Hillary Clinton’s campaign is now caught in the death spiral of media piling-on and internal finger-pointing that always plagues a losing campaign.  It is remarkable how quickly – and perhaps prematurely – it has come.  And it is startling how little grit, fight and gumption her supposedly hard-boiled campaign operatives are showing.

Bert Bennett, Jim Hunt’s political godfather, had a saying about this phenomenon: “When you win, you did everything right.  When you lose, you did it all wrong.”

So it is now.  It is so clear – through the rear-view mirror – to all the critics and to the disgruntled campaign insiders how inevitably flawed her strategy was from the beginning.  And they all marvel at the strategic brilliance and tactical flawlessness of the Obama campaign.

If it was so clear, why didn’t somebody point it out at the time?  Need I remind you that, mere weeks ago, Hillary was the inevitable, unstoppable nominee and Obama was a flailing, fledgling naïf?

She should have gone negative on Obama before he found his game and destroyed him then, the revisionists say now.  Well, yes, but it is also a truism of primary campaigns that when one candidate attacks another, both suffer, and a third – say a John Edwards – fills the vacuum.

The fact is that, after New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was doing pretty well.  She had found her voice.  She had let us see a glimpse of a real, feeling person.  Her prospects were looking good, just weeks ago.

Then Bill Clinton walked onto the stage in South Carolina.  As he is wont to do, he took over the stage.  He proceeded to show us just how politically clumsy – and dangerous – an old politician can be when he is out of practice and puffed up with his own greatness.

Al Gore and his campaign never stopped blaming Bill Clinton for Gore’s loss in 2000.  Now Clinton may have done in a second Democratic presidential candidate.

In the final analysis, the fundamental flaw in this campaign may have been that the candidate was named Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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I have been reading Professor William Link’s biography of Senator Jesse Helms.

This happened before my time, but back in the 1960’s – with Helm’s outspoken support – the legislature passed “The Speaker Ban Law” to make it illegal for communists to speak at state universities. That led to a big flap over in Chapel Hill (where I later spent four happy years) and after a lot of ‘sound and fury’ the law was repealed on the theory that – even on a public school campus – communists had a right to free speech.

Then, in the middle of reading all this ancient history, I opened the News and Observer to read about the Wake County School Board’s new policy on guest speakers. Even the sheriff, when asked to speak to a middle school class, didn’t feel he could (or should) sign the Board’s new pledge to adhere to their policy – so, now, like the Communists in the 1960’s, he’s officially unwelcome to speak in public schools.

The School Boards new policy has its roots in a speech given last year – by an Egyptian critic of Islam – to a social studies class at Enloe High School. He came. He spoke. He criticized. And just as the anti-communist fifty-years ago, the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the ACLU promptly descended on the Board – which promptly proved spineless. Superintendent Del Burns apologized to the Muslim Community, lynched the social studies teacher who landed him in the flap, and now, to spare Superintendent Burns future groveling the Board has passed a set of perfectly politically correct guidelines.

The sheriff wouldn’t take the pledge. So he’s out. So is Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly. He’s out too.

What precisely are the guidelines? The Board decrees no speaker may “denigrate any culture, race, gender, national origin or religion.” (Odd that they left out pornography).

Given that standard it would appear an historian – say, Edward Gibbon if he were alive – could not tell a Wake County social studies class that the Visigoths or Huns were savage barbarians – unless he could do it without denigrating their culture.

In fact, it’s hard to see how anyone could criticize much of anything.

After the sheriff declined to sign the Board’s pledge, School Board spokesman Michael Evans told the News and Observer, in wonder, “How could anyone not want to sign that form? That’s in place to protect everybody…”

Well, no.

I suspect this ‘new policy’ was written by the School Board’s lawyer to protect one group – the School Board. So, the next time someone offends a Hun or Muslim, with enough muscle to issue a press release or hire an attorney, the Board can lynch another teacher and say, They violated our policy.

In effect, the School Board has become afflicted with a crippling case of ‘modernity’ – the inability to say any culture or religion or nation (unless it happens to be ours) is wrong.

