John McCain’s stock is falling faster than Wachovia’s.

You can read a candidate’s polls by reading what they do. McCain has been in panic mode for a week. Suspending his campaign, flying to Washington, threatening to pull out of the debate, getting back in the debate, attacking the bailout bill, lobbying for the bailout bill, attacking Obama and then attacking Obama for being too partisan.

McCain acts like a drowning man. Obama acts like a man riding the wave.

McCain may simply be on the wrong side of history. He called himself “a loyal foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution.” But this election may be the death knell of the Reagan revolution.

Reagan proclaimed that government is the problem. The implication: Business is the solution.

The one Democratic President since 1980, Bill Clinton, made peace with that sentiment. He even declared an end to the era of big government.

Now our long national love affair with business is over. The American public wants government to rein in business.

It’s a historical cycle as dependable as the business cycle. 

I received a curious email, followed by a phone call, from Richard the Intellectual. Richard tends to watch politics from afar but something happened yesterday that left him completely, absolutely enraged.

He got a brick in the mail from State House Republican Leader Skip Stam.

That’s right, a brick.

The kind, as Richard said, he used to build his house.

He calculated Stam spent $20 to buy the brick and mail it to him.

After Richard finished sputtering, I gathered the brick was a fundraising gimmick – it had something emblazoned on it like, ‘Help us build a Republican majority,’ and came with a fundraising letter.

If that was meant to be an attention grabber it worked. But backfired.

Richard’s bottom line was simple. He said, disgusted: ‘My choice this election is between crooks and fools.’

He means Democratic crooks and Republican fools.

I asked, goading him, ‘Well, what did you do with the brick?’

He said he was going to attach it to the next postage-paid Business Reply Envelope he receives from a Republican and send it back to Stam.

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When I read James Romoser’s story in the Winston-Salem Journal about Senator Dole spending only 13 days in North Carolina during 2006, my immediate reaction was: “That’s an ad.”

Thirteen days out of 365? Less than two weeks out of 52?

This is a gift from the political gods to Kay Hagan’s campaign. Any bets on how long it will take her – or the DSCC – to roll out a new ad?

Already, Dole has been “rocking-chaired” by the DSCC ads on her effectiveness. 

(“Rocking-chaired” is to the Senate race what “Swift-boating” was to the presidential race in 2004.)

This plays right into the underlying “she’s-too-old” theme. For that matter, so do her own ads. The scene of her sitting on the porch makes her look like an Alzheimer’s patient.

Because Dole is already on the defensive about her effectiveness in the Senate, she can’t argue she was working so hard in Washington she couldn’t be here.

A year ago, nobody thought Dole would have a real challenge for the Senate. Today, she is on her way to being another in North Carolina’s string of one-term Senators, joining Robert Morgan, John East, Terry Sanford, Lauch Faircloth and John Edwards.

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Who knows, this election may really be about change and not just political double talk about change from politicians reading polls.

Or, at least, whether the politicians beating the “change drum” are sincere or not – the voters are dead serious.

Which would explain some curious poll numbers we’re seeing right here in North Carolina.

We’ve got Obama, whom no one gave an ice cube’s chance of winning North Carolina six months ago running even with McCain.

We’ve got Kay Hagan, who was given less chance than Obama, running even with Liddy Dole.

And we’ve got Pat McCrory, after Republicans haven’t won a governor’s race since 1988, running an eyelash ahead of Bev Perdue.

A vote for Obama is change in Washington.

A vote for Hagan is change in Washington.

And a vote for McCrory – since Perdue represents the political establishment here at home – is a vote for change in Raleigh.

So what are McCain, Dole and Perdue – as paradigms of the establishment – to do?

There is one tried and true political strategy. It works like this: If voters don’t like you, you’ve got two choices: Change that. Or make your opponent an absolute villain voters loathe even more than you.

That’s about the only way to get reelected if voters want change and you’re standing in the way.

