As the seemingly endless Democratic presidential primary slog enters its second spring, one amazing woman has managed – by relentless dint of hard work, long experience, sharp intelligence, quick wit, quicker quips and a winning smile – to shatter the glass ceiling and take her rightful place in the traditional Boys’ Club of Big Time Politics.

No, not Her – Rachel Maddow!

That’s right — a woman who calls herself “a supplicant who worships in the Temple of Journalism” – but whom others have described as “Amy Goodman with animal noises” – is now firmly ensconced in the upper echelon of the political punditocracy. With her own rising radio show on Air America, coupled with regular appearances on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann program, where she is often, oddly and excellently paired with Patrick Buchanan, this self-described “thirty five year old, liberal, lesbian girl-who-looks-like-a-man” is on the brink of becoming progressive media’s next mainstream breakout star. One significant measure of Maddow’s new-found favor: the decision by MSNBC, effective next week, to hire her as a regular panelist on its newest nightly campaign program Race for the White House – and to allow Air America to simulcast the 6 pm nightly program as the first hour of its own nightly Rachel Maddow show.

The cable executives are betting a lot on their new program, which also features NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory (who replaces the execrable Tucker Carlson.) Passionate viewer interest in the ongoing presidential race – as evidenced by increased ratings for programs focused on campaign news – has led all three 24/7 cable operations to create new shows to cater to the marketplace demand. Race for the White House will be up against stiff competition from CNN’s Election Center and Fox News Channel’s America’s Election HQ, but installing Maddow as a regular gives MSNBC an edge its competitors can’t match – a telegenic and true progressive voice for an election cycle dominated by progressive politics and politicians. The MSNBC simulcast on Air America – in addition to making an impressive statement about the progressive radio network’s growing stature – also promises to pull in a new progressive audience to MSNBC, which is successfully positioning itself as the hot new alternative to Fox News in the cable firmament.

I sat down early one recent morning to share breakfast with Maddow, who keeps a punishing schedule that begins at 9 am, encompasses hours of preparation for her three-hour live Air America program, and often extends far into the endless cable night. A California native dedicated to promoting AIDS prevention and gay rights — she claims to have been the first openly gay American to receive a Rhodes scholarship – Maddow is also articulate, winsome, and often self-deprecating, someone who says in the same sentence that she tries “to be authoritative, transparently sourced, and pretty comprehensive” in her work, while remaining “a total dork.”

Like most radio talk show hosts, Maddow is forthright about the fact that she is NOT a journalist. “I think of myself as a commentator and a pundit; an analyst but not a reporter and not a journalist,” she told me. “You know, I think doing research isn’t enough…(she laughs) to be considered a journalist.”

Maddow started in radio less than a decade ago as a sidekick on a commercial show in western New England, when she went to an open on-air audition and was hired on the spot. “As soon as I started talking on the microphone I was like, ‘Oh, right! This is what I’m supposed to be doing,’” she recalled. “I wish I figured this out before I was twenty-six. I realized that I had a knack for it and that it was really fun.” Still, she wasn’t convinced that radio was right for her in the long run, so after a year she took time off, finished a dissertation, “and actually did get my doctoral.” Four years later, she had a national radio show. What happened?

“Air America’s first day on the air was the day before my 31st birthday –March 31st, 2004—and I forced them to hire me,” she says with another laugh. “I just pulled every trick I could out of the hat. I’ve never been, like, a well-connected person – my dad worked for the water company, my mom was a Canadian and worked for my middle school. So it wasn’t at all clear that this national media company was going to hire me. They really just seemed to hire celebrities, really. They had Chuck D and Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo and…celebrities, celebrities. And all I had was, well, an ex-girlfriend who pretended she was in Al Franken’s class at Harvard and brought him tapes of my hosted music show as the DJ in the morning from western Massachusetts. So Air America had no business hiring me.”

Nonetheless, Maddow got hired as part of the team. Within a year she had a solo spot: a one-hour program at 5 A.M. Monday to Friday. Although she credits “tenacity more than talent” for her success, it’s actually the combination of the two that makes her so compelling—along with enough self- confidence not to take “No” for an answer. “I took every opportunity given me and then some,” she said. “You know, I just forced myself on them. I knew I was right for the network.”

She’s also right for MSNBC—and perhaps beyond. Certainly her mix of news, opinion, and entertainment – the mother’s milk of talk radio – is also right for the hypercaffeinated world of cable television news.

