It’s been fun watching the GOP react to McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. While there has been plenty of predictable what-a-bold-and-exciting-move talk from some party loyalists, the headline of John Dickerson’s crisp piece in Slate this morning sums up much of the back chatter: “Huh?”

It’s not just that she was the darkest of horses, and before her job as the governor of a state most Americans have never visited was the mayor of town of nine thousand people; it’s the little  international experience question that is most roiling the waters. If the fortysomething orator and organizer Obama is not ready to be the leader of the free world, why would this former beauty queen and hockey mom be primed to take the reins? Obama’s “readiness” was one of McCain’s favorite bombs and he went and defused it himself. 

But as Dickerson notes, the one-sentence response of many voters was: McCain picks woman. And that is what the people who made this decision (not JMC, who met her just once) are counting on: As one of McCain’s aides told him, “We either get Hillary’s voters and we win, or we don’t. It’s not a mystery.”

While Hillaryites-for-McCain seems as counterintuitive to me as Jews-for-Hitler, we are in what Rachel Maddow calls a “post-rational” state. If this election comes down to splinter groups, as seems increasingly likely, the women of PUMA seem poised to become the next Naderites, voters who out of spite or stupidity are willing to tip the election back to the Republicans. If you’re not familiar with PUMA — “Party Unity My Ass!” — check out Chris Matthews’ encounter with them at the convention. It’s like being assaulted by an army of crazy bag ladies, except they have a real bomb.

Female suicide bombers are all the rage in Baghdad these days. “Senseless self-destruction — it’s not just for men anymore!” Anyone who thinks women are incapable of such Shiva-like all encompassing annihilation have not been through a divorce. Of course, the PUMA people will tell you that a McCain victory would clear the way for Hillary to return, Lazarus-like, in 2012 — forgetting that Lazarus had been dead for four days when Christ raised him, and stunk something powerful. 

Of course, Nader could be his own Nader this time. A friend of mine attended a Q&A session with the Quixotic candidate not long ago, more out of curiosity than anything. My friend is a scientist by profession and he had formulated a question ahead of time. “I’ve researched your positions,” he said, “and I agree with many of them. If a more mainstream candidate had the same positions, would you support him?”

“Absolutely not,” Nader replied, going on to say that you couldn’t trust anyone — anyone but him, I guess. Ka-boom!

Day four of the Democratic National Convention found me grousing about the house as the event moved outdoors to Invesco Field in order to accommodate the over-capacity crowd of 80,000 believers. Though I had been impressed by the major speeches leading up to Obama’s acceptance, it looked a little like one of those Day On the Green concerts Bill Graham used to host at Oakland Stadium: I was expecting the frisbees to come out at any second.

“It’s a little too fucking peace-and-love,” I said to my wife as we waited for the star of the show. Stevie Wonder singing I-don’t-know-what with a choir of busboys (“I want you all to remember I love you very much,” Stevie told the crowd before he sang a note), followed by Michael McDonald doing his Ray Charles impression on “America the Beautiful.” (Seriously, guys: Michael McDonald? I think the Dems were so worried about the backlash Kerry suffered using A-list stars in 2004 that they went to the second page on this one.)

The appearance of Susan Eisenhower helped; first, she’s an Eisenhower and though Republicans don’t revere that name the way they do Reagan’s (he was the first to warn us against “the military industrial complex,” remember) she had gravitas — and a pink suit! “She doesn’t look like she’s out of a Black Eyed Peas video,” Paul Begala cracked on CNN. Then Al Gore gave a good speech — or wrote a good speech. He delivered it in such speed I thought maybe he had to go the bathroom, but he raised the perilous issue (of course) of global warming, reminding us of what’s really at stake.

And then came Obama’s speech, weighted with more expectations than almost any address in modern political history, and what can I do but add to the chorus of acclaim? Sure, he inspired and connected with a massive crowd, but more importantly he was substantive (listing actual changes he intends to implement if elected) and he came out swinging. Of the Bush legacy (lies, torture, cronyism, cynicism) he said simply, “We are a better country than this.” And then, most satisfying of all, he answered each of John McCain’s low-ball, sleazy assertions and innuendoes — that he’s a celebrity only, that he’s unpatriotic — with fireball returns. 

Watch the speech, if you haven’t already, and forward it to your friends. Then suit up for battle: By picking Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain his signaled both his own cynicism (“Women will vote for a woman, even if she’s opposed to a woman’s right to choose”) while aligning himself with the base of the GOP. The Motown act we should have seen yesterday was the Isley Brothers, doing what shall be the real theme of this election: “You got to fight the powers that be.”

It must suck to follow the Beijing Olympics, as the Democratic National Convention has been forced to do this week. Sure, the closing ceremonies of the former were garish and bizarre (what was Jimmy Page doing there? and didn’t that mountain of people look like Breughel’s Tower of Babel, while reminding you there might be too many Chinese people in the world?) but the highlights were spontaneous and exhilarating — the opposite of any scripted political convention.

