Stephen Hawking made his name talking cosmology to laymen. This weekend he made headlines with a pronouncement on xeno-sociology, which is on the order of Roger Ebert musing over technical details of digital film 50 years from now. In an episode of the upcoming Discovery Channel series Stephen Hawking's Universe, the theoretical physicist claims that Earth is best left blissfully ignorant of extra-terrestrials.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet," says Hawking. "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

What articles on Hawking don't say — perhaps discussed in the documentary — is that an unfriendly civilization would almost certainly be authoritarian.

Democratic post-industrial cultures unanimously lose interest in conquest. Where are the empires of Elizabeth and Napoleon? Divided and divested, turned over to the natives for better or worse. American manifest destiny stopped at the West Coast, and the United States' territories are welcome any day to set off on their own.

If we extend political constants to little green men several thousand light years away — and we may as well, already presuming expansionism — then the battleships swooping into orbit will only bear flags of a tyrant. One problem: we've watched the scientific potential of dictatorial societies level off. The old Second World hasn't beaten the First World to a significant invention since the middle of the Cold War. Beyond heavy machinery, information is the currency of progress, and in closed societies . . . well. Today's "developing countries" are relatively unstable, poor, squabbling states riding the technological coattails of the West. Sure, they manufacture and export a lot. But who taught them how to mass-produce?

What seems more plausible is that democratic powers — let alone dominant ones — are miraculous. If that is the case, then the majority of worlds inhabited by sentient beings wouldn't be Coruscants but instead far-flung, alien Africas — abject, stagnant and isolated sites of endless conflict. Terrible places to visit, but hardly a threat to us.

Could a liberal republic or federation of the stars succumb to rule by force? Possibly, although according to this line of thought, not by action of an external threat; and the deterioration resulting in a decline, not to mention the resources necessary to regulate an iron order, might lead to the abandonment of starflight and the same isolation of destitute worlds. Just how plausible is a galactic evil empire? We ought to be careful not to run away with the imagination of science fiction.

What an oration that was; a cross between a Protestant sermon and a presentation before the board of directors. For ninety minutes it proceeded in a shuffle, unmusically, swinging from loftily austere to slangy, then disciplinarian, and then to mundane fact-studded stuff. Insofar as these yearly addresses register with the public, the president shouldn't suffer too badly from what early commentariat analyses measure to be a poor speech. But the country's appraisal, if gradual, is cumulative; and the White House's asseveration of statist economics, social engineering, and international mousiness foretell a year much like the last one. So you have to wonder what Mr. Obama will have left to say in 2011.

To his credit and that of his political strategists, the president chose to go long on employment and gross domestic product over the next four quarters — he did this because, right now, he can. Take pollster Scott Rasmussen, who made his name by predicting everything the right did not want to hear in 2006 and 2008. Consistently, Rasmussen's surveys show that 1) Mr. Obama profits from resentment of the Bush administration even though 2) White House policies diverge from the electorate's expectations, particularly because 3) most people still believe the president will fulfill public wishes. About three-fifths of respondents oppose the health care salient in Congress, another 60 percent would rather companies pay lower taxes to improve business, and only one-third is pleased with the country's direction. How many approve of the president? Statistically, almost no fewer than the majority that elected him.

From that came high-water marks. "The markets are now stabilized," and "the economy is growing again." The president wagers against backsliding, or else assumes that if the last threshold breached — 8 percent unemployment in lieu of the stimulus bill — made no difference to voters, another won't. As long as he is perceived as trying, read the polls, can anyone blame him?

President Obama's efforts will begin with giving to Paul from Peter what both Peter and Paul earned because Paul deserves it most. "Financing remains difficult," Obama chided, "for small business owners across the country, even those that are making a profit." Because? "Banks on Wall Street" are "mostly lending to bigger companies." Thus $30 billion of taxpayer take, a massive body of capital dwarfed to a starry pinpoint in the cosmic federal budget, will infuse the lending of "community banks." Perhaps the worst is over, as whatever artificially easing credit did to rive the market in 2008 no longer troubles the president.

Three other proposals were imitative of supply-siders: tax credits for small businesses that hire, capital gains holidays for small businesses, and incentives for companies to build plants and fill them with machinery. Woe to those not hiring or laying a new assembly line. Why not lower corporate rates, blind, and let those entrepreneurs and rainmakers figure the way out themselves? For the command economist, it's always contingent.

Characterizing the years 2000-2009 as "the lost decade" — the last twelve months slipped in as a lost year for handy exculpation — the president rhetorically put his hands on his knees. Please stand: China, India, Germany. "These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs." America, why can't you be like your little brother? China's leaden, dictatorial stumbles; Germany's rightward push; and India's stultifying regulation, corruption and discrimination may be relevant to the argument; but the expectant unemployed aren't concerned about an international side-by-side.