“Cable news and talk radio are now in the same boat,” Maddow observed. “I noticed when I first started doing cable that there’d be this real exuberance among the news producers, particularly younger cable news producers, about talk radio hosts. I could see the transition actually happening. I think in cable news — whether they intended this or not — they really think that what talk radio has is what they ought to be. Which is, you know, entertaining hosts to whom viewers and listeners have loyalty, in whom they trust to provide information, who supplant other sources of news.

“But they are more full service than that. They are also providing analysis and setting up conflicts, either between themselves and other people or among their guests — and being at the same time, funny and entertaining,” she continued. “I just believe that there is a way to do all that with integrity. I don’t think that mixture of information, analysis and entertainment is itself corrupt or dishonest. The way to do it is by being very clear about what it is that you are doing. The commentary can include parody songs and making fun of people, or, you know, ranting in my dungeon. It can involve a very wide range of stylistic and communicative techniques. You just have to be clear about the distinctions.”

Rachel Maddow is nothing if not clear – about the distinctions between news, opinion and entertainment, but also about her own distinct beliefs, politics, persona, and about where progressive media may be heading. “I think the more power the Democrats gain, the better off progressive radio and progressive media is,” she concluded. “I felt like I was outside banging on a locked door when Republicans were in power seemingly everywhere. But the closer we get to retaking the country, the closer we get to overtaking the traditional media in terms of content and influence.”

Maddow’s newest bosses at NBC News obviously share her assessment — if not her sentiments – as witnessed by the new gig with David Gregory and the groundbreaking Air America simulcast. If they really have the courage of their convictions, however, they’ll soon stop making her just a panelist — and go ahead and create her own cable television show!

As the war in Iraq marked its fifth anniversary, thirteen Iraqis were killed as dozens of mortar shells were fired at the “heavily fortified Green Zone” in what the New York Times called “one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the area in the last year.” The attack “ushered in a day of violence around the country that claimed the lives of at least 58 Iraqis and four American soldiers.” The American military deaths increased the number of American service members killed in the war to at least 4,000.

The response of the American media to the ongoing carnage in Iraq, however, seems only to echo that of the current American Administration, as expressed recently by Vice-President Cheney. When told the vast majority of Americans now oppose the war, Cheney pithily replied, “So what?”

As noted in another Times article headlined, “The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?”, “Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.” Since the start of last year, as reported by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.”

Given the waning media attention on Iraq –in the middle of last year, it was the most-covered topic in the news, but reporting since then by major American news sources has dropped by a startling 80 percent, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism – it’s not surprising that public interest in the ongoing war has dropped as well. Recent polls show that fewer than thirty percent of Americans polled now say they are following events in Iraq “very closely.” Although leading media executives cite any number of excuses for the decline in attention — the danger and expense in covering Iraq, shrinking budgets and a presidential campaign that is also straining their resources, a national economy in crisis – the bottom line for concerned citizens has been a severe drop in coverage of the war. The three broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts now spend half as much time on Iraq as earlier in the year – and far less than in 2003 or even 2004.

That’s why the decision by PBS Frontline to devote four and a half hours to its two part special Bush’s War, (airing Monday, March 24 from 9-11:30 pm ET and Tuesday, March 25 from 9-11 pm) is to be greatly lauded – as is Frontline executive Producer David Fanning, under whose leadership the series has broadcast more than forty reports on the war, creating in the process both the leading documentary analysis of the war and the richest archive of it in all of broadcast journalism.

There are items to quibble with, of course – Frontline’s own reporting proves the title Bush’s War to be a misnomer, for example, since the lead figures throughout the debacle have always been former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his cunning colleague, Vice-President Cheney – but in sum the two-part special makes a damning case against the incompetence and arrogance that has (thus far) resulted in the 4000 deaths of US service personnel.

The first half of the Frontline special focuses more on the “behind-the-scenes battle” and “the hidden war being waged inside the administration” over Iraq, using an impressive array of top-line sources to paint a compelling portrait of how Cheney and Rumsfeld –- skilled and experienced veterans of Beltway bureaucratic infighting – triumphed against the overmatched likes of Colin Powell, George Tenet and Condi Rice. Almost from the start — the 9/11 terror attacks that shocked the nation out of its millennial complacency and into a new century of strife – “Dick Cheney was in charge,” as Frontline narrator Will Lyman intones in his familiar Voice-of-God manner.

