Magic Hour

And so we drift, or is hurdle perhaps a better word? into that golden space of time where the most insane of political allegations can be directed at one's opponent, with reasonable confidence that there won't be time to disprove them until just after the election, leaving you the longest possible time before you have to run for anything again.

I should probably put more time into coining the perfect phrase for this period- happy hour, perhaps. Actually, I think I like the Twilight Zone, although someone probably still owns the copyright to that (please don't sue me- I'm really not worth it).

It's appropriate, because this is the period where you are rewarded for just the right sort of lie- of sufficient scale to flip huge numbers of voters, aimed at the sort of character assassination that lingers even when evidence mounts that the allegation probably isn't legitimate.

I thinking here of, say, "evidence" of attendance at Obama's childhood mosque, or "allegations" that McCain is secretly a vegetarian. If you're reading this, you probably don't require anything like this much explanation of what I'm getting at, so I'll stop providing it.

But if either campaign has been saving up the loony juice for their last big push, it's time to start the keg stands. On the one hand, Obama may feel comfortably enough ahead...well, to be frank, I'm trying to be impartial, but Obama has run the sort of campaign that makes this sort of thing almost unthinkable from him.

Which leaves McPalin. Despite all his rhetoric to the contrary, it's hard to believe that McCain is really as confident of victory as he keeps claiming, and any move like this would have to tarnish not only the tatters of his reputation, but any hopes Palin has of emerging as the leader of the opposition in the upcoming months. Then again, I've never run for President, and the sort of motivation you must need to do it probably complicates rational analysis. And McCain has a reputation for comebacks, not least in his own mind, and seems to leave a great deal of this sort of decision making in his staffer's questionable hands.

Let's hope there's nothing more to say about this between now and the 4th. We can only wait and see.