With a slight wobble — looking forward to nuclear energy and accessing oil and gas prospecting, then staring at Republicans while standing firmly on the buckling, decline-hiding creed of global warming or climate change or whatever — President Obama began to channel Huey P. Long with a touch of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Careers? Too dependent upon degrees. Solution: money to community colleges. College? Too expensive. Solution: federal loans. Loans? Too onerous. Solution: apparent creation of a modern thane by way of forgiving debt in ten years for public servants. "In the United States of America," he declared, "no one should go broke because they chose to go to college." Or go into the private sector.

After entering a plea for socialized medicine, incriminating the average American as an entitlement-seeker — "What's in it for me?" we are supposed to be asking — the president drew one laugh from roughly half his audience, both immediate and remote. There is going to be a spending freeze, you see. "Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected." Ah, but the remaining one-half of one percent . . . "this freeze won't take effect until next year — when the economy is stronger." President Obama stared at the Republicans again. "That's how budgeting works." Off-camera, the minority party guffawed. This made the president visibly unhappy.

In time came reproof of the Supreme Court and a mildly disorienting transition to national security, which was capped by the president twice pronouncing the "end" of "this war," presumably Operation Iraqi Freedom, but not entirely clear, given the Democratic supplication that bad men might please go away. Then followed advertisements for a revival of acronymic arms treaties intended to deactivate mind-blowing nuclear arsenals so as to avoid confronting the reasons why, say, Washington has never worried about London's megatons.

With visions of left-liberalism as the philosophical bellbottoms and beehive of our time, I was listening to the president's reprimand of, in order, corporations, media, government, CEOs, bankers, doubts, lobbyists, politicians, TV pundits, and sound bites; and realized something. "No wonder there's so much cynicism out there. No wonder there's so much disappointment. . . . And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change — or that I can deliver it. " My God, I thought, President Obama is talking about a malaise. Two years passed before Jimmy Carter resorted to pietism; Obama needed only one. Vitally, Americans do not expect delivery from one man of anything except license.

Several minutes later, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell appeared on television, live from Richmond. To a country for whom the GOP's brand equity is guarded, he was a cipher: waspish, southern, staid, terribly practiced, and armed merely with platitudes. It isn't exactly what Republican luminaries say so much as how they say it, and for the unconvinced McDonnell would have been a swift tune-out. Libertarians like Nick Gillespie extol liberty with wit and genuine appeal, and in less than three minutes. But, see, Mr. Gillespie runs magazines and movements, not for public office. The saving grace: no one really listens to the minority response.

The president sounds serious about his policy, so elections may as well occur next Tuesday as on November 2nd. Democrats stand to lose; Republicans stand to gain some proportion of power, and if the present can so indicate, sufficiently unsure of what to do with it. And Mr. Obama, bless him, will still be around.

Well, then: election polls for the presidential race were mostly right. Only mostly right, because three states halted runaway courts, some US senators hung on, and Republicans took majorities in assemblies here and there; fuses athwart the national overcurrent. But the prize was the White House, and it is going to Barack Obama, President-elect of the United States.

These are weightless days. To look at the United States is to see it aglow. Maybe inasmuch as the race ended so quickly, and prospects for John McCain snapped off so cleanly, that catharsis brings relief. For we oppositionists, pride enters humbly. Not without delusion can one deny Obama his victory, nor can a patriotic American deny the man dignity of his elected office. And whatever the day's news, its reporting will be markedly cheerier for at least four years. Liberal journalists, party faithful, are eudaemonic, professional misfeasance serving the country's mood. The brats got their way this time, though the happy consequence is regnant optimism.

Does the executive match his nation's temperament? Have we shifted leftward? Pollster Scott Rasmussen, whose perspicacious operation asked voters why they wanted Barack Obama, says no.

"Mr. Obama followed the approach that worked for Ronald Reagan," writes Rasmussen in The Wall Street Journal. Yes, the senator was recognized as a spiritual nephew. But rather, for the left? Not so: "Mr. Obama's tax-cutting promise became his clearest policy position. Eventually he stole the tax issue from the Republicans. Heading into the election, 31% of voters thought that a President Obama would cut their taxes." Only one in ten, according to Rasmussen, believed the same of John McCain. And when invited to compare Reagan's hallmark position — "government is the problem" — it was Obama with 44 percent, and McCain with four percentage points less.