Cheney remained in charge throughout a series of fierce internal Bush Administration skirmishes, working in close concert with his old pal Rummy to circumscribe, end-run and in general thwart the aims and desires of anyone who stood in the way of their vision of regime change in Iraq. Frontline deftly limns the process as, one after another, the opponents of Cheney and Rumsfeld were successively co-opted, marginalized, falsely lionized and ultimately hornswoggled by patient infighters. As Frontline persuasively shows, Rice, Tenet, Powell and their supporters never stood a chance against the superior skills and greater tenacity of Cheney and Rumsfeld. Far from being “Bush’s War,” the reportage here establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was for years really Rumsfeld-and-Cheney’s War – and continues, in Rummy’s enforced absence, now to be almost solely Cheney’s War, with a president and Secretary of State along for the ride and pretty much doing what they are told…

The second part of the Frontline special examines the actual war in Iraq – not the war in Washington — beginning with the quick early “victory” and “Mission Accomplished,” followed by a recitation of how the early mistakes and lack of preparation soon led to chaos, violence and then an insurgency that continues to this day. The special then speeds through an account of the past three years of conflict, and concludes with the current state of the “surge” – the “temporary” increase in combat troops bringing the total American force to 160,000 – that has left President Bush, in the eyes of one observer, New Yorker writer Steve Coll, “certain to at least win a stalemate.”

So, with Rumsfeld gone, Powell gone, Tenet and many others gone but not forgotten, the costly, deadly war most Americans don’t want – but don’t want to think about – grinds on. Now it really is “Bush’s War” – and our own. And as the brilliant Frontline special concludes, “Soon Bush’s war… will be handed to someone new.”

– By Rory O’Connor

Editor’s Note: In conjunction with the airing of a comprehensive series on the Iraq war Monday and Tuesday, FRONTLINE promises a “New TV/Web Experience.”

For further information on Bush’s War visit the Frontline website.

When I was last in China, I was informally told that it would be acceptable to ask government and Party officials about virtually anything I wanted – unless of course it involved one of the forbidden “three T’s.”

“T” for Taiwan, Tiananmen, and Tibet.

All were apparently “T” for Taboo.

I guess someone forgot to tell the Tibetans.

In any event, that particular “T” has begun to boil over of late – and faced with vigorous Tibetan protests, followed by equally vigorous global criticism of their repressive response, China’s top officials countered in a most modern and predictable fashion with an all-out, full-tilt media offensive aimed at controlling both domestic and international perceptions of the ongoing conflict.

On the international front, the Chinese government responded by blocking foreign broadcasters such as CNN and BBC, cutting off websites such as YouTube, and denying journalists access to the Tibetan region — even going so far as to stop CNN reporters when they were still hundreds of miles away. In addition, top officials, including the region’s governor, attacked Western coverage as “ridiculous” at a press conference.

Domestically, after trying first to minimize the uprising, the Chinese government soon shifted and began to promote intense but one-sided television coverage, airing hour after hour of footage of last week’s riots in Lhasa. Employees at the state television service CCTV “were instructed to keep broadcasting footage of burned-out shops and Chinese wounded in attacks,” as Tania Branigan reported in the Guardian. “No peaceful demonstrators were shown.”

Meanwhile, authorities in other areas of western China with large Tibetan populations banned all reporting of the protests and asked foreign journalists to leave, according to a report from Radio Free Asia, which also noted that the government referred to demonstrators as “the enemy” in an editorial in the Tibet Daily, the Communist Party newspaper in Tibet.

“These lawless elements have insulted, beaten, and wounded duty personnel, shouted reactionary slogans, stormed vital departments, and gone to all lengths in beating, smashing, looting, and burning,” the paper said. It also repeated the official line (Premier Wen Jiabao accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of provoking violence to taint the Beijing Olympics and promote Tibetan independence) that last week’s rioting was instigated by the Dalai Lama, who is recognized by Tibetans as both a spiritual and political leader.

“Their atrocities are appalling and too horrible to look at, and their frenzy is inhuman,” the paper concluded. “Their atrocities of various kinds teach and alert us to the fact that this is a life-and-death struggle between the enemy and ourselves.”

Meanwhile, the international media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) attacked China’s media blackout, noting that Beijing had stopped issuing permits for foreign correspondents to enter Tibet, and that at least 25 journalists, including 15 from Hong Kong, had already been expelled from Tibet or Tibetan areas.

