It's good, as far as it goes, that John McCain is attempting to contain some of the paranoid ugliness that he's been responsible for. I'm happy to live in a country where politicians' self-interest restrains them from fomenting civil unrest.

But what matters is not the kind of man John McCain is or isn't. What matters is the kind of country we live in.

McCain will be a rapidly-receding footnote to history by Thanksgiving, taking his place among the Bob Doles and James Blaines and Charles Pickerings. He still has the power to make this campaign very dangerous for a lot of innocent Americans, but on November 5th he won't be able to get the matches near the gunpowder any more.

What worries me are the people who are stocking up their own gunpowder for Guy Fawkes Day. It's bad enough that hateful, paranoid lies are being spread in an attempt to defeat Obama. What's much, much worse is that defeating Obama is no longer the hatemongers' goal

The shape of the narrative is already forming, in preparation for a McCain loss. The right-wing media is laying the groundwork to claim voter fraud, perpetrated by ACORN, as the primary cause of McCain's defeat, even if November 4 is a landslide. In fact, a landslide will make the hard-liners' cognitive dissonance greater, because they won't be able to process how badly they have lost mainstream America, and lead them toward paranoid explanations.

The plan is to deny the legitimacy of Obama's election, and to continue portraying him as a dangerous outsider. No claim is too outlandish. We will hear how Obama personally engineered the financial crisis and how he is in league with various foreign bogeymen.

This is extremely dangerous. It gives the most dangerous people on the right an excuse for violence, because Obama is not "really" President and because he's "dangerous." So violence can be rationalized as necessary, for the greater good. And it builds in an excuse for ignoring the rule of law, since government itself is "illegitimate."

That isn't about one election. That's about the kind of country we live it, about whether we keep civil peace and respect the rule of law.

Starting November 5, we need to push back, hard, on media outlets that peddle dangerous fantasies.

McCain and Palin have turned a dark corner in their election rhetoric, and as many others have said, they are creating real danger.

McCain has gone beyond the acceptable bounds of American political discourse, and he has done it at a moment of national unrest, as the economic crisis creates fear and anxiety. A historical moment like this would be dangerous enough without McCain. The risk of mob violence would be with us now even if McCain were not actively increasing it. During times of uncertainty, mobs look for scapegoats to turn on. McCain has chosen to offer the public identifiable scapegoats.

If the fire McCain that is playing with actually catches, if people are burned, there will be enormous grief and enormous rage. And if something terrible happens, few of us will be able to think clearly about those responsible. So it's time to think the worst-case scenario through now.

If McCain's campaign actually incites the violence it is so close to inciting, his political career needs to end. That day. Not simply his lost campaign, but his Senate career, his speaking engagements, his public life. He needs to resign in disgrace, and he needs to be made to see that necessity.

There cannot be violent retribution for the merchants of violence, if we want to keep our America America. And laws regulating campaign speech will go horribly wrong. But the political retribution must be swift, complete and unrelenting.

No politician who undermines public safety for personal gain has any place in our national life. Every politician should fear an outbreak of civil violence against his or her fellow Americans; who can speak of loving our country but not dread that? If mere patriotism, mere responsibility, mere human decency are not enough, politicians must fear for themselves and their careers. Every American politician should live in holy dread of inciting a mob, and every politician should know that rasing a mob and losing control of it means exile from American politics forever.

God forbid that any of my fears come to pass. I hope McCain will think better of what he is doing, and stop. I hope that we will get through the coming month in peace. But if the worst happens, McCain must leave public office, Palin must leave public office, and Steve Schmidt, their campaign strategist, must never be employed in politics or government again. And steps need to be taken, calmly and rationally, to ensure those outcomes: a new public organization, including a political action committee and a fundraising arm, aimed at removing those malefactors from office, and at deterring any future poltician from taking such depraved risks with the public safety.

Words have consequences, and John McCain has a public trust. A politician who becomes an enemy of the civil peace needs to be punished, not by more violence and not by the law, but by the patriotism of his fellow Americans.