Good and bad for Obama. Good, since prevailing opinion confirmed his presidency. And bad for many reasons, chief among them the fact that Barack Obama's actions in lower office give poor testament to Barack Obama's more corporeal campaign promises. The president-elect has been quiet about past statements; his older repertoire is played una corda or not at all. Now, lifting tax burdens is laudable, less so for the generally unencumbered; and especially less so when increasing burdens on others debilitates economic activity, and the unencumbered get impoverished anyway. If he is viewed as authentically Reaganite, Obama may be surprised by his poking around, say, the coal industry. There are sectors of the American body public kept inviolate but not, thrills aside, erogenous zones.

Another challenge: the president-elect must substantiate what has hitherto been ethereal. Any skeptic of theatrics in the presentation of Obama would have to have been so caught up in the moment on Election Night that they did not stop to wonder why the president-elect appeared with his family, then his running mate, then both groups; but observed his victory alone and way out front. Taken in with that stage, bisecting the audience with a radial platform at the end of a catwalk, it was a little much. The only other celebrity immediately coming to mind to have done this is Bono, and the last time I heard of him before that, he and U2 were nightly exiting a giant lemon as if from a spaceship.

Campaigns can employ lots of thaumaturgy. Administrations less so. Remember the caterwaul in response to George W. Bush's 2005 call for American foreign policy to bring an end to dictatorship — and yet the president had a sound concept and several working models. Obama, as president, could very well realize policy goals. But so many of them reach into figuration. Yes We Can: exactly what, and for whom? If good can come of his administration, it will be my acquaintances — many who affirmed the winning candidate by speaking in tongues — accepting that the man is indeed mortal, plus a partisan Democrat.

The one most qualified to restrain the politics of velleity is Barack Obama. During the victory rally on Election Night, there was that welling admiration — which an American simply feels — but the speech begged scrutiny. Obama's narration of the 20th century denuded American trials. "A man touched down on the moon" thanks to nationalistic and ideological competition; because Yuri Gagarin flew into space first and the United States would've been damned to have let the hammer and sickle fly on Luna before the Stars and Stripes. First, or ever — "a wall came down" several years after Ronald Reagan told a disdainful House of Commons and a jaded world that free societies would "leave Marxist-Leninism on the ash heap of history." Barack Obama's first act as president should be to learn more about the country he will be ordained to lead.

Who reclassified elections with death and taxes? Prophecy is, in the economics of uncertainty, that invisible hand which guides money and volition away from willing consumers. I remain as I have since before spring of this year: I will be surprised if John McCain does not win the presidency.

Past a certain point, insistence has the purpose of convincing the advocate. Barack Obama is, with his perfervid support and media sympathy, an infectious candidate; but not an unstoppable victor. Information supplied to the electorate is suspect; those confident of Obama must deal with the irony that because the press has, with growing ostentation, traded journalism for politicking, the press' reporting on its efforts to contrive a Democratic White House is in turn exaggerated.

Presidential debates, celebrated as junctures in the race track, are this season's plainest example.

John McCain spent two-thirds of the first debate building momentum until he could prod Barack Obama on his enthusiastic concept of Iranian detente and see what bromides flowed out. The Arizona senator hesitated in the second debate, more than his opponent, from indecision over ingratiating himself with the audience or treating the town hall to bloodsport. Obama, perhaps because it's been decided he can and should, did both. McCain uncovered another choice when he shook the outstretched hand of an erubescent retired chief petty officer, tracing a long line back to his Navy beginnings and going where Obama couldn't. In the third debate he spent an hour and a half pushing Obama from redoubt to redoubt, the Democrat caught telling a member of his blue-collar constituency that a proletariat is a proletariat.

And? Sponsored focus groups, polls, and pundits contradicted this and pronounced Barack Obama winner of all three debates on account of — showing up and sounding pleasant.

Unanimity to make you wilt. But there is a yawning divide between the objective and reported records. Barack Obama is not good extemporaneously; pressed, he doesn't know exactly what to say. He emits malapropisms. On the first night of the Democratic convention, appearing to his wife and children on the upstage jumbotron like Orson from Mork and Mindy, Obama stammered and tried to disentangle an inverted object and subject when his youngest daughter strayed from script. In Debate Two, his defense of strikes in Pakistan's lawless corridors began, "Now, Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears and, you know, I'm just spouting off, and he's somber and responsible."

Most lack the address to speak flawlessly under pressure. But we are told that the Illinois senator's elocution is irreproachable, behind the podium or not; a "superb debater." Barack Obama took "wet behind the ears," "green around the gills," "sober" and "solemn," skewered with a line of reasoning and served up as shish kebob. You know, just spouting off. Not reported but recorded; and remembered, since it didn't match the advertisement.

