Americans are known to have a short political memory. The election is a year away. Therefore, things are being done right now which are intended to resonate with voters in one year.

Next November, middle class voters, it is hoped, will think of one word when they think of Republicans:

SLEAZE.

That was what the core message of the "vast right wing conspiracy." And now, the payback torpedoes are being launched. Some of them have struck. Timing is far more important than truth. (Truth is for wimps anyway.)

Schwarzenegger: Nazi-loving, chauvinist groper.

Limbaugh: racist drug addict.

The Bush Administration: mean religious bigots who wreck lives of heroic whistle blowers by deliberately exposing their beautiful and courageous wives to harm. (The cool thing about that is that they get to trot out yesterday's heroes of mythological yore....) Those who see through the stories often go unappreciated.

Hey, I don't write these stories, but somebody does. They all make for titillating reading somewhere. Whether you call it spin or national mythology, these are ordinary Americans' bedtime stories now -- and they are intended to remember them next year.

Truth?

Come on! That's not the point, and it's never been the point. The collective national unconscious is being manipulated. The Democratic activists (frankly, I think the Clintons are still the high priests of the national mythology machine) are calling the shots, they've fired the torpedoes, and the Republicans are now in react mode.

Whether they stay in react mode remains to be seen.