Jay Nordlinger writes in The Corner:

As a political tactician, I don’t have Karl Rove’s stature, or any.…But one thing seems to me fairly obvious: Job No. 1 for McCain-Palin should have been to define Obama and Biden as too liberal for America. And that shouldn’t have been too hard. This is just about the leftest ticket we’ve ever seen. But have they done it? I don’t think so.

Strange, that.

I wish it seemed strange to me too. But mostly it seems familiar. Your humble Blog Goliard has spent too much of the last eight years—and, come to think of it, more than he wanted of the previous twelve as well—talking back to Republican leaders on his television. “No, you fool…don’t say that, say this! Don’t concede that point; don’t forget your best argument, which would be this; no, for the love of God, don’t vote for that…” et cetera, ad nauseam.

And what of McCain-Palin?

My hope is that they’re holding their most effective fire for the last two weeks. Remember, after all, how quickly the Obama campaign and its willing allies in the press were able to turn Jeremiah Wright from “Danger! Danger! Game-changing campaign killer!” to eye-rolling “I can’t believe you still care about that” old news.

My fear is that, once again, we’ve got a Republican standard-bearer who can’t make the (perfectly good) case for himself effectively to save his life—or isn’t allowed to, by the geniuses on his staff.

It’s going to be a long month.