Weekly News Roundup: 8/10/08

This will be the first edition of what I hope to be a weekly summary of news and events, followed by a look at the week ahead. Why Sunday night? I figure it's the very end of the weekly news cycle, the last time a story can take hold before the major papers go to press Monday. I'll miss the late-breaking polls, but I'll cover those in the a.m. if there's anything worth saying about them.

Three stories dominated the news cycle this week: John Edwards' fall from grace, John McCain's negative advertising blitz, and the outbreak of war in the old Soviet republics. The first one of these was by far the most sensationalized, but conversely also the one with the least staying power. While Mr. Edwards has clearly conducted himself in a way that does great damage to his political future, the fact is that he has been out of the spotlight for a little while, and appears never to have been in serious contention for the number two spot on the Democratic ticket. This reduces the likelihood that this story will viewed in the context of the election, thus blunting its impact on the future of the race.

The McCain campaign finally seems to have found its footing, and has used a series of negative spots to knock Obama off-balance, but this has yet to result in a noticeable dip in Obama's polling numbers. While the ads focus largely on the juvenile topic of Obama's celebrity, this species of character assault has been know to produce stunning results, and its efficacy should NOT be doubted.

The most relevant development of the week, however, was the outbreak of warfare in the Caucasus region. What began simply as a Russian military response to repeated provocation from Georgia has escalated over the last thirty-six hours into a clearly existential battle for the future of the Western-backed Georgian government. Russia's disproportionate and violent assault has drawn condemnation from around the world, but there is little the West can do to force Moscow's hand.

As Politico has noted, this is a genuine "3 a.m." type event, and you can bet on a massive PR mobilization by both campaigns to show how plugged in they are to the situation on the ground. McCain is going to try and play up his toughness, drawing a hard-line and daring Russia to cross it, while Obama is likely to utilize slightly cooler rhetoric, stressing his firm but diplomatic approach to international crises.

This conflagration makes for a fine excuse to cancel Obama's widely derided vacation, and we may see him back in the news more quickly than we had anticipated. If not, expect this next week to be a quiet period of shifting and positioning in anticipation of the upcoming Veep selections and party conventions. The message calendars are probably pretty barren, but more than ever look for events to move the conversation. It could get intense quickly.