The numbers aren’t in yet for last night’s forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church though I suspect a good many more Americans watched Michael Phelps make history by winning his eighth gold medal. And in retrospect, I wish I had joined them. As is, I am ensconced in a primitive lake house in Connecticut, with basic cable and no Tivo, and had to choose between the wonks and the winners. Which doesn’t make me a loser, necessarily… 

Or the Dems, I trust. It is good, always, to know your enemy and if you get most of your political news from skewed sources like Countdown with Keith Olbermann, you might think McCain was a befuddled old man and then Obama would use him like a punching bag in a debate. But this was no debate: the candidates answered Warren’s questions separately, Obama first, before members of his congregation and the media and only stood on stage together for a moment. And McCain has found his legs doing town-hall debates to much smaller audiences than Obama’s, and from the reaction he got from the crowd I would say he may have found his following. 

Observers keep saying that the evangelical voters are up for grabs this year, with many of them more concerned about global warming and international poverty than the old saws of abortion and gays. But the whoops McCain got for adamantly opposing a woman’s right to choose and making it clear he would pack the Supreme Court with others who felt the same was enough to make your blood run cold. Or mine, anyway. 

Of course, most Americans do think women should be able to decide what to do with their bodies (which is big of them) and despite the 25 million copies of Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, in print, his flock is but a slice of the electorate. But it is one that arguably Obama needs a piece of, and as comfortable as he was talking the Bible talk (quoting Matthew, touting humility) the red meat was clearly being served by Johnny Mac. 

All we can hope is that Obama, who treated his half of the show as a conversation with the pastor while McCain leapfrogged past the dais to speak directly to the audience, gets better with personal narrative in such settings — and that Americans remain tired of the prospect of endless war. McCain tried his darndest to gin the crowd up over the Russian invasion of Georgia, reminding them of what spunky freedom-loving people the Georgians were — early Christians, too! But the response seemed relatively tepid. For neocons like McCain, seeing Russian tanks roll into other countries is like hearing “Free Bird” on the classic rock station. It’s supposed to make you hold your lighter up and and holler for more. But after seven years of pugnacity and a president who doesn’t do nuance, while the planet burns and our economy tanks, a lot of people’s arms are tired, their fingers scorched. Time for another tune. 

Political pundits, like nature, abhor a vacuum. How else explain the moaning and gnashing of teeth by writers on the left while the GOP-prone seem strangely confident in this August season of quietude, when the nation is preoccupied with the Olympics and enjoying the dregs of the summer?

I read several appalling pieces this week forecasting doom: John Heilemann’s think piece in New York magazine’s race issue, which basically says the only reason Obama is not surging in the polls is that we are, at heart, a nation of racists; and Michael Moore’s “How the Democrats Can Blow It” in the current Rolling Stone. (To call something by Moore self-serving is redundant: witness Number Six of his list of mistakes Obama is most likely to make: “Denounce Me!”)

Meanwhile, Republicans are feeling the hope, if not the love, again. Buoyed by those strangely static poll numbers, which scarcely moved after our man went to the Middle East and Europe, and may have actually moved in McCain’s direction as he began his own subliminally racist campaign against the Democrat and saw significant campaign contributions pour in. 

I would like to remind all watching that it’s early innings yet. The reason people don’t want to pay attention to the campaign now is that it seems endless (coming after the extended primary season, which seemed at times like one of those director’s-cut DVDs that feature all the scenes he should have kept out) and, for the most part, unenlightening. Tonight the first public meeting between the two candidates will be held significantly at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church and could feature some interesting questions from the purpose-driven-life guru, who told the Christian Broadcast Network he will be asking each man personal questions about his character and values.  

Okay, maybe you don’t think that sounds like must-see TV. It’s not a debate per se — Warren will quiz the candidates separately and expect them to make nice: Evangelicals are up for grabs in this election in a way they haven’t been for years, with the church-going (no matter what you thought of his old church) Obama looking a little better than the skirt-chasing, wife-dumping, war-loving admiral’s son. At least to some of us. But you would probably rather watch Michael Phelps win another gold medal, or other members of the American team whine about one more loss. That’s okay. As I said, it’s early innings. Things should start to get interesting right about now. 

One of the best things about watching the Olympics is how we all become experts in sports we know absolutely nothing about. “She added all those elements to her routine and totally stuck her dismount and you gave her a 14.8?!” That and those Chinese girls who they swear are 16 — according to who? Roman Polanski?

But the Olympics are also supposed to be a time to set political differences aside. Which is why the Russians waited until opening day to invade Georgia. To his credit, Bush expressed his displeasure forcefully, and in person (does he still see Putin’s soul in his eyes? is it starting to look like that picture of Dorian Gray?) and took a few opportunities to publicly criticize the Chinese, too. Did you see his interview with Bob Costas? That’s about the most relaxed and articulate I’ve ever seen the president. The prospect of unemployment must agree with him. That and the wall-to-wall sports. 

