Getting Our Lame Ducks in a Row - Updated

This whole thing is turning into a French farce – which is about to be repeated as tragedy. It’s like watching Rome burn, except these guys don’t have Nero’s insouciance. They’re more like the Three Stooges.

Bush has been the lamest duck in U.S. presidential history, pretty much since he hugged the third rail of Social Security “reform.” In fact, he’s been at it so long now that he’s kind of settled into the role, figured out its protocols, accepted his own failure with the kind of quiet ill-grace that we’ve all come to love. The “decider”? He’s barely the presider. The United States is being run by the grounds crew – Gates, Paulson, Crocker, et al. (“Run” being a relative term here.)

So, I guess, with that role model before them, we can understand the behavior, cluelessness, feckless wanderings and policy meanderings of our two suitors for succession. Their attentiveness to W’s example is acutely visible in the present crisis: McCain, with his playground impishness, throwing monkey wrenches hither and yon – into debates as well as bailouts; Obama, with his patented deer-in-the-headlights freeze-tag, working manfully to keep it together until the next podium is free. (And then there’s Joe Biden’s channeling of Mrs. Malaprop – or is it Gerald Ford?... which doesn’t hold a candle to Sarah Palin’s bid to out-dumb-jerk Steve Carrell’s Michael from The Office.)

It’s a signal innovation for candidates to become lame ducks before the election. But, then, these are transformative times.

Update: There are, fwiw, some adults in the wings. O tempores, o morons.