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I miss Bill Clinton. Not the bad Bill, who can’t bring himself to say a good word about Obama or a bad word about McCain-Palin. But the good Bill. The only person in politics who can talk both intelligently and empathetically about The Problem and The People.

That’s what this Great Financial Crisis – Depression II? – demands. But it’s sadly lacking at the top of American politics today.

Everybody I talk to is worried. Or scared. Nobody seems to know what to do – or even know who knows.

It’s bad when I find myself liking what right-wing Republicans said about the original bailout plan. That’s how confused I am.

I looked for somebody reassuring in Friday’s debate. 

McCain looked like Mister Wilson being forced to spend the evening with Dennis the Menace. He came off – in the debate and all last week – as too grumpy, impetuous and unpredictable to be President in troubled times.

Obama, the supposedly inexperienced newcomer who “just doesn’t understand,” came off as cool, unflappable and pragmatic.

But I wish Obama had Clinton’s facility for grasping the problem, explaining it in people terms, and coming up with a reasonable-sounding solution. I wish Obama could show us he feels our pain.

Clinton, of course, has gone on to bigger things: his “Global Initiative.” He now feels the entire planet’s pain.

Whatever Obama lacks, he clearly beat McCain in the debate. He looked more Presidential. The debate and the White House meeting eliminated any stature gap.

Speaking of the White House, is there anyone in the world that the public is convinced gets it less than George Bush? It’s easy to forget he is, as Jon Stewart calls him, Still the President.

Just as in 1932, the American people are counting the days until somebody else – anybody else – gets in. Whoever that is, he’ll Get It better than the guy in there now does.

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While tonight’s debate could change everything, here are winners and losers in the wake of this week’s financial-political panic:

Winner (for now): John McCain. Once again he stopped his precipitous slide in the polls. He put himself in the position to be the hero on the bailout, if it passes. Or to be the worst pandering politician in the history of the planet, if his ploy backfires.

Winner (for now): Barack Obama. George Bush did him a big favor by inviting him to sit at the table in the White House. Suddenly Obama looks as much like a President as Bush or McCain. Where McCain has seemed jumpy and panicky, Obama has been cool and collected. But too cool?

Winner and Loser: Bill Clinton. Gets pilloried for lavishly praising McCain and Palin and grudgingly praising Obama in interviews. But demonstrates the skill that both McCain and Obama lack: explaining the crisis and the bailout in terms people can understand.

Winner: Jim Cramer of CNBC. “Mad Money” can be crazy, but he can make crazy things like the bailout clear. His explanation: It’s not just for Wall Street. It’s pumping money into the economy so consumers can keep their houses, buy a car and take out a college loan. Are you listening, Barack?

Big Losers: Sarah Palin and, thus, McCain. Every time she answers questions, the McCain campaign is like a polar bear standing on the edge of a glacier that’s melting because of global warming.

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Democrats in North Carolina have a long-running problem. There is a culture of corruption a mile wide and a mile deep that runs right through the heart of their politics.

The core of their problem is how they raise the money that pays for their political operations, from the North Carolina Democratic Party to their campaigns. By and large, this Democratic fundraising is based on a simple mechanism: the exchange of political favors for campaign contributions. You want something from government, you pay. It’s a practice Democratic politicians follow day and night.

The most infamous example is Jim Black, the House speaker who received $120,000 in contributions from video poker operators while blocking legislation to ban video poker, who pocketed $29,000 from chiropractors to pass legislation requiring insurance companies to treat chiropractors the same as family doctors, and who appointed a lobbyist for a lottery company to the State Commission that grants lottery contracts.

Now, if you’re a Democrat, you’re almost surely going to holler that I picked the most egregious examples. But consider this:

This week a Board of Transportation member, Lewis Sewell, gave us an up-to-date example. Mr. Sewell spent $375,000 of tax money to build roads through his own land. He (and family) have also given a whopping $37,500 to Beverly Perdue.