Barack Obama's promotional strengths make him an unattractive executive. Word is that John McCain's tacks, right before the first debate, delivered him from electoral favor. Obama is regarded to have been equanimous then and since, thus presidential: when in fact he proposed and endorsed nothing; committed and imparted little while debating; and has maintained a "stable lead" by a) smiling, b) shrugging, c) professing innocence, d) hiding his running mate, and e) allowing his campaign to excommunicate local television stations that disrupt national uniphony by asking said running mate about economic policies. This, too, is not lost on observers.

A friend's septuagenarian friend has graced every occasional lunch over these years with the ribbing of a partisan Democrat. Bill Clinton? His good friend. George Bush? Ruined everything. Barack Obama? He . . . wasn't sure he could support the man. May have to vote Republican. Not race in question; character. That was in September, the shallow nadir of Obama's polling, so perhaps a transient reluctance; and either way unheard of in the news. Yet real, and felt by the least likely.

Similar firsthand observations convinced the American Thinker's Steven Warshawsky that Barack Obama will lose. "There are numerous websites and blogs written by Democrats touting McCain's candidacy," Warshawsky writes. "There are pro-McCain grassroots efforts being led by Democrats. And we all know friends or relatives who are Democrats, who voted for John Kerry in 2004, and who are no fans of President Bush — but who are going to vote for John McCain this year."

Obama's weak spots in the Democratic primaries foretell a slight electoral shift that would confirm John McCain as President. Virginia has taken in suburbanite workers from Washington, D.C., devotees of government's retainer party; and Tri-State retirees, who on balance do not vote Republican. So it is not John McCain's to win; but neither is it a meaningfully bellwether state. Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina stay put. Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada turn blue, but John McCain won't need them. New Hampshire, won by Hillary Clinton in January, was visited by a certain inevitably graced campaign recently, does not poll reliably for Obama; and affirms libertarian roots by returning to its 2000 position.

Congressman Jack Murtha, who carries a large bucket of ignominy and enjoys painting people with it, called western Pennsylvanians "racist," later euphemized as "redneck." Murtha meant to be dismissive, but denizens of the Commonwealth likely take the second word as a mark of authenticity. Outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Barack Obama is not perceived as a black man; but a suit and a salesman. If rallies in the state headlining Sarah Palin are as broadly ebullient as they sound, then Obama will perform as he did in April, losing the state to his opponent — and the White House, by six electoral points.

William F. Buckley Jr. saw Jimmy Carter spend the final days of October 1976 in a state of "serenity that is the result either of fatalism, or of an objective optimism as he looks down the road to the last week." Barack Obama has abided the last six weeks in stasis. A national media and intellectual class want us terribly, so terribly, to believe it is because all has been preordained. Too terribly, so the rational mind resists that anesthetic, and votes, intrepid.

The first presidential debate between senators since 1964 (if we subordinate Lyndon Johnson's three years as vice president and pretend he debated Barry Goldwater), last night saw each man preferring to address the chamber to his opponent. Even after moderator Jim Lehrer chided both, neither managed eye contact for long. And neither answered the first question directly — are governors, as de facto executives, really better suited for the job?

John McCain trailed in the first half-hour, appearing diminutive and derivative by echoing Barack Obama's responses on short-term economic plans. The candidates diverged on spending priorities, and McCain's one-note sounded more authoritative than Obama's willingness to freeze all spending except any one of the dozens of major entitlement programs the Democrat recited in litany.

Thirty more minutes, and the Republican spent as much allotted time demonstrating and criticizing as his opponent did adumbrating and protesting. The appeal the Illinois senator made to a left-leaning audience in July is indelible on record — said Obama, "I would," in the words of Anderson Cooper, "meet separately, without precondition" with the serial liars of "Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea." No, no, not actually, said Obama. Hereon Obama can only show the electorate a palimpsest. Oh, there are other officials in Tehran that the Illinois senator would face from across a table.

John F. Kennedy said, before he became president, "I would not meet with Mr. Khrushchev unless there were some agreement at the secondary level which would indicate that the meeting had some hope of success, or useful exchange of ideas." The month after Kennedy became president, Moscow ogled. Kennedy had a meeting arranged. And in Vienna, in June, Nikita Khrushchev dialectically scalped him.

Yes, fine, Barack Obama is an abstract thinker; I am, and many other intelligent and capable people are, too. It's our nature to generalize. But does he comprehend world affairs, understand the brute endurance of men who sleep restfully after a day as principal of a violent, repressive state? Does Obama even know where a lot of these locations are and what is in them? When John McCain spoke of each issue, he identified people and places, fitting them in context — which one cannot do when simply rattling off. Those are, for world leadership, not minutiae.

