But roll back the tape to 10 months before that, and Clark looked like a different guy. The Vietnam war hero, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, the man who’d calmly explained each step in the Iraq war night after night after night on CNN — that man was so flummoxed by the simple and entirely predictable question of whether he would have voted for the resolution that authorized George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq that he ended up flip-flopping on his position and begging for help from a press aide.

When Salon spoke with Clark by telephone last week, he wouldn’t say whether he’ll run again in 2008, but he said he’ll be ready this time if he does.

He has a Web site and a political action committee and consultants and booking people and a seemingly endless schedule of things that look an awful lot like campaign appearances. He says he’ll be “formulating and speaking and acting” until the time comes to make a decision about his presidential plans.

But for all that, Clark says that the success of any Democrat in 2008 will depend as much on the Democratic Party as on the candidate it runs. The party has “deep construction” to do before Americans will trust Democrats to keep them safe, Clark says, and the time to begin that work is now.

“It can’t be done in the heat of a political campaign,” Clark says, “and it’s not about a candidate. It’s really about a party, and I think it requires an array of voices over a sustained period of time whose views can be assessed and measured against events.”

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that for the first time since before 9/11, Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans in coping with the main problems the nation will face over the next few years. To the extent that national security and terrorism are part of that answer, is this an important turning point for the Democratic Party?

I think it’s an important yardstick, but I’d beware of “turning points.”

We know what public opinion polls do and don’t do. What we’re talking about is needing to establish a full-service Democratic Party that is able to take care of healthcare, education, employment issues, retirement issues, diversity issues — we’ve always been trusted on that — but that can also set a long-term vision for America and guide our foreign relations, our security policies, and keep us safe. One opinion poll is welcome, but we know we’ve got a lot of deep construction to do.

You tried to do some of that in the 2004 race. After your own campaign ended, you campaigned hard on behalf of Kerry, trying to add to his credibility on national security issues. Why didn’t that message take then?

Because we were going against an accumulation of 30 years of statements by others. First of all, I wasn’t the candidate, so that automatically reduced the amount of impact. And as you know from the campaign, a lot of effort was made to distort Kerry’s message, which I thought was very clear and should have been very reassuring to Americans. But campaigns are adversarial, so there were competing voices out there. [The deep construction] can’t be done during the heat of a campaign. This is the time for the Democratic Party to have a strong and correct voice, prescribing a strategy for America and pointing the way ahead — and being held accountable for it.

Should that voice come in the context of Iraq, or in some larger context?

Both. It’s not possible to avoid discussions of Iraq, but I also think you’ve got to look beyond Iraq and the Middle East.

What should the Democrats be doing and saying now about Iraq?

First of all, we’ve got to support the troops that are there, their families at home, the military as an institution that’s fighting the war, and our veterans. We have to do that because it’s a duty for Americans, and if we’re going to be the leading party in America, then we have to lead. There’s nothing more important for a government than protecting the safety and security of its people, and that requires a strong and ready armed force. So that’s the first thing that Democrats have to do. I think we’ve done a good job at that, and I think we’re getting increasing recognition for that.

It’s been Democrats who have supported and proposed measures to make sure every vehicle has the appropriate armor, to make sure every solider has body armor and adequate ammunition and training, to make sure that our veterans and our returning soldiers can be taken care of. Democrats have a long-standing reputation for being more interested in the people than in the weapons systems.

But the right hammered Kerry in 2004 for not “supporting the troops.” Is the trick to avoiding that next time by building this four-year message you’re describing?

You’ve got to have a consistent message. I wouldn’t put a set term on it — if you had an eight-year or 12-year or 28-year term, that would be even better. What’s behind all of this is the legacy of Vietnam, the frustration of veterans. People have gravitated to the other party based on a recollection of angry voices and rallies that condemned the troops when all the troops were doing was supporting a policy that a democratically elected government had put in place.

So Democrats have to pull off being critical of the administration’s Iraq policy — and articulating a better policy of their own — while not being perceived as denigrating the troops.

First, it’s still true that the war in Iraq was a strategic blunder. Even had the intelligence been proven to be correct, it wouldn’t have established a compelling necessity to go to war when we did. Second, the intelligence wasn’t correct. That said, once we’re there, we want to succeed.

The administration’s overall strategy is sort of unarguable in the broadest sense. The problem is that it is not executing it well.

“Unarguable” in the sense that the United States has to stay in Iraq until the job is done?

