There’s an interesting test of crisis communications going on in the run-up to the Republican convention right now. With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and convention plans changing by the minute, what’s a Republican member of Congress to say about all those reminders of Katrina — and the famously bad handling of it by the Bush administration?

From the sound of things, the talking points are already out. We’re supposed to get an announcement of the revised convention plans at 3 p.m. Central time this afternoon (full coverage elsewhere on the main CQPolitics.com site). But for now, Republican lawmakers are tying the storm plans to one of John McCain’s central campaign themes: putting the country’s interests above party politics.

A short time ago, I talked to Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who was running around trying to figure out the same thing we all are — what comes next in the Twin Cities. Technically, Coleman said, the Republicans have to have a convention in some form. They can’t have a presidential nominee without one. But “John McCain’s whole message is about putting country first,” Coleman said, and whatever the Republicans do with their rewritten convention agenda, whether it’s a telethon or something else, will be geared toward that theme.

“We will be sending a very clear message to this convention that it’s country first, not politics first,” Coleman said.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said when he addressed the issue on CNN’s Late Edition earlier today. “John McCain’s someone who’s always put the country first,” said Boehner, who has been one of McCain’s main congressional allies during the presidential campaign. “And, clearly, when you look at this potential disaster, putting the country first is the right thing to do.”

And McCain, for his part, is weaving that theme into his statements already. “I pledge that tomorrow night, and if necessary throughout our convention, we will act as Americans and not as Republicans because America needs us now,” McCain said earlier today, according to the Associated Press.

What, exactly, that involves will probably become clear in a couple of hours. But it seems that the Republicans are already trying to take their cues from the new leader of their party, and how they deal with Gustav will be an important test of whether they can apply their new political theme in a sensitive way to an impending disaster.

There was one line in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last night that seemed to sum up his entire candidacy in one neat phrase: “Change doesn’t come from Washington — change comes to Washington.”

He was talking about a grassroots mobilization style of politics, not about himself — a way of channeling his community organizing background into a call for people to get involved in politics. But in a way, it also spoke to one of his biggest vulnerabilities: the fact that he has only three and a half years of experience as a U.S. senator, nearly half of it spent on the presidential campaign trail.

With any other senator, that might be an immediate disqualifier. But if “change comes to Washington” rather than from Washington, as Obama says, that helps him defuse the issue because most people wouldn’t judge him by his Senate record. In fact, they wouldn’t judge him as a senator at all. They’d see him almost as a visitor to Washington, someone who’s just as appalled by the state of affairs as they are.

The whole event at Invesco Field was designed to mark a break from the usual way of doing things, and in that it was a success. Sitting in the stands, watching thousands of people waving American flags and “change” signs, cheering and stomping their feet, it was impossible not to feel the power of people getting excited about politics. Even if they were almost all on one side of the political fence, it was a reminder that mass mobilization, when it’s done skillfully, is not a force to be dismissed lightly.

It’s about the last lesson you’d expect from what is, after all, an all-Senate ticket now. (Remember that Joe Biden has been in the Senate since the early 1970s.) And now, John McCain, in picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, has a strong anti-Washington element to balance the quarter century he has spent on Capitol Hill.

But if McCain wants to take issue with the way Obama frames the argument, he may have to come up with an equally compelling narrative of his own. Starting on Monday in St. Paul, he’ll have one of his best chances to do it.

When we scold Democrats for being misleading about John McCain’s record of support for President Bush, we should acknowledge when they get it right. Tonight, it looks like Barack Obama has gotten it right.

In his acceptance speech, Obama hammered McCain for voting with Bush — but he steered clear of claiming McCain supported him 95 percent of the time last year, a claim that, as I’ve written, is misleading because McCain barely showed up to vote last year and a lot of those votes were on issues the Democrats don’t disagree with. (Joe Biden used the misleading claim again last night.)

Instead, Obama said McCain voted with Bush 90 percent of the time — a claim that is more valid because it’s based on a CQ study that covers the entire period of the Bush presidency.

“The record’s clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time,” Obama said in his speech. “Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.”

How will McCain answer the charge? Tune in next week in St. Paul.

Ever since Hillary Rodham Clinton’s widely praised speech Tuesday night — which wholeheartedly endorsed Obama and paid tribute to her campaign without dwelling on it — the Barack Obama camp has been trying hard to return the favor. But even for them, it’s hard to let the past go completely.

At a breakfast with reporters this morning, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, said he has been “amused” by the running storyline about Clinton’s alleged lack of enthusiasm about Obama. “Everything we’ve asked her to do, she’s done,” Axelrod said. “And she’s offered to do more, and we’re going to take her up on her offer.”

Michelle Obama made much the same point yesterday in a speech to the Hispanic Caucus. Clinton’s speech, she said, “shows what a true and gracious leader she is.” And she added this interesting nugget: that Chelsea Clinton has offered to talk to the Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, about her experiences.

Still, the nature of the drawn-out primary battle between Obama and Clinton seems to make it impossible that the Obama campaign would never mention it again. When asked why the Obama-McCain race is closer in the national polls than the generic Democrat vs. Republican matchups, Axelrod reminded the reporters that Obama had just come off of an unusually long primary season. “That has had some impact on us,” Axelrod said.

And whose fault was that? He never said. Guess it just happened all by itself.

It really breaks your heart to see a beautiful friendship end so tragically.

John Kerry spoke at the convention tonight, which was sort of a poignant moment, given that he was the star of the show four years ago. But that wasn’t the most poignant part of the speech. It was the part where he ripped into his old friend and fellow Vietnam veteran, John McCain.

The two have been through a lot together. In the early 1990s, Kerry and McCain served together on the committee that determined there were no missing prisoners of war in Vietnam — a finding that didn’t sit well with some groups — and later helped convince President Bill Clinton to normalize relations with the country.

