On what promises to be a historic evening, John McCain is speaking before a hand-picked crowd in Louisiana and dying on stage. It’s difficult watching a good man, which I think he is, try to do the contortionist’s routine he must: decrying war while defending this one; blaming bureaucrats for the failure of government to help people after Katrina (when some good organization was just what was needed); claiming he can fix health care by…well, trusting in our can-do spirit. America, heal thyself!

Not only it is a bad and dishonest speech, poorly constructed and lazy (repeating the phrase, “That’s not change we can believe in,” playing off of Obama’s motto because his campaign’s best counter was “A Leader We Can Believe In”) but he can’t sell it. His grin is frozen, his skin shiny and waxy in appearance — none of which is improved by the baby-barf green background his campaign has selected. If this is his opening salvo, his attempt to piss on our parade by making this speech while the polls closed in South Dakota, it backfired.

Both CNN and MSNBC broke away from MccCain’s speech to declare Obama the presumptive nominee and marvel at this moment in our country’s story when a black man (okay, half-black man) with a name like Barack Hussein Obama can be the Democratic nominee for president. After letting white Southerner David Gergen and black Southerner Donna Brazille wonder at this turn of events, Jeffrey Toobin also talked about the fact that he is not a boomer. Like McCain

Who must have finished speaking, no doubt being helped off stage at the end, because when I flipped over to Fox News, Carl Cameron was making apologies for his piss-poor performance, acknowledging that he looked bad and sounded worse. But even Brit Hume had to question why he chose this evening to come out — before Clinton’s rendition of that old PiL classic “This Is Not a Love Song,” to say nothing of Obama’s aria, meant to mark the opening of the general election.

If this is the GOP’s best shot, well, what can I say but bring it on!

Now that he is preaching from the back of pickup trucks, telling anyone who will listen that his wife is a victim of a cover-up, Bill Clinton seems to have settled on a new role: the crazy old uncle who’s off his meds. Sure, I thought dignified diplomat, emissary of peace and understanding with a mistress in every port, would be a nice gig for his second or third act. But ranting that Hillary is winning the general election and saying things like, “In case you haven’t noticed, most of the media aren’t for her,” puts him in another class entirely. One that wears tin foil hats.

Hillary has a new, equally scary role for herself: She is the madwoman at the wedding, the one who was scorned and pounces when the preacher says, “Does anyone know of any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined together? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Well, I can think of a couple,” she yells from a pew in the back. “He has no experience, his whole career is based on one speech and a lot of decent hardworking Americans who just happen to be white don’t like him.” There is some polite coughing, eye-rolling, one or two strained whispers — “God, not her again” — though nothing like the avalanche of admonition her husband envisions. Most people are just hoping that the bride and groom were go ahead with their vows (“I always wanted to be married in the Mile High City!”) and move on — even if she clearly isn’t ready to.

Campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary made a point of visiting Mount Rushmore, I guess so she could be photographed with some of our other exes. Her face appeared in the news, alongside the granite profiles of Jefferson and Roosevelt, and maybe she was just hoping we would take the hint. Sorry, lady. I’m sure you would make a perfectly good, er, husband (trying to stay with my analogy here, nothing wrong with pantsuits). But we, the ever-hopeful and often disappointed bride that is the loyal Democratic base, have fallen for someone else. Hard. And complaining about him just makes her look petty.

I guess it’s possible that she and crazy Bill are doing this just so they’ll look good when they stop ranting and join the party. Then we’ll smile politely when we see them at the reception and keep our distance. By the time the honeymoon is over and we’ve moved into the big white house we’ll have forgotten about the whole thing — though we’ll still want to put their portraits in the basement, if not the dumpster out back.

We just got back from a Memorial Day parade in Salisbury, CT, near which we had rented a house, as simple and touching a celebration as you can imagine. It was like one of those old Morning in America commercials, without the Reagan. Though there may have been a few Reaganites in our midst.

The parade started at ten am at the library, led by the local school marching band, followed by several carloads of military veterans. Locals are encouraged to follow them on the short march to the graveyard, and many of the kids had little flags to wave. In the graveyard the vets gathered in their dress uniforms and colors (one old Green Beret looked like he might have been the prototype for Special Forces soldiers everywhere), exchanging happy looks and banter. Hey, look! We’re still alive! Then a Boy Scout read The Gettysburg Address, the vets fired their rifles into the air before taps was played.

One of the local preachers read the 23rd Psalm and went out of his way to mention not just the (mostly) men and women who had fought and died but the innocents who died in the wars as well. One vet got up to make a speech but said he couldn’t and just wanted to pay tribute to those who served. The names of veterans from CT (none from Salisbury, it seemed) killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were also read and I was struck by the number of Latino names rising to replace the ranks of the Irish, English and Italians that had come before.