“Unarguable” in the sense that you have to create an Iraqi government that people can have confidence in, that has legitimacy. You also have to have the ability to train the Iraqi military and security forces to take over an increasing proportion of the burden. And you have to deal with Iraq’s rough neighborhood.

As far as creating an Iraqi government, the administration essentially did very little for more than a year. And even today, we’re having a great deal of difficulty bringing that government together. Then, on the military side, we also wasted a year [before] getting serious about training the Iraqi military and security forces. And the administration hasn’t ever really talked about how to deal with Iraq’s neighbors other than to threaten them; and it doesn’t talk to some of the neighbors, like Syria and Iran.

So it’s not that there’s no way out. It’s that the administration isn’t doing a very good job of making a success of what it got us in to.

Can you lay out a road map that would work better?

The question is, could we have done it better? The answer is yes. Could we still do it better? The answer is yes. We would work very closely with the emerging political authorities in Iraq. We would put the resources and organizations in place to train the Iraqis. And we would deal with Iraq’s neighbors.

Your presidential campaign stumbled right out of the box when you were asked about the Iraq war resolution. Looking back now, do you think that was the defining moment for your campaign, that you were doomed from that point on?

Well, what I said in testimony repeatedly was that I believed that Congress should empower the president to go forward with a resolution to the United Nations. But I warned against giving him a blank check. I would never have supported the resolution as it ultimately emerged.

But you wavered on that over the course of that particular day.

On that particular day, I explained — well, I tried to explain — what my views were on the war. It was a conversation that was less than complete — let’s put it that way.

Has the Downing Street memo had any impact on your views about the war?

You should go back and take a look at the book I wrote in the summer of 2003 ["Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire"]. Essentially, the Downing Street memo confirms everything I said.

Do you think the memo will change the way Americans think about the war or the president?

The Downing Street memo hasn’t been given adequate recognition in the press. I think the truth about Iraq is this: It was an elective war; it was a war we didn’t have to fight. But this administration chose to fight it. I’ve said that very consistently, from way before I became a candidate and all through my campaign.

You’ve said the biggest problem in your 2004 presidential campaign was that you got a late start and had no staff, no political money and no backing at the outset from the established political party. Clearly, you will not start from that sort of handicapped position in 2008, right?

I haven’t ruled anything out. [Laughs.] Thanks for asking.

Well, it seems that every time you say anything, the Internet comes alive with reports that you’ve announced that you’re running in 2008.

It’s been an amazing thing. I don’t know if people who are seasoned political reporters — you know, the inside-baseball reporters — ever really appreciated what happened. Maybe they did. But I didn’t have a plan to go into politics. People came to me, and I really was drafted. Only after President Carter and Sandy Berger and a lot of other people called me did I really get serious about considering [a run].

And has that draft continued with respect to 2008?

Let’s not call it a draft. Let’s say this: There’s still a lot of support out there — I picked up a lot of support during that whole process because people came to know me. People in the Democratic Party didn’t really know me [before that]. And I met a lot more people when I was campaigning for John Kerry and John Edwards later on.

People who don’t know much about you probably assume that you’re a one-trick pony — that you’re all about national security. But you’ve spoken out forcefully on other issues, too. Will national security still be the most important thing in 2008, or will other issues become more important as we get closer to that election?

I think the Democratic Party has to do three things. It has to prove itself a full-service party that is able to deal with and sustain the confidence of the American people on national security.

That’s No. 1.

That’s No. 1. No. 2 is that it has to show that it’s a party that can appeal to, and has appeal in, all parts of the country. We’re not writing people off. In fact, local Democratic parties in the South are quite strong — they just don’t have a national connection. The reason is that a lot of the people who vote Democratic on [local] bread-and-butter issues see the national election as something that’s more about the future of America. It’s not about road improvements, school improvement, Medicaid. It’s about which party can best protect and take America forward.

The Democrats do a good job at the local level, but when you get to the national level, we’ve got to be a party that puts America first — before any of the particular issues we like to talk about in our party. Democrats talk a lot about policy. But those policy issues, you know, they seldom decide a national election. National elections are decided on convictions. They’re decided, ultimately, on a gut check the voter makes. It’s not head, it’s heart, as the voter goes into the booth and says, Who’s the best person and what’s the best party to entrust the future of this country to?

The American people really don’t agree with many of Bush’s domestic policies, but at least in 2004 he got a pass on that because they saw him as a trustworthy, honest, keeping-them-safe kind of guy.

