richard Belzer, Adrian Fenty, Barbara Walters—everyone jostling and elbowing for a chance to find some place to rest and have a civil conversation. There was none.

Dinner time!

Spare tickets, for the first time in recent years, were few and far between. Those who couldn't get past security to hear President Obama and Wanda Sykes left to drown their lack of importance in more cocktails elsewhere.

When dinner finally let out, it was time for the Niche Media Capitol File's after-party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A conga line of celebrities—Padma Lakshmi, Forest Whitaker, Dulé Hill, Valerie Jarrett, the Prince of Qatar, David Cross and Rachel Leigh Cook—filed into the Beaux-Arts building, its ornate interior bathed in pink lights and pulsating with hip-hop.

Fresh-faced junior staffers in short skirts stood in clusters gazing around, keeping an eye out for the celebrities. Fox News' Greta Van Susteren and her husband, lawyer John Coale, chaperoned Alaskan "first dude" Todd Palin for a lap around the party. No, they weren't interested in doing interviews, thank you very much. Nearby, the actor Tim Daly ran into Friday Night Lights' hot mom Connie Britton by the bar, where they embraced. Meghan McCain, in a form-fitting white gown, and her entourage cut a path through the party.

On the second floor, partygoers slurped mixed drinks and gazed down at all the young flesh, beginning to bump and shake on the dance floor. Slate's Mickey Kaus, in from Los Angeles, wondered if people in D.C. actually enjoyed dance music. Could everyone be faking it? A young attractive woman with editorial ambitions and a low-cut dress moved in for a frontal barrage of flattery. She recognized Mr. Kaus, she said, from Bloggingheads.tv.

There was an eruption of excitement on the dance floor below. Rahm Emmanuel was in the house. Well-wishers scrambled for a closer look.

Across town, the voltage was perking up at the Vanity Fair-Bloomberg party, which was precisely the small, intimate affair it promised to be. It took place in a mansion that belongs to the French ambassador, but easily could have been mistaken for the house in Eyes Wide Shut. It was one of those specifically D.C. nights where David Axelrod or Mother Jones' David Corn were in a conversation every time you looked up, but a star like Owen Wilson was left to his lonesome by the bar, and The Office's B.J. Novak, who has become a regular at any event in D.C. for the last year, was wandering aimlessly at several points throughout the night.

Meanwhile, others found ways to pass the time.

"He needs to figure it out, he needs to figure it out because he's a man, he's a fucking man," said an insistent Jonathan Rhys-Myers while waiting for a chance to use the bathroom. Within a few moments, he gave up on that bit of conversation and went off to give the coat-check girl a kiss, one of two women he was spotted smooching.

It was impossible to walk into a room or out onto the terrace and not see someone: Justice Antonin Scalia, James Franco, Donald Rumsfeld, Graydon Carter, Michael Bloomberg, Andrea Mitchell, David Carr, Ludacris, Jason Wu, Lally and Katharine Weymouth and editors Marcus Brauchli, James Bennet, and Rick Stengel.

But unlike last year's Bloomberg party, which was hot well past 3 a.m., this one died down at least an hour or two earlier. Two images that capped the night nicely: Valerie Jarrett and Desiree Rogers splayed on a couch, legs extended after a long day's journey into this nightcap; and VF spokeswoman Beth Kseniak with her friend Katie Couric sitting on another couch on the other side of the house, the AC blowing their hair up.

On Sunday morning, back at the McLaughlin brunch, the weekend came to a merciful end.

MSNBC contributor and former West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell chatted with Mort Zuckerman, the publisher of the New York Daily News. Mr. O'Donnell was looking L.A. chic—untucked shirt, lace-less Vans sneakers. A bleary-eyed photographer sized up the twosome. "If he can't bother to tuck in his shirt, I can't bother to tell him to," said the shutterbug, and snapped the picture.

Mr. McLaughlin's orthopaedic surgeon, stood nearby, nursing a drink.

Shortly after noon, the omnipresent Mr. Corn, of Mother Jones, shook hands with the host, and excused himself to go watch his kid's soccer game. The Observer swooped in and asked the host for his impressions of the weekend. Mr. McLaughlin, always fond of scores and grades and scales, said that compared to past presidents, Mr. Obama's speech the night before scored around an 85 percent.