“The freedom of movement for foreign journalists had been one of the few positive developments ahead of the Olympic Games,” RSF officials said in a statement. “But this is now being flouted by the Chinese government facing Tibetan protests. Yet again the Chinese government is trampling on the promises it made linked to the Olympics and is preparing the ground to crackdown on the Tibetan revolt in the absence of witnesses.”

As with other governments faced with legitimate dissent from its citizens – recent examples include those of both Myanmar and the United States — the first reaction to unrest is to try to control and contain information. The Pentagon even has a name for this tactic: information dominance. In China, where the media is directly overseen by an Orwellian Ministry of Information, along with the State Council Information Office, edicts are often issued telling media outlets what subjects they can cover, how they should be covered — and perhaps more importantly, which must be avoided. And the “three T’s” have topped that list for nearly two decades.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, it was thought that such barriers to information would topple. Instead the Chinese government created what has ironically come to be known as “The Great Firewall of China,” a well-funded, sophisticated, and ultimately successful effort to control the Internet and ensure that reporting and discussion about Tibet and other sensitive subjects such as relations with Taiwan — or what really happened at Tiananmen Square — remained severely constrained.

Will the world media now allow the Chinese government to establish “information dominance” over the Tibetans – and the rest of us? Or will the protests succeed in focusing world attention on China’s human rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics — intended by the Communist government to boost its international image?

As one US State Department official told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “The Olympics is an opportunity for China to put its best face forward and show progress to the world” on human rights. “To be successful, they’re going to have to address some of these issues while the world is watching China. And the world will be watching China.”

But if the world’s media and citizens acquiesce in the face of the Chinese media offensive, what pictures of China – or of Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square – will that watching world be permitted to see?

Prime Minister Wen now says that Lhasa was returning to normal and “will be reopened to the rest of the world.” But he is not saying when, and he is not saying how. I’d like to ask him—but it’s apparently forbidden…

There’s a clever, effective technique often employed by coaches in the National Basketball Association, used to gain a subtle but demonstrable edge in close games, known as “working the refs.” In essence, it involves endless and bitter complaints about your opponents’ supposed advantages — to your own future advantage. Aggressively contesting every foul and infraction assessed to your side, no matter how deserved it may have been, and in the end, the unmitigated barrage may result in a psychological reaction on the part of the referees, who (being only human) then begin to feel that they have been unfairly calling the game. Striving for impartiality, they soon begin to subconsciously ‘adjust’ their control of the game so as to correct any prior ‘imbalance’ that may have resulted from their previous calls.

Hillary won this week by working the refs.

By constantly complaining about coverage, and relentlessly focusing on charges that the news media has favored Barack Obama and treated him far more gently than herself, Hillary was finally able to staunch the bleeding and stage a desperately needed, last minute comeback that will keep her in the game. By mocking the media, quoting Saturday Night Live, and “practically browbeating reporters,” her campaign lived to fight another day.

And fight is the operative word. Going negative against the media, as well as her opponent, saved the day for the Clintons. For the first time, Senator Obama seemed off his game instead of on top of it, and on the defensive instead of in command, allowing his own, previously potent narrative to be eclipsed by Hillary’s. The Obama camp’s surprise was telegraphed on Tuesday by the candidate himself when he told reporters, “I am a little surprised that all the complaining about the refs has actually worked as well as it has for them. This whole spin of how the press has been so tough on them and not tough on us – I didn’t expect that you guys would bite on that.”

Obama is nothing if not a quick learner, of course, as evidenced by his closing remark, “Clearly, Tina Fey and I are going to have a conversation.” Obama’s joking reference to the SNL host whose skits had the press all but plumping pillows for him was a clear signal that, however belatedly, his team is about to begin berating the referees as well. But the damage has already been done, and the game is headed into overtime now.

For its part, the Clinton campaign – having accomplished its goal of influencing the coverage – has now stepped back and shifted to a rather laughable posture of not commenting on press coverage. “With regard to the media, I frankly don’t find it productive to comment,” said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, who had spent most of the previous week doing precisely that. “I’m clearly not an unbiased source in this regard.”

Clearly. What’s also clear is that aggressive complaints against the media, coupled with negative attacks on her opponent, brought Hillary back from the grave. If history is any guide, the Clintons will continue their aggressive battle to regain the White House “until the last dog dies.” What’s also obvious is that the attacks and negativity will only continue and escalate on both sides from here on.

