If politics is theater then the general election is Broadway to the primaries off-Broadway (or off-off Broadway performance art of, say, Mike Gravel). Try-outs and previews are over, audiences have stood up and cheered, or at least not walked out, and the big money has been brought in to make sure this turkey doesn’t fold.

Comedy may be just as apt a metaphor. If the primary elections found candidates from both parties prowling the Iowa and New Hampshire equivalents of the Purple Onion (think HIllary Clinton as Phyllis Diller, Mike Huckabee as Bob Newhart, and Giuliani as Don Rickles) the general election is more like prime time and seeing how the presumptive nominees of each party handles the Family Hour is our new national pastime.

I caught another glimpse of McCain’s infamous green backdrop speech the other night — a tape that lives in infamy, since as public missteps of major candidates go it’s right up there with Nixon’s appearance in his first debate with JFK — and it occurred to me that McCain, who can actually be a funny guy, has transcended the sort of Lenny Bruce, black-humor mode of the early primary season (and 2000, when he famously referred to Arizona’s senior mecca Leisure World as “Seizure World”) and moved into an altogether more avant garde approach.

He reminded me of Andy Kaufman. If you remember Kaufman’s first historic appearance on SNL you’ll know what I mean. In the early days of that show, things really were improvised and often comics would come out and die. (The talented Franklyn Ajaye comes to mind.) Hardly anyone knew Kaufman then and when he told an elaborate joke in his Latka Gravas mode — eyes bugging, lips wet — many assumed he was really bombing, especially when he started to cry. It was only when he started to play the conga in time to his tears that we began to understand that we had entered Andy’s world.

So it was perhaps with McCain that fateful night. Yes, yes, I know there have been more shakeups inside his campaign meant to clean up his public performances, and whole articles are devoted to the man’s problems with the Tele-Prompter. But in his heart I suspect McCain may look at such outings — the frozen grin, the lame execution of such lame lines as “That’s not change we can believe in” — and smile in satisfaction. If I can’t be president, he seems to be saying, I’ll give them something to remember. Look for Elvis impersonations and lady-wrestling next.

Obama, meanwhile, has leap-frogged over the whole comedy circuit to the big stage (a very big stage in Denver). As much as Republicans scream about how smooth he is, he just gets smoother, deftly handling the net left who don’t like his centrist approach while reminding reporters new to covering him that he’s always been less reliably liberal than he is portrayed. To McCain’s Kaufman he is Johnny Carson, telling America with his very posture to stay cool. I half expect him to swing an invisible golf club in the direction of Doc and the band. And all the other comedians (ie, politicians) on the Democratic side — and even a Republican or two — are making nice. They know that you don’t cross Johnny. For the foreseeable future, it’s his show.