In my long discussion of the Michael Smerconish endorsement yesterday, I should have made it more clear that in terms of the big picture, Michael Smerconish is what film gangster Hyman Roth would call "small potatoes."

Most ordinary middle class people -- especially the undecideds who don't read newspaper pundits (much less blogs) -- have no idea who Michael Smerconish or Chistopher Buckley are is, nor do they care one bit about whether these to-them obscure figures are "betraying their conservative principles." And even if by chance they happened upon a discussion of them somewhere, they wouldn't be persuaded of anything one way or another. The antics of the partisan political punditry mean very little to that 51% of the country who don't know that Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.

This is not to say that the undecideds and the uninformed are necessarily members of the same class; only that the defections of people like Buckley and Smerconish can't be expected to change many minds in a way that will have much effect on the election.

However, the last minute endorsements of Barack Obama by Colin Powell and Ben Bernanke might. The timing resembles a one-two punch, and while I can't prove that this was deliberately orchestrated, these men share a reputation of being "above politics."

That Powell's endorsement appears to be a crassly political, finger-to-the-wind move on close analysis is beside the point. So is the fact that the Federal Reserve is supposed to be non-political.

As a move, the Powell-Bernanke one-two combination is brilliant. It fits perfectly with David Axelrod's strategy (characterized by TNR's Jason Zengerle) of "third-party authentication." Moreover, there's no hard evidence that this was deliberately orchestrated, and it might not have been. After all, the poll numbers are there, and the election is so close that the victory of Obama appears to be a certainty. So endorsing him is seen as a relatively safe no-brainer.

Above all, the endorsements of Powell and Bernanke are likely to be seen as reassuring. Because these men are respected. And above politics.

Call me a cynical contrarian, but life has taught me to be suspicious about anything that's supposed to be reassuring. It smacks of salesmanship, and I'm always suspicious of salesmen. Especially when they seem anxious to close a deal.

The problem with this particular "close" is that the reassuring message is rooted in the ethos of these two guys as being "above politics." Yet the fact of their last minute political endorsement demonstrates just the opposite.

If these guys were really above politics, they'd stay above politics.

Isn't partisanship bad enough? Must we be subjected to non-partisan partisanship?