They’ve worked together on other issues, such as their 2002 proposal to increase fuel efficiency standards. And, of course, there was Kerry’s feeler to McCain in 2004 about becoming his running mate.

This year, though, Kerry has gone after McCain with great enthusiasm, attacking him on behalf of Barack Obama in numerous conference calls with reporters. Tonight, he took the attacks to new heights — explaining the break with his old friend by making a distinction between “Senator McCain” and “candidate McCain”:

“I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

“Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote.”

Then, the kicker: “Talk about being for it before you’re against it.” (Who ever thought Kerry would have brought that up?)

But Kerry saved his strongest words for McCain’s turn to a more aggressive attack mode against Obama, the work of chief strategist Steve Schmidt and other recently installed campaign operatives:

“The candidate who once promised a ‘contest of ideas,’ now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.”

So much for senatorial courtesy. And so much for the friendship.

As the eyes of the nation turn to one Illinois senator tomorrow night, it is the other Illinois senator — the one who happens to be the second-ranking member of the Democratic leadership — who will step into a supporting role that he says he’s happy to play.

It’s an interesting time to be Sen. Richard J. Durbin these days. A second-term senator whose sharp communications skills vaulted him quickly into the top ranks of the Senate leadership, Durbin will introduce the biographical video of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who just joined him in the Senate three and a half years ago.

Durbin is the Senate majority whip, which means he has plenty to do trying to help Majority Leader Harry Reid force legislation through the easily gridlocked Senate. But he has also been one of Obama’s closest allies from the time he launched his presidential campaign in January 2007. And now, Durbin is acting as a liaison between the Obama team and the Senate, keeping Obama advised about floor business and keeping his Senate colleagues up to speed on the latest campaign plans.

It’s the kind of backup role that could be hard to accept for other senators, most of whom have a pretty high regard for themselves. Durbin, however, seems to have accepted his role gracefully. In lending a hand to Obama at his time of victory, Durbin says he’s just doing what any good friend would do.

“Barack is my friend. I asked him to do this, I told him I would help him, and I couldn’t be prouder of him as a result of his winning the nomination,” Durbin said. “I’ve never had any ambition to run for president. I want to make sure we have a good one, though, and I think he’s the best.”

Durbin describes the relationship in sports terms: “It’s like I’ve been a baseball team for a long time, I’m a good hitter, and along time this rookie MVP who is winning every game for us and we’re on our way to the World Series.”

But Durbin also looks at Obama’s nomination as a story of how quickly one’s life can change after hitting rock bottom. When Obama gives his acceptance speech at Invesco Field tomorrow, Durbin says he’ll be thinking about Obama’s experience at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Obama writes about the story in “The Audacity of Hope”: The rental car company wouldn’t accept his credit card, which was maxed out from his failed run for Congress that year. He couldn’t get floor credentials. Eventually, he left before the convention was even over.

Even in 2004, the story could have turned out much differently. “Four years ago, he got up to give a speech, and people couldn’t pronounce his name. They were handed signs with O-B-A-M-A on them, and they didn’t know what to say,” Durbin said.

“When he left, though, things changed, and they changecd dramatically. In such as short period of time, he’s come such a long way. It says a lot about him, and about our party, and about this country.”

Sure, Joe Biden would bring decades of valuable expertise to a Barack Obama administration. But here’s a thought to ponder: Does he have so much experience that he might just become a Democratic version of Dick Cheney?

The question has nothing to do with their political views, which are pretty much polar opposites. But it is an issue of what happens when you pair up a vice president with years of Washington experience with a president who doesn’t have it. After all, don’t forget that Cheney was also a veteran Washington hand who served with a relatively inexperienced president.

The vice presidency has been steadily growing in power and influence, ever since Walter Mondale made it a more equal partnership in the 1970s. But with Cheney, the power of the vice presidency reached new heights. So it would seem to be natural for both Obama and John McCain to consider whether they really want to repeat that experience. So far, Obama and Biden’s aides haven’t been able to tell me whether that was a consideration in the vetting process this time around.

But here’s what we do know: Biden, it appears, is no Cheney, at least in terms of his views of the limits of executive power. During his own aborted presidential campaign, Biden rejected nearly all of Cheney’s expansive views in his answers to a December survey by the Boston Globe.

And at an Iowa campaign rally in July 2007, Biden declared that “the House of Representatives could, if it chose, find reasonable grounds to bring articles of impeachment” against Cheney. He also predicted that “in order to get elected president of the United States, the American public is going to demand that both a Democrat, as well as a Republican nominee, that he shed or she shed that authority.”

A vice president doesn’t necessarily have to have the same views of executive power to have a strong influence over the president. Still, Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency, doubts that Biden would become another Cheney figure. It took more than just an imbalance of experience, Goldstein said, for Cheney to have as much power as he has had under President Bush.

Cheney’s power, he said, was also a function of Bush’s willingness to delegate large amounts of authority to his vice president and Cheney’s willingness to use it. Biden could become another significant vice president in the mold of Mondale or Al Gore — both of whom also had more Washington experience than the presidents they served — but he’s unlikely to become another Cheney, Goldstein said.

That’s also the view of former Sen. Bob Graham, who said Cheney’s power came from the combination of experience, “his sort of aggressive nature,” and Bush’s willingness to delegate authority. “Obama’s not going to let that happen,” said Graham.

And, of course, Obama’s people insist there is no Cheney sequel in the works. “We can assure you, we won’t have another Dick Cheney, in Joe Biden,” Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro told me. “Obama-Biden are committed to respecting the system of checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution and are committed to setting a new direction for this country, unlike John McCain, who wants to continue the same failed policies of the last eight years.”