The last half-hour yielded John McCain extra points. Barack Obama looks to his left and puffs his cheeks when vexed, and in those thirty minutes a lot of cheek-puffing was directed leftwards. Not so discriminating about democracies, totalitarians, whatever, Obama turned subjunctively to China and Russia. They "have extensive trade with Iran but potentially have an interest in making sure Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon." Mr. Obama, that pair's trade is the Iranian nuclear warranty.

We hear that Obama, statistically regnant, need only adequate performances. Last night's exchange dishevels this thinking. The Democrat left Ole Miss in mere adequacy. Not once did he penetrate his opponent's philosophy or platform, while he now must memorize prevarications for each position that won't sound right to the average voter. Last night, John McCain could have tied the deposition of Saddam Hussein to Muammar Gaddafi's capitulation, which exposed AQ Khan and a transnational network of weapons of mass destruction — antidote to the word "Iraq," still a Democrat's potent venom. McCain didn't. But he can next time, and again, and again. Barack Obama will advance to the forthcoming debates, possibly to win, but first to simply survive.

William F. Buckley is here and there in Strictly Right. Beginning with what its dust jacket promises ("an affectionate portrait") the book, halfway through, first sheds fresh or exclusive information, then primary sources, then any coherent narrative on Buckley altogether — ending in weirdly detached conjecture by authors whose orbit from the founder of National Review and patron of modern rightism was close, but not that close.

The drift would be OK if "the American Conservative Movement" were more than a subtitle. As the book progresses, biography is substituted by generic history, borrowed-interest anecdotes, and brittle gossip. The worst offense comes when the authors — who apparently personally dislike Alfonse D'Amato — take an opportunity to denigrate the former senator as they recount editorial lunches. Fair enough if they don't care for Al. But where does Buckley figure on that page? He is . . . referenced.

Strictly Right is an unsuccessful try at a difficult task. There's a characteristic noted by most who have written about Buckley, which is that Buckley was by all appearances hardworking, focused, private, and a little impersonal. He inclined not to biography but bibliography: fiction; nonfiction; commentary, in print and on television. Even in writing his many, touching eulogies, Buckley focused on the subject rather than on himself. Faced with that kind of reticence, biographers have had to search; or like these authors, really strain.

For those who wish to know the man, you can find William F. Buckley in the work of William F. Buckley. At the very least you won't find him in this book.

It had to be, for this year, a Democrat who broke the silence before a civil service commission meeting last month. "So, who's caught up in Obamamania?" The grin on the official's face divulged that he wasn't, exactly. Chatter went back and forth, laughter and smiles more knowing than tight-lipped — when these people enter city hall they walk into politics. Another appointee, a Republican, said he had only been watching closely enough to know "that there are three leading candidates, and I'm not terribly excited by any of them."

A couple of weeks ago, one colleague confessed he favored neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton nor John McCain. He was open to considering each one of them. The forum in which the open question was posed wasn't the right place for my opinion. And anyway, I have needed only one general election year, 2004, to know enough to stay out of the amicable political persuasion business. Friends vote however they want. But I did offer simple advice — if uninitiated, focus on policies — and, noting widespread ambivalence, considered the thought experiment. Political convictions intact, what if I were undecided?

Barack Obama's campaign courted me during February — tracts and phone calls, an automated invitation to cross party lines in the Ohio primary. Reasons why I might vote for Obama are scarce to start out. The Illinois senator opposes the Bush doctrine; I solemnly espouse it. He welcomes judicial activism; I don't oppose social legislation so much as I demand the impeachment of judges who try to promulgate it themselves. In one pamphlet, the campaign asked me to support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton because the latter claims to impugn NAFTA — blamed by each candidate for Ohio's sallow economy — as immemorially as the former has.

Now, there is a double irony: Ohio was driven into these circumstances by Republican eminence in the state capital, and by the same majority flouting every rule of the free market. I would see tariffs abolished and countries made to specialize and compete; but the senator aggregated a promise to increase taxation and subsidies after a protectionist decree. OK, what else to vote for? Another colleague volunteered sheer character, as he saw parallels between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. Both men, he said, give people hope.

A narrow but limning reduction is to assume most of Kennedy's prepared text came from the hand and heart staff. Richard Reeves, validated by his syndicated columns from the far, mystical left, wrote Profile of Power, an incontestable and sober biography of thirty-fifth president. Hope felt in the telecast presence of Kennedy? It inheres in the hopeful: the New Englander was cool-headed, astute; until the day of his assassination, baffled with the supernatural investitures, in him, by others. If self-centered, dilatory and indulgent, JFK was faultlessly dispassionate for an executive station. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s hagiography convinces people of John F. Kennedy's glory in the same way that Clement Clarke Moore inspirits belief in Santa Claus.