And, as a result, the leaders of our schools have given us their own 21^st century version of The Speaker Ban Law. But they were cleverer then Jesse Helms and those old 1960’s anti-communists. They didn’t ban speakers critical of Muslims or Visigoths or North Korean dictators or Iranian religious extremists. They have just dictated what they can say.

And, if you think about it, they’ve done one thing that’s even more peculiar than what happened in the 1960’s. At least, rightly or wrongly, Jesse Helms and the Cold War anti-communists were trying to stop someone from speaking who was criticizing us. Our culture. Our religion. The Wake County School Board has turned that on its head: It’s banned speakers who criticize people who attack us.

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Barack Obama got a taste this week of what’s coming.

The picture of him decked out in Somali gear.  The McCain emcee who repeatedly called him “Barack Hussein Obama.” The Louis Farrakhan question at the debate.

It’s time for the Obama campaign to strap on the seat belts.  It’s going to be a rough ride.

And ugly.

After September 11, 2001, one political operative told Obama his political career was over.  That was a bit premature, but the point is well taken.

Obama had a relatively easy road to the Senate.  And to where he is today in the Democratic contest.  Both times, he was blessed with the greatest gift in politics: incompetent opponents.  Now, some real fireballers will start throwing at his head.

Obama is inspirational.  He puts me in mind of the Kennedys.

Unfortunately, the Muslim e-mail smear that has been circulating for months and the events of this week put me in mind of how ugly – and how effective – racial politics can be.  It worked for Jesse Helms.

A lot of older – or, as I prefer to say, “experienced” – Democrats feel this way.  We hope Obama is different from the ineffectual hope-mongers we’ve nominated before.  We hope he’s ready.  We hope times – and people – have changed.  We hope race – and the new element of anti-Muslim bias – won’t matter this time.

We hope that hope is more than a word.

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It seems, or at least appears from reading the newspapers, that each successive generation of Democratic leaders in North Carolina is less concerned about rooting out corruption.

Former ‘Governor for Life’ Jim Hunt, not my favorite elected official, may have occasionally tolerated a little bit of what a Tammany Hall politician once called ‘honest graft’ – but not much.  Some things he’d tolerate.  But, then he’d draw a line in the sand.  His successor, Governor Mike Easley has turned out to be less diligent, and well, Jim Black broke the sound barrier.

The point is over the past sixteen years, it seems from Hunt to the present day, corruption has been like the proverbial camel getting its nose under the tent flap.  And State Treasurer Richard Moore, one of the two leading Democratic candidates for governor, seems to be taking the tradition a step further.

Not long ago, three of Mr. Moore’s political contributors decided to form a company to sell supplemental vision and dental insurance to state retirees. I’ll spare you the details of how (you can read them in the News and Observer), but Moore’s office helped out by, effectively, eliminating their competition.

Each month Treasurer Moore’s office delivers to his contributors company, free of charge, a list of North Carolina’s 200,000 government retirees.  But he refuses to make the same list available to their competitors – including other insurance companies and state employee associations (one of which offers vision and dental insurance for slightly less that provides broader coverage).

Moore argues – vigorously – that this is not a case of favoritism.  He says he has no choice in the matter. That for him to give the list – to any group other than the one he has designated, which is owned by his contributors – would violate a personal law the legislature passed last year.

However, the State Senator who wrote the legislation says that is not what the law means at all. That Moore is wrong.

Treasurer Moore is certainly not the first elected official to accept contributions from people who profit by doing business with the state. But eliminating his contributors’ competition does seem to be breaking new ground.

Unfortunately, my own party, the Republicans, have refrained from speaking out on Mr. Moore’s peccadilloes. One hopes they are simply waiting for the General Election.  That after the primary – if Moore wins – the first words out of the Republican nominee’s mouth will be, “Mr. Moore, explain this.”

In the meantime the Democrats can contemplate what it means – to the Democratic Party – if he is elected governor. 

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In the beginning was the word.

Senator Barack Obama’s rhetoric has accomplished what we Republicans have failed to do for years.  He’s undone Hilary Clinton. 

It understates Obama’s achievement to simply say his rhetoric is articulate.

To a certain, surprising, extent American politicians all oddly seem to sound the same.  Sometimes listening to, say, Hillary, then to John McCain, is like listening to two people singing the same song.  Or rather the same tune, but with different lyrics.  The words may differ, but the cadences are the same.