Everyone left after the last taps was played and then they were giving out free ice cream down the street. Our dog, who had been so terrified by the blanks fired earlier, got a lot of attention. I got the impression it was the kind of town where you could argue with your neighbor about this war, or any war, and still say hello to each other on the street. I felt free of the rancor and despair I sometimes feel on our most patriotic holidays and I wonder if I was getting a glimpse of a small town America I thought was lost. It made me feel optimistic for the days to come. Or maybe it was just the weather.

Probably the worst thing about Hillary Clinton invoking RFK’s assassination as a justification for staying in the race has been the “who-me?” aftermath of it, the various explanations offered by her camp and her. Speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, SD, Clinton defended sticking around beyond her use-by date saying, “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Meaning: anything can happen, right? You never know in this crazy, mixed-up, gun-clinging country of ours. It ain’t over ’til it’s over etc. As news of her comments spread (June is coming right up, folks) and Obama’s camp showed admirable restraint even as the candidate himself was reportedly outraged, one of her spokespeople tried to turn the tables, like the fellow who shows you a pornographic picture and says what a dirty mind you have. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historic examples of the nominating process going well into the summer. Any reading into beyond that would be inaccurate and outrageous,” said Mo Eleithee, keeping a straight face the whole time.

When that didn’t play, Clinton tried a more straightforward apology, telling reporters in a supermarket, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator [Edward] Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I’m honored to hold Senator [Robert] Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.”

So it is about her, after all! You see, she holds the same seat RFK did, and she went sailing with Ted when Obama was still working the streets in Chicago, and hey, we all make mistakes. Looking at the the video of her remarks she certainly doesn’t look like she’s at the top of her game and there she does have my sympathies. I would hate to have people filming me first thing in the morning, trying to sound smart before the coffee kicked in.

But she’s supposed to be the candidate who’s good to go at three am, on Day One, no less. For someone who supposedly has her wits about her at all times, she’s coming off as mighty punchy — or calculating — these days. Was she giving voice to an unconscious death wish for her opponent? I doubt it. But even if this was only a 1%, a girl-can-dream-can’t-she response, why would Obama want a potential Lady Macbeth for a running mate? It would be reasonable to assume someone is out to get him but you don’t want to have to bring the food taster with you when you’re having lunch with your No. 2.

The alternative explanation –that she just said something stupid and tasteless because she was thinking about the Kennedys, even though she said the same thing to Time back in March — is almost as bad. “Did I say ‘kill Castro’? My bad. I had been thinking about the Castro district in San Francisco, since I’m actually a lesbian. Oops, did it again. I had been in Lisbon, Portugal, recently and…” She’s either discombobulated or disingenuous, and I know which one I’m putting my money on.

It was too good to be true. Not that I ever thought Hillary was going to go away quietly (what in her career would suggest that course of action?) but I did think she might move aside and let the gentleman do his thing with a little bit of class. But now she is comparing Florida to Zimbabwe, blaming her defeat on sexism and misogyny and saying that Obama can’t woo white working class voters.

Well maybe he can’t — in Kentucky and West Virginia. And frankly, I wish he had spent more time in those states trying to convert those crackers before the primaries because he’s going to need them before the general election. But the WWCV in Oregon liked him just fine and anyone who thinks there are no rednecks in Oregon haven’t spent much time there. Right outside of Ashland, the site of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and one of the best organic restaurants on the west coast are pockets of dogpatch as derelict as any in Alabama. And a lot of those folks voted for Obama.

Maybe Obama’s problem is, as Sam Stein suggested in the Huffington Post, more geographic than socioeconomic. West Virginia strikes me as more of a backwash than Oregon; the poorest pockets of the state are like the land time forgot and I have literally been afraid to stop in some towns there lest the locals come out and eat me. Oregon, on the other hand, has that liberty-loving, California-hating gene deep in its DNA — but its also got Nike and its longtime advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy; it’s got Reed College and the legacy of Ken Kesey. It’s got a whole weird dimension that I like to think is a lot more like America than, well, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Not that I think Obama could, or should, write those states off, especially the former. But it in my fervent hope that his new jack candidacy speaks to a country that is ready to get outside of the holler, a country tired of being locked in the old sandtraps of the past. America may not look like Oregon, either — I hate any state that claims to represent the rest of us — but maybe the dream of this candidacy is best reflected in the promise of the west, all that majestic beauty and natural resources, still mostly unspoiled. Give us mountains to match our man.