And none of this is illegal. Mr. Sewell pours money into Easley and Perdue, gets appointed to the board and spends money for himself, but under North Carolina law that’s just fine.

And what does Ms. Perdue have to say about all this? Nothing. In fact, when asked if she’d reappoint Sewell to the board she couldn’t even bring herself to say no. She dodged the question.

Pat McCrory has built a campaign based on ending this kind of Democratic corruption and Mr. Sewell will serve as a poster boy for what he’s talking about from now until November.

I’d suggest McCrory challenge Ms. Perdue to take two stands. 1) To pledge not to reappoint Mr. Sewell; and 2) To join him in supporting a simple reform: No member of the Board of Transportation will raise money for or contribute to a candidate for governor. You can serve on the board or be a political moneybags, but you can’t do both.

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John McCain is like a football coach who keeps coming up with gimmick plays to keep his drive alive on fourth and long.

Picking Sarah Palin saved him at the beginning of September. Now his cancel-the-debate and go-to-Washington end-around run has again frozen the other team, the refs and the fans.

But the momentum of this game has swung decisively against him. McCain’s situation is desperate, just as it was after the Democratic convention.

The last thing a Republican candidate for President can survive this year is a sinking economy. All Obama has to do is keep painting McCain as more of the same old thing that got us in this mess. And promise change.

McCain is a scrappy, creative player. He scrambles and improvises like Brett Favre.

But he is giving up too much yardage.

Picking Palin helped him in the short term. But he sacrificed his reputation as the rare Republican who is not a captive of the Cultural Right.

His attacks on Obama helped him in the short term. But he sacrificed his reputation as one of the few honest politicians.

Now he has helped himself in the short term by flummoxing Obama and the media on the debate and the Wall Street bailout.

Obama has an easy defense: Call for changing the first debate’s topic from national security. Since McCain wants to focus on the economy, debate the economy. 

If McCain wins that exchange, he stays alive for another series of downs. If he loses, the game is all but over.

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Pat McCrory’s ad has the same message as Barack Obama: It’s time for a change. Therein may lie Bev Perdue’s challenge.

Public Policy Polling found that she is weak with Democrats around Charlotte. Question: Do they know she’s the Democrat and McCrory’s the Republican?

Like Obama, McCrory is calling for change. Like Obama, McCrory is running against the status quo/more of the same in the capital. Like Obama, McCrory looks like a smart, young, fresh outsider.

One Republican told me there are three parties in Charlotte: Democrats, Republicans and Chamber of Commerce. And that McCrory belongs to the Chamber party.

Obama’s surge in the polls – which started with Wall Street’s meltdown – is lifting Perdue. Now she needs to reach these wayward Democrats. But will stem-cell research and school vouchers do it?

Her performance improved in the education debate. But she lacks a strong positive message about the future. Her ads tell us what she did. She needs to tell us more about what she’ll do.

And that she’s the Democrat.

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Rob Christensen compared this year’s election to 1992 – 16 years ago. I’d go back another 60 years – to 1932.

Americans were in a panic about the economy.

The Republican candidate for president was an experienced, respected veteran of Washington who believed the fundamentals of the economy were sound.

The Democrat was a relatively inexperienced, supposed lightweight – nicknamed “Feather Duster” – who remained maddeningly vague and general.

Read Jonathan Alter’s great book about the time, Defining Moment, and you may be surprised to find the experts considered the Hoover-FDR race a tossup. At a time of national crisis, they wondered, would the American people turn to an untested outsider?

Then, as now, the public wanted “bold, persistent experimentation.” But now it’s the secretary of the Treasury, not the president, who is demanding sweeping executive powers. Not even Republicans dare suggest giving George Bush those powers.

Then, as now, nobody in Washington or on Wall Street seemed to know what they were doing. And no politician is sure how to handle the hot potato.