Well, I think the “they” was a slim margin, and a whole lot of “theys” didn’t. Elections in America tend to be very close affairs, just like approval ratings are. Most presidents have stayed at a fairly low rate of approval, 60 percent or less, which reflects the fact that Americans see issues and politics not in simple terms but in complex terms.

But when they go into the [voting booth], they see the issue — of who they can trust with the future of the country — through their heart, while the [Democratic Party] tends to look at it in terms of policy competition.

And so, as I started to say, there’s three things the Democratic Party has to do: No. 1 is full service. No. 2 is, across the country, nobody left out. No. 3 is we’ve got to be a party that the American people understands will fight and stand up for what we believe in.

Does that start with standing up for yourselves as a party?

It does.

If it’s important that Democrats stand up and fight for themselves, how damaging is something like the intraparty squabbling over Howard Dean’s recent comments about Republicans?

The more we can do to focus on the real issues that affect the voters, the more trust we’ll gain from the voters. I think it’s not too early now to begin the track record of laying out what the Democratic Party stands for, what we believe in.

We are, after all, a party of family values. We believe in the values that support families, like jobs and healthcare and education, and we’ve proved it. And without their concrete expression in effective policies, you can’t support families.

Do you think the American people are growing tired of the Republican take on these issues?

I do.

So is it time for Democrats to come in with a forceful alternative view, or is it more a matter of letting Republicans hoist themselves on their own petard?

Democrats need a coherent vision of where we want to take America. I don’t think there’s been a time in recent memory when everyday life in America has been so affected by events abroad — not just on national security and public safety but on our jobs, our healthcare, our retirement security. Nor has there been a time when what we did at home was so determinative of our future. For example, we’re simply not going to be competitive at the levels we want to be in a global economic era unless we can really improve American public education.

And what can you do about issues like these over the next however long it is before you make a decision about 2008?

It’s a matter of both formulating and speaking and acting. I laid out a strategy in the book I published in 2003, “Winning Modern Wars,” in the sixth chapter. It’s still the right strategy for America. It’s even more current now than it was then about how we have to conduct ourselves abroad and what we have to do at home to meet the competition from overseas. And then I think we’ve got to encourage Americans to get moving.

“Get moving” in what sense?

On education, healthcare reform, dealing with the reality of poverty, heading off crises before they erupt into war, promoting better business practices at home and a better business environment at home.

It seems like that would have, if not the dual purpose, at least the dual effect, of shaping the debate and broadening your own portfolio a bit.

Well, I have a broad background. People in uniform have had incredibly varied careers, and they’ve done a lot of things. Because so many Americans don’t haven’t gone through the military themselves, they may be not aware of that.

In the military I was responsible for 44,000 schoolchildren in Europe. I had a number of hospitals [to oversee], I had to deal with problems of diplomacy, I had to deal with base-closure problems and job problems in the civilian economy, I had a big budget to manage — in addition to being a sort of traditional general. And in the military, we got all the education that you could possibly want. I had a degree in philosophy, politics, economics. I taught political philosophy and economics. I was an assistant in the White House Office of Management and Budget. I saw how budget decisions are made. I saw how the president goes through the annual budget, and I worked the process with Congress.

Returning to the idea of standing up for what you believe in, I keep hearing the line, “If Kerry didn’t stand up for himself against attacks from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, how could we know that he’d stand up for our country?” Do you think that’s the right analysis of what Kerry did wrong?

I don’t know whether that analysis is right, but I don’t think that, going forward, it’s the question we should be focused on. What I’d like to focus on is, how do we ensure that the American people trust the Democratic Party?

This country needs a strong two-party system. There’s no doubt that the Republican Party has arrayed a group of ideas that they express fervently and fight for. There’s no doubt that the Democrats have a strong body of ideas. What we want is for the public to understand that those ideas encompass all Americans and all of America. They’ll keep us safe at home and abroad. We’re the best party to lead, and we’ll stand up and fight for what we believe in.

So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:

“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.

And then she said this:

Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.

“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”

If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.

More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?

Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.

That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.

Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.

Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.

But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.

Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”

There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.

The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)

The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.

In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.

Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!

America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.

There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still  un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.

The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.

Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:

In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)

Oh, the Washington Times.

Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”

As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.

Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.

Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.

But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.

*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.

(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)

Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:

This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.

If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)

Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.

A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!

Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.

Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?

How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.

I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.