The Kennedy whom Barack Obama resembles is Bobby. Reeves was ruthlessly plain about the attorney general's performance during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Robert Kennedy was inexperienced and impractical, but he was also magniloquent, vain and capricious.

There is no malice in Obama. He appears likable; modest, for a pol; and indelibly candid about his foibles. But he also appears to be somebody's speechwriter who accidentally got elected instead. His rhetoric — classical rhetoric — is sing-songy, and substitutes pomposity for wit even as it exchanges verity for style. Can Obama demonstrate the political power of his language? Well, no: he hasn't had time for it. Then, the nonchalance greeting accusations of Obama's staff telling NAFTA members other than what the candidate told voters. Leeway to which Obama is entitled, it was said. Really? That, what — the senator is vitally insubstantial? And thereby an ensuing smallness of the man.

Hillary Clinton: less to say about her. Her domestic positions are similar enough to Obama's for rejection; her foreign policy statements mutable enough to distrust. Even if she were to be nominated, even if she were inaugurated as president in ten months' time, that a debutant Illinoisan currently leads the primary race means that while inevitable, Clinton wouldn't be irresistible.

A rejoinder to the Obama campaign's retorts on NAFTA woke me up on a Sunday morning. I took notes. Hillary Clinton, in a recording, regretted this one steel mill having closed. She vowed to "end corporate giveaways," and "create jobs" to "help build the middle class." Only in a daydream from a mind of central planning can millions be placed into an abstractive construction set.

That returns me to last year's bizarre holiday tableau starring Clinton. To Carol of the Bells, symphonic but also the gravest Christmas chant selectable, Clinton wrapped boxes — not gifts, since each was figuratively identified as a federal program envisioned under a Clinton presidency.

I didn't comment on the advertisement but was struck by it. For the first time, I saw an earnest former first lady. Hillary Clinton sees herself the American matron of twentieth century socialism. Citizens are her guests: welcome to all the stuff set out by laborers, and free to come and go, but to do little more than say Please and Thank You. They can't be head of the household. She is. Her excitement, as she bundled those presents, was real. But Mrs. Clinton looks haggard from the wrong angle, these days, and her message of old-time statism — without the gilt Obama lays on his — is just as worn. Inherited popularity aside, Clintonism is old, so old. The voter is left with the appeal of a rotting feast.

Even though I conjectured a "President McCain" for the sake of an argument last April, I told a friend in December that the Arizona senator, nearly the Republican nominee in 2000, stood in this election as "an also-ran." In a party primary, John McCain would not have been — before Super Tuesday — my first choice, nor necessarily my second, while probably my third. He speaks silly things about "global warming" and the makers of pharmaceuticals — ah, but the other two senators do, too, and they are a lot sillier. He is stentorian on subjects that are none of his business, like free speech and its monetary form.

McCain is less silly on federal excess; he dislikes it. Whatever complaisance he showed on Capitol Hill over the president's judicial nominees, he has no love for judges looking into the Constitution and finding the Almighty, but seeing themselves. Cardinally, John McCain exhorts American power to expand the democratic world as a defense against what remains of the mephitic, totalitarian one. And partisan Republicans resent him for acting contra to the party now and then; but for the average citizen, if there's anything to be said of a mugwump, it's that he doesn't play favorites.

He would be no gentle, endearing president. Still, that can be plus, maybe sending David Gregory, that disrespectful bore from NBC, away from press conferences in tears. A leader for these times? As another colleague noted, he "fits the bill." I have seen sons of bitches in office, but never a real sonuvabitch. By process of elimination I vote for John McCain.

Unless the Democratic presidential contenders suddenly appeal, or voting for dead men or withdrawn candidates or imaginary parties convinces as indirect means to political satisfaction, the Republican voter will soon choose between John McCain and Mitt Romney. The race hasn't descended to acrimony, exactly, but it is still as cheerless as it was last week, right before Rudy Giuliani discovered that his grin was Cheshire.

John McCain is the curmudgeon whose primary wins at first mystify. He grumbled about deficits and twice voted against George W. Bush's tax cuts. In spite of, or because of, proximity to the white-collar obloquy of the Keating Five, the senator sees corruption where there is instead a First Amendment. McCain is not only openly accepting of illegal immigration, but fervent. Why have Republican voters elevated him? One supposition rests on tenure — it is simply John McCain's turn, voters resign themselves to that. For a corollary, one compares McCain to former senator and presidential loser Bob Dole.