From the Clinton campaign, look for more innuendo, more sotto voce suggestions about inexperience and naiveté, more questions about everything and everyone from Antoin Rezko to Louis Farrakhan. From the Obama campaign, look for harsher examination of everything from the Clinton’s newfound wealth and still-concealed tax records to her votes in support of a war that continues to kill Americans and drain our treasury. Both sides are obviously preparing a fresh avalanche of accusations and attacks.

While ‘spinning’ the latest primary results for the press, for example, chief Obama strategist David Axelrod first noted the Clinton approach of “attack, attack, attack” and then promised to respond soon in kind. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Axelrod concluded.

In the process, however, Democrats can only hope that their collective goose doesn’t get cooked by the endless assaults on their two remaining candidates — one of whom apparently will still be standing unbowed but quite bloodied – to face John McCain in November’s general election. If the Democratic gaggle of geese morphs into a murder of crows, McCain will be the clear beneficiary.

But before contesting the general election, one must somehow, someway, first win the increasingly bitter race for the nomination. To inject a final sports reference, the only thing that matters in politics is if you “Just win, baby,” as the National Football League great Al Davis once eloquently phrased it.

And if that means ‘going negative’ proves to be the most effective tactic – whether used directly against your opponent, or more insidiously against the refs – then that’s what we’ll see from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns, no matter how distasteful the rest of us may find it.

If you’re a Democratic primary voter in Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania, and are still torn between Obama and the Clintons, here’s the best reason I know to throw your support to Obama: Mark McKinnon.

Love him or hate him, there’s general agreement that McKinnon — the chief media adviser and strategist for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain – is a genius at what he does. So it’s no surprise that, even though it’s relatively old ‘news,’ word that McKinnon will stop working for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee has been freshly burning up cyberspace of late.

Citing his admiration for the Illinois senator, McKinnon says he cannot face being part of a campaign that “would inevitably be attacking” Obama. “I have met Barack Obama. I have read his book. I like him a great deal, he told National Public Radio. “I disagree with him on very fundamental issues but it would be uncomfortable for me and it would be bad for the McCain campaign.”

But who is Mark McKinnon — and why does his unusual stance matter so much? For starters, because as the chief media adviser and strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaigns, he arguably deserves more credit (or blame, depending on your politics!) than any other individual for George Bush being in the White House. Anyone who can get George Bush elected President of the United States twice (and Governor of Texas before that) is a danger to Democrats everywhere, and the fact that McKinnon will withdraw his services from McCain in the event of an Obama nomination should be music to the ears of anyone who wants to see an end to our long national nightmare—aka the Bush Administration and its possible successors.

I first met McKinnon in 2004, while covering the presidential media campaigns for the television industry journal Broadcasting & Cable. He returned my first call immediately — unlike his inept Democratic counterparts, who failed to return fourteen calls and then hung up when I finally got through. After telling me to check in with presidential counselor Dan Bartlett (who also promptly returned the call) McKinnon then invited me to spend a day at the Bush/Cheney campaign offices in suburban Virginia.

Upon arrival, I asked McKinnon what his media plan for the campaign against John Kerry would be. To my surprise, instead of dodging, filibustering or ignoring the question, he answered in a forthright manner. “We plan to spend sixty million dollars in the next ninety days defining John Kerry before he can define himself,” McKinnon told me.

“How are you going to define him?” I shot back.

“As a flip-flopping liberal who’s wrong on defense,” McKinnon replied.

I then watched in amazement over the next three months as he proceeded to do exactly that. Within weeks of our conversation, ordinary people all over the country suddenly began saying that they had doubts about Kerry – particularly, they parroted, because he seemed like such a “flip-flopper.” The mainstream media lapdogs soon followed suit.

Kerry never recovered from the preemptive assault on his authenticity, which was later reinforced by images of windsurfing and clips of him saying, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Game, set and match to the Republican side.

So who then is Mark McKinnon? And why is the man who first elected George W. Bush, and later rescued John McCain from the land of the politically dead and then took him to the brink of the nomination, saying he won’t help McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic candidate? The high-school dropout, onetime staff songwriter for Kris Kristofferson, formerly Democratic political operative who once denounced Karl Rove and friend of such liberal heavyweights as onetime Clinton advisers Paul Begala and James Carville seems an unlikely choice as President Bush’s or candidate McCain’s campaign media director. But politics is first and foremost about winning — and McKinnon’s candidates win.