Obama’s cadences are different. Not completely different. But different enough.  Take how he attacks Hillary.  He says very reasonably, Here’s what Hillary says about me, then he answers, equally reasonably, And here is why I say she’s wrong.  Compare that to Hillary’s sixty second blasts of rhetoric that resonate like the same old sound bites we’ve heard over and over for years.

The question is: Does a heart of true evangelical change beat beneath Senator Obama’s rhetoric?  Or is he just a very clever politician? 

Time will tell.  For now, Obama’s rhetoric, combined with the demographics of Democratic primaries, has left Hillary in a dilemma – in a sense of her own making.  There was once a time (not so long ago) when Hilary had every political advantage over Obama.  She led in every poll.  In dollars raised.  In how well she was known.  In just about every other way that matters politically.

She could have, then, had she chosen to be – dare we say, negative – made Senator Obama’s political life extraordinarily difficult.  Instead, making what seemed to be the safe bet – that her name and money would safely see her through to the nomination – she proceeded into the primaries as if waltzing toward her coronation.  But, in the process, she gave Obama the gift he needed most – all the oxygen necessary to grow and thrive.  So, now, he has eclipsed her.  Leaving her little choice but to attack him.  But to do it at an extraordinarily difficult time – when Senator Obama is riding a huge wave of momentum and when the pundits struck senseless (but not speechless) are just waiting for Ohio and Texas to rewrite the political obituaries they penned for Hilary before the New Hampshire primary.

And, according to the newspapers, that is the debate going on inside Senator Clinton’s campaign right now.  To attack or not to attack.  According to the press, her media advisor Mandy Gruenwald says, no.  Her pollster Mark Penn says, yes.

Ms. Gruenwald was part of Governor Jim Hunt’s 1984 campaign against Jesse Helms. I don’t know where she stood then on the issue of Hunt attacking Helms. But I know we were thankful for every day Hunt took the advice of those who said, ‘No. Don’t attack’ – so, at least, when he finally did it was all but too late.

Senator Clinton is standing on the deck of a sinking ship with water around her knees. Without a miracle it’s no longer viable for her to win by saying – Senator Obama is a fine candidate.  A fine man.  He’ll make a fine president.  But I’m better. She’s going to have to make her case by saying, Here’s where I’m right.  And here’s where he’s dead wrong.

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The other night, lying in bed, I stopped clicking long enough to watch an old black and white movie. Talk of the Town it's like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, only with Ronald Coleman appointed to the Supreme Court rather than Jimmy Stewart appointed to the Senate. The good guys (and Jean Arthur, in both movies) battle the bad guys and crooks ending with Coleman donning his judicial robes and staring out the window of the Supreme Court at the dome of the Capital.

We have fallen on hard times since those days – if those days ever existed. Today, the pirates are more entrenched in Washington than ever and Barack Obama is running for President as our modern day Mr. Smith, whose mission is to end piracy.

And with Senator Obama leading both Hillary and John McCain in all the polls, one would expect the varmints (and lobbyists) in Washington, who are about to see their livelihoods disappear, would be in a panic.

But, instead, they hardly seem worried – much less shaking in their shoes – because Barack the Avenger is about to descend on them.

Why not? Surely, the keen eyed Barons of K Street have not missed the danger. Or could it be they know something we don’t?

Could they have they talked to their comrades in Chicago, who told them, He’ll play ball?

Or have they scrutinized Obama with a discerning eye and decided that, beneath his rhetoric, he’s no threat – that in the mean streets of Washington they are going to eat him alive. That even if nineteen year old girls swoon over him, like a rock star, there is nothing for them to worry about.

So, is Barack Obama the man to clean up Washington? Do we need a Mr. Smith? Or, say, a Huey Long – who’s as mean and ruthless as the varmints he’s after but who has one virtue: Just the sight of a lobbyist sends him into a Homeric Rage.

Senator Obama is soaring in the polls running for President as Mr. Smith – but what we may really need to clean up Washington is ‘Dirty Harry.’

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We apparently got all excited over nothing.  North Carolina’s presidential primary may not matter after all.