Surely it has crossed Barack Obama’s mind – and a few other Democrats’ – that there might be political gold in attacking the $700 billion bailout to Wall Street. But Obama is a cautious, pragmatic guy. Much as FDR refused Hoover’s entreaties to join in a bipartisan plan to save the economy before Inauguration Day.

You can imagine what a John Edwards would do. An investment in attacking the bailout bill now – like plunging into the stock market today – could bring a huge payoff. Or an equally huge political loss.

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Democrats are apoplectic about the McCain campaign’s distortions, distractions and outright lies. It’s the old Rovean, Swift-Boat strategy: say anything, no matter how outrageous, until it sticks.

Let’s not get too huffy. Bev Perdue’s campaign showed that Democrats can play the game.

Pat McCrory’s campaign took a predictable shot at her: Return the money you raised from DOT board member Louis Sewell.

But the Perdue campaign fired its own salvo: McCrory was in bed – or, more precisely, on the golf course and in the doctor’s chair – with Jim Black.

You think that’s a stretch? Well, Under the Dome gave Perdue’s attack more play than McCrory’s.

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Pat Stith convinced me that The News & Observer won’t lose its soul when he leaves.

I told you he was a loyal guy. He is also persuasive.

Stith says his retirement does not stem from the buyouts. He is 66, after all. He has been pondering retirement for a while. And he wants to go out on top of his game. We both remember burned-out deadwood that stayed at the paper too long.

Stith says Executive Editor John Drescher is up to the challenge of a shrinking staff and news hole. Drescher is keeping an investigative unit, for example.

Proof came with Sunday’s front-page story by Dan Kane and Benjamin Niolet about a DOT board member steering money toward road projects adjacent to land he owned.

So I take back my overly gloomy observation in Friday’s blog post. And I hope Press Association attorney Hugh Stevens’ prediction that crooked public officials can relax turns out to be wrong, too.

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We liberals pride ourselves on our commitment to clean, open and ethical government. Then we get in power and show that we can be just as hypocritical as the other guys.

Witness the Gang of Four – the members of the Raleigh City Council who have been meeting in private to discuss city business, according to David Bracken at the N&O.

The four are Rodger Koopman, Thomas Crowder, Russ Stephenson and Nancy McFarlane.

Mayor Charles Meeker and the other Council members said the private meetings are improper and unethical.

But the four – who share an anti-growth message – trot out rationalizations that would be worthy of the Bush Administration:

• “The purpose of the meetings is to share information, not get everyone on the same page.”

• "We would never get ourselves in a compromising position where we're going to break any ethics or open meeting rules."

• "To me, it's just a fact-finding mission."

• "I think it is good when people who serve together in a political body talk to each other, frequently, informally. I think that's the kind of stuff that the voters actually want."

Excuse me, but the Bullshit Meter is going off the scale.

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Pat Stith is the best reporter there ever was.

Not at The News & Observer. Not in North Carolina. The best. Ever. Anywhere. 

I had the good luck to work with him at the N&O in the early 70s. We once worked together on a story about state government misusing federal jobs money. I learned more about journalism that month than I would have learned at journalism school.

He is absolutely honest. And the most competitive person I ever met.

We used to be in a group that played basketball at Ferrel Guillory’s church on Sunday afternoons. When Pat played, you would end the day bruised and sore. Even if he was on your team.

The excellent front-page profile in today’s N&O does him justice. But it neglected to mention one of his nastier habits from years back. He chewed tobacco, and he spit into coffee cups. Cups would pile up on his desk. Some were half-full of coffee, and some half-full of tobacco juice. It was hard to tell which. Occasionally he would turn in copy with a mysterious brown stain on it.

He tried being an editor once. He hated it. And he will tell you he isn’t the most polished writer who ever took to a keyboard.

But Pat has a zeal for truth. And this world could use a few more people who have a zeal for truth.