Remember when the networks used to cover these things gavel-to-gavel? Of course there were occasional surprises then (the Republicans in ’64, the Dems in ’68) but they were for the most part like covering a huge noisy Shriners’ convention, complete with the silly hats and banners. Now the nets tune in at ten, while the cable news channels (not to mention political web sites and myriad bloggers) flail about in search of some drama.

For the last few days everyone was working the Clinton angle: would Hillary deliver her masses for Obama? Would Bill ever get over himself? And even after HRC pulled out all the stops last night (if she had given a speech half as good during the primaries she might have won the nomination) kvetchers are still worrying if it was enough. Watch Bill swing for similar heights this evening; he’s not going to let his old lady best him at the inspiration game, let alone this whippersnapper from Illinois.

For a more interesting rivalry, tune into MSNBC during the evening. While CNN has The Best Political Team on Television cluttering the actual floor of the convention in Denver, MSNBC has been broadcasting from what looks like the parking lot outside. There you can see bloviator Chris Matthews, who is sort of the setting sun of the third-rung cable net, getting prickly with ascending star Keith Olbermann. Matthews, who is said to be contemplating a run for office himself, likes to hear himself talk as much as any man on television and insists on a certain political impartiality while Olbermann is more blatantly Bush-bashing (and Obama-supporting) and prefers a more snarky, rat-a-tat style. The Hardball host sounds like he’s fighting a cold, coughing and wheezing while he tries to make a point, while Olbermann is all but rolling his eyes. It’s the closest thing to real friction you may find for the next few nights, unless you switch the channel to watch the Yankees struggle for survival and try to beat Boston…

Made our second outing to Tanglewood today, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. It features none of the chaos and filth of the outdoor concerts I grew up on (Altamont, anyone?) but better food and, arguably, better music.

This afternoon’s program consisted of Beethoven’s Ninth and nothing else — but really, what else do you need?  Beethoven was swinging for the fences when he wrote his last symphony and, according to the program notes, appeared on stage at its debut performance in Vienna in 1824, deaf as a post, beating time to the music. 

Most people of my generation recognize the symphony’s closing movement, set to Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” as the song Ringo had to sing to keep from being eaten by a tiger in Help! (The second most recognized movement is the second, the opening strains of which were used by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the NBC evening news.) It was an old poem, a literal ode to joyousness and rapture, when the composer began to set it to music but as the program notes (by composer Jan Swafford) observed, “In old age we often return to our youth and its dreams.”

There was plenty of old age and youth on display on the lawn at Tanglewood, the former enjoying their picnics and wine, the latter trying to eat their ice cream bars before they melted in the August sun. At one point I lay in the shade and watched a cumulus cloud do a sort of deconstructed vortex thing above my eyes in the middle of the second movement. It kind of reminded me of watching the light shows at the Fillmore when I was in high school, though when the concert was over, I was okay to drive. 

If you watched the candidates’ forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church Saturday night, in which the popular pastor asked first Obama and then McCain identical questions, you were assured that the Arizona senator was in a “cone of silence” during the first half. “I was trying to hear through the wall,” McCain joked when he took the stage.

Now the New York Times has reported that he was actually in a motorcade when Obama was being questioned and could easily have heard Warren’s rather James Lipton-like queries — which could explain why he seemed to hit each one out of the park while Obama’s batting average was slightly more human.

Take this Warren query: “What’s the most gut-wrenching decision you’ve even had to make and what was the process you used to make it?” Obama went with his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, a stance considered treasonous by many at the time, which was not exactly news to anyone in the country. McCain came up with a far more exotic (though again familiar) story about how he turned down an offer of early release by the Viet Cong which they wanted for PR reasons, adding “It took a lot of prayer.” 

And on it went: when asked about moral failings, Obama spoke of experimentations with drugs as a kid, while McCain said it was the failure of his first marriage (glad he got that out of the way!); when asked , “At what point does a baby get human rights?” Obama demurred that the answer was “above my pay grade,” while maintaining, “I am pro choice.” McCain said simply, “At the moment of conception,” to the rapturous applause of the rapture lovers in attendance. 

I chalked the disparity in their performance to their nature — Obama nuanced, McCain, not so much — and despaired a little. To learn that he may have cheated while claiming to be spontaneous makes him seem a little slimier than I had thought — but a much better actor. His campaign, meanwhile, is outraged: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” said a spokeswoman. (Did you know he was a POW?)

In fairness, both candidates got a heads-up on some of Warren’s questions but can we dispense with the idea that McCain’s service and detainment make him above criticism? Might I remind people that the war in Vietnam was morally wrong and of dubious legality, fought for selfish reasons in the name of freedom and democracy? Does that remind you anything?

Now