“It all started with Hank the Hallucination,” McKinnon recalls. “Hank and Paul Begala are the reasons I got into politics.” Hank, an illustrated comic strip character in the Daily Texan, the student newspaper McKinnon edited, ran with his backing against Begala in a 1982 contest for student government president at the University of Texas in Austin — and won. “I was a bit of an anarchist in those days,” McKinnon recalls.

Hank was the first in a long series of winning candidates that McKinnon has backed. “I was a volunteer for Lloyd Doggett in my first real campaign in 1983,” he says. “Carville was the campaign manager, and Begala was in the upper echelon. He brought me out of the basement.”

McKinnon continued to work in winning Texas Democratic campaigns after that, helping to elect Ann Richards as governor in 1990 and Bob Lanier as mayor of Houston in 1991, among others. But by 1996, as he explained in a Texas Monthly essay called “The Spin Doctor is Out,” he had burned out on partisan politics and “last-minute attack and response ads.” Instead he planned to concentrate on corporate clients and public affairs, such as a successful 1997 effort to preserve affirmative action.

Then he fell in love, and everything changed. As he famously told a reporter, McKinnon saw Bush at a party and had the feeling that a man has “when he’s at a party with his wife and sees a beautiful woman across the room.”

The object of his newfound affection was George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. “It is unusual” for a conservative Republican politician and a liberal Democrat media maven to hook up, McKinnon admits. “The nexus was [Democratic] Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, who was my mentor.” McKinnon and Bush became jogging partners and fast friends. Soon Bush began courting McKinnon professionally as well.

“Even as Governor, President Bush was famously skeptical about political consultants,” McKinnon says. “And at the time, all the typical Republican hired guns were circling. Hiring me was certainly a counter-intuitive move. I think he liked the idea that I wasn’t looking to work in politics anymore.”

In the end, McKinnon says, he decided to work for Bush “out of respect, loyalty and friendship — which as you know are qualities that are very important to the Bush culture.” Those feelings were reciprocated by Bush, who put McKinnon in charge of two of the most well financed media operations in history.

The strategies McKinnon employed in the past decade may seem awfully negative for a man who says, “Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.” (After all, McKinnon was the architect of the ads that trashed John McCain in South Carolina and beyond in 2000, ensuring a Bush nomination.) But McKinnon says it isn’t so.

“It’s not negative to define John Kerry. We’re not doing attack ads, we’re doing strong contrast ads,” he told me four year ago. “That’s legitimate, not negative. We aren’t saying Kerry is ‘Weak on Defense,’ we’re saying he’s ‘Wrong on Defense.’ There’s a big difference.”

As I wrote at the time, “The war of words matters a lot, and while McKinnon concedes that the Bush campaign is busy testing them in focus groups, he offers no details. Still, it’s clear he is attempting to position the president as a ’steady’ leader and Kerry as a ‘flip-flopper’ who changes positions often for political expediency. If the words work, they will be repeated over and over as part of that ‘coordinated blitz’ aimed at defining Kerry as ‘indecisive and lacking conviction.’”

Despite the fierce hatred he has engendered in some of his former friends, McKinnon generally remains an approachable and affable figure. Even Begala – who eventually did become student body president by winning a runoff between the “two top humans” after Hank the Hallucination was gunned down — extols him. “I love him!” Begala told me. “He’s a wonderful, terrific guy.”

Even though he went over to the Dark Side?

“It’s a free country. Sure, he was way to the left of me in college, and now he’s way to the right,” Begala responded. “But hey — James Carville goes home every night and goes to bed with Mary Matalin… Mark has changed his life, but I don’t believe he had a conservative epiphany.

“I believe him when he says this is based on a deep and personal love of George Bush. But this is not a race for student government president,” Begala concluded. “Still, if Bush is ruining the country, I say let’s attack the organ grinder and not the monkey.”

“I haven’t taken as many shots as I thought I would,” McKinnon conceded at the time. “Probably because Begala blessed me.”

Would he describe himself as a Republican?

“Let’s just say I’m a man of evolution,” he responded with a grin.

His many critics now contend that, far from “evolving,” McKinnon is just an opportunistic turncoat, a lustful chameleon, a bizarre sellout… and worse. In any event, now it’s time for another hallucinatory campaign, and McKinnon is once again in the thick of it.

Just ask John McCain—or Barack Obama, for that matter!