Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

America may be in a dour condition, but it is not going to elect a dour president.

Hurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn't care. This is war - not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that's a victory he savors and desires - unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail.

The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.

All conservatives are bilingual we have to be. We speak both liberal and conservative. But liberals are monolingual - they don't have to be anything else. They speak liberal, and are completely ignorant of the conservative tongue.

Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing - and now to something very close to parody.

Back in 1995, Bill Gates himself didn't understand that the internet was the direction computing was going.