James Bond. But then Indy would shoot him with a pistol that happened to be lying on the ground.

We’ve been watching the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles via Netflix, and in one episode, a young and unbilled Daniel Craig plays a German intelligence officer (alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones). He and Indy square off in the final act.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have been an adequate sequel to Temple of Doom, but I’ve been surprised at how vastly inferior it is to the Young Indy shows, which are surprisingly good, and emphasize how hard it is to screw up this kind of story.

Just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on campaigns against hippies.

Is John McCain’s campaign the most despicable in modern history? Or is he just calling plays from the standard “losing Republican” playbook? Do the minor outrages and insults of previous campaigns fade too quickly into the past to be remembered (e.g. which Obama advisor called Clinton a “monster”? Did Clinton play the race card in South Carolina? Does anyone care?) ? Or do the McCain-Palin accusations of terrorism, disloyalty, and treason represent a new and contemptible low?

Bush’s 2000 general election campaign, in which a genial but obviously overwhelmed governor ran as a moderate Democrat, was only revealed to be untrue in retrospect, when he turned out to be the most right-wing president since Herbert Hoover. But at the time, it was mostly about expanding access to education, cutting taxes for the middle class, and conducting a humble foreign policy. I don’t remember anything resembling the mindless, pointless name-calling of the McCain campaign.

And although Bush’s 2004 campaign was heavy on character assassination, it was also a campaign about ideas. Wrong-headed ideas, to be sure — the war in Iraq is a good idea, suspected terrorists shouldn’t have any rights, our allies can go to hell — but ideas, nonetheless. The lies about John Kerry were at least designed to reinforce the argument that John Kerry couldn’t be counted on to start wars, torture prisoners, and tell our allies to go to hell.

John McCain, by contrast, has zero ideas to talk about. Barack Obama seems to know more about McCain’s health care plan than John McCain does. The only thing left is John McCain’s anger at seeing a presidency he thinks he’s entitled to (it’s his turn!) slip away. He and Sarah Palin are eagerly funneling that anger into the conservative id and turning it into general, unfocused rage about Obama, about the media, about liberals, about education, about pronouncing words correctly, and so on.

My initial reaction was to consider the McCain campaign uniquely ugly — I’ve never before heard presidential candidates doing call-and-response and encouraging their supporters to yell things like “terrorist!”, “kill him!”, and “off with his head!”

But then I saw that Tim Fernholz at TAPPED found a strangely familiar New Republic article about the last days of a flailing, bitter Dole campaign that was headed towards defeat:

Mainly what is noticeable to the naked eye is how much less pleasant the Dole campaign has become — which is saying something. The crowds flip the finger at the busloads of journalists and chant rude things at them as they enter each arena. The journalists, for their part, wear buttons that say, “Yeah, I’m the Media. Screw You.” The artillery aimed at Clinton gets heavier by the hour. ” [...]

[F]rom the beginning the Dole people have preferred to insult your intelligence than to craft more plausible lies. The disjuncture between the persona of the candidate (straight talker) and the behavior of his campaign (big liars) dates back to the very start of the primaries. At the same time that Dole was presenting himself as a force for decency his campaign was spending millions of dollars on push polls. When asked about them, the Dole campaign told reporters that Forbes and Buchanan were hiring pollsters to slander themselves, so that they could accuse the Dole campaign of dirty tactics. They kept this up for several weeks, even after they were told to stop by the Republican National Committee. Dole’s attitude seems to have been: whatever these people I’ve hired do in my name is not my responsibility. He never seems to have realized there’s a problem with selling honesty dishonestly.

I’m not sure if this makes the McCain campaign look better, or the Republican Party in general look worse, but there you have it.

In both of her big campaign speeches, she repeatedly lied about opposing the bridge to nowhere.

As mayor, she tried to ban books from the public library, and then tried to fire the librarian who wouldn’t go along with her.

As mayor, she fired the police chief for not supporting her election campaign.

As governor, she tried to fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. When it became public, she lied about it.

As governor, she fired the state’s chief of police when he wouldn’t go along with her plan to fire her ex-brother-in-law. When it became public, she lied about it.

Oh, and she opposes birth control, even for married couples, and she opposes abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. She doesn’t believe in global warming, and she wants to teach creationism in our schools.

Also, the GOP believes that her 18 months as governor of Alaska means she is more experienced (executive experience is the only kind that matters!) than John McCain.

In other words, she’s an extremely conservative liar who likes to abuse the power of government for her own personal ends. After eight years of Dick Cheney, that’s vice-presidential change we can believe in.

Why did Palin lie (again) about her support for the bridge to nowhere? Why didn’t McCain’s handlers consider camera angles when picking backdrops for the speakers? (*) If you’re going to run a vapid, empty campaign based only on imagery and personality, shouldn’t you at least be able to get the stagecraft right?

I don’t think this election is going to be close. And I’m looking forward to next year, when our politics can be about the details of health care legislation, about renewable energy, about slowing down global warming, about serious things.

(*) During Herr Giuliani’s speech, they were projecting a skyline of New York. But it was way too high and way too big, so on TV, Giuliani was standing in front of a grayish-orange fog (a close-up view of some water) that made it look like someone was loading up Diablo II in the background.

And I was ready to damn with faint praise Tim Pawlenty’s ability to bring an ordinary middle class perspective to the party of $500 Italian loafers, a $5 million per year middle class, and an inability to remember how many houses you own.

But, um, what? Seriously? A heartbeat from the presidency? The mind boggles; the best I can do is a joke about how Sarah Palin is young enough to be John McCain’s wife, or about how John McCain is older than the state of Alaska. But that’s petty and mean-spirited, so instead I’ll just point out that Barack Obama’s acceptance speech was really good, and yet more proof that he has the intellect, the judgment, the temperament and the integrity to be a great president.

Sen. John McCain’s inability to recall the number of homes he owns during an interview yesterday jeopardized his campaign’s carefully constructed strategy to frame Democratic rival Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist

Apparently I’m supposed to believe that eating non-iceberg lettuce and taking one’s shirt off at the beach make one an elitist. And I’m simultaneously supposed to believe that divorcing your wife in order to marry a wealthy heiress, forgetting how many houses you own, and paying over a quarter-million a year for household servants, makes one a patriotic tribune of the middle class. Good luck with that strategy, John McCain.

It seems that an increasingly desperate John McCain has accused Obama of taking his shirt off at the beach. How un-American. As all grumpy Republican politicians know, the proper way to enjoy the beach is in black wingtips and a Brooks Brothers suit.