So at most, Biden might just be another Mondale or Gore — but that’s enough to guarantee him plenty of influence. After all, Obama is known as a good listener, and Biden loves to talk.

One aspect of John McCain’s energy plan that hasn’t gotten too much attention from the Democrats is his proposal to offer a $300 million prize for the development of an affordable car battery that can enable hybrid and electric cars to drive long distances.

Today, though, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan made it clear her party doesn’t take the idea seriously at all.

“That’s a gameshow,” Stabenow said during a briefing at the Colorado Convention Center. If anyone actually developed a car battery that could meet those challenges, she said, “they’d be billionaires. They will not need a prize at the end of this.”

McCain’s people, of course, say it’s not that simple. Whoever develops the car battery would still have to spend money to market and distribute it, so a prize would be a needed incentive because it would be “an immediate return on that investment,” said McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin. Moreover, he said, it’s a necessary part of the equation to make the new batteries available at a price most consumers could afford.

It’s not surprising, of course, that the Democrats would dismiss McCain’s ideas so easily (and vice versa) in the heat of a campaign. But it’s also yet another reminder that if McCain wins, and wants to get his agenda through what will probably remain a Democratic Congress, he’ll have a lot of selling to do — even down to the level of such lower-tier proposals as the battery prize.

So how will Barack Obama get his ambitious health care plan through Congress, given how badly the last major overhaul attempt failed in 1994?

At a briefing at the Colorado Convention Center this afternoon, Neera Tanden, Obama’s domestic policy director, offered a two-point argument: Conditions have changed since then, and Obama’s version would get through Congress more easily than John McCain’s health care plan.

Tanden didn’t pretend the Obama campaign has a detailed legislative strategy at this point. Everyone is too focused on the election to have thought that far ahead, she said. But the urgency of rising health care costs is convincing lawmakers and business groups that the problem has to be tackled.

“You’ve seen the business community now coming forward in a way that they haven’t in years past, really recognizing that this is an economic competitiveness problem,” Tanden said.

Moreover, of the two candidates’ health care plans, Obama’s would actually be easier to pass because it builds on the employer-based health care system, Tanden said. McCain’s plan would move away from employer-based health care and instead offer a tax credit that would cover only half of what health coverage costs in the individual health insurance market, she said.

“That kind of radical reshaping would have a much more difficult time getting through Congress,” Tanden said.

Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign takes issue with her description of their plan. McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin says the plan wouldn’t end the employer-based health care system at all, since it wouldn’t touch employers’ ability to exclude their health care spending from their taxable income. It’s the employees’ tax exclusion that would be replaced with a $5,000 tax credit, he said, and that would likely make it easier to afford individual coverage that would be too expensive otherwise.

The bigger issue, of course, is that the scope of any major health care overhaul is so broad — requiring a sign-off by several committees before it even gets to the House or Senate floors — that either plan will require detailed negotiations. But it sounds like the Obama team won’t worry about that too much until after the election.

One more side note: Tanden, who was one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top advisers before Obama brought her into his campaign, declined to say what role she thought Clinton might want to play in the health care effort if Obama wins. She just repeated Obama’s stock answer: that Clinton, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and other top health care lawmakers will all have a role to play.

“I’ve firmly taken off my Hillary Clinton hat,” Tanden said with a laugh.

It doesn’t exactly fit with Barack Obama’s message that Washington is broken, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used her convention speech tonight to debut the latest list of accomplishments congressional Democrats will highlight this fall.

According to Pelosi, the Democratic Congress can take credit for: implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission; rebuilding the Gulf Coast; passing tax rebates to stimulate the economy; passing the recent bill aimed at the housing crisis; raising the minimum wage; increasing fuel efficiency standards; making college loans more affordable; and making educational benefits more generous for benefits.

She never got around to mentioning a few items that might be higher on the priority list for Democratic base voters, like the failure to end the Iraq war and the electronic surveillance bill that angered many of the party’s supporters.

But for voters who think Congress isn’t doing anything at all, Pelosi seemed pretty confident that her party can now convince them otherwise.

All of the attention Tuesday night is going to be on the big speech by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and whether she can really get all of her supporters behind Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. The bigger question, though, is whether she has truly settled on a vision of what her political future should be after the election is over.

Since she came back to the Senate in June, Clinton has gamely insisted she wants nothing more than to work hard for her New York constituents. But she still can’t quite get over sounding like a candidate. And all of the speculation that a President Obama might nominate her to the Supreme Court has never quite gone away — even among her Senate colleagues.

“She could go on to a long career in the Senate like Robert Byrd. She could become a justice on the Supreme Court,” said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who helped lead the cheers for Clinton at the Hispanic Caucus meeting.

But if Clinton’s political path leads nowhere except the Senate, her supporters say she might actually be okay with that.

“Knowing her as I do, she loves what she does in the Senate. She really does,” said Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, one of Clinton’s New York colleagues.

Dallas City Council member Pauline Medrano, a Texas delegate who has known Clinton since the 1970s, said Clinton could become a “sounding board” for Obama on policy matters if she stays in the Senate — as well as a help in recommending appointments to get his administration up and running.

“Don’t forget, Bill and Hillary Clinton have experience in that — making appointments quickly,” she said.

But Blaze Wharton, a Utah delegate, doesn’t write off Clinton’s chances for a second White House run in 2012 if Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., defeats Obama in November. “Of course, we all want Barack Obama to be elected president now,” Wharton said, but “if he’s not, she has a shot in four years.”

Clinton may not shed much light on her future plans tonight, but the uncertainty on that question will add even more dramatic punch to her speech. “I think right now she’s focused on Nov. 4. On Nov. 5, we’ll wake up and see what the world looks like,” said Salazar. But whatever happens, he said, “I think there are a lot more chapters of her public service left to be written.”