If Hillary Clinton loses Texas next Tuesday – as looks increasingly likely – the air will go out of our balloon.

Obama campaign insiders are confident about Texas – and expect a close race in Ohio.

Clinton campaign insiders are making it clear they don’t have a lot of hope left.

We still get to vote.  And maybe we’ll have one of those big Obama-mania rock concert-style rallies.

But, once again, we’re like the subs who get in for the last two minutes of a 40-point ACC blowout.

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Imagine this: Barack Obama and John McCain are debating in October.

Senator McCain says: ‘As I said at the time, early in the war we made mistakes in Iraq. But we’ve learned. We’re on the right track. The surge is working.’

Obama says: ‘It that’s correct then tell me one thing – give me one example of something – we have accomplished by attacking Iraq that has helped us defeat Al-Qaeda.’

Republicans want the debate about Iraq to be about the surge’s success. But Senator Obama may not give them that debate. Instead, he may say conquering Iraq is, for example, the equivalent of conquering Spain in World War II. Franco was a Fascist. And it would have been nice to depose him. But it wouldn’t have helped defeat Hitler. So, Obama’s answer to McCain saying, ‘We need to win in Iraq,’ may be, ‘Then tell me how that will defeat Al-Qaeda?’

And Senator McCain’s answer to that question may determine the outcome of his campaign. Because he’s said we may need to stay in Iraq, as we have South Korea, for years. And it’s going to be hard to justify that unless he can prove it will help defeat Al-Qaeda.

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Senator Barack Obama told supporters Sunday in Ohio: “I don’t think NAFTA has been good for American’s, and I never have.”

But, four years ago, during his Senate race in Illinois, “Obama touted the benefits from United States exports under NAFTA” and the Associated Press reported “that Obama favored pursuing trade deals such as NAFTA.”

Obama explained this away blithely, saying he doesn’t “oppose free trade but he has reservations about NAFTA.” Then he added: “What the world should interpret is my consistent position, which is: I believe in trade.”

Hillary’s own position is a bit muddled. Her husband passed NAFTA. But, now, fourteen years later she’s decided the agreement was ‘flawed.’ Still, saying something she hoped would work turned out to be flawed beats ‘I’m for it. I’m against it. The world should accept my consistent position.’

With her record, NAFTA is not perfect ground for Hillary to take a stand on against Obi-wan Obama. But it is ground. And, politically, if her record is muddled, his is more muddled and, right now, bringing him down to her level is a victory for Hillary.

Tonight in the debate she should say, ‘Obama, words matter. You’ve said you ‘favor trade deals like NAFTA’ then you said ‘I don’t think NAFTA has been good.’ Now, explain to me how the world should see that as consistent.

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North Carolina chicken king Edgar Marvin Johnson must feel like he’s been tarred and feathered by The Charlotte Observer. If the Observer’s reports are correct it’s hard to imagine even Johnson’s own mother buying a chicken from his House of Raeford Farms.

According to the Observer, Johnson is akin to the worst villain Upton Sinclair ever dreamed up in The Jungle. Reading The Observer it appears Mr. Johnson does not care a whit about his employees’ broken bones, amputated fingers, and he never heard of carpel-tunnel syndrome. Instead his goal is to keep his factory lines moving full speed and misleading the government inspectors about accidents so no one looks too closely at his operation.

Think I’m exaggerating? Consider this example: The Observer reports that a conveyor belt in Mr. Johnson’s plant in Columbia snagged a worker’s “glove, snapped her right arm and ripped off the end of her finger.” She was rushed to the hospital. Then hours after surgery, as she was recovering, a House of Raeford nurse showed up to inform her the company expected her back at work the next day.

The Observer has put its stamp of approval on these stories, run them under it’s masthead and told readers these are true reports about how Marvin Johnson runs his business. They’re standing behind their stories, and, apparently, are willing to except the consequences should Mr. Johnson decide to prove they’re wrong.

But he hasn’t done that. He hasn’t sued The Observer for $10 million for libeling him and, given his failure to strenuously exercise his right to free speech, next he might be wise to expect government regulators to descend on him hammer and tongs.