I’ll call Pat today. Loyal soul that he is, he probably will not criticize the company whose financial machinations and miscalculations led to his retirement. But I doubt he wanted to retire. Ever. Pat probably figured he was saving the jobs of a couple of younger reporters. Hopefully, they learned something from him.

John Drescher, the N&O’s executive editor, said Stith was “the soul of this paper.” True.

The N&O has lost its soul.

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A veteran North Carolina Democrat points out the surest sign that the McCain campaign is worried about North Carolina: They are spending money on TV ads there.

For months, Republicans have insisted they aren’t worried about North Carolina going for Obama.

Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, has said:

"It's just one more state where the Obama campaign has allowed its hubris to dictate spending decisions. John McCain will win North Carolina and soon you will see the Obama camp withdraw from North Carolina like you have seen them withdraw from other states."

If Schmidt is so confident about North Carolina, why is he letting the Obama campaign dictate his spending decisions?

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I’m still stuck on John McCain saying Barack Obama supports ‘comprehensive sex education’ for kindergartners.

If McCain is telling the truth he’s convinced me – 100% – Obama does not have the judgment to be president.

But if, on the other hand, it’s not true, he’s landed me in a conundrum. Because that’s a pretty serious smear. One that’s hard to overlook as, say, just politics as usual.

I also do not understand why – if the charge is false – Obama is not jumping up and down and screaming bloody murder. Smears like that have backfired and sunk candidates with a lot bigger leads than McCain. Why hasn’t Obama done his own ad? It would have been simple. All he’d need is himself, a chair, and a television set. He’d sit in the chair, turn on the TV, play McCain’s ad, then look into the camera and say, Senator McCain, you misled the American people. Apologize.

Obama could have changed the direction of the presidential campaign. Instead of defending his liberalism he’d be debating McCain’s honesty.

If he’d done that McCain’s next ad – saying Barack Obama compared Sarah Palin to a pig – would have been manna from heaven. McCain put the ad on. Ran it. Stood by it. Then, a week later, turned around and told the press, personally, he didn’t think Obama had compared Palin to a pig at all.

So this time Obama didn’t even have to prove he’d been smeared. All he needed to do was run McCain’s statement that McCain’s own ad wasn’t true. In politics it doesn’t get any easier than that. Then, rather than swatting at the ten incoming missiles McCain’s firing at him every day, Obama could just destroy them all in one fell swoop by proving McCain doesn’t believe his own ads.

John McCain’s political strategy is puzzling. But Barack Obama’s is a mystery.

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Democrats have been more down than the Dow Jones Index since the Republican convention. But there is a definite uptick this week, with one exception.

Here is my reading of the Democratic Election Mood Index (DEMI) as of today:

• The air is going out of the Palin bubble. Thanks, Tina Fey.

• Bad economic news is good political news. James Carville even declared Obama President when the stock market plunged Monday. 

• McCain is losing momentum, especially now that the media has turned on him – and turned the Straight Talk Express into the Double Talk Express. Even more especially since he channeled Herbert Hoover on the fundamentals of the economy being strong.

• There still is nervousness that Obama may not be tough enough or mean enough and that the party will blow another one.

• Feeling good about the Senate race. Liddy Dole has been rocked by the attack ads, and Kay Hagan is looking better. More independent groups are looking at playing in this race.

• But there is near-panic on the governor’s race. One Democratic consultant said letting Bev Perdue debate five times amounts to political malfeasance. 

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Down to his last four months in the governor’s mansion and looking ahead at his future beyond politics, Mike Easley has given his wife a five-year contract to work at North Carolina State University for $170,000 a year.

Democrats are giving Sarah Palin the devil for trying to fire one Alaska state trooper – but not one Democrat is howling about Governor Easley making his wife the best paid factotum in North Carolina history.

Pat McCrory did comment. And asked an excellent question: Where’s the outrage?

I’d say that alone – McCrory’s shock about the lack of outrage over the governor putting his wife on the government payroll for $170,000 a year – qualifies him to be governor.