Both men have been senators, were veterans, and endure limiting injuries from war. Neither, if called "moderate," will motivate very many to shake their heads. To conflate them politically, however, misses their divergent natures. The irascible McCain has chosen positions with far more assertiveness than the complaisant Dole — to say McCain is "moderate" means that he holds several statist beliefs, while for Dole it means that he is lukewarm and may simply give in. That may convey authority and consistency for the former but it certainly implies an absence thereof for the latter, and dispatches the analogy. We have the footage from 1996: Senator McCain has not mistaken San Diego for San Francisco, or dived off any dais.

Mitt Romney, the executive, occupies a political space that once belonged to Ronald Reagan. From where does the robust American come? Family and enterprise, the former governor celebrating the first; and advocating, via tax relief, the second. How to stand in wartime? Hold fast, says Romney, turning on the phrase "strong military." What about rightist cultural standards? Yes, yes and yes.

What Romney promises is not necessarily what he has enacted. National Review contributor Deroy Murdock has, for months, compared the candidates. He especially impugned the former governor's contemporary statements and, though with an evident vindictive spirit, significantly so. Corporate taxes, use taxes, identification card fees: all increased. Whence abortion, immigration and marriage laws? Westerly. Romney continues to define himself with negative space. Thus he runs as the conservative, but declaratively, and thus putatively; and perhaps ostensibly. As I said to a friend, over breakfast last Friday, voters face a choice between a reformed conservative and a moderate — but could very well elect the reformed conservative and have a moderate.

Complicating this is the perception of the presidency becoming a tight cynosure of Washington, D.C. — not because it is or could be, but because the men who would inhabit the White House are foremost on the public mind. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, though not a Radical. Jack Kennedy's first two years in executive office were a profile in legislative washouts, thanks to an adverse congressional wing of JFK's own party. And: Hillary Clinton would have seen socialized medicine promulgated in 1994 if Democrats had wanted it. Between the balance of power is the potential for a beneficial difference in ideology, but recalcitrant caucuses of the GOP are evaluating the party as if they were electing a parliament.

On the other hand, Congress can declare but never administer war. It may be that transnational fascism rising in the Near East — the hostilities already engaged and promising a decade of trials — has decided the ballots in McCain's favor. The senator has called for less, not more, extricable deployments overseas. Almost a year ago, John McCain said unpopular things about unpopular campaigns. At the same time, Mitt Romney said something else. Those statements have been disfigured by McCain, though not wholly. Romney was asked about "timetables" in Iraq, in this case the watchword for check marks for a retreat. He assumed, rightly, that President Bush had a political covenant with Baghdad, and spoke to that end. The question was loaded: did Romney asseverate? Maybe. What he clearly showed was caution, great caution, and not necessarily — judging by his language — out of military deliberation.

John McCain's capture and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese countervails the left's animation of Oliver Stone's pitiable, disenchanted military stereotype. No more accusations of civilian cowardice, at least. Were a President McCain to send the armed forces into justified peril, with near-certainty could one assume that none would suffer quite like he did. Yet McCain has his own thane's mindset, insulting Romney and begging, for observers, whether his service supplies the cause of derogating those civilians whom he swore to protect — but now obstruct him politically.

Where are the other candidates, the better ones? Popularly defeated by John McCain and Mitt Romney, two men of the imperfection that tends to stifle the ideologues and dreamers. Can the victor be flattered by the could-be vice president? God forbid these two end up as one another's running mate, haughty partners in electoral enterprise.

Events, since just this Saturday, can be arranged as a crest for the last two weeks of Republican presidential campaigning. John McCain struck Mitt Romney with an imputation of words on Iraq policy to Romney's tendency to equivocate, not too far off the mark. Mitt Romney retorted with a defense of topical statements — and a note of McCain's better standing with members of the other party, also not too far off the mark. In the three-day exchange of stilted indignation for like, journalists in support of each have contributed to a group conclusion that both men are sour and half again too shrewd.

But then, mercury is a toxin signifying radiance, yes? John McCain is polling on top, Mitt Romney close enough in second. It is, though performing from within the offices of glass. Those in whose mouths a thermometer has accidentally snapped can describe, in grimaces, the misfortune of a simple means for telling temperature happening to be that awful, argent liquid. Messrs. former governor and senator may face the other directly for Republican presidential nomination, but for now each competes to be the least dislikeable.

Rudy Giuliani, who trails in the race he once led, only smiled. "Some of my opponents are engaging in negative campaigning, using words like dishonesty," he said on Saturday. Save strength for the Democratic nominee, remember? "So I'm gonna try and remain positive, we're gonna talk about the things we can do for America, the things we can do for Florida. And I think that is going to be the winning strategy in Florida." National Review's Jim Geraghty demurred. "I realize Republicans are not Democrats and Florida is not South Carolina, but that is more or less the argument that John Edwards was deploying in the final days before yesterday's primary," after which the former senator from North Carolina took the spot reserved for Giuliani.

