Cheat Sheet

So conservative strategy does exist! David Frum cuts through the froth his colleagues at the National Review have whipped themselves into over Bill Ayers: "We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign … that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters." The Atlantic's Ross Douthat jumps onboard, suggesting that McCain move forward with what he calls "aggressive pandering to the middle class." A McCain victory is unlikely either way, Douthat says, but such a strategy at least "has the virtue of actually addressing itself to the massive, massive anxieties that Americans are experiencing at the moment, as opposed to addressing itself to issues that voters, I suspect, perceive as tangential at best."