Despite the relentless braying of right-wing radio, despite the mind-boggling fact-cooking of Fox News and anything else owned by Rupert Murdoch, we may be at the point where all Obama need do is whisper "golf" - and the yammering falls quiet, the counterintuitive spinning stops, the swift boats sink away.

Politics is filled with metaphoric banana peels and open manholes, 1,000-lb. safes hurtling down from above, and supernaturally efficient saws cutting holes in the floor beneath the unsuspecting. The hot-headed or tactless remark, or documentation of long-forgotten whorehouse visits, are as common misfortunes as they are obviously catastrophic. Denials are useless, since there is little breach between accusation and verdict. Once gob-smacked, if a candidate looks, walks and quacks like a duck – he’s a dead duck.

In his unfortunate interview with Yahoo/Politico earlier this week, and his plain-dumb airing of American political laundry in the Knesset yesterday, President Bush has balled himself up on the end of the chain dragging the GOP to entropy.

Americans just don't like to see their countrymen's lives held so cheaply by an absentee jackass like Bush. He bagged 'em for the boys - whew! That's a page from the Marie Antoinette Guide to Verbal Acumen. And if we're going to insult and degrade the guy on the other side of the aisle, we don't do it with foreign eyes watching, even if those eyes belong to our brave little allies in the Levant.

Overnight, he’s this year's Bernie Kerik: His acute political radioactivity doesn’t become apparent until a host body is so poisoned digits and limbs start falling off, and stink clears the room. What's odd is that apparently no one in the GOP saw this coming, after more than seven years of one disastrous pratfall after another; it's difficult to think of anything the Bush Administration has done right.

The President's ankles have snapped and he’s stumbled, but they can’t just shoot him on the track and drag him away. He is, after all - yes, unfortunately - the Commander in Chief.

A few weeks ago, a GOP stalwart noted that when Bush gets near a microphone, he swallows it. Amazing there's room left after he gobbles his foot.

The only question is: Will Democrats be Republican-enough to use this sort of trivial stuff, these devisive non-issues?

After all, on the basis of very little, Obama has been accused of everything short of drowning kittens and scarfing up fully barbecued toddlers

Maybe it's time for Democrats to conjure their Inner Rove.

There are some considerations – and advantages – to the party positioning Hillary as Obama’s Nov. 4 co-pilot.

Democrat stalwarts at least may want to offer her the number-two spot as a means of avoiding the party’s congenital tendency to fragment like a crispy-fried taco shell. Fraught with antagonistic, hoarsely self-righteous factions, the party is defined by this characteristic fragility, and keeping the Big Tortilla in one piece is a 27/7 ordeal for the Democrat machinery. These chronic fault lines also guarantee an absurdly diluted party platform that will forever reflect basic, contradictory incoherence: There are just too many squeaky wheels, too many self-appointed front groups vying for attention, and the hard currency of political juice.

And this year, Democrats fear more than anything else a miffed Hillary taking her marbles and going home, refusing to face her fate and countenance the outcome – and absolutely foreswearing any autumn support for Obama.

In short, a Shrike Strike that would shatter the party.

There are means to bridle Hillary’s diva instincts. Let’s imagine her pronounced exit is as bilious as – say – Ted Kennedy’s in 1980, when the Massachusetts Baggage Train sniffily paced the convention stage with Jimmy Carter trotting along after him like a servile lap-dog. Kennedy pointedly refused even to shake Carter’s hand, and we can be sure after that abasement old-line cigar-and-whiskey Democrats like Tip O’Neill grabbed Kennedy by the scruff and slung him against the wall, making it clear with no room for doubt that he flushed down the toilet any chance he may have had to be a future nominee. Even a Royal Kennedy can’t get away with that kind of snotty rich-boy bullshit – not in public, at least. And the prospect of that kind of penalty, that absolute disavowal, could keep Hillary in line.

But… you never know. There is an unnerving… irrationality to Hillary that may or may not be affected. The blunt methods of her husband’s machine seem a comfortable fit for her, and even after years of breathing White House air and stalking the Senate hallways, she consistently figures as a shrill fishwife browbeating all doubters and anyone less-enamored of her brand of slasher politics.

But even with all that, she may be the least of all curses considered.

It occurred to me last night, watching that startling "ship of fools" moment when Hillary accepted the West Virginia win - hollering with false bravado in the falling confetti - that maybe she's started her run for the vice presidency.

It's tough to see how it could be otherwise: Her ostensible campaign for the presidency has become a mangy, sun-broiled desert rat stumbling erratically from one mirage to the next. OK... she won West Virginia. She won... white, low-income, uneducated. In West Virginia. Let's just come out and say it: She got the hillbilly vote. Jed and Grannie hiked down the holler with their ol' dog Mose and threw in their truck with Horney Bill's wife. This was a primary decided not so much by race as nostalgia: The mountaineers remember reasonable prosperity in the '90s, and loyalty to the Clintons springs from that dynamic the way desperate sharecroppers heeled to planter dandies.

It is impossible, however, to present the West Virginia win as a turnaround, or evidence of an emerging trend that makes Hillary a more attractive candidate in November - a pitch to undecided super delegates, voter will be damned. West Virginia, for the past 20 years, has been a relentlessly unreliable state for the Democrats; its nominal party majority has gravitated to the GOP more times than not. Not only has it divested itself as a "key" state, hardnosed political triage demands it be written off.

This is where the comparative sophistication and foresight of the Obama campaign becomes evident: He has declared the field open in states Democrats previously considered out of reach - like Virginia and Missouri. It's a bold gamble that is likely to pay off, since Democrats now have a candidate who commands trust and admiration (responses of late so rare) from young and independent voters.

But Hillary's sunk a lot in this run; she's gotta come up with something. And she's not dumb. Blind-drunk slobbering with ambition, yes. But stupid? No.

Last night, she also made reference to her win "helping our candidate in November." The ambiguity of the term "our candidate" seems to put a little air between her and the No. 1 spot. Maybe she's sussed out the big picture and is taking the high road, or, at least, the path most advantageous to her.

Look at it this way: The more votes she racks up now, the more indispensible she'll appear to the party front office. They can't shackle her to Obama - the choice for a running mate is (mostly) his. But they certainly can twist his arm with the idea of an "unbeatable" duo.

That's an argument she just may win.

Playin' through:

In an interview with Politico / Yahoo News released today, President Bush says he decided by express solidarity with our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan... by giving up golf!

Yes, you read that right. No, this isn't some rend in the time/space continuum. He's bagged up the clubs until the boys come home.

If you really want to read the fool gibberish of the man Pat Buchanan calls a lame duck scared of how history will remember him, it's here:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html