Oh, and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is giving the keynote address. Clinton is the “headline prime-time speaker.”

You’d never know that from the coverage, though.

It looks like we’ll be hearing an awful lot this week about how John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time last year. So it’s time for a refresher course on what that statistic — which comes from CQ’s annual vote studies — really means.

The line is cropping up over and over again in the Democrats’ speeches and statements. One of the latest was Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s response this morning to a McCain ad about a Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who plans to vote for him: “Cheap political stunts like this ad show that John McCain is offering more of the same: four more years of failed Bush policies and a record of supporting George Bush 95 percent of the time and losing track of how many houses he owns.”

As it turns out, though, last year is about the worst possible example the Democrats could use to make their point. Yes, technically, McCain did vote with Bush 95 percent of the time last year — when he showed up. But he only made 44 percent of those votes.

That’s such a low percentage that CQ didn’t even list McCain in the rankings of the senators who sided most often with Bush. (We only list senators who showed up for at least 50 percent of the votes.)

And because McCain was gone so much, most of the votes he cast were focused on just two issues: Iraq and immigration. Iraq is a legitimate subject for Democrats, since Bush and McCain both fought their efforts to end the war. But on immigration, Bush, McCain and the Democrats were on the same side.

There were plenty of other years where McCain sided with Bush almost as often and actually made most of the votes — so the statistics actually meant something. For the year the Democrats are using, though, the 95 percent support for Bush is pretty close to meaningless.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has many challenges when she addresses the convention tomorrow night: Throw her support to Barack Obama, make it sound like she means it, get her supporters on board in more than a halfhearted way. But most of all, she has to give a speech that’s not all about her.

Judging from her speech to the Hispanic caucus this morning at the Colorado Convention Center, she might still have some work to do on the last part.

Clinton did make an impassioned plea to her supporters to “work as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me” — the same line she used at the New York delegation breakfast earlier in the morning.

But along the way, she managed to throw in a lot of references to her own career and her own accomplishments, sounding very much like the presidential candidate she was until early June.

“I have worked on behalf of farm workers for a very long time,” Clinton said. “I stood on the floor with Bob Menendez and Ken Salazar during the immigration debate, arguing for comprehensive immigration reform…. My first job in politics was registering Hispanic voters in South Texas…. In my campaign, across South Texas from El Paso to San Antonio to Corpus Christi, I’ve reunited with some of the people I worked with. I even met some people I registered to vote.”

Eventually, she did circle back to Obama, and with a line that seemed perfectly test-marketed for the big speech tomorrow night. “Let us remember what we were fighting for,” Clinton said. “We were not just fighting to elect a particular person president. We were fighting to take our country back.”

Like it or not, though, everyone will be focused on whether Clinton really has gotten over her loss. If she sticks to the parts about uniting behind Obama, she just might be able to shut the chatter down once and for all. If not, she probably won’t.

Sounds like Barack Obama and Joe Biden have figured out a way to get on the same page with Biden’s Iraq plan. Namely, the one where Iraq gets divided up into three regions — the signature plan of Biden’s own run for the presidency before he and Obama joined forces.

Biden’s plan — written with Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations — would turn Iraq into a loose federation of Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish regions with broad autonomy to run their own affairs, leaving the central government in charge of only common interests such as border security, foreign affairs, and the distribution of oil revenues.

It was a controversial plan, criticized by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and even the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which posted a statement on its Web site last fall declaring that “attempts to partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means into three separate states would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed.”

But Biden insisted the critics were wrong, and that the plan was about federalizing Iraq, not partitioning it. And the Senate seemed to agree. In September 2007, on a 75-23 vote, it adopted a non-binding “sense of Congress” resolution endorsing the Biden plan — a great talking point for his presidential campaign. “I’m the only one with a clear plan adopted by a majority of the foreign policy establishment, 75 senators,” Biden boasted in November 2007.

Of course, a 75-23 vote means two senators weren’t there to an express an opinion. Any guesses? Why, of course — Barack Obama and John McCain.

Now, McCain has criticized the Biden plan, telling CBS News that he “disagreed with him from the time he voted against the first Gulf War to his position where he said you had to break Iraq up into three different counties.”

Biden’s team, however, says Obama endorsed the plan at the time and continues to support it — with a crucial qualifier: It has to be what the Iraqi people want.

“Senator Biden and Senator Obama continue to believe that federalism is a good solution if that’s what the Iraqis decide,” said Biden spokesman David Wade. “That was the resounding bipartisan message the Senate sent last year, passing the Biden amendment which Senator Obama endorsed. The Iraqis must now do the tough work and reconcile their differences to chart their own future, and we should not be in the position of spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and distracting ourselves from the war in Afghanistan.”

On a rhetorical level, at least, the merging of the Obama and Biden foreign policies has begun.

One of the more surprising twists in the debut of Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate has been the Democrats’ decision to highlight Biden’s work on the 1994 crime bill.

It’s almost as if they’re determined to keep Biden from being pigeonholed as just a foreign policy guy, who brings nothing to the ticket on the domestic side.

Obama made the crime bill a prominent part of his introduction of Biden in Springfield yesterday. Obama said that Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, “brought Democrats and Republicans together to pass the 1994 Crime Bill, putting 100,000 cops on the streets, and starting an eight year drop in crime across the country.”

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California picked up the theme as she praised Biden at the Democratic convention’s kickoff press conference in Denver this morning.

“Our first responsibility is to protect the people. Their safety is our responsibility,” Pelosi said. “He wrote the crime bill that put cops on the beat … all of the things to keep people safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods and in their communities.”

It’s an odd thing to draw attention to, however, for a different reason: The crime bill was also one of the reasons the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994.

