Here’s another excerpt from one of our interviews at Netroots Nation. Here retired Gen. Wesley Clark discusses the darkening situation in Afghanistan …

Checking in from Austin. Alex Gibney just previewed a couple of short segments from his still-in-production documentary on Jack Abramoff: Casino Jack and the United States of Money. I’m very jealous of some of the video they’ve managed to dig up of Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed from their early days as swashbuckling young Republicans. Later today I’ll be interviewing Gibney, who won an Oscar this year for Taxi to the Dark Side, and picking his brain on how he found all this great old footage.

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman tells TPM that the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility is dragging its feet in investigating whether his prosecution was politically motivated.

It seems that the White House is now bowing to a heavily coded timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq. In a White House statement just released, we have this …

In the area of security cooperation, the President and the Prime Minister agreed that improving conditions should allow for the agreements now under negotiation to include a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals — such as the resumption of Iraqi security control in their cities and provinces and the further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq. The President and Prime Minister agreed that the goals would be based on continued improving conditions on the ground and not an arbitrary date for withdrawal.

Keep an eye out here for a concerted Bush-McCain push to take Iraq off the table for the election. They declare victory, say we’ll be out in no time. So what’s to argue about?

It took a few days but it appears that John McCain has now welcomed back Phil Gramm as top economics advisor and surrogate.

From Robert Novak …

After Sen. John McCain publicly repudiated his close friend and adviser Phil Gramm’s comments about a “nation of whiners” and a “mental recession,” the two old political comrades patched up their relationship.

Gramm apologized to McCain for his remarks that gave Democrats an opening against the Republican presidential candidate and provided several days of ammunition for blogs, cable television and radio talk shows. McCain told Gramm not to worry about the expected pitfalls of a campaign surrogate. Gramm will continue as an adviser and surrogate.

As you know, we’ve been reporting for more than a year on the multiple public corruption scandals engulfing Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska. And Mark Begich, Mayor of Anchorage, is running against Stevens this year and in a pretty tight race. TPM’s David Kurtz caught up with Begich at Netroots Nation and did his best to draw Begich out on Stevens’s bottomless barrel of political muck …

Ok, another turn of the story. Earlier we noted Bob Novak’s (who whatever else you might think of him is very wired on these types of stories) report that after a few days in the dog house, John McCain has forgiven Phil Gramm and welcomed him back on board the campaign as his top economics advisor and media surrogate. Now The Politico’s Jonathan Martin has gotten comment from McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, who partially disputes Novak’s story.

What Bounds says is that Gramm is out as surrogate. It’s only his role as advisor that is continuing.

In other words, McCain will still rely Gramm’s advice but the campaign has decided it’s not a good idea to let Gramm out in public to let people get an idea of what kind of advice he’s giving him.

Seems like a wise plan.

As you know, I occasionally do posts suggesting taunting that newspaper beat reporters recognize a campaign trend that hasn’t yet distilled into the media narrative. But here I think the trend is becoming so unmistakable that I’m really starting to wonder.

Over the last ten days or so, the President and the McCain campaign (who are clearly working in coordination, as they’re entirely entitled to do) have been systematically drawing back from their positions on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran and either fully embracing or moving toward those held for some time by Barack Obama.

Let’s run the list.

McCain and now the White House (via the DOD) are moving toward more US troops in Afghanistan — a position they’ve each long opposed and which Obama has been on record in support of for at least a year.

Bush and McCain have each also in different ways tried to nudge closer to Obama’s position on withdrawing troops from Iraq. The key shoe falling today is President Bush’s embrace of a “time horizon” for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain’s declaration of military victory in Iraq seems very much like an effort to get people thinking the troops are coming home soon within the conceptual architecture of his professed goals in Iraq.

And finally Iran. I’m not certain what McCain himself has said about Iran in recent days. But over recent months a key line of attack from the president and John McCain has been that Obama is a latter-day Neville Chamberlain for saying we should negotiate with Iran. And now over recent days we’ve learned that the White House is sending one of its top diplomats to negotiate directly with Iran’s nuclear negotiator. And there are growing signs the White House is poised to open a diplomatic interests section (an unofficial diplomatic outpost) in Tehran.

In the case of Iran, the flashpoint has been meetings between heads of state. So there’s not a direct equation. And McCain’s and Bush’s supporters can still point to this as the bright line they have not and will not cross.

But when the spin is wiped away, for all the scrutiny and hand-wringing about the nuances about Obama’s 16 months, there’s simply no denying that all the real movement at this point in the campaign shows Bush/McCain trying to nudge closer to the ground Obama already holds.

I asked former National Security Council aide Rand Beers today about the President’s new “general time horizon” for withdrawal:

This is the lead on a story just out over the Reuters wire …

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator’s trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials’ visits to Iraq in advance.

“I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators” who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

The Reuters piece hints at it. But if Obama is going to be in Iraq this weekend, this is a major breach on McCain’s part. As a knowledgeable insider notes …

If it is true that Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, it is a very serious mistake for McCain to have disclosed it publically. Even for run-of-the-mill CODELs the military gives guidance like, “Please strongly discourage Congressional offices from issuing press releases prior to their trips which mention their intent to travel to the AOR and/or the dates of that travel or their scheduled meetings. Such releases are a serious compromise to OPSEC.” If Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, I can not begin to imagine how much this is complicating the security planning for the trip.

It’s known that Obama is leaving on his foreign trip this weekend and the Journal OpEd page this morning said that Obama could arrive in Iraq “as early as this weekend.” And with a slew of reporters in tow, it’s not exactly highly classified information. But there is a reason definite information about these sorts of trips aren’t released in advance.

Hypothetically, maybe McCain was just guessing. But even so it would still be a serious lapse of judgment on his part.

We’re seeing what more we can find out.