I've been reading Andrew Sullivan for a long time. I almost always find him interesting, he often writes well, and every now and then I learn something new from his blog.
However, the man is certainly prone to mood swings and drama. (If you aren't familiar with Sullivan's habits, perhaps these two articles, http://www.thedailybeast.com/... and http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/... written in the space of three weeks, will give you some idea how wildly the guy can lurch.)
Frankly, I think Sully has gotten predictable and ripe for some teasing.
Can you come up with thumbnail summaries for Sullivan's reaction to the gut-wrenching final month of the campaign?
Put your contributions in the comments, mine is below the jump....
THE VP DEBATE
I'll have to give the VP debate to Biden. I had always regarded him as having a strange mix of competence and clownishness, but he delivered tonight. He made a forceful defense of the Obama record and called out Ryan on his lies and iffy math. If you play the expecatations game, it was knockout: the famously gaffe prone Biden, the butt of innumerable jokes on the onion, defeated the wunderkind heralded as the next coming of conservative intellectualism. I'm not sure if Ryan's reputation will ever recover. He may even have to return to Wisconsin to defend his house seat this election.
This debate might slow Romney's momentum a little, but it doesn't change the fundamentals. It was a vice-presidential debate, and those don't count unless a VP candidate is clearly not up for the office. I don't think Ryan was that bad. What has to change is Obama's attitude, or I should say, the attitude Obama presents in the debates.
Why is that that everybody else - Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, his own wife for God's sake - can defend the Obama record of success and make a strong argument for a second term, except for Obama himself? This was the failure in Denver: We saw a man who acted like he didn't want the presidency or care to defend what he had done with it.
Nobody wants to vote for "leadership" like that. Obama's challenge in the next debate is to show us that Denver was fluke. That he knows why he wants to be president, that he knows what he wants to do in a second term (and embracing Simpson-Bowles would help), and that he can put up a fight and defend himself and his record.
(accompanied by image of Biden and Ryan at the debate, Biden is talking)
THE TOWN HALL DEBATE
!!! The Obama I voted for !!!
(accompanied by a photo of "the cool Obama" in a taking charge and kicking butt pose)
THE FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE
I'm not sure if this moved any votes or not. Foreign policy rarely does. Both candidates looked strong. I am worried that Obama let Romney hug him on almost all of the issues and did not call Romney on his ties to the neocons and his plans for more wars in the middle east. It's as if Obama is really scared of the Kristol-Netanyahu axis.
Then again, Obama looked far better than he did in his disastrous Denver outing, and that may be all that mattered. This seems to be Obama's method of operation from his days as community organizer: To hang back, not make any mistakes, let his surrogates
and ground game work their magic (and if Obama wins, he owes Bill Clinton *something), and not make any mistakes while his opponents dash themselves on the rocks of madness. This seeme to be working in the days before Denver, when Romney couldn't shake the 47% Will it be enough?
We can only hope so.
(accompanied by image of Obama in a thoughtful and pensive pose, hands in his pockets, sillhoutted in a doorway with light streaming out of it)
ELECTION NIGHT
meep-meep
(accompanied by a photo of a happy Obama taken earlier in that evening)
WEDNESDAY AFTER ELECTION NIGHT
long article with a title like "Black Teddy Roosevelt", "The Chicago Lincoln", "American Jesus", etc