Governor Easley, sailing into the political twilight, is not running for anything this year. But Bev Perdue is. And Kay Hagan is. And other Democrats are. Republicans ought to follow McCrory’s lead and hold their feet to the fire.

So, how about you, Bev? How about you, Kay?

Are you outraged at all?

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Chaos breeds creativity. And so will this chaotic campaign.

Every campaign year rewrites the rules of communication. Winners often win because they recognize the new rules before their opponents do. Then the new rules become the old rules, not just in politics but for all communications strategies.

In 2004, it was the 527 Swift Boat-type campaigns.

This year, it’s “churning.”

The phenomenon was captured in a New York Times article this week about the presidential candidates trying to break through the “media fog” of “blog postings, cable television headlines, television advertisements, speeches by other candidates and surrogates, video press releases, screaming e-mailed charges and counter-charges — not to mention the old-fashioned newspaper article or broadcast report on the evening news.”

Since the 1980 Reagan campaign and the 1992 Clinton campaign, received political wisdom has been that the best weapon to cut through the fog is a disciplined, tightly focused Message of the Day.

But today’s chaos has outrun yesterday’s tactics.

The new model may be the McCain campaign’s successful media strategy after the Republican convention. Compared to the Obama campaign, the Times said:

Mr. McCain’s campaign, reflecting the influence of Steve Schmidt, his day-to-day campaign chief, sees opportunities in this chaos. The McCain campaign is the more aggressive of the two, throwing out information, often frivolous and often stretching the bounds of truth, to try to keep things churning.

Churning. That’s the key.

The Obama campaign could use some churning right now. Both the national operation and its state affiliates should be more aggressive – and more negative. Throw the kitchen sink at both McCain and Palin. Throw it all: his Hooveresque comment that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” his past support for deregulation, the fact he can’t use a computer, his claim that he invented the Blackberry (as Al Gore invented the Internet), his distant relationship with his own family, his uncertainty about how many houses he owns, his use of his POW experience to answer any criticism. Then there’s Palin: alleged affairs, her daughter’s pregnancy, her children’s drinking and drug use, Troopergate, book banning, etc. Plus all the truth-stretching and downright lying the Republicans have engaged in.

Throw it all against the wall. Something will stick.

The lesson, not only for campaigns but for anyone trying to get out a message today: You can’t impose order on chaos. You can make chaos your ally.

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Two stories in today’s N&O point to where things are headed.

• A front-page story by Mark Johnson. Previously, he and other Charlotte Observer staffers were identified as “Charlotte Observer.”  Today, he was identified as “staff writer.”

• The Business section said the McClatchy chain, which owns the N&O and Observer, will begin layoffs Monday.

 Already, Johnson and other Observer staffers in Raleigh have moved into the N&O building. And the papers’ political staffs are operating as one unit.

Are we going to have one combined newspaper? 

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Candidates aren’t the only ones whose debate and interview performances are being scrutinized. So are TV anchors, reporters and commentators.

Was Charles Gibson condescending in his questioning of Sarah Palin? Does anybody know what he meant when he asked if Iran was an “existential” threat to Israel? What does Sartre have to do with the Middle East?

The ongoing clashes between MSNBC’s people and the candidates – or among themselves – are part of the same story. Not to mention everybody at Fox.

Now the question is being raised here by some Democrats: Did Pam Saulsby of WRAL unfairly badger Bev Perdue during the gubernatorial debate last week? 

Media bias usually is in the eye of the beholder. But TV reporters and commentators be on alert: You too will be held up to scrutiny.

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With the polls heading the wrong way, the Obama campaign has to consider whether tying John McCain to George Bush is a winning strategy.

Since Denver, the Democratic message has been that McCain means four more years of Bush.

But McCain may have used his convention to slip out of that trap. Picking Sarah Palin helped him make the “Maverick Reformer” argument.