In addition to the funding for President Bill Clinton’s 100,000 cops initiative, the bill also included a ban on certain kinds of assault weapons. That provision almost sank the whole package in the House, when anti-gun control Democrats teamed up with Republicans to block the final bill from coming to the House floor. As ever-colorful Democratic Rep. Charlie Wilson of Texas put it, asking a lawmaker from an area like his East Texas district to vote for a gun ban was “like asking someone from Brooklyn to vote against Israel.”

But Biden didn’t want to compromise at all. The solution wasn’t to change the crime bill, he said at the time, but to “change eight votes in the House.” Clinton administration officials disagreed, and the negotiators made minor changes that picked off just enough moderate Republicans to allow the bill to pass, mostly by cutting spending on crime prevention programs. The assault weapons ban, however, stayed in the bill with only minor changes.

Soon enough, the National Rifle Association began running ads against high-profile Democrats like House Speaker Thomas Foley of Washington and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks of Texas. Both lost their seats that fall. And the Democrats lost the House and Senate.

There was really only one reason for Barack Obama to pick Joe Biden as his running mate: the foreign policy credibility Biden would bring as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden certainly lives up to his billing in terms of knowledge and expertise, but if Obama thinks he can count on Biden to keep him out of trouble, he might be in for a disappointment.

Biden’s biggest moment as a foreign policy watchdog came when he held a series of hearings in 2002 about the prospect of war with Iraq. If there was ever a time to ask aggressive questions and pin administration witnesses down about what was ahead, that was it. Instead, Biden would ask insightful questions — some of which foreshadowed exactly the dilemmas the United States faces now — and then let them go, sometimes dismissing them with jokes.

Take his Sept. 26, 2002 hearing with Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, as the star witness. Biden asked Powell to explain how the Bush administration would know when it was safe to bring U.S. troops home. “I’m not looking for an exit strategy in timing. But what is the end game?” Biden asked.

Powell gave something short of an ironclad answer: that the troops could come home when Iraq had “something that will be seen by the international community as a representative government that will keep this stage together” and wouldn’t develop any more weapons of mass destruction. (No one at that hearing was seriously questioning whether Saddam Hussein had them.) “I think it will take time. And I can’t tell you how many years,” Powell said.

That thought caught Biden’s attention. “One thing is clear: When we succeed militarily, if we decide we have to go, it will not be like the Gulf War when Johnny comes marching home within three to five days or several weeks or a month. Some Johnnies are going to stay there,” Biden said. Then, he let it go: “I’m not opposing that.”

Later, Biden came up with an eerily accurate summary of the challenge the United States now faces. “I hope the State Department, which is very good at coming up with phrases, comes up with a new word for nation building, because that’s what we’re going to be doing,” Biden said. And everyone in the hearing room had a good laugh.

And about those weapons of mass destruction: If Biden had any skepticism about whether he existed, he kept them to himself. “Many of us share the conviction that Saddam Hussein’s relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and his possession of some already — especially his pursuit of nuclear weapons, which I do not believe he possesses — pose a significant threat to Iraq’s people, its region and to the world,” Biden said that day. “Ultimately, in my view, either he must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.”

Obama has spent much of his campaign arguing that experience is overrated. Oddly, though, he has picked a running mate who just might prove his point.

You knew it was going to happen at some point. The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee are trying to set up a commission to recommend changes for the next presidential primary season — including, possibly, cutting down on the number of “superdelegates.”

Their proposal, which will be presented to the Democratic convention rules committee in Denver on Saturday, would create a 37-member “Democratic Change Commission” to suggest a series of changes to the delegate selection and primary rules for the 2012 election. They’d look at ways to make sure no states hold primaries or caucuses before the first Tuesday in March — except for “approved pre-window states,” which could hold their contests in February — and they’d consider changes to the rules for caucuses.

All of this was probably inevitable — especially the debate over the primary schedule — given the mess that Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton faced in their drawn-out nomination fight. The early Florida and Michigan contests, which almost cost those delegations their seats at the convention, were some of the testiest issues Obama and Clinton had to resolve to make peace before the convention.

But for members of Congress, the biggest issue before the commission may be the question of whether to reduce the presence of superdelegates the next time around.

It wasn’t that long ago that the superdelegates — mostly elected officials, including all Democratic members of Congress, and party powerbrokers — looked like they might have been in a position to decide the nomination. Clinton’s campaign openly pursued them, hoping to overturn Obama’s lead with the pledged delegates. Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, warned that unelected delegates shouldn’t overturn the will of the voters. The whole episode served as a refresher course on why the Democrats had created superdelegates in the first place: to give party officials a voice in the process and make sure they could step in if the grassroots party voters were about to nominate a candidate who was sure to lose in the fall.

But since that goal started to look unseemly, many Democratic lawmakers became more open to re-examining the superdelegate system — not by changing the rules in the middle of the game, but by looking at it after the nomination was settled. That’s exactly what’s happening now. “The commission will review it and make recommendations on reductions to ensure the voters choose our presidential nominee, not party insiders,” said Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro.

Now, all they have to do is convince Democratic members of Congress to give up their automatic seats at the conventions. Don’t hold your breath.

It’s official now: Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the former Democrat who’s now one of John McCain’s closest allies, will be one of the speakers at the Republican convention in St. Paul in two weeks.

Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee and now an independent, will be one of the speakers on Monday, Sept. 1, the first day of the convention, party officials announced. Two of the other speakers that day: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the team that prevailed over Lieberman and Al Gore in that election eight years ago.

The Monday-night slot might ease the growing speculation that Lieberman would actually become McCain’s running mate this year, part of the pro-choice-veep talk that was agitating social conservatives within the Republican Party. But it won’t do anything to ease the talk in Democratic circles that Lieberman should be stripped of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he has only because he caucuses with the Democrats.

