Barack Obama is on the path to the Heavyweight Championship of the world. Or the U.S. presidency...

A revelatory and darkly comic adventure through a nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown - from the halls of Congress to the bases of Baghdad to the apocalyptic churches of the American heartland.

Talk about the "kitchen sink"! If Barack Obama wanted to throw it at the eight years of First Lady experience that Hillary Clinton has made central to her resume for "the job" she says she wants us to "hire" her for, there is plenty there. People on the left who say he won't, he can't because he's just like her, a creature of capital and empire, may be right in the grand scheme, but they shouldn't be smug, because there aren't exactly models of successful radical or even liberal fights against the Clintons. There are barely models of noble but failed fights...

Already it looks like Obama's advisers are getting it completely wrong, though, challenging her for her First Lady papers and her tax returns and, implicitly, the source of her and Bill's immense wealth. Obama can no more beat the Clintons at this kind of game than the right could. Every small, personal complaint looks petty or desperate or sexist, and only allows Hillary to play the part she likes best, after mud slinger and policy wonk, which is survivor...

Obama can't do anything about that last "asset" of Hillary Clinton, and maybe it is her ultimate chip, but it would make for a more interesting campaign going forward if he would challenge that First Lady experience by implicitly challenging the myths on which it stands, projecting an idea of the future unmoored from the Reagan-Clinton continuum, something Hillary is locked into. What drew so many people originally to Obama's campaign was its call to "turn the page" on past Republican and Democratic politics alike, and its recognition that people are just fed up. [More]

How can one equal Bill Clinton for thuggery and opportunism when it comes to the so-called “race card”? And where does one even start with the breathtaking nastiness of his own conduct, and that of his supporters, in the last week... Many liberals do not like it now that they see similar two-faced Clinton tactics being employed against Obama, who is “one of their own.” And many of the most prominent and eloquent U.S. black columnists — Bob Herbert, Colbert King, Eugene Robinson — are also acting shocked. It’s a bit late.

Bob Herbert shocked even me by quoting Andrew Young, who said that his pal Clinton was “every bit as black as Barack” because he’d screwed more black chicks. How is Hillary Clinton, or Chelsea Clinton, supposed to feel on hearing that little endorsement? One gets the impression, though, at least from the wife, that anything is OK as long as it works, or even has a chance of working.

Say what you will about Sen. Obama (and I say that he’s got much more charisma than guts), he is miles above this sort of squalor and has decent manners. Say what you will about the Clintons, you cannot acquit them of having played the race card several times in both directions and of having done so in the most vulgar and unscrupulous fashion. Anyone who thinks that this equals “change” is a fool, and an easily fooled fool at that.

In 2008, as it was in 1992, the race for the Democratic nomination has been electrified by a newcomer to national politics. This time it is Barack Obama, also fending off accusations of inexperience, who has thrilled a new generation, his rallies staffed and fired up by teenagers and students, just as Clinton's were 16 years ago. Now it is Obama who has made hope - once the watchword of the self-styled "Man from Hope" - his own...

Except the Obama of 2008 faces an obstacle the Clinton of 1992 never had to endure. He is up against a wholly novel phenomenon in US politics: the double-headed presidential candidate. All week in South Carolina he has done battle with not just his main opponent, but that opponent's spouse, the pair commanding as much media attention as if both their names were on the ballot. What's more one of those two adversaries is the most effective campaigner in modern political history: one William Jefferson Clinton.

It is making Obama's presidential bid look like an uphill task, even in South Carolina where eve-of-poll surveys show him comfortably ahead. And yet, one can't help but conclude that, in any other year, against any other opponent(s), Obama would be cruising towards the Democratic nomination, powered by a charisma unseen since that first season of Clinton 16 years back. [More]

National Lampoon's Official Bush Countdown Clock tracks the days, hours, minutes and seconds until George W goes back to the ranch at Crawford, Texas... full-time.