One other, more minor fact: Someone should ask the United Food and Commercial Workers Union – which represents workers in several of Johnson’s plants – why it’s been AWOL. It’s hard to understand – given the reports in The Observer – why the union hasn’t been vociferously exercising it’s right to free speech too.

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You can’t help but be intrigued – if by nothing else – by the irrationality of local politics.

The last three elections Mayor Meeker has swept himself, and his allies, into office as no-growth, anti-evil developer, pro-sugar plum fairy candidates.

But now we learn – from a charter-member of the Mayor’s anti-growth club – liberal activist-blogger Lunsford Lane (a pen-name) the Mayor’s secretly been marching in lockstep with developers for years. He’s not against them. He’s for them. In fact, he’s helping them on the City Council right now – as opposed to, say, Councilman Thomas Crowder, a true scourge of anyone who wants to build anything bigger than a hatbox.

For instance – according to Mr. Lane – it turns out the drought is an example of the Mayor cozying up to developers at everyone else’s expense. Lane reports developers are ‘dancing a jig’ because Meeker gutted the Phase 2 water restrictions to let them go on building new sub-divisions that add “literally THOUSANDS of new homes” to Raleigh’s overtaxed water system – which will be bone dry by summer.

Lane adds that the no-growth (or as little growth as possible) crowds support of Meeker has “been a rocky-marriage from the get-go, with Meeker promising his fidelity to us Citizens, but time and time again caught in bed with Big Real Estate.” And that the Mayor’s “made his choice – he’s leaving us and the kids and shacking up with Big Real Estate… The only thing left to do is file the papers. Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E became final today.”

And Lane is not just mad he’s getting even: He’s launching a drive to get 5638 people to sign petitions to recall the Mayor.

So there you have it. Local politics in a nutshell.

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Since Claude Sitton retired from The News & Observer, North Carolina editors have been an invisible lot.  John Drescher may be changing that pattern.

Drescher, who recently became executive editor at The N&O, publicly called out Governor Easley twice this weekend.

In his column and on the air, Drescher challenged Easley to answer questions about the N&O’s devastating series on the state’s failed mental health reforms.

Drescher wrote, “Simply put, Easley needs to lead.”  On WRAL’s “Headline Saturday,” which he co-hosts, Drescher challenged the Governor to appear on the show and answer questions.

It was an unusually personal challenge – the kind of thing Sitton frequently did.

The N&O, like many newspapers, may face an uncertain financial future.  But Drescher appears determined to keep the paper a political power.

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The New York Times, conservative pundits are arguing, duplicitously helped John McCain win Republican primaries then cut him off at the knees once he had the nomination all but sewed up.

They say The Times endorsed McCain in the New York primary, withheld a damaging story while he fought for his political life in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, then fired both barrels – publishing the story – the minute he had the Republican nomination in his grasp.

It’s a colorful picture. But thin. The Times publishes newspapers. Sex sells. Hypocrisy sells. Political corporation sells. A juicy story landed in their laps. They published it.

And sales no doubt soared.

Whether they also crossed an ephemeral line of journalistic ethics – because The Times’ story is even thinner than their critics’ suspicions of duplicity – will be debated in universities and media centers. But publishing sensational stories is what newspapers do. And The Times, naturally, did it.

What’s more the ability of this story to ‘sell newspapers’ and attract public attention was immediately confirmed by the television networks. Even before The Times expose reached print CNN, MSNBC and Fox News jumped on it. If The Times has violated some canon of journalistic ethics – so has just about every other news organization by repeating the story. So, they’re all on the same thin ice.

There is no real proof – in The Times broadside – of a romance between Senator McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The innuendo is simply based on the opinions of a few former aides – who even The Times hints are disgruntled – who say they were concerned about improper appearances (such as Senator McCain and Ms. Iseman riding on a private jet together). The Times reports of Senator McCain’s romance fall in the category of rumors, not even reaching the level of allegations. Still, this is America and sex sells newspapers (and just about anything else).

The more telling allegations are The Times revelations of Senator McCain’s ties to lobbyists in general. Here, to some extent, Senator McCain is foisted on his own petard. He campaigns against lobbyists and special interests and, indeed, has a record to support his contention. But, at the same time, like just about everyone else in Washington – including, I suspect, Barack Obama – he’s awash in special interest money and advisors.