So far, the Democrats are making no moves against him. They’re just gritting their teeth really, really hard. “Senator Lieberman can speak to whatever group he wants, but it’s not going to change the fact that John McCain is a flawed candidate who is wrong on every issue facing the country,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

One thing’s for sure: Whatever he says in his speech — the theme of the day is “service,” as in celebrating McCain’s service to his country — Lieberman will have to stick to foreign policy and national security, the areas where he agrees with the Republicans. If he goes anywhere near domestic policy, it will be an instant reminder that Lieberman still mostly sides with the Democrats on those issues.

In other words, he’s still caught in the middle between the two parties. Once you’ve come this far from one side, though, it’s not a stretch to keep going. As former Sen. James M. Jeffords once said, “It’s a short walk across the aisle.”

Barack Obama came awfully close today — through one of his surrogates — to endorsing the bipartisan “Gang of 10” energy compromise plan that includes offshore oil drilling.

It’s not that Obama addressed the compromise directly. It was more of an implied embrace. His campaign sent out former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, briefly a presidential candidate himself, to bash John McCain for rejecting the plan. In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Vilsack said McCain’s refusal to support the plan proves the Republican nominee-in-waiting has been “lock, stock and barrel by the oil industry,” since the plan would be funded in part by trimming tax breaks for the oil industry.

The conference call was timed to allow the Obama campaign to take a swipe at McCain’s visit to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico this morning to promote his plan to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

But Vilsack wouldn’t go so far as to say Obama supports the “Gang of 10” plan — which was, of course, the inevitable question. “I’ve not specifically talked to Senator Obama today about his position,” Vilsack said. Instead, he just repeated what Obama has already said: that he likes the bipartisan nature of the group, led by Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and that he likes the “comprehensive approach” the group came up with, especially its incentives to develop alternative sources of energy.

Obama took some heat earlier this month when, in an effort to praise the newly released plan, he seemed to back away from his opposition to offshore drilling. On Aug. 1, the day the plan was released, Obama told the St. Petersburg Times that “if it is part of an overarching package, then I am not going to be rigid in preventing an energy package that goes forward that is really thoughtful and is going to really solve the problem.”

Later, Obama tried to return to his criticism of offshore drilling without ruling it out entirely. “While increased domestic oil exploration certainly has its place as we make our economy more fuel-efficient and transition to other, renewable, American-made sources of energy, it is not the solution,” he said in Youngstown, Ohio, on Aug. 5. “It is a political answer of the sort Washington has given us for three decades.”

And that may be all we’re going to get out of Obama for a while on the “Gang of 10” energy plan. Just to be clear, though: He’s opposed to opposing the plan.

It looks like the Democrats will have their chance to turn the Senate’s vote on pay equity in April into a top-tier national issue. Convention officials just announced that Lilly Ledbetter, the Goodyear supervisor who lost a Supreme Court case over wage discrimination, will be one of the speakers at the Democratic convention in Denver, giving the party a chance to tell voters once again that Republicans don’t care enough about the issue.

Ledbetter will be in the Tuesday night lineup next week, the same night that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York gives her “headline primetime” speech. (Not the keynote, mind you, just a really important speech from the groundbreaking candidate who came oh-so-close to being the nominee herself.)

By adding Ledbetter to the lineup, the Democrats will be able to whip up national outrage over her story — she discovered she was being paid less than her male coworkers, only to be told by the Supreme Court that she should have sued within 180 days, except it’s generally hard to discover these things within 180 days, etc.

They’ll also be able to flog John McCain, who missed the Senate vote but said he opposed the bill — which would have made it easier to prevail in wage-discrimination lawsuits — because the approach “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems” and because women “need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else.” Expect to hear that last quote a few thousand times between now and November.

But it’s a good bet that they’ll mention the Senate vote, too. Both Clinton and Barack Obama flew back from the campaign trail to vote for the bill, but it died because it fell short of the 60 votes that were needed to begin the actual debate on the bill. Only six Republicans voted to move ahead.

In case anyone missed the linkage, a memo the Obama campaign sent out this afternoon — “Does McCain Have a Woman Problem,” by Dana Singiser, Clinton’s former director of women’s outreach and now the director of Obama’s women’s vote program — uses McCain’s opposition to the Senate bill as an example of his alleged vulnerabilities among women voters.

So the Ledbetter speech could be a “two-fer” for the Democrats — a chance to boost Obama’s credentials with women voters while also begging them to send more Democrats to the Senate. McCain’s rapid-response team is already on it. In a statement, spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of “refusing to acknowledge that the legislation he’s promoting has more to do with paychecks for trial lawyers than the struggles of working women.”

But if McCain economic adviser Carly Fiorina isn’t already on the Republican convention speakers’ lineup, they’re probably writing her in right now.

One of the biggest mysteries about John McCain, the man who claims to be the enemy of powerful lobbyists and special interests, is why he has surrounded himself with lobbyists and former lobbyists on his campaign team.

The latest adviser who’s causing headaches for McCain is foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whose lobbying firm has represented the Georgian government, raising questions about how neutral a broker McCain can be in the crisis caused by Russia’s invasion. Why would McCain put himself in this position, given that his political identity is shaped largely by his battles for higher ethical standards in Washington?

The answer, when you look back over his entire Senate career, seems to be that McCain was mainly bothered by lobbyists who frustrated his own goals. He doesn’t seem to have any problem with lobbyists who share his goals.

One of the lesser-known episodes that led to McCain’s push to overhaul the campaign finance system — besides his frustrations as a member of the Keating Five in the late 1980s — was his view of the rewrite of telecommunications rules in 1996. McCain wanted a bill that would have gone much farther in deregulating the entire industry. But he couldn’t get the Senate to go along, and he was convinced that the reason was all the lobbyists who wanted to protect their own slices of the industry.