"I thought he was relaxed and in relatively good form," said Mr. McLaughlin. "But he could have improved on his command of the material."

So why no Hay-Adams, this year?

"We were drifting around," said Mr. McLaughlin. "And there was the economic ..." He paused. "And the appearance associated with what could be seen as an indulgence. We thought we ought to be able to work out something in between."

And with that, his young, energetic wife materialized, grabbed him by the forearm, and physically pulled him in the direction of another conversation.

Such emotional excesses arise from deep insecurities, of course, and almost always involve bouts of amnesia, hypocrisy or both. For if the wingers could be honest for even a moment, they would have to admit that all of their complaints about Mr. Obama’s diplomatic style could have been lodged just as easily against his Republican predecessors.

To take the most obvious example, commentators on the right experienced a collective seizure when the American president appeared to bow to the Saudi king last month at the G-20 summit in London. Although the White House spokesman denied that Mr. Obama had actually bowed before Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, the video indicated a dip lower than necessary to shake the monarch’s hand. For any American president—and indeed, any American—to bow to a monarch under any circumstances is an affront to the founders.

But if Mr. Obama showed too much deference to that despot, so did George W. Bush. Back when Abdullah was still the crown prince and Mr. Bush was president, the Texan planted a kiss on the Arab leader’s lips, and then held his hand publicly. This incident occurred only seven months after 9/11, when Saudi complicity in terrorism was a matter of the gravest concern. (A few conservatives complained, but nobody was calling for impeachment of the man whom many Republicans were comparing with Churchill.)

Then came the Chávez handshake, which pitched numerous right-wing pundits and politicians into full-scale political seizures, notably including Patrick Buchanan, who shrieked that Mr. Obama “went down there and virtually groveled to these characters. … I mean what is the matter with people!”  Echoing Mr. Buchanan’s ire was Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and would-be presidential aspirant.

“Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chávez smiling and being with the president as proof that Chávez is now legitimate, that he’s acceptable,” complained Gingrich. “How do you mend relationships with somebody who hates your country, who actively calls for the destruction of your country, and who wants to undermine you. … We didn’t rush over, smile and greet Russian dictators.”

Now, Mr. Gingrich was once an adjunct professor of history somewhere, so he ought to have a firmer grasp of the realities of the past. His hero Ronald Reagan certainly did rush over, smile and warmly greet the Russian dictator Mikhail Gorbachev more than once during his second term as president, much to the irritation of critics on the right (even if many of them pretend to forget those instances now). Eager to achieve landmark arms-control agreements with the Soviet leader, Reagan wisely ignored the carping of conservatives like Howard Phillips, who denounced him passionately as a “useful idiot fronting for Soviet propaganda.”

But then Reagan’s peace offensive only followed the pattern set by Mr. Buchanan’s old boss, Richard M. Nixon, whose most lasting achievement as president was to establish official relations with the People’s Republic of China. Was Nixon too friendly when he met with the rulers of the most blood-soaked Communist dictatorship on earth? Search Google for “Nixon China” and you will immediately find a nice old black-and-white photo of him gripping and grinning with Mao Zedong, an enemy of Western democracy and a remorseless executioner of the innocent. No doubt many conservatives watched that tableau in fury and astonishment, having spent decades in ideological battle against the Chicoms.

So it is permissible to yawn when the likes of Buchanan, Gingrich and the howling bloggers of the right claim that President Obama’s polite behavior toward any leader he encounters is a betrayal of America. He represents a nation sufficiently secure in its values to greet the world with malice toward none. His policy will be tested in practice, not bar-brawl theatrics.

From my perspective it was a wonderful speech. I felt the entire country exhale and breathe a sigh of relief. Here was a voice that over these past two years many of us had come to count on; possessed by a man with near perfect political pitch.  The main message was responsibility and stewardship. He called on all of us to leave behind the childish pettiness of partisan politics and remember that we are a unique community, formed from every part of the planet. As technology shrinks the size of our world and creates a global, interconnected economy and society, he noted that America's diversity got us there first and we have a responsibility to lead.

