Amba has cleaned her glasses...

and is starting to catch on that -- even though it's fun to go with the kids thinking you're part of the "future!" -- it pays to play it wise and think: What does this "Change" and "Yes We Can!" meme really mean, short of electing the first black man as president? She quotes this excerpt from the Washington Post:

Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscuration. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

And Susan Estrich today weighs in on the recent plagarism charges, offering up some hard-earned wisdom from her own work experience. Read the last two paragraphs with your newly cleaned glasses, a few times over, if need be:

What gives is this is politics, and in politics, copying lines from someone else, even if it's only the result of having the same writer or handler, can be deadly if it goes to your character.

Just ask Joe Biden. He got knocked out of the presidential race in 1987 by the notorious "Biden tape," which showed British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock and Sen. Biden using the same phrases to describe their boyhoods and come-from-nothing paths to leadership. One front-page New York Times story and one Des Moines Register story later, and Biden was history.

Or ask me, for that matter. I got my job as the manager of the Dukakis campaign in September of 1987 because then-Gov. Dukakis swore up and down that no one from his campaign could possibly have played any role in the dastardly deed of making and distributing that tape — hardly dastardly at all, by my lights — and then was forced to eat his words and fire my predecessor, whose fingerprints were, figuratively speaking, all over the tape.

Cut to 20 years later, and the Clinton campaign doesn't even bother to use a third party to charge Obama with the crime for which Biden was beheaded.

Why bother? Howard Wolfson, the Clinton communications director who raised the charges against Obama, isn't risking his job in doing so; he's doing his job.

David Axelrod, the extraordinarily smart strategist who has been with Obama since the beginning, was also Deval Patrick's strategist in his run for governor of Massachusetts. Maybe the lines are his. Who cares?

That's really the only question. Does anyone care? The charges of plagiarism hurt Biden 20 years ago because, with 20 fewer years of foreign policy experience than he has today, there were questions about his depth and gravitas as a candidate, whether he was just a pretty face or a serious leader. So the words, coupled with some overstatement on his resume at the same time, hurt grievously.

In Obama's case, the concern is, or should be, different. Does anyone really doubt that Obama is a skilled rhetorician? They'd have to be nuts. The real question is whether there's more to his candidacy than that. It's not the focus on the borrowed words but the focus on words themselves that makes this an appealing target for the Clintons.

The real comparison with Deval Patrick, the one that could hurt Obama, is the one people in Boston have been drawing for some time between two inspirational candidates who talk big change, but then, as in the case of Patrick, face the hard light of reality when they win. Deval had a rough first few months in office, and while he's now settled in, his governorship is, according to many observers, not so different than those of his predecessors, who did not promise major change. He's fighting for casinos, not a revolution.

Indeed, a number of people have been circulating articles and arguments that one of the big reasons Obama lost Massachusetts handily, notwithstanding his endorsement by every living legend in the state, was because Democrats there are disappointed with the last candidate who promised change, Gov. Patrick. That's the comparison worthy of examination, and it's based on actions, not words.

Meanwhile, Maureen's NYT column today again focuses solely on criticizing Hillary Clinton, something "clever" about the candidate playing Laverne and Shirley, with no Lenny and Squiggy in sight... (Because that's what we all think of nowadays when we think Milwaukee, donchaknow?)

In my book though, Maureen ties for campaign analysis inanity today with this observation from Ann "oversensitive mom?" Althouse, who sees criticism of Obama's silver-tongued speechmaking as ... homophobia? (No Ann, use your dictionary. See, there's a difference between "thespian" and a lesbian, and pretty much by now, even the working-class folks know it. Oh, and if you think all "poets" are gay, tell that to Seamus Heaney, for one.)

THIS RHETORIC FROM THE CLINTON RALLY verges on homophobic. Machinists' union president Tom Buffenbarger, speaking before Hillary Clinton last night, called Barack Obama a “thespian," a "silver-tongued orator," a "man in love with the microphone," and "a poet." And a Harvard Law Review editor.

And you know Ann, Susan was a Harvard Law Review editor once upon a time too. And she's on record as well, as saying that experience -- however worthwhile -- in no way qualifies one to lead as Commander-in-Chief.