Despite the relentless braying of right-wing radio, despite the mind-boggling fact-cooking of Fox News and anything else owned by Rupert Murdoch, we may be at the point where all Obama need do is whisper "golf" - and the yammering falls quiet, the counterintuitive spinning stops, the swift boats sink away.

Politics is filled with metaphoric banana peels and open manholes, 1,000-lb. safes hurtling down from above, and supernaturally efficient saws cutting holes in the floor beneath the unsuspecting. The hot-headed or tactless remark, or documentation of long-forgotten whorehouse visits, are as common misfortunes as they are obviously catastrophic. Denials are useless, since there is little breach between accusation and verdict. Once gob-smacked, if a candidate looks, walks and quacks like a duck – he’s a dead duck.

In his unfortunate interview with Yahoo/Politico earlier this week, and his plain-dumb airing of American political laundry in the Knesset yesterday, President Bush has balled himself up on the end of the chain dragging the GOP to entropy.

Americans just don't like to see their countrymen's lives held so cheaply by an absentee jackass like Bush. He bagged 'em for the boys - whew! That's a page from the Marie Antoinette Guide to Verbal Acumen. And if we're going to insult and degrade the guy on the other side of the aisle, we don't do it with foreign eyes watching, even if those eyes belong to our brave little allies in the Levant.

Overnight, he’s this year's Bernie Kerik: His acute political radioactivity doesn’t become apparent until a host body is so poisoned digits and limbs start falling off, and stink clears the room. What's odd is that apparently no one in the GOP saw this coming, after more than seven years of one disastrous pratfall after another; it's difficult to think of anything the Bush Administration has done right.

The President's ankles have snapped and he’s stumbled, but they can’t just shoot him on the track and drag him away. He is, after all - yes, unfortunately - the Commander in Chief.

A few weeks ago, a GOP stalwart noted that when Bush gets near a microphone, he swallows it. Amazing there's room left after he gobbles his foot.

The only question is: Will Democrats be Republican-enough to use this sort of trivial stuff, these devisive non-issues?

After all, on the basis of very little, Obama has been accused of everything short of drowning kittens and scarfing up fully barbecued toddlers

Maybe it's time for Democrats to conjure their Inner Rove.