For instance, The Times reports his campaign is run – free of charge – by a lobbyist who represents clients before McCain’s Senate Commerce Committee. Another lobbyist is his campaign spokesman.

To get elected Senator McCain does what just about everyone else in Washington does – the difference is, unlike everyone else, he seems to be saying it is wrong. Which raises a question of sincerity. Or hypocrisy. (Which also sells newspapers.)

On one hand, Senator McCain’s rhetoric may just be posturing. But, on the other hand, he may genuinely be for reform – as his record indicates – while at the same time realistically facing the fact he’s caught between a political rock and a hard place – he may not like special interests influence but he needs their money (and free labor) to get elected. So, he holds his nose and takes it – though, perhaps, he feels in a better world that would not be necessary.

What does this mean if he’s elected? It’s simple: We’ll have a President who’ll be uncomfortable with special interests but who is also able to swallow hard and take their money too.

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Ann Coulter says – given their stands on issues – she might as well vote for Hillary as John McCain. Rush Limbaugh says he thinks we’re out of luck this election – there is no conservative choice. And Laura Ingram says, Amen.

Equally vociferous, on the other side of the equation, Jack Kemp – who almost appears to have become a co-host of ‘Hannity and Colmes’ – says McCain is just fine and calls Ann, Laura and Rush to task for not towing the party line.

Let us lay aside the question of Jack not finding McCain superlative until after the New Hampshire primary and examine his admonition. Should Rush, Laura and Ann hush? Or are they right when they say conservatives should not embrace McCain, say, as they did Bush in 2000?

Well, from their point of view criticism of McCain serves a purpose. Conservatives embraced President Bush hook, line and sinker, and fell in line like choirboys. And look what happened:  The Arab ports deal. Immigration reform. The deficit.

Ann, Rush and Laura, like many conservatives, have even more differences with McCain than they do with Bush. And, unlike Jack, they don’t feel like jumping on McCain’s bandwagon. So why shouldn’t they speak their minds? What’s wrong with having a few maverick points of view? After all, we’ve experienced a dearth of independent-thinking conservative critics for eight years.

And, what’s more, Senator McCain’s a tough nut. He can take it. He may even find a little dust-up with Ann and Rush and Laura helpful. They may even be performing a public service and, unless they’re hoping for positions in the McCain administration, what real harm does taking a shot at Senator McCain, now and then, do? Ann, Rush or Laura may even want to take one at Jack.

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Here’s an unusual political twist: Ten weeks before the Democratic primary the North Carolina State Employees Association, a politically powerful, mostly-Democratic group spent $30,000 on a newspaper ads attacking State Treasurer Richard Moore – a Democratic candidate for Governor.

SEANC has a bone to pick with Treasurer Moore – who manages their $75 billion pension fund. They say he won’t let them ‘see the books’ – which, by the way, are public records. And they’ve become so aggravated they’ve sued him.

Moore didn’t take all this lying down. He didn’t say much about the lawsuit. But he’s said plenty about the ads. In fact he opened his State Treasurers check-book and wrote a check – at taxpayers expense – to pay for his own ads. (As a result SEANC’s out $30,000, taxpayers are probably out an equivalent $30,000, and Moore’s campaign for Governor is out $0).

In Moore’s ad he quotes the Attorney General’s office as saying – at least as far as the lawsuit goes – he’s innocent as a lamb. Which sounds fine until you consider this is the same Attorney General who obliged Governor Easley by creating a loophole in ethics laws so the Governor’s appointees to the Board of Transportation don’t have to report how much they raised for his campaign.

Beyond proclaiming his innocence Moore seems to be saying this about the lawsuit:

            SEANC is so dumb it’s gotten what it wants and doesn’t know it.

Now, let’s go out on a limb and speculate SEANC is not dumb as Moore infers.

So, is the only purpose of the lawsuit to help elect Moore’s opponent Beverly Perdue? That could be. But, on the other hand, if SEANC wants to elect Lt. Governor Perdue surely it could find better ways to help her get votes than by paying lawyers to file a lawsuit virtually no one ever heard of or read.

So, what is it the SEANC really after?

