First, McCain could never be grateful enough that the Democratic candidate is not going to be John Edwards. In an election that promises to focus on the economy, Edwards was ready for his close-up. His appeal was always more serrated on domestic than foreign policy issues, and he had made peace with the left over his Senate vote to authorize war with Iraq. More importantly, Edwards has honed an approach to kitchen table issues that blends policy with vision, transforming micro-issues about college tuition and tax credits into challenges about what kind of a country we want, and what kind of citizens we need to be in order to get the government we crave. Voters beyond the Democratic base found him trustworthy on issues of social and economic fairness; even if they disagreed with his proposals or cringed at his vanity, few would dispute that he cared. The “Two Americas” theme is more resonant now than at any time Edwards has occupied the national stage. Absent a mega-terrorist event in October, a McCain-Edwards match-up would be over shortly after the conventions.

For that matter, McCain is lucky he won’t be up against Democrats who have foreign policy bona fides, like Joe Biden or Bill Richardson. A campaign with either one of those candidates would reveal just how vapid and warmed over McCain’s worldview is, even before we consider how to recalibrate foreign policy while engaged in two wars that form one big wormhole into the abyss.

Against Biden or Richardson the depravity of the “surge” policy that McCain is so proud of would become grotesquely obvious. The “surge” strategy was never anything more than a greasy tactic to tamp down the violence in Iraq just long enough to get through the election. The transparent cynicism behind the "surge" is win-win for the GOP: even if they lost the election, the inevitable chaos when our military eventually redeploys from a fledgling unable to govern itself could be blamed on the Democrats. As foreign policy, the “surge” is but one stench in our house, and it is the last pie Karl Rove put in the oven before he slithered off to get rich.

Everything that McCain stands on regarding the war in Iraq has cost our country unfathomable blood and treasure with relatively little to show for it. Yet if Obama cannot do more than rehash the “hundred years” quote, which is clearly out of context, he will simply look like a sneaky high school debater. And that is another stroke of phenomenal luck for Republicans. A Democratic candidate with foreign policy chops would de-pants McCain in the general election. In matters of war and peace – his strong side! – John McCain looks more and more like Humpty Dumpty, and in a race against Biden or Richardson he would wobble off the wall before anyone even had to push.

But every coin has a flip side, and those who study exit polls like animal entrails have yet to turn the primary over and see what else it means. That’s what I want to talk about next.