We’ve seen in the past how presidential candidates used their conventions to reintroduce themselves to Americans. Bill Clinton did it in 1992. The campaign turned his way then – and never turned back. McCain may have accomplished the same dramatic pivot.

There is another strategy Obama could use: McCain is out of touch. Doesn’t know how to use a computer. Says the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Seems awfully grumpy and crotchety.

Underlying that argument is age: a subliminal – or not so subliminal – hint that McCain is just too old.

Maybe too old to deal with today’s problems.

It’s working against Liddy Dole.

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Like the True Church, politics long ago split into two faiths: Organization and Media.

I follow the Media faith. But the Obama campaign is trying to show that Organization leads to enlightenment. Or at least to victory.

If organization works, this will be the year.

It used to work. At late as 1976, organization played a key role in Jim Hunt’s election as governor. But – thanks to Carter and his crowd – I became a convert to Media. My road to Damascus was the 1984 election.

Every election since, Democrats say THIS is the year organization will come back. Over and over, they said: We have figured it out now. This time organization will really make the difference.

It never has.

Doubter that I am, the level of organization in the Obama campaign still is impressive. It is even deeper than Rob Christensen’s piece in the N&O today suggests.

Normally skeptical Democrats are convinced the effort can deliver three to five extra points for Obama – and potentially for the entire ticket.

I’m willing to be converted. Will the scales fall from my eyes in 49 days?

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Barlow Herget of State Government Radio asked me a question that reminded me of what I’m missing this time of year: “What’s happening inside a statewide campaign now?”

Unfortunately, polisci students, campaigns right now are not just about strategy, media and organization. They’re also doing a lot of math: 

• Fundraising: How much money is in hand, and how much more can we raise?
• Polls: Ours and anybody else’s we can get hold of. How are we doing? Where are we up and where are we down? What demographic groups? Which ads are working and which aren’t?
• GRPs: That is, Gross Rating Points – the measure of how many times a given ad has been seen. And how do we divvy up the GRPs we have left?

On top of the math, you have people calling every day to tell you what you’re doing wrong and what you ought to do. Almost none of whom have ever run a campaign. Including the candidate, his (or her) family, friends and business or law partners. But attention must be paid.

About one idea out of every 20 is good. You have to figure out which 19 to ignore.

On top of the mental strain, there is the mind-numbing stress and physical fatigue. You go from before sunrise until you collapse at night. The cell phone and the Blackberry never stop. The conference calls stack up like planes at O’Hare. You’re fueled with coffee and Diet Cokes all day long. Your first thought every morning: 50 days to go. Can I make it? Weekends? Forget them.

Only the most disciplined find time to exercise. And when it comes to food, there are two schools: Scarfers and starvers. The scarfers (like me) eat everything, especially doughnuts and burgers. Average weight gain per campaign: 15 pounds. The starvers can’t eat, and their clothes hang off them.

Weighing over it all is the sheer terror of losing. As James Carville once said, the best thing about winning a campaign is that you didn’t lose.

It’s a wonderful life. I miss it so.

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Democrats are in their quadrennial panic. If self-flagellation were an Olympic event, we’d win the gold every four years.

Yes, McCain’s pick of Palin changed the race. Yes, Obama needs to hit harder. Yes, Joe Biden’s right: Hillary would have been a better running mate. Even Tom Friedman is calling Obama a wuss, for Pete’s sake.

But Democrats need to step away from the ledge. Obama is not Al Gore or John Kerry. David Axelrod & Co. are not the same set of squabbling, egomaniac Washington consultants who sank the party in 2000 and 2004.

The national polls were bound to get – and stay – tight. This is a 45-45 country. The polls are the same every presidential race. Remember, only about 10 states – probably not including North Carolina – will pick the President.

Obama has been through this before. Last year his supporters were in a panic that he wasn’t being tough enough on Hillary. Obambi, they calle