“Why is it that every time I talk to someone in this industry — and there are many — they say, ‘I am in favor of total deregulation, but… .’ There is always a ‘but,’ ” McCain said in a Senate floor speech in June 1995. “And guess what? They have to have some kind of special dispensation for their industry to make sure that they have a level playing field.”

So McCain went to work trying to reduce the influence of money in politics, and he and Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin got the campaign finance overhaul signed into law in 2002 — the signature accomplishment of McCain’s career.

But it turns out that many of the people in McCain’s orbit have lobbying backgrounds, which is why so many ended up on the campaign team. It’s not just Scheunemann, but campaign manager Rick Davis, senior adviser Charlie Black, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer, etc.

None of these people are standing in McCain’s way now, of course — they’re helping him get elected. But they sure muddy his message of being a crusader against special interests. And on the ethics front, McCain himself used recognize that after the Keating episode, he has less room to make mistakes.

In an interview with CQ 10 years ago, as he fought for campaign finance and tobacco legislation, McCain put it this way: “The penalty is double when you stumble again.” Exactly.

With the presidential campaign in a bit of a lull, the big event of the day was the announcement of a “Republicans for Obama” group, starring former Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa and former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. It was probably meant to be a boost to the Barack Obama campaign, but it really served as a reminder of how thin those party crossover groups actually are.

There’s always at least one of them in every presidential campaign: Democrats for Bush, Republicans for Clinton, etc. The distinguishing feature of each one, of course, is that the “Democrats” or “Republicans” who start them aren’t exactly mainstream spokespeople for their party. Remember Zell Miller, the senator who started Democrats for Bush in 2004 and even spoke on his behalf at the Republican convention? He was a Democrat, but it was never clear why, when you looked at his voting record.

The same goes for “Republicans for Obama.” Both Leach and Chafee were mainly known for voting against their Republican colleagues more often than almost anyone else in the party, until both lost their re-election bids in 2006. That year, Leach opposed his party on nearly 38 percent of the votes that pitted a majority of Republicans against a majority of Democrats — more often than any other House Republican except Christopher Shays of Connecticut.

And Chafee opposed his party more than any other Senate Republican that year, voting against his GOP colleagues on 60 percent of the votes that divided the parties. In fact, he’s not even a Republican anymore, as he acknowledged on the press conference call arranged by the Obama campaign this morning. He left the party last year and is now an independent.

And while we’re at it, let’s take a look at “Citizens for McCain,” the group John McCain is using to reach out to Democrats and independents.

It’s headed by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the former Democrat who’s now an independent, but still caucuses with the Democrats to give them their Senate majority, yet votes against them on almost everything related to foreign policy, even though he still sides with them on domestic policy, etc. etc. (Sorry, just made myself dizzy.)

Lieberman isn’t quite at the bottom of the list in terms of voting with the Democrats, but he’s close. So far this year, he has voted with the Democrats on 80 percent of the votes that divided the parties, less than all but six Democratic senators. So it may have taken a little more effort to pull him into the McCain camp than it took to lure Leach and Chafee into the Obama camp, but not by much.

If you see Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona joining Republicans for Obama, or Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California joining Citizens for McCain, then you’ll have a real story of cross-party appeal. Until then, the crossover groups tell us about as much about Obama and McCain as they have about past presidential candidates: nothing.

You’re a senator running for president, and the first terrorism conviction is announced under the military commissions law you worked on. What do you say about it?

For John McCain, it’s not a problem. He voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and not only that, but he worked on it actively, negotiating the language that was supposed to make sure it complied with the Geneva conventions.

So when a military jury convicted Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, on five counts of material support to a terrorist organization today, it wasn’t hard for McCain to figure out what to say. He welcomed the verdict and declared that the trial “demonstrated that military commissions can effectively bring very dangerous terrorists to justice.”

For Barack Obama, the task was a bit harder. He voted against the military commissions legislation in 2006, called it “sloppy,” and predicted it would be vulnerable to a Supreme Court challenge.

Now that he’s a presidential candidate, Obama didn’t go out of his way to remind the public of that vote. Instead, he praised the military and supported the verdict, but turned the lengthy process into an indictment of the Bush administration’s policies — and said he still prefers a system that would try suspected terrorists in the regular courts. It’s a fascinating statement to deconstruct, to see how Obama (and/or his speechwriters) handled the twists and turns:

“I commend the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances. They and all our Armed Forces continue to serve this country with valor in the fight against terrorism. That the Hamdan trial - the first military commission trial with a guilty verdict since 9/11 - took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the Administration’s legal framework.

“It’s time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice. And while it is important to convict anyone who provides material support for terrorism, it is long past time to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the terrorists who murdered nearly 3000 Americans.”

It wasn’t exactly three cheers for the verdict, or even two cheers. Maybe a cheer and a half. But under the circumstances, maybe that was the best he could do.

It was one of those spit-out-your-coffee moments on the campaign trail today. At a visit to a nuclear power plant in Newport, Mich. this afternoon, John McCain, who hasn’t made a Senate vote in more than four months, said Congress should cancel its August break and come back to solve the nation’s energy crisis:

“Now, nuclear power alone is not enough. Drilling alone is not enough. We need to do all this and more. That is why I am calling for an “all of the above” approach. I am also calling on Congress to come back into session to deal with this pressing energy challenge. I am prepared to take time off the campaign trail and I hope Senator Obama is too.”

Really? Because if he did, it would be the first time McCain has worked at his day job since April 8, the last time he voted in the Senate. (It was a procedural vote to limit debate on a housing bill.) Even Obama, who isn’t around much these days either, came back on July 9 to vote for a rewrite of the electronic surveillance laws and a measure cancelling some payment cuts to Medicare doctors.

