I had to do a quick double take of the New York Times this morning. Is this some sort of a sick joke? I thought.

Until I noticed that below the photograph was a teaser for a story about Jerry Springer the Opera.

I don’t think the Clinton campaign will be happy to see this video doing the rounds—a mashup of Tom Cruise’s Scientology pitch and Hillary Clinton’s minor meltdown (69,000 views and counting so far). Then again, the New York Post’s endorsement of Barack Obama this morning was probably, if anything, a boost to the Clinton campaign.

Clinton and Cruise on the Campaign Trail—YouTube (Via Daily Intel)
Obama for the Democrats (New York Post)

I received the following email this morning from our intrepid friend Mark (pictured above on a recent mountaineering expedition in China):

Well, I got myself into a pickle and need some help. I applied to race up the Empire State Building in the Empire State Building Run-Up . I received a rejection letter before I even started training. I ran a stairs workout that day (35 flights repeated 5 times) to see if I could do it. I almost didn’t make it.

I gave up hope and stopped training. Yesterday, I received a new letter rejecting my rejection letter. I’m back in the race, but with little or no training under my belt. I’m running scared and the race is next Tuesday, February 5.

Does anyone live or know people that live in tall buildings? Or maybe you’ve befriended a kind doorperson who will let me run in their building? I’m looking for something in the range of 30 – 45 flights. The higher the better.

I will repay you in barbecue.

Thanks,
Mark

Can anyone help Mark? Leave a note in the comments or drop me an email.

After tonight’s victory in Florida it’s looking increasingly like a McCain vs Clinton race for the White House. If that’s the case then Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times at the weekend, believes McCain has a very good chance of winning:

Not all Republicans are smart enough, however, to recognize the value of John McCain should Mrs. Clinton emerge as the nominee. He’s a bazooka aimed at most every rationale she’s offered for her candidacy.

In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being “tested” by her “35 years of experience” won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief “on Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issue No. 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat. Even the audience at Thursday’s G.O.P. debate in Boca Raton cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was still defending it in February 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well. ” Only in November 2005 did she express the serious misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses her of now advocating “surrender” out of political expediency, her flip-flopping will back him up.

Billary can’t even run against the vast right-wing conspiracy if Mr. McCain is the opponent. Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay hate Mr. McCain as much as they hate the Clintons. And they hate him for the same reasons Mr. McCain wins over independents and occasional Democrats: his sporadic (and often mild) departures from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and campaign finance reform, torture, tax cuts, climate change and the godliness of Pat Robertson. Since Mr. McCain doesn’t kick reporters like dogs, as the Clintons do, he will no doubt continue to enjoy an advantage, however unfair, with the press pack on the Straight Talk Express.

Even so, Mr. McCain hasn’t yet won a clear majority of Republican voters in any G.O.P. contest. He’s depended on the kindness of independent voters. Tuesday’s Florida primary, which is open exclusively to Republicans, is his crucial test. If he fails, his party remains in chaos and Mitt Romney could still inherit the earth.

That would be a miracle for the Democrats, but they can hardly count on it. If Mr. Obama has not met an unexpected Waterloo in South Carolina — this column went to press before Saturday’s vote — the party needs him to stop whining about the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, he would unambiguously represent change in a race with any Republican. If he vanquishes Billary, he’ll have an even stronger argument to take into battle against a warrior like Mr. McCain.

If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may at least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Democrat who seriously thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomination — let alone that the Clintons will escape being fully vetted — is a Democrat who, as the man said, believes in fairy tales.

The Billary Road to Republican Victory (New York Times)
McCain Defeats Romney in Florida Vote (New York Times)

Spotted outside the Haitian Baptist Church, in Prospect Heights, at the weekend.

I’m sure their services are much more friendly.

(Via Lol.)

So it looks increasingly like McCain or Clinton for the White House. (The Times weighs in endorsing them both this morning—not that it will do McCain’s campaign much good.) Meanwhile, over at Slate, Jack Shafer has some interesting thoughts on the press’ much maligned fixation on who’s up and who’s down:

Horse-race coverage isn’t the devil spawn of the television age. Scholar C. Anthony Broh dates horse-race coverage of campaigns back to 1888, when the Boston Journal reported that a “dark horse” was unlikely to appear in a campaign. While noting horseracisms’ obvious deficiencies, he catalogs its many pluses. Horse-race journalism increases voter interest in campaigns, something you can’t say for the average newspaper’s delineation of a position paper. “The horse-race image encourages reporters to emphasize competition rather than to forecast results,” Broh writes, arguing against the common view that reporters are keen to anoint a winner as soon as possible. Every political reporter I know yearns to cover a deadlocked presidential convention.

Critics of horseracism complain that it isolates on poll results and reports from campaign rallies to the exclusion of discussions of political “substance.” But that’s hardly ever the case. Mother Jones’ Jonathan Stein has been cataloging some of the best of the substance coverage, recently citing pieces about Clinton’s voting record vs. Obama’s and a comparison of the Democrats’ domestic policy. He’s also refuted Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece that claims the campaign press corps has bogged itself down in trivialities. But even if the press corps had abandoned substance, no voter is more than a mouse click away from detailed policy papers and unfiltered campaign speeches by the candidates. If you’re not an informed political consumer this year, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

A political campaign is more than a traveling debate society. Beyond the issues, voters need to know why a candidate is (or isn’t) performing well in the polls, is (or isn’t) raising money, is (or isn’t) drawing crowds of supporters, or is (or isn’t) keeping his cool. Candidates win or lose for a reason, reasons that have to do with issue papers but also with how they carry themselves and present their positions. Candidates appreciate this fact, which is why they commission private polls so they can construct their own horse-race results and act on them.

In Praise of Horse Race Coverage (Slate via Mediabistro.com)

I just took the electoral compass USA test and came out closest to John Edwards. Urgh. I have to admit I can’t stand Edwards (commenting here about his poor showing in the Democratic Caucus in Nevada this weekend, which pretty much ensures his imminent departure from the presidential race).

It’s not so much what Edwards says but the way he says it. There’s something about the permagrin, the pinched lips, the perfect teeth and the now famous haircut. I would rather have been closer to any of the other Democratic candidates.

The only comfort I can take is the fact that the electoral compass places Edwards somewhere between Clinton and Obama, which I suppose is the general position I’d take if I was a passport-carrying citizen of the USA, like a certain British turncoat.

Electoral Compass USA (via Clive Davis.)