"Has Bush earned the right to name his successor?"

One short question is all it takes to turn this campaign into a referendum on Bush's performance.

To establish the meme that McCain is running to serve out Bush's third term.

To hint at Bush's extraconstitutional assertion of executive authority.

To call to mind the Embrace and the Endorsement.

To play the guilt-by-association game one last time -- but this time, with substance.

From here on out, Dems, and especially Obama, who has made his own good judgment a major campaign theme, should be tying McCain to the phrase "poor judgment."

As one of the Keating Five, McCain was officially reprimanded for having "poor judgment."

He showed poor judgment in supporting the decision to invade Iraq and continues to show poor judgment in wanting to stay there.

He shows poor judgment in continuing to embrace and validate the poor judgments of a president with a 19% approval rating.

And the very most charitable characterization of the NYT revelations is that McCain has consistently exercised poor judgment in his association with lobbyists.

Let's Googlebomb it and make it official.  

Obama won't be able to beat McCain unless the MSM and a majority of American voters are ready to accept, at the very least, two brutal truths:

1.  Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died for a mistake.

2.  We cannot achieve "success" in Iraq.

This is the takeaway from Thursday's debate.  Here's why.

The GOP candidates are in California to pay homage at the Ronald Reagan shrine.  Let's throw them for a loop!

Politico.com is co-sponsoring the debate and will be putting several reader-submitted questions to the candidates.

If you're looking for a way to tie all of Bush's corruption to the GOP nominee...

If you want to see a GOP debate where the candidates actually are forced to acknowledge the existence of the man who has occupied the Oval Office for the past seven years...

Look no further than this question:

Eight years ago, candidate George W. Bush pledged to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. Based on your own understanding of the ethical standards required of the office, has President Bush failed to live up to that pledge in any respect?

This question made it into the top 150, and is eligible for the final round of voting tonight between 7:55 p.m. Eastern Time and the end of the debate!  Please vote for this question at Politico.com!   It is listed under "Leadership."  

If you're looking for a way to tie all of Bush's corruption to the GOP nominee...

If you want to see a GOP debate where the candidates actually are forced to acknowledge the existence of the man who has occupied the Oval Office for the past seven years...

Look no further than this question:

Eight years ago, candidate George W. Bush pledged to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. Based on your own understanding of the ethical standards required of the office, has President Bush failed to live up to that pledge in any respect?

You can get this question asked in an upcoming GOP debate!  Please vote for it at Politico.com!  I just posted it.  It should be on one of the first few pages, listed under "Leadership."

John McCain, still the prohibitive favorite for the GOP nomination, has already given the Democratic nominee considerable fodder for campaign ads for his repeated "100 year" comments about Iraq.  But as the media darling, he's likely to get ample opportunity to wiggle away from those sound bites, noting that since his commitment to a long-term occupation of Iraq is contingent on American forces no longer taking casualties, he was only speaking to an abstract hypothetical.

In Thursday's Florida GOP debate, though, McCain stated his commitment to a long-term occupation in Iraq in much more concrete and, I think, alarming terms:

Brady Bonk has a great blog post on why the most important topic for Congressional oversight -- why we invaded Iraq -- is being overlooked.  Besides our democracy's urgent need for accountability over warmaking, Brady sees electoral blood in the water:

[Iraq War oversight] should have been this Congress’ focus, not legislation. Get these assholes in front of committees and cameras. Inquire. Subpoeana. Make them say "I don’t remember" a thousand times. Force them to consider risking contempt. Show the American public, day after day after day, what a bunch of lying, thieving, incompetent, stupid bastards led us into this ridiculous, far too costly occupation of Iraq. Grab headlines. Uncover every dirty little nasty truth about Iraq that you can, and then run on it in 2008 and beyond, use it to cement a truly veto-proof majority. THEN’s when you get to vote to end it.

1. "Tax Relief" = "Legalized Tax Evasion"

Thanks in part to what seems to have been a pretty serious misstep by the Clinton campaign, right-wingers have seized upon the Marc Rich pardon as a counterpoint to the Scooter Libby commutation, with some success.  But if not for the knee-jerk Clinton-blaming that has substituted for 95% of Republican public policy discourse since 2001, tax evader Rich would be an odd choice as the GOP's poster child for unpardonable felons.  All Rich did was give himself "tax relief," keep "his own money," and assert his "property rights," while doing more than his fair share of "starving the beast."