One of the other candidates for State Treasurer speculated that it may have to do with the collapse of the sub-prime lending market. The candidate’s theory went like this:

After Moore convinced the legislature to let him invest pension funds in riskier instruments like hedge funds, the sub-prime market collapsed and Moore’s investments tanked. The State Treasurer may be sitting on a lot of losses.

That explanation fits one piece of the puzzle. Normally, you’d think the last thing Moore would want before an election is to be sued. But he might prefer a lawsuit to having voters know he’s lost several hundred million dollars.

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The debate on Raleigh’s City Council’s to stop people inside the beltline from tearing down older homes and building new ones has turned a bit goofy. 

For instance, consider the latest broadside from Mayor Meeker’s close ally and amigo Roger Koopman. Councilman Koopman says that building newer homes – he calls them ‘monstrous McMansions’ – denies the neighbors equal rights to sunlight and wind.  I’m not making this up. Literally, he said it on his blog. He also says people have told him they’ve had to move their “gardens because these giant homes block areas that used to get sunshine, but now are permanently enveloped in shade.”

Now, think about that a moment. The sun’s not stationary. It moves. For instance, how, when the sun is at high noon, can a McMansion leave the neighbor’s garden in the shade – unless the garden is directly underneath the McMansion. I was never – remotely – a physics major in college but Mr. Koopman’s bleating sounds a bit like political gibberish. 

In fact, it sounds like Councilman Koopman (who says, “Blocking your neighbors’ sunlight is selfish and unacceptable”) may be infected by a malaise more psychological than physical – a phobia of “giant homes” and “monstrous McMansions.”

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Hillary Clinton did not turn the tide in Thursday night’s debate.  Bill Clinton says she has to win both Texas and Ohio to win the nomination.  Her campaign advisers are divided.  Her spending and strategy are being criticized.

So here is one more piece of bad news, looking back to Tuesday’s primary in Wisconsin:

Obama got a bigger majority against Clinton (58-41) than McCain got against Huckabee (55-37).  McCain won by 18 points, and Obama, by 17. 

Clinton almost seemed resigned to defeat in the debate. 

We may be seeing the end of the Bill Clinton Era in American politics.  Which may free Hillary Clinton to write her own story in the Senate – just as Ted Kennedy did when he finally gave up his presidential dreams.

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John McCain has enjoyed laudatory Mainstream Media coverage for so long it’s understandable he’s mad at The New York Times.

The Times finally broke a story – which apparently has been an open secret among insiders for two months – about a potentially unethical relationship between McCain and a lobbyist eight years ago.

The story is overshadowed by the sexual innuendo. 

But if you carefully read the Times story, it raises legitimate questions about whether Senator McCain is truly Senator Integrity.  Especially when two former McCain aides, even if they are anonymous, say that key advisers were so concerned they confronted McCain about the relationship

The McCain response is to blast the Times for allegedly shoddy reporting – and a liberal hit on a True Conservative.

But the real issue is whether McCain has had a closer relationship (please ignore the inescapable innuendo) with Washington lobbyists than his image would suggest.  Ironically, one of the McCain aides most adamantly attacking the Times is super-lobbyist Charlie Black.

I blogged last week about the exceptionally positive coverage that McCain and Barack Obama have enjoyed in this campaign.  Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Mitt Romney have been envious.

But both McCain and Obama are being reminded that, eventually, the media dog bites all ankles.

Last election Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker and Rodger Koopman and Nancy McFarlane pummeled their opponents in North Raleigh for being cozy with developers.

They said mushrooming growth was out of hand, the developer-villains were out of hand, and Council members Jessie Taliafero and Tommy Craven were bosom buddies with developers – they scared the willies out of everyone and got elected.

It was a scam.  There’s hardly a block left to develop in North Raleigh.  Growth can’t get out of hand because there’s nowhere left to grow.  The developer-villains’ hands are tied not by Mayor Meeker but by lack of land.

The real problem in North Raleigh is simple: We’ve had the growth.  What we need now are the roads.

But, last election, by making developers villains Meeker and company dodged that issue.

Someone ought to take a few minutes to add up how much money the Mayor and Russell Stephenson and Thomas Crowder are spending in the district they all live in downtown – and compare it to how much they’ve spent in one of the districts in North Raleigh.