There was a touching moment when the Georgian and Russian women who medaled in an air-pistol event exchanged kisses, with Georgian Nino Salukvadze saying, “We shouldn’t stoop so low to wage wars against each other.” (You didn’t see it because it was an air-pistol event, which as a TV sport is right up there with snipe hunting.) While the press focused on the silver and bronze winners sharing a moment on the podium, I couldn’t help but notice the Chinese winner in the middle, waving her medal: “Peaceable kingdom, shee-it — I got the gold, bitches!”

But the most touching example of international diplomacy came last night, when the US swim relay team beat the French (a statistical improbability like unto finding water on Mars, according to the NBC color man) and then brayed like big time wrestlers while the French closer actually cried. Not that there is anything wrong with crying, or being French. But this frog had actually had the temerity to say they would “smash” the US team. Sorry, Frenchy. We’re the smashers here. Just ask The Decider, or his friend, Old Soul Eyes.

It was good to see the major New York papers giving the story of John Edwards’s mistress the coverage it deserved this morning. It made the front page of the Times, the Daily News and the Post (“He’s a Lyin’ Cheatin’ No-Good Hypocrite!” — not a quote, mind you, but a statement of editorial opinion) while the Wall Street Journal merely teased the story on the front page (you had to turn to A3 to get the dish). It made me think all was right with the world (now that he went public on ABC Nightline, trying to have it both ways by admitting to the sin of arrogance while implying he wasn’t so bad because his wife was in remission when he started fooling around) and it answered the netizens who complained that mainstream media was being irresponsible not investigating the affair before.

Now begins the long climb to redemption for the man who would be president if not a champion of the poor. First he’ll have to reach the requisite level of truthiness that others are demanding of him (with the questions turning from “did you shag her?” to “how long have you been shagging her?”) and then come up with some kind of public role for himself — but he had to do that anyway. He can look to the example of Bill Clinton, who went from denial to tortured, albeit half-assed admission — and hopefully do it better. 

Watching David Carr make the rounds of TV interviews and magazine features, all in the name of promoting his crack-head-turned-crack-reporter memoir, The Night of the Gun, I have felt he was making his own amends, redeeming himself in the public eye but also allowing us to forget the example of James Frey, whose story of addiction and imprisonment turned out to be a million little pieces of baloney. 

Carr mentioned the Frey fiasco in his interview on the Colbert Report and has used it to explain why he videotaped his “sources” — former friends and family members — about his darkest days. No one wants an act of public self-redemption to turn into the kind of spankfest Frey got from Mother Winfrey. It was especially instructive to see him slip out of the trap so many of Colbert’s guests fall into. Since Stephen Colbert plays a character named Stephen Colbert, savvy guests tend to either dismiss his tack as an act, or treat him as if he were real. 

When Colbert, in his right-leaning, O’Reilly Factor mode, opened with a zinger — “You are a former crack addict, and you are a reporter for the New York Times. Which of these two do you think is more damaging to society?” — Carr did not slip. “I don’t think that’s a tough call,” he said. “Journalism, if it’s practiced appropriately, is a civic good… Using crack cocaine is an idiotic activity that will eventually result in mania and death.”

Telling the truth is always easier when you don’t have to think about which truth to tell. 

While it seems early in the race to be talking about, uh, race, the damage has been done: McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, accused Obama of playing the race card by mentioning that he doesn’t look like the presidents on the dollar bills (green) and the response of the presumptive Democratic candidate has been somewhat muted. 

“The instinctive urge to punch back was tempered by the fact that race is a fire that could singe both candidates,”  the New York Times reported this morning, which makes me worry. It wasn’t too long ago that Obama was invoking Sean Connery’s speech to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue.” That, he says, is “the Chicago way.”

Obama’s missing years — those the least reported about in the media, and given the least inspection in the press — were in the state legislature of Illinois, and longtime watchers of that august body say dirty pool is the default mode, and they like it that way. (This kind of hardball is a matter of native pride and legend:It was Chicago’s own David Mamet who wrote Connery’s speech.) He can fight dirty, they insist, not skip Bambi-like through the forest singing of change. It may be time for the candidate to get in touch with his inner thug, to pull that gun he was talking about. May I suggest some bullets?

He can’t brand McCain old & white when that is so much of the Arizona senator’s own campaign strategy, but what about making more of the fact that the man has flip-flopped on nearly every major issue, from the Bush tax cuts for the rich to off-shore drilling? (This accusation helped smear Kerry in the last election.) When he has been consistent he has mostly been wrong, as in his support of the Iraq war — a three trillion dollar fiasco that has not made us one bit safer — and his tired belief that the Vietnam war was just and should have been won. He’s opposed to abortion and will pack the Supreme Court with justices who feel the same; he has abandoned the immigrants whose cause he once triumphed; and his missus is a scary Stepford Wife who eats live kittens. (I made that last part up.)

The trap, of course, is that Obama is supposed to be a different kind of candidate, one who doesn’t need to sink to that Karl Rove like level of mud-slinging and innuendo. But he does. The Republicans’ willingness to go so low so early in the game is a sure sign that they know they’ve got nothing, and that any rational weighing of the choice this fall will send voters away from the tired policies of the last eight years, most of which McCain seems just fine with. But rational doesn’t have much to do with it come voting time. Some people want to know how Obama, our potential commander-in-chief, responds when attacked. Now is the time to show them, Chicago-style.