Of course as in any piece of great pubic oratory there was something for everyone. For me, he said:

• "...each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
• "Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
• "We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do."
• "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works"

And finally:

• "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

I was not the only one thrilled by President Obama's message,  I heard Conservative pundit, Pat Buchanan, laud our new President in his call for a return to: "...those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

Our new President makes you want to help him and wish him well. I have never seen anything like the flood of support and good will that he has enjoyed these last few days. It was amazing to see and could not be better timed.

Of course inauguration day is more than words, it is also symbols. The most important of these symbols is the peaceful transfer of power represented by past Presidents and Vice Presidents joining together and the great tradition of the outgoing President seated on the podium with the new President. The size of the crowd on the Capital mall and at viewing parties from coast to coast was a thrilling final act of this great pageant of democracy. On the Columbia campus, our President, Lee Bollinger hosted thousands of students, faculty and neighbors in an outdoor viewing of the ceremonies.

To inaugurate is to begin. It is more than a little scary to think of the challenges we face. The sustainability of this fragile blue island in the vacuum of space, the violence of the Mideast, the dire poverty in Africa and the economic crisis here at home. The inauguration of this President was an event of enormous affirmation and, one of unity and inclusion. President Obama referred to his own story and as he often does, used it to demonstrate how much is possible here in America.   In concluding he observed that assuming the Presidency was "a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant".  This is the promise and potential of America. While watching the ceremony and listening to Aretha sing at the start and Dr. King's colleague Rev. Joseph E. Lowery's benediction at the ceremony's end, I felt like I was dreaming- or watching an improbably sentimental and sappy movie.

But it all was real. Each of us now, in our own way must now participate in the great national renewal that President Obama spoke of on the Capital steps. January 20^th was a very moving day that we will need to remember and draw on during the difficult days that are surely ahead.

The noted television pundits were discussing Alaska Governer Sarah Palin's comments about the press as well as about bloggers from the up-coming issue of Esquire, in which she called them," Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me."

Here's a transcript of the chat per Mr. Yglesias:

As The Atlantic's Mr. Coates quipped, "Yes that crack reporter Pat Buchanan..."

But Mr. Barnicle, on the other hand, surely knows the difference between bloggers who just "get off" and real pavement-pounding journalists. He was, according to his own Web site, a columnist for The Boston Herald, The New York Daily News, and The Boston Globe for whom wrote "4,000 columns collectively."

His bio doesn't mention, however, that he's been accused repeatedly of being a plagiarist and a fabricator. In April 1998, Salon's Tom Mashberg reported that Mr. Barnicle was busted for repurposing parts of George Carlin's book Brain Droppings in a column without crediting his source. Mr. Barnicle told reporters at the time that he was "sloppy" and "lazy" but insisted he hadn't read Mr. Carlin's book.

Mr. Mashberg recounted seven other instances of Mr. Barnicle ripping off other writers (including legends like A.J. Liebling and Mike Royko) and writing about persons whom Boston Magazine—which enlisted the help of a private investigator—could not find.

Writing about Mr. Barnicle's hiring at The Daily News in March 1999, The New York Times' Felicity Barringer quoted an anonymous News editor saying, "there is a large body of opinion that worries that having an alleged plagiarist on the staff is not the smartest thing for our paper to do."

So, hey, when it comes to knowing the rules of journalism—and how bloggers just don't play 'em—Mike Barnicle knows. Mike Barnicle wrote the book on journalistic ethics, okay.

At least we think he did.

Since World War II, a basic pattern has prevailed, with one party controlling the White House for two terms, followed by the other. In the modern era, eight years seems to be about all the patience voters have with one party calling the shots. This is one of the many reasons why 2008 set up so poorly for the G.O.P., and why it’s been something of a revelation that John McCain has kept the polls close with Barack Obama.

Once in the postwar period, though, the incumbent party did what McCain and the G.O.P. are now endeavoring to do and held on for a third term – in 1988, when George H. W. Bush soundly defeated Michael Dukakis. But Bush’s presidency offers an ominous precedent for the G.O.P.’s near-term political prospects should McCain win this fall.

Obviously, the chief factor in Bush’s failure to win reelection in 1992 was the poor economy, and his bumbling inability to convince Americans he grasped the severity of their suffering or that he had the ability to address it. But his problems went deeper than that. Bush also spent his term pursuing a pragmatic domestic agenda, choosing what he perceived as responsible and prudent decision-making over ideology – the “town father” model that you might expect from a Greenwich patrician.

