Well, not war, but a milder though satisfying combat and a valuable moment of self-redemption. By network standards, Gibson was a lipstickless bulldog. The encounter was combative enough to blow some of her Teflon off.

Much has already been written on segment one of the Gibsonthon, aired on World News Tonight Thursday. Palin didn't recognize the pillar of Bush's foreign policy, and then mischaracterized it. She repeated her absurdity about command of the Alaska National Guard and proximity to Russia. (He might well have asked her what she'd learned from all that proximity.) She declared that she was ready for war with Russia. Mild-mannered Charlie, who is always wishing us a good day, confessed: "I get lost in a blizzard of words there." I've never heard him so blunt.

On the Friday night 20/20 segment, Kate Snow's teaser began: "You discover her story is part fact and part fable." Palin was an earmark queen, winning $27,000,000 for 6000 people. She spent $8,000,000 on a road to nowhere. "Some of her best friends...are reluctant to endorse Sarah Palin the candidate," Snow reported.

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The discouraging part first: An Obama video called "Still" makes the case that the world has changed (computers! e-mail!) since McCain first went to Washington, but McCain hasn't changed: he doesn't know how to use stuff; his tax policy is still regressive; and so on. This is supposed to show that he's old, out of touch; unhip. (If you're going to say he's unchanged, at least still say that he never had the temperament to be president and he still doesn't.) I imagine it's supposed to get to the young. In any case, I hope no serious money's being spent to send "Still" out to general audiences. The main thing the campaign needs to be saying right now is that McCain is mercurial, unsteady, unreliable; he's worse than a flip-flopper, he's rudderless, a man with no ballast, a poseur; there was once a McCain with a claim to honor but that McCain has changed--into a mendacious, unscrupulous Republican like a certain current resident of the White House.

Now for a morning bonus, my favorite wingnut reaction to Charlie Gibson: "Gibson is a tool. This will only help the GOP ticket. It never ceases to amaze me just how dumb these intellectuals are." In the eyes of the Base, the Devils who run The Media, along with anyone who knows anything, are (gasp) Intellectuals, and enough said about them.

Look at this: A Maine reporter, from WCSH in Portland, asks McCain some questions about Palin, and he lies, stumbles, evades, blathers about Alaska-next-to-Russia Palin-fights-the-old-bulls, a hypothetical gas pipeline. He can't even get his talking points out crisply: they sound more like stumbling points.

H/T: Joe Sudbay at Americablog.

Let's face it: McCain and Palin have run off with the Change banner.

I was always worried that "Change" was too vague by half, one of those pallid euphemisms of our degraded politics intended to excite (somewhat) a society many of whom think politics is the devil's work or in any case far less interesting than gadgetry, sex, and the pursuit of personal happiness. Who doesn't want Change?

And who doesn't want Reform, for that matter? A certain George W. Bush ran off with that mantle in 2002: "Reformer with Results." Now the plutocratic, bomb-and-drill, culture-war, abortion-stopping, tycoon-loving, polar-bear-drowning wolf-shooting reformers are back with a vengeance.

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On his new New Republic blog, The Flack, Howard Wolfson says HRC won't fall into the trap of lowering herself to fight Sarah Palin. That is, she won't let herself get cast as the senior cat scratching the eyes out of the perky kitten for the general delectation of extreme sports fans.

Absolutely right. Rather, HRC should be unleashed to the battleground states where she ran well, to remind her voters, and others, that McCain is (1) a devoted practitioner of Bush-Gramm "Tough Luck for You, Whiners" economics and (2) a neocon who'll send us into wrong-headed, unnecessary, America-wasting wars.