Can we take Jim up on the qualification? John Edwards, after bumptious entrances in two presidential primary seasons, has won a single state, showed a few times four years ago but otherwise stays back in place. He airs policy in the future subjunctive, because as a junior senator he legislated as a co-sponsor; or else introduced bills that were either commemorative or a little more than that, and if so checked in committee. Rudy Giuliani's mayorship, in its brasher moments — shattering welfare and elevating its dependent class, arming a police force to grapple with and pull down the streets' criminal establishment, knocking out whole sections of New York's affirmative action offices — was executive grace under fire, on the order of the Cato Institute managing from Berkeley's city hall. What most talk of, Rudy has done.

Hardly anybody in the press believes Rudy Giuliani's strategy will be effective, let alone triumphant, but the former mayor must be very pleased by how terribly his opponents have cloyed over the last ten days. If but consigned to the imaginative details of string theory, there is a Tuesday, January 29, 2008 when the Floridian GOP considers that a) the first- and second-place candidates are unsatisfying, b) they don't have to be, and that c) Rudy is still in the race. If such a day is conjectural and unreachable, at least Giuliani will be taking away some consolation.

Even better, if Rudy is nominated, conventional wisdom might then hold that it's best for a candidate to limit public displays and confine himself to a favored, few states. We — the civic enthusiasts, party members, citizens pestered by the media — may not start hearing about the next bunch until late, late 2011.

The press is impatient. Cause would be an early sequence of presidential primaries without swells or peripety — no humiliations, no scandals, zero dramatics. Even though most candidates between the two major parties have had articles written about the vitality of one or another state win, succession from contest to contest remains orderly while decisively favorable for no one. The only man bowing out so far, a Democrat, surprised by running earnestly for so long: poor, old, gubernatorial secretary-diplomat Bill Richardson.

Reportage seems to have a quicker pulse, more published per day, hour and event than 2004. The majority of it is from primary sources, factual and concrete. Somebody is on the stump, or his staff is distributing literature, responding to claims made by an opponent two hours before. Who is in which state; what corner of it, which town? A headline from fifteen minutes ago informs. Coverage invests in discrete detail as essentially as does sportscasting. Knowing where all candidates are and what they are up to at the same time is a novelty, useful if one is keeping records or writing tickers. But the risk to living from one moment to the next is that analysis narrows into straight-line projections from a tiny sample of data.

Rudy Giuliani, for example, is supposed to be in straits. Three reasons, according to commentary: attention is being paid elsewhere, polls have shifted and the former mayor has not performed well in the primaries in which he wasn't expected to perform well. On the last point: Giuliani employs strategists, literal ones, not just the sober operators best known for temporizing and talking loudly on television. Strategy aligns local and anticipated resources precisely as means to achievement over the long term. Patience, planning and indirection support it. As a strategist is scrupulous he eschews opportunity and develops contingencies for chance.

Contrast with Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses through the immediate use of what was available (curious electors, flattering press) in lieu of what was absent (money, order). Tactics gathered the victory, and Huckabee's ad-lib couldn't unsettle the fortified New Hampshire campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain. No gain in the Granite State for Huckabee, no gain in Michigan for McCain, probably no gain in South Carolina for Romney. This is a season so far without any drives, in spite of the words "surge" and "momentum" as an editorial extravagance. Polls are indicators, not determinants, of elections. It might be that the direct primaries went to the man in the greatest position to take them from the start — and movement in voter loyalty amounts to a lot of statistical legerdemain.

John McCain won the New Hampshire primary when he ran for president in 2000. He is in political rapprochement with the state's party; the senator spent much of his time up there, and his visits were both noticed and appreciated. His final stay was met by a robust campaign apparatus. The Romney patriarch, George, once governed Michigan. Son Mitt successfully appealed to state Republicans, who gave to his presidential bid their money and then their votes, shepherded to ballots by a trim and effective organization.

South Carolina is trickier, a state that four in-theater candidates managed to split into shares. John McCain intended it to be a soft landing at the end-point of an arc from New Hampshire, and situated himself early; Fred Thompson, activated, presented a logical southern choice; and Mitt Romney's arguable standing as the rightward-most, viable candidate lifted him through the latter months of last year. John McCain leads and may win, but if he does on grounds of establishment back then — and not enthusiasm of now — South Carolina is a property of competence rather than narrative. The race, then, won't be McCain's; Florida, New York and California will remain Giuliani's, and we face another fortnight of no easy predictions.