The summer months of a presidential election year rarely hint at the \u201ctotal war\u201d the fall will bring. Publicly, the two campaigns move like panting dogs on an Alabama blacktop in mid-July. Each is content to sniff the other from a safe distance. There are occasional growls, but only such as honor requires. When the two do feel the need to engage, they employ as much mock ferocity as possible in hopes that sheer bluster will win the day.<\/p>\n
It is hot, after all. Let us not do too much.<\/p>\n
The campaigns save themselves, of course, for the conventions. Then, after these exhausting bits of theater, there is the required post-convention \u201cInevitable Victory Tour,\u201d which often takes the form of an \u201cexpress\u201d of some kind or another. This field exercise is followed by the perpetual bombardments of the six weeks leading up to Election Day. Mercifully, none of this seems imminent during the judgment-of-God-heat of mid-summer, traditionally the doldrums of the political cycle.<\/p>\n