Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (Or: Obamandias)

"Hey, guys, here's what you should be doing with your meticulously planned convention" is the lowest form of commentary. Nonetheless: Jesus tapdancing Christ.

Greek columns? Behind your presidential nominee as he accepts the nomination? Not flags? Not, I don't know, tractors or something? I know Obama has looked grand before capitols and monuments before (Springfield, Berlin, San Antonio), but 1)"hubris" and "presumption" are the only attacks on the man that have stuck and 2)Christ, Greek columns?

There is a bluntness here that I respect. Both McCain and Obama are running for Caesar. I get that. But part of the game of running for Caesar has always been pretending you don't want it, that the proles need you, and you're one of them. Our imperial trappings are less cornball than this: Motorcades, armies of secret service, go down the list.

I have to wonder which campaign Obama is watching: the one where he's as popular as he was in early 2008, or the one where Republicans are taunting him like a caged animal for stuff-just-like-this, and where his lead isn't just gone in the (mostly meaningless) national polls but fading in the (meaningful as all hell) state polls.

His only hope is that McCain gives his stirring address in song atop a scale model of the Hanoi Hilton. I find this unlikely.