Jack Shafer on the media’s typical coverage of campaigns contains this gem about last night’s spectacle in Denver—and a useful reminder [e.a.]:

Instead of decoding the Obama propaganda, the broadcast press mostly wallowed in it: Flipping the dial, I didn’t hear much in the way of disparagement from the talking heads. Indeed, the fact that the networks paid $100,000 to install a Skycam to hover over the cheering hordes at Invesco Field proves how easily they can be co-opted by a campaign that spends the money to produce a terrific “show.” The Skycam added no journalistic value to last night’s coverage, only buckets of oomph for the Obama-Biden ticket. If you can’t avert your eyes from such spectacles and the network anchors refuse to frame them skeptically, be prepared to discount the emotional effect they may exert on you.

He’s right, of course. What he doesn’t note is that the very next day, the Republicans put on an equally compelling “show” with the very photogenic Sarah Palin:

Aren’t political campaigns fun?

Especially when a resurgent Russia is all but forgotten in the process?

It’s funny how being mugged by reality makes people change their minds:

Santa Barbara County became a symbol of the national environmental movement’s passionate opposition to offshore oil drilling when an oil spill devastated its coastline in 1969. On Tuesday, it became a symbol of the changing national mood as its board of supervisors debated whether to welcome new wells along California’s shores.

The supervisors voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday to end the county’s opposition to offshore drilling, although the vote will have no practical impact on state or federal policies.

But the speed with which opinions have changed in Santa Barbara County as gasoline prices have climbed has been astonishing. The vote there reinforces, at the local level, a shift evident in national polls and in the delicate willingness of Democratic leaders like Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive presidential nominee, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, to open the door to limited coastal drilling.

Three weeks ago, the Public Policy Institute of California released a poll showing that 51 percent of Californians now approve of offshore drilling, a 10-point increase in a single year. “I don’t think any of us expected to see the day when there’d be more than 50 percent support for oil drilling,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s research director. [e.a.]

Holy cow—that’s not the Santa Barbara I know! It looks like America’s dependence on foreign oil has now become officially anathema.

In case any of you thought that electoral politics was about issues and policies, read what

this commenter at Ann Althouse’s blog has to say about McCain’s pick of the unknown (to me) Sarah Palin as his VP:

This is a subtle, brilliant choice, and once against shows the McCain camp getting inside the Obama camp’s decision loop. For almost every criticism you can find for Palin can redirected at Obama. The decision will provoke more heat than some others would have, but better to suffer the slings and arrows toward the bottom of your ticket than the top.

Upshot: it’s all about the strategy. So what it is, is war by other means.

And in case you think that Barack Obama really is a new kind of politican rather than an old-fashioned political warrior, consider this story related by Jodi Kantor in yesterday’s New York Times [e.a.]:

In 2006, Mr. Obama backed Alexi Giannoulias, a 29-year-old friend from the basketball court, for Illinois treasurer. Opponents accused Mr. Giannoulias of corruption, citing thin evidence: a loan his family’s bank made to a convicted felon. After Mr. Giannoulias worsened the situation by calling the felon a nice guy, Mr. Obama told him to fix his campaign or get out of the race.

“I was almost crying,” said Mr. Giannoulias, who eventually won. “He was almost upset at how thin-skinned I was.”

It is not that Mr. Obama does not experience emotion, friends say. But he detaches and observes, revealing more in his books than he does in the moment.

Also from the comments at Althouse’s blog [e.a.]:

[Palin] earned the nickname Sarah Barracuda and won Miss Congeniality both before the age of 21.

Sounds like a natural politician to me.

Remember back when I referred to Obama as a reptile?

This, dear readers, is what our electoral politics has come to. Not exactly change you can believe in.