Check out these hilariously loaded questions on the Attorney Purge and the Iraq War in the latest Fox News poll.

McCain, the “establishment” candidate, announces his comparatively anemic fundraising numbers.

You’ve seen it before: a former member of the administration publicly criticizes the White House, and the counterattack immediately follows.

So how did it play out with Matthew Dowd, the longtime Bush strategist who publicly broke with the administration this weekend? Simple: paint Dowd as a shambles of emotions, a man who’s wandered off the reservation out of personal grief.

See the talking point in action during this afternoon’s press briefing.

Harold Ford, Jr., fresh off his first major speech as the Chair of the DLC, will be joining us at TPMCafe this week to discuss his work and the policy initiatives he’ll be pushing during the ’08 primaries. Should be an interesting debate, the announcement alone started a pretty heated thread.

His visit is a part of our ongoing effort to bring interesting people to TPMCafe to engage the readers and the other writers all week with a specific argument. In the last two months, Matt Stoller, Chalmers Johnson, Amanda Marcotte, Jeff Faux, Marshall Ganz, and our own Mark Schmitt and E.J. Graff have all sparked conversations (and many more have joined in). Next week we’ll have TNR Senior Editor Jon Cohn on his new book Sick.

What we want to know from you is: who would you like to hear from at TPMCafe? What issues would you like discussed? Email talk(at)talkingpointsmemo.com. We’re all ears.

I don’t know if he was the first. But yesterday here at TPM, David Kurtz referred to the McCain trip to Baghdad as a Dukakis-in-a-tank moment for the once-widely-respected senator from Arizona. And he really hit it on the mark. In fact, with McCain’s lackluster fundraising and leaden poll numbers already in place I wonder if it might not become a defining moment.

So much of this country’s experience of Iraq — and I mean the experience of those of us who’ve watched the carnage at a great distance — has been the widening, agonizing, often comical but always awful gap between what we are told about what’s happening in Iraq and the overpowering reality of what we can see, read and hear about it. A few quotes capture the disjuncture — Dick Cheney’s line about the insurgency in its “last throes“. Perhaps, in retrospect at least, the president’s Mission Accomplished stunt. Actually, for the best evidence that none of this is real and that we’re all just characters on the pages of a tragicomic novel, you need look no further than the fact that our new public culture of cartoonish flimflam was prefigured in the words of the neo-jingoistically named ‘Baghdad Bob’ at the start of the story.

In any case, as I say, we all know the disconnect. But seldom has it been perfectly captured in image. And not just an image, because we’ve got plenty with the dingbat fibs and rah-rah nonsense. But you also want a bit of pathos and desperation, a measure of ridiculousness not just comic but somehow cosmic.

And here I think we have it. The aging war hawk, proving that security is returning to Baghdad by walking into a market encased in body armor, surrounded by rooftop sharpshooters and enveloped in a shield of a hundred soldiers, helicopters (Blackhawks), helicopter gunships (Apaches) and all after another group of soldiers went in for a pre-jaunt security sweep which, in the words of Larry Johnson, “searched for explosives, sent informants into the crowd, set up a perimeter, and secured the area before the Senators showed up with their 100 armed guards.”

It’s an iconic moment, like but much more than the Dukakis image, since its ridiculousness can be come at again and again. And from so many angles. Here, for instance, Times reporters go back to talk to the merchants on hand for McCain’s dog and pony show, who promptly dump on the senator’s malarkey. When asked about the senators’ claims that their jaunt showed that security was returning to Baghdad, appliance shop ower Ali Jassim Faiyad said, ““What are they talking about? The security procedures were abnormal!”

Politicians can be wrong and successful. But what no politician can handle or sustain is to be ridiculous. And isn’t that what we have here? And especially from someone who, at least some seasons ago, some of us had learned to expect so much more from.

Here’s the lede of a piece from the always invaluable Warren Strobel …

President Bush is losing his top day-to-day adviser on Iraq, the White House confirmed Monday.

Meghan L. O’Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush’s controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring.

Her departure, which follows that of her deputy, could leave the White House with a vacuum of long-term experience on Iraq policy, and it comes as Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress prepare for a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops.

Not to be catty. But could leave the White House with a vacuum of long-term experience on Iraq policy? Think that train’s already left the station, hasn’t it?

Today’s Must Read: remember the Niger uranium forgery? The Washington Post reminds us of what we don’t know.

Yet another head to roll in the Abramoff investigation.

There you go. Another small fish about to get indicted in the Abramoff investigtion. This time it’s Italia Federici. But what about the big fish in that one? Sure Jack himself is going to do serious time. And Bob Ney is already in the slammer for a relatively short stint. But for all the very real consternation about the eight fired US Attorneys and the Cunningham probe, in many ways, the Abramoff investigation is really the dog that never barked. What about Tom DeLay’s fixer Ed Buckham? What about Tom DeLay for that matter? And the other members of Congress implicated in the scandal? The prosecutorial turnover in the Abramoff scandal bears a lot more attention, as does the current US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey A. Taylor.

And here’s a bonus for you guys in the White House press corps. When do we get to see those pictures of Vice President Cheney with alleged Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes? Maybe it’s time for someone up there to put in the question.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell confirms her scoop: GOP Senators privately say they’ll withdraw support for the war if the “surge” doesn’t show progress by late August.