P.M. Carpenter

Just a few remarks in this final column for BuzzFlash, for whom it has been my immense pleasure for nearly two and a half years to write daily.

"The past is not fugitive, it stays put" -- Marcel Proust

Or, the more commonplace line of that most uncommon genius Shakespeare, "Whereof what's past is prologue."

Rather difficult campaign slogans, to be sure. But it's the sentiment that counts. So, whether through inspired literature or divine revelation or some inescapable temporality bellowing that they were losing this thing big time, President Obama and House Democrats have re-choreographed their midterm strategy; they've decided to gang-thump the GOP for its previous sins -- to resurrect the frightful specter of Barton, Boehner, and Bachmann as the living ghosts of Bush/Cheney -- and "to put Republicans on defense," as The Hill characterized it, "by forcing them to explain where ... they would lead the country should they win control of Congress."

So here we are, right in the thick of the Great Conservative Crack-Up -- a political nervous breakdown that's showing the GOP's ancestral Whigs and Federalists how to really polish off a party with dazzling pizzazz, while presenting, quite possibly, electoral hope for an often incoherent Democratic caucus.

Just how severe is its breakdown? Or, viewed from another angle, what actually constitutes the breakdown?

CNN's painfully impartial host of "State of the Union," Candy Crowley, asked her opposing guests last Sunday, Was the "Shirley Sherrod incident" a political lesson or a lesson about race?

This irreducible question seemed a lesson itself. It was far from being one of the worst offenders, but its simple polarity in relation to such a complex issue did strike me at the moment as rather odd: OK, guests, this is television, a medium in which preposterous simplicity thrives, so choose A or B, take left or right, line up according to whatever prejudices my producers carefully prescreened and, if you wouldn't mind terribly much, please just pound away at each other for a while.

Ms. Crowley could have asked, Was the Sherrod incident a political lesson, a race lesson, a socioeconomic lesson, a lesson about gender, as well as lessons deeply rooted in sociopolitical psychology, mass psychosis, technological entertainment (see preceding condition) and the demise of professional journalism? -- for starters?

In lightning response to WikiLeaks' release of more than 90,000 classified reports that unshockingly depict a ghastly intersection of America's increasing helplessness and the Taliban's accelerating strength, National Security Adviser Jim Jones unleashed a minor barrage of mind-numbing bureaucratese:

"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."

Well, as long as "these irresponsible leaks" won't degrade our foolish consistency of despotic alliances or upset the delicate, self-negating balance of "common enemies" and deep "partnerships," we should be OK; which is to say, Jones' critical insertion of the qualifying "irresponsible" was superfluous at best.

A family emergency called me away in this, my penultimate week with BuzzFlash, however the upside was that a few dial-turning hours on the straight open road also commanded one my semi-annual updates on the peculiar mental workings of the Psycho Talking, Worst Person in the World, Rush Limbaugh. Throughout the course of any normal week I might catch a 10-second clip of this clown playing one those preceding roles, yet when I listen to him live and direct it always astounds me that the highlighted clips seem to be taken virtually at random, for he's actually three solid hours of interchangeable, indistinguishable madness.

The most charming line in President Obama's thoroughly political putdown of Congressional Republicans yesterday, aimed squarely at the fall elections, was that "there are times when you put elections aside; this is one of those times."

He was also unwilling, because of his irreversible devotion to an illusory bipartisanship, to call them kidnappers of American "tradition," faithless, hyperpartisan, hypocritical, irresponsible or malicious -- all of which he promptly did.

Yes, the silly season is upon us, a time in which the president shifts from governing to campaign mode -- the latter of which some among his vocal base wish Obama had never left, even though the former has accomplished more landmark legislation within 18 months than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson.

When forecasting doom for Democrats in 2010, political observers often fail to remind -- and thus voters fail to recall -- that among the present House majority nearly 50 seats come from districts that voted for John McCain.

Hence potentially staggering losses in November by Democrats -- virtually all of whose potential losers now sit with the moderately conservative Blue Dog coalition -- can reasonably be framed as less of a loss for Dems than an inevitable revanchism by Republicans.

Yesterday Politico called it a "mystery." This morning the New York Times called it a "paradox." I call it democratic s.o.p., resulting in s.n.a.f.u., the "f.u." of which is nearly always b.a.r.

What is "it"? The fact, said the Times, that President Obama "has done what he promised when he ran for office in 2008: ... He has injected $787 billion in tax dollars into the economy, provided health coverage to 32 million uninsured and now, reordered the relationship among Washington, Wall Street, investors and consumers." But, "while he may be winning on Capitol Hill, he is losing with voters."

Oh dear, here we are, in the relative cosmic scheme of things just minutes away from a crucial midterm election and the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll presents us with a collective electoral mind of either inscrutable mush or widespread, depraved indifference to reality.

Voters are angry. Voters are still angry. Indeed, voters are getting angrier. Why? Because they -- roughly three-quarters of them, according to the WaPo poll -- disbelieve that the economy is improving. This statistical skepticism conforms precisely with a recent CBS News poll, which found an imposing 74 percent of Americans believing that that $800 billion in stimulus spending had no salutary effects whatsoever.