Then, maybe, folks in North Raleigh will wake up.  And not get hoodwinked a second time by politicians promising to end growth to solve their problems. 

The Clinton campaign may not be dead, but it’s on life support.

She could change the momentum by winning Texas and Ohio in two weeks. 

But it’s hard to change the delegate math.  She would have to win 70 percent of the vote in the primaries left – including North Carolina. 

Who would have thunk it?  Last year, who thought the Clintons could be denied the nomination?

Well, a lot of people thunk it.  Barack Obama and John Edwards, to name two.  Both of them gambled that, if they could get into a one-on-one contest with Clinton, they would win.

Clinton’s problem all along was that if she wasn’t your first choice, she wasn’t your second choice either.  Now, all the other candidates’ votes are consolidating behind Obama.  Plus, he generated enthusiasm that generated new voters.

The Clintons will not go away easily.  Beating them now may be like the old NRA slogan: You’ll take away our nomination when you pry it out of our cold, dead fingers.

The operative words there are “the Clintons.”  Because Hillary’s greatest strength and her greatest weakness is always Bill.

When she was on her own – when she showed grit and emotion in New Hampshire – she did well.

But when Bill took over the stage – like in South Carolina – she got hurt.

Hillary also has an Al Gore problem.  When she speaks, you can hear the gears grinding.  To switch to a music metaphor: Obama is smooth and jazz-like, while listening to Clinton is like listening to Lawrence Welk do the Rolling Stones.  You like the tune, but something is missing.

The Clintons’ chances now rest with the superdelegates.  That is, with a gang of politicians whose main concern is self-interest.  And who are free to change their minds as much as they want.  That’s why they’re called superdelegates.

Barring a huge mistake by Obama – or that rogue satellite falling on his head – how likely is it that the superdelegates will overrule the primary voters and caucus-goers?

The Clintons will argue electability in the fall.  But that’s hard to do when you’ve lost nine elections in a row.

They will point out – and rightly so – that the superdelegates were created (by the 1982 Hunt Commission) for one explicit purpose: to help the Democratic Party nominate a winner.

Of course, the superdelegates promptly picked Walter Mondale.

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People from Charlotte are obsessed with the so-called Charlotte Curse: the repeated failures of Charlotte mayors to be elected to statewide office: Eddie Knox, Harvey Gantt, Sue Myrick and Richard Vinroot.

There is no curse – at least among voters.  Poll after poll has shown they don’t mind a candidate from Charlotte.

But there is one way many Charlotte candidates – especially mayors – are cursed: their own arrogance.  That’s how Pat McCrory’s campaign looks right now.

After a long build-up, McCrory repeatedly stumbled out of the gate – from misspelling “Governer” and blaming a mystery hacker to fumbling questions in debates.

Apparently, like others before him, McCrory figured that since he’d been elected Mayor he and his team knew all there was to know about getting elected Governor.

Wrong.  It’s like going from Southern Conference basketball to the ACC.

McCrory is trying to fix his campaign.  That’s why he hired Jack Hawke.  But unless I’m wrong, Jack is a lot like me: not eager to disrupt his good life with his grandkids here and move down to Charlotte and work 24/7 – which is what it’s going to take to cure this patient.

If Fred Smith had been spending his money on TV ads instead of BBQ, he’d be running away with the GOP race now.

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Richard Moore’s ad strategy doesn’t add up.

Last week, his campaign pulled their ads off the air – after one public poll showed Beverly Perdue increasing her lead.

The Moore campaign said the ads were pulled because the presidential campaign may soon dominate the air wars.  That makes no sense.  If that were so, wouldn’t the Moore campaign increase its buy now?

A more likely explanation is that Moore’s ads haven’t worked. 

Their message has been tough talk.  Moore has attacked government studies and commissions, criticized wasteful spending and boasted of his record as a crime-fighting prosecutor and disaster manager.  Guy Talk, in other words.

Perdue’s ads have been Girl Talk.  The little guy who grew up thinking she could do anything.  Health care, especially.

Moore’s ads make him look like a Republican.  Maybe that’s why they run so much on Fox News.

Perdue’s ads may be more in tune with the Democratic primary voters.