McCain’s people must think they have a winning issue, because it’s the second time in two days that McCain has challenged Congress to come back and work on energy. He said it yesterday too, at a campaign appearance in Lafayette, Pa. He’s clearly picking up the talking point from House Republicans, who have been staging daily protests since Friday because Congress went on recess without allowing a vote on an energy package that would have included offshore oil drilling.

The problem, though, is that it’s easier for House Republicans to demand that Congress come back. Unlike McCain, the House Republicans show up for work.

But since McCain brought it up, Congressional Quarterly has just updated its statistics on how often members of Congress have voted this year. The new figures reflect all the roll-call votes through last week, right up to the beginning of the August break. Ready for it? McCain has made 18 percent of the votes this year.

That’s far and away the worst voting participation record in the Senate. McCain showed up for just 36 out of the 196 roll-call votes the Senate has taken so far this year. You could say he’s a bit below the average, but that doesn’t quote capture it: The average senator has made 94 percent of the votes.

Obama isn’t doing much better — as of last week, he had made only 37 percent of the votes. But that’s still twice as much as McCain. And Obama’s not the one calling for Congress to get back to work.

It may well be a smart move for McCain to stay away from the Senate. Congress isn’t so popular these days, McCain doesn’t want to be tagged as the Senate insider, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada tends not to schedule votes on any measures that would support McCain’s campaign agenda. So McCain might be able to defend either the absentee-senator strategy or the call-Congress-back strategy.

In the interest of a consistent message, though, McCain might want to pick one or the other and stick with it.

For all of the comparisons people have made between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy, there’s one area where Obama hasn’t really had the Kennedy thing down: the space program.

Obama tried to change that this weekend, but it sounds like it took some intervention from Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the Senate’s only astronaut, to pull it off.

On Saturday, at a town hall meeting on the economy in Titusville, Fla., Obama seemed to respond to a surprising broadside from John McCain, who charged on Tuesday that Obama was prepared to let the space program stall out after the space shuttle is retired in 2010. Obama promised a “real vision for space exploration” by not only continuing the Constellation program — the new effort to return Americans to the moon and eventually go on to Mars — but also by reestablishing the 1960s-era National Aeronautics and Space Council “so that we can develop a plan to explore the solar system - a plan that involves both human and robotic missions, and enlists both international partners and the private sector.”

As McCain’s campaign correctly pointed out, though, Obama wasn’t always so enthused about the new moon program. Late last year, he had proposed funding his early education plan in part by “delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years,” as shown in this version of the plan preserved by the NASA Watch Web site.

Last week, Nelson, who flew on the space shuttle as a congressman in the 1980s, told me he had complained to Obama about his plan. It clearly would have hurt Florida’s economy — not the message you want to send at a town hall on the economy.

But in addition, Obama’s education plan talks about making math and science a priority again. There’s no better way to get kids excited about science and math, Nelson says he told Obama, than to continue the space program. So Obama cancelled the cuts, Nelson said, and now Nelson is an enthusiastic supporter of Obama’s space policy.

It’s probably one of the lesser-known compromises Obama has made as he tries to pull Democrats together for the general election. And don’t look for the reference to the NASA cuts on Obama’s Web site now. It’s not there anymore.

There was actually a bit of issues talk on the campaign trail today, believe it or not.

Barack Obama laid out a new plan for rebate checks and another stimulus that might well become part of the Democratic congressional agenda in September. And John McCain tried to pitch a free-market, locally-driven education plan to a skeptical audience at the National Urban League.

See? There are other things going on besides Britney Spears ads and the playing of race cards.

Let’s start with Obama, since he might have some power to get Congress to act on his plans. In a speech in St. Petersburg, Fla., he proposed a new round of rebate checks — $500 for individuals, $1,000 for families — to help Americans cover their rising gasoline costs. Pretty expensive, but Obama says he’d let the oil companies pay for it: He’d fund the rebates by imposing a windfall profit tax on their record profits.

The second part of the plan would be a new, $50 billion stimulus package, with half going to help state budgets and the other half going to help rebuild roads, bridges and schools.

Obama said the rebate checks “could go out to families as soon as this fall,” a clear signal that his people are talking to the Democratic leadership about working his plans into the second stimulus package they’d like to do in September. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland hinted at the a possibility at a press conference this morning: “Senator Obama is working closely with us. And that proposal will be on the table as we discuss over the next few weeks exactly what ought to be in the package.”

It’s probably jumping the gun a bit, though, to suggest that the Obama’s rebate checks will actually be in the mail this fall. President Bush and congressional Republicans would have to go along with it, and it’s not clear why they’d want to hand Obama that kind of a victory at the height of election season. McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin set the tone for the GOP response to his plan: “The higher taxes that Barack Obama supports are one of the surest ways to kill jobs and exactly the wrong approach to a slowing economy.”

And even without Obama’s involvement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California is sounding skeptical about the hopes for a second stimulus in the fall. “This has to be bipartisan. We have to have a signature,” she said at a press conference yesterday.

McCain, meanwhile, used much his time at the National Urban League in Orlando, Fla., to talk about his education plans — not exactly a front-burner topic this year. He called for more school choice and an expansion of the “Opportunity Scholarships” program now operating in the District of Columbia. And he proposed alternative certification for promising would-be teachers, noting that “You can be a Nobel Laureate and not qualify to teach in most public schools today because they don’t have all the proper credits in educational ‘theory’ or ‘methodology.’ ”

The dismal state of education for low-income children, McCain said, demands “a willingness to break from conventional thinking.” It’s not clear whether McCain’s advisers told him about this Department of Education evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program released last month, which concluded that the program made parents feel better but didn’t improve the children’s test scores.

Still, the McCain and Obama speeches gave us all a few hours to catch our breath from the barrage of attack ads. At least, until they can get the next ones on the air.