I’m actually going to give Chris Wallace a bit of a break on the whole Clinton Goes Postal thing. I’m not entirely buying the notion that Clinton’s explosion wasn’t staged. I suspect Bubba had been waiting for an opportunity to let the fur fly, and the smirking Wallace was looking for an opportunity to let him. I think both men did what they wanted to do, and my intelligence is a bit insulted both by Wallace’s claims of surprise and the Clinton camp’s phony outrage.

It’s just the mean season. And it’s going to get meaner. The GOP seems to be against the ropes (Rep. Mark Foley's stupid, stupid, stupid dirtymail with some pimple-faced page being the latest example), but I believe in the magic of Karl Rove, whom I believe to be a political warlock. This smells like a GOP rope-a-dope, like the balance of the apparently damaging NIE report (or, perhaps an updated NIE report) will be released in the ninth hour, and we’ll all feel good about Iraq again, or they’ll announce bin Laden’s capture (of course, my cynicism suspects they’ve had him all along).

The Democrats., being as dumb and clueless as ever, seem to be phoning it in, confident of a November GOP bloodbath. They’re more or less letting Clinton lead the charge (which makes a kind of sense since he’s their biggest name), but Bubba isn’t running for anything. And Rove likely salivates every time Clinton speaks because, every time he does he points out how much less eloquent and effective Hilary is, that Hillary is little more than a shell for Clinton Term 3. she’s the LaToya Jackson (okay, maybe she’s the Janet, but I don’t think Janet can sing, either) of the Clinton camp. Worse, I can’t name any other prominent Democrats running.

Even worse, the Democrats continue to stagger along without presenting any believable alternative to the Bush Crazyman Doctrine (is it just me, or does Bush seem ever more crazed and desperate every time I see him? He reminds me of Anthony Hopkins in the third act of Nixon). By now, the Dems should have come up with their own version of the GOP Contract With America, a comprehensive and feasible list of reasons we should give them power. It seems like every Democrat is running on the platform of I Am Not A Republican, which, honestly, is good enough for me, but I don’t have much confidence things will change much regardless of who wins in November.

The only possible fun we might have is a Bush impeachment, which the Dems really don’t have the votes for. The president’s bald and obvious backside-covering in having Congress pass a law that says, essentially, his illegal torture tactics and wiretapping were legal, seems a hedge against a Democratic landslide, which would lead to a certain Bush impeachment. I’d like to see the Republicans voted out simply for not having impeached him already. There’s no doubt, none, that the president has violated any number of laws, but this do-nothing Congress continues to swallow it all. Meanwhile, as I recall, the last president apparently lied about monkeying around with a chubby girl and was dragged around the white House ellipse behind Newt Gingrich’s pickup.

That President Bush can commit actual crimes that cost actual lives and not be held in any way accountable, but Bubba’s disgraceful but otherwise harmless skirt chasing would polarize the nation for months (and now be used to hammer Democrats with—the new talking points being Bubba was so distracted with MonicaGate he couldn’t deal with bin Laden—how’s THAT for hypocrisy!) is part of the overall wonder of the evil genius and bare-knuckle ruthlessness of the Republican party.

Bill Clinton seems to be the only Democrat with a clue. With a spine. Who can rope-a-dope the GOP with any real skill. I think November is about Bill Clinton versus Karl Rove for the world championship of Evil Genius. I mean, Rove likely deliberately baited Clinton’s ire. I refuse to believe they didn’t provoke him deliberately; they want the Dems to come out swinging and punch themselves out early. But, even more so, I believe Clinton is smart enough to know Rove wanted him to explode. So why did he explode? Why give the conservatives what they want?

I’m not entirely sure what the strategy is, here. But I am sure about this: Chris Wallace intended to provoke Bill Clinton to anger. Bill Clinton either knew or suspected Chris Wallace would provoke him to anger. Wallace deliberately provoked him and Clinton deliberately let the fur fly. For either man to claim that was all happenstance is utterly ridiculous.

This is all just grist for “security moms” (ghah, do I hate that label and every clueless, SUV-driving, paranoid, know-nothing house frau it conjures up). These are the people who make choices for our country. The Days Of Our Lives and Oprah crowd. Who drive tanks because they make them “feel safe,” and who voted for Bush because he promised them to end abortion (not a chance) and pass a gay marriage amendment (nope).

These are people who made Desperate Housewives a huge hit. Who go to bed at 7:30 and who have no clue, none, what any of this actually means. These are the folk who thought the Chris Wallace interview was legit. This is the audience Rove and Clinton are playing to. For the rest of us who took the red pill and escaped the Matrix, it’s all just brilliant staging, which would be all the more entertaining if there wasn’t so much at stake.

My prediction: the Democrats’ non-message phoning-in backfires on them. The GOP retains leadership, possibly of both houses. But, hopefully, Bush is slowly roped in by the GOP themselves, realizing, the alternative is Hillary in ‘08. McCain has to come out hard against the CrazyMan non-policy and present a cogent path for things. If he does that, he beats Hillary like a drum. She’s *such* an awful mistake, as Falwell said, she rallies the conservative base against her. And, in the end, Hillary ‘08 is what all of this is about.

I think Rove outboxes Bubba, the GOP squeak by the midterms, and Hillary goes down in flames before McCain/Condie or McCain/Powell. In the meantime, however, I’ll be enjoying the theater.