The conviction by the American left that the right is stupid is one of the defining and least attractive characteristics of contemporary politics. But it is true that to small-town Republicans the world is not a complicated place, because they have seen so little of it.

Senator McCain argues that he will magically morph into a powerful change agent. But in his 26 years in Washington, McCain was better at lecturing about reform than leading a reform movement. Republican corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did McCain’s cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of President Bush.

In last the three months, Senator McCain’s campaign has been a transformed into an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine. The catalyst for the change is Steve Schmidt, a veteran of the winning 2002 Congressional and 2004 presidential campaigns, where he worked closely with Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior strategist.

With just over eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into a set of state-by-state face-offs, with an increased focus on turning out supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and advertising money.

Labor’s policy on Afghanistan has consistently been that Australia’s presence there, rather than Iraq, represents our commitment to fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban at “the coalface”. But the promises Labor made while in Opposition are forcing our troops into a long fight that will test even the might of the United States.

It would be easy to be confused about which national convention was really the gathering of the opposition. As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment.

The aid — along with Vice President Dick Cheney’s high-profile visit to a region the Russians call “the near abroad” — is sure to inflame tensions further. Russia’s leaders have openly accused the United States of having provoked the conflict by arming the Georgia military while encouraging its aspirations to join the NATO alliance.

Dmitri A. Medvedev speculated that the war in Georgia was intended to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election, almost certainly a reference to Senator John McCain. He said the United States armed Georgia and then “gave Mr. Saakashvili carte blanche for any actions, including military ones.”

Monday’s turnover of responsibility to the Iraqis for security in Anbar Province, once Iraq’s most violent territory, serves a purpose for each man. It allows President Bush to claim that five years after the invasion, Iraq is achieving stability, and it allows Senator McCain to argue that he was the first to come up with the winning strategy.

“John is an independent man who thinks for himself,” Mr. Bush said via satellite from the White House, in an eight-minute speech intended to reinforce the McCain campaign’s theme that the senator is no clone of the president. “He’s not afraid to tell you when he disagrees. Believe me, I know.”