I was walking through Washington Square Park this afternoon when I came across this.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised considering the park’s proximity to NYU. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel enraged at how ignorant and insensitive it was to hold this rally less than a couple of miles from Ground Zero one day ahead of the 9/11 anniversary. Then again, I suppose that was partly the point.

As I walked past the lead dimwit ranting about how much Larry Silverstein stood to gain from the “controlled explosion” of the Twin Towers I had an overwhelming urge to spit on the ground in front of him or in front of his pals’ banner. But in the event I walked on, seething, hoping one day they might grow up to regret their youthful fervor, and fearing most would not.

The Guardian has a sobering video interview with a US medevac crew chief. I don’t know how those guys can do that day in, day out.

Another clip I came across during my current research, Hal Holbrooke in Mark Twain Tonight! Not too difficult to imagine what Twain would have made of the McCain campaign’s theme Country First:

Man is the only animal that deals in the atrocity of war. He is the only one that for sordid wages goes forth in cold blood to exterminate his own kind. He has a motto for this: “Our country: Right or Wrong.” Any man who fails to shout it is a traitor.

[...]Only when the republic’s life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it’s wrong. Otherwise the nation has sold its honor for a phrase. And if that phrase needs help he gets another one: “Even though the war be wrong, we are in it. We must fight it out. We cannot retire without dishonor.”

Why not even the burglar could have said that better.

As was to be expected, a pretty uninspiring performance by both of the McCains last night. Interesting that the Republican nominee chose to underline his maverick credentials. Nick Denton argues that is exactly where the Democrats should be attacking him:

Before he appeared on the national stage, Karl Rove once explained the key to effective negative campaigning. “Look, I don’t attack people on their weaknesses,” he once told reporters in Texas during a campaign. “That usually doesn’t get the job done. Voters already perceive weaknesses. You’ve got to go after the other guy’s strengths. That’s how you win.”

That was the tactic employed in 2004 by conservative groups challenging John Kerry’s national security credentials; they undermined the Democratic candidate’s credibility as a war hero. And it’s the very same tactic that McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt has adopted to deal with a much more formidable opponent, Barack Obama. The first round of negative ads were straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook. The Democratic contender was portrayed was not so much a charismatic leader as a celebrity; driven not so much by destiny as hubris.

If one were to attack John McCain at his point of greatest strength, what would that be? Not his affiliation with the Republicans. In Rove’s words, voters already know that (to the extent that it’s true.) Even if the McCain campaign removes all mention of George Bush from the speeches and Republican signage from the halls, the party cannot escape the last eight years. John McCain strongest suit appears to be his maverick nature; he is a man who puts principle before party.

[...]By contrast, the American presidency is an executive role. Decisions require deliberation; principle must be put to one side in the interest of a messy compromise; pride must be swallowed. My personal test is a hypothetical reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. If McCain were president, could he really ignore the more belligerent rantings of America’s enemies? Would he, like Jack Kennedy, have made the face-saving concession that helped the Soviet Union withdraw missiles from Cuba? If the phone rings at 3am in the White House, it’s McCain the proud martyr I worry about rather than careful Barack Obama.

Some highlights from last night’s speech. Clive Davis couldn’t stop cringing. I thought she did a pretty good job. Then again, when you’ve had a start like the one she’s just had, it would have been difficult to do much worse. I think Alex Massie says it best:

The best bits of the speech—and the parts that showed how she might be able to reach out beyond the evangelical base—came when she stressed her small town credentials. Ezra Klein, who has the best liberal response I’ve seen, is right to say that even here there were missed opportunities: she should have talked more, not less about the lessons she had learnt about the government that matters most to people (and the limitations of government) and about how she would take those lessons with her to Washington.

Still, presumably this can be developed in due course. This was, to my mind, the most important part of the speech:

I grew up with those people. They’re the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.

I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA.

I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.

So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education even better. And when I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too.

This is where she must make her stand. Other people can do the foreign policy stuff and the big picture theorising the punditocracy loves and uses to measure a candidate’s worth. Her Unique Selling Point is her ordinaryness. Ordinaryness laced with sass and confidence for sure, but the ordinary values and interests of small town America nonetheless. She is the first Vice-Presidential nominee in more than 30 years who’s not served in – or, if you prefer, been corrupted by – Washington. That should be a strength, not a weakness. (The hockey mom line was ad-libbed incidentally. It’s not in the prepared script.)

It’s precisely because she was sitting on the PTA a handful of years ago that she can talk to “ordinary” voters in terms they can understand. It’s precisely because she’s not rich that she can claim, with more plausibility than, say, a Hillary Clinton, that she gets it. She gets it because, you know, her sister Heather runs a gas station and Sarah Palin knows the pressures ordinary folks are struggling with, understands their concerns about the costs of health care or college tuition and all the other things that matter most to people. It’s not the quantity of experience that matters but the quality.

I don’t think I ever really understood the full meaning of the phrase “shotgun wedding” until I saw Levi Johnston fervently holding hands with Bristol Palin at the Republican convention this evening. Shame he did not have time to take the gum out of his mouth before he walked onstage and shook hands with the Republican presidential nominee.

Forget last night’s speech. For me the most unforgettable moments of the Denver convention were the two video reports by NYT media columnist David Carr.

Carr’s column is the first thing I turn to in the Times on a Monday morning. And I have watched with interest in recent months as The Night of the Gun, his memoir about life as a drug addict, received a succession of glowing reviews.

But how did a former junkie make it as a media columnist at one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers? It all makes a lot more sense now: