Fix for Junkies

Attention political junkies: the final Obamaporn is in, the post-game inside-the-campaigns feature stories, the king of which is Newsweek's brand (since 1984) of deeply embedded reporting, with the contractual agreement that nothing the reporters covering each campaign goes public, not a word nor a rumor, until the day after the Presidential Election.

This time they have a lot of inside Clinton, along with Obama and McCain. For those of us who read too much campaign coverage while it was happening, the most surprising news may be when the McCain senior campaign staff knew they were 90% likely to lose (the weekend before the third debate) and that McCain essentially came up with the Joe the Plumber meme himself, egged on by his wife and Lindsay Graham.

There's a highlights version, but the multi-chaptered piece is really something.

For a more succinct "why he won" covering the Obama side, Ryan Lizza does a nice job in The New Yorker. The first passage ending kind of sums up the last phase of this insanely long season:

As a practical matter, this meant that, after the Democratic National Convention, in Denver, the campaign would do all that it could to focus attention on economic matters. It had no idea, of course, how fully both the economy and John McCain would coöperate with that goal.

David Grann covers McCain, who seems more and more like a quasi-tragic character who finds honor only in losing.

Drink up, this is the last time you're allowed at the well. It's onto the future since Obama is there already, vetting cabinet choices and, one hopes, secretly governing already. After all, per Andy Borowitz, Bush is in a race against time:

Confounding the conventional wisdom that he is a lame duck president with no agenda as his days in office dwindle, President George W. Bush is redoubling his efforts to mutilate the country before his term expires, aides confirmed today.

"President Bush has spent the first seven years and ten months of his presidency doing everything in his power to leave the United States in smoldering ruins," said White House spokesperson Dana Perino. "He certainly is not going to let the final days of his tenure go to waste."

Ah, someday this, too, shall pass.