For instance, Bush backed an unpopular and politically toxic bailout of numerous savings-and-loan institutions, believing that this was essential to keeping the economy stable. He also championed the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed the 1991 Civil Rights Act and – of course – backtracked on his famous “read my lips” campaign pledge and supported a tax increase in 1990. All of these moves, but particularly the tax hike, had the effect of alienating the G.O.P.’s conservative base, which was then in its ascendancy, and confirming the right’s long-held suspicion that Bush, for all of his conservative campaign rhetoric in 1988, was fundamentally a man of moderate instincts.

This realization spurred an intra-party revolt. In the House, Newt Gingrich, then the minority whip, rallied his fellow conservatives to oppose the bipartisan 1990 budget agreement because Bush had folded on taxes. They failed to stop the budget, but the dispute revealed and exacerbated fissures within the G.O.P.’s Congressional ranks, with Gingrich’s conservative rebels openly clashing with pragmatic old bulls like House Minority Leader Robert Michel and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole.

Bush’s abandonment of the right also led directly to Pat Buchanan’s decision in December 1991 to challenge him in the Republican presidential primaries, the first (and still only) time since 1968 that a sitting president has faced serious intra-party competition for renomination. Buchanan railed against the budget accord, the Civil Rights Act, and Bush’s free-trade agenda (here, at least, Buchanan was ideologically at odds with most Reagan conservatives) and scored nearly 40 percent in the lead-off New Hampshire primary. “I think King George is starting to get the message!” he declared on primary night.

Buchanan failed to replicate his New Hampshire showing in subsequent primaries and Bush quickly secured enough delegates to claim the nomination. But Buchanan’s New Hampshire success made international news, the same way Eugene McCarthy’s near-upset of Lyndon Johnson in 1968 had, and revealed just how week within his own party Bush had become.

Buchanan’s success also forced Bush to accommodate him and his 3.5 million voters at that summer’s Republican convention. Buchanan was handed a prime-time speaking slot on the convention’s first night, which he used to declare that America was in the throes of a “culture war” – and to knock Ronald Reagan, in what turned out to be his final G.O.P. convention appearance, out of prime time. The ultraconservative tone of the 1992 Republican convention, a direct response by Bush to his critics on the right, further poisoned Bush’s standing with less-ideological independent and swing voters.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee that McCain, if elected, will follow Bush’s example. He might be an entirely different kind of president. But there are some striking parallels between their backgrounds and their approaches to governing.

Like Bush, McCain has long been mistrusted by the right. Just as Bush ran his first presidential campaign as a pro-choice New England moderate (who warned of Ronald Reagan’s “voodoo economics”), McCain burst onto the national scene in 2000 as a fearless reformer who was willing to call out members of his own party by name (like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson).

Bush spent the eight years after his first campaign as Reagan’s vice president, frantically atoning for his sins against conservatives and trying to recast himself as a fellow Reagan revolutionary. His relentlessness, coupled with the power of his office, was just enough for him to win most of the right over, however grudgingly. McCain got a later start, but he too has moved to shore up his standing with the right – so much so that the moderate to liberal media voices who once championed him now say they don’t recognize McCain.

But just as with Bush, there’s really no reason to think that McCain’s conversion to domestic policy conservatism is all that sincere. (His hawkish foreign policy views are another matter.) If he wins this fall, it’s not hard to envision McCain pursuing a pragmatic domestic policy course. Those Bush tax cuts that he once abhorred but that he now promises to extend? It’s easy to envision President McCain, just like President George H. W. Bush once did, announcing that the country needs more tax revenue. Immigration? Sure, he had to temper his rhetoric about how “we are all God’s children” to secure the G.O.P. nomination, but why wouldn’t he revert to his old ways once he has real power? And the environment and global warming? McCain is already well to the left of most of his party on that one.

When Bush won 20 years ago, Republicans rejoiced, having just saved the country from (in their view) the horrors of Dukakis-ism. Two years later, they were at war with themselves. Expect a similar celebration if the G.O.P. defeats Obama in seven weeks – and similar strife once President McCain settles in.