The Note: Too Visible to Be Invisible

— -- WASHINGTON, Feb. 12

The Gang of 500 and its 22,000 closest friends believe Ring 1 is moving inexorably along, Ring 2 has as much bounce as a dropped dead cat, and Ring 3 is where all the action is.

That is to say:

Ring 1 -- the Iraq war: This week's House Iraq non-binding resolution debate will have interesting twists and turns (with the press simultaneously overestimating and underestimating the significance of the number of House Republicans who vote for the measure), but it is just a step along the way to the reality catching up with the political end of the war that occurred in November.

Ring 2 -- other legislative business: Ring 1, lingering bitterness over the Pelosi plane flap, taxes, Vice President Cheney, and Ring 3 make this ring as dead politically as the war.

That leaves us Ring 3 (2008), which is hoppin'.

As Yoda (a/k/a "the Washington Post's Dan Balz") and others have pointed out, these are NOT the earliest starting presidential nominating fights ever -- far from it. But the level of February intensity is patently unprecedented.

Now, the sheer volume of cable, e-mail, and the Internet focus on 2008 gives the impression to the Gang of 500 that more than 22,500 people are actually paying attention to all this now. That impression is wrong.

Go to any medium-sized Midwestern town and ask everyone you see what they think of John Edwards' decision to keep those two bloggers on his staff, and if they think the 28 hours it took to resolve the matter represented an unconscionable delay that reveals more about Edwards' capacity to be president than anything else he ever has done in his life. Chances are, unless the town is Madison, Wisconsin, you will get a lot of blank looks.

But those 22,500 people are extraordinarily influential in creating and influencing media, both Old and New. And the media, as always, is having an extraordinary influence over the campaigns.

Even the Internet is not vast enough to list all of the manifestations of the unparalleled early intensity of this race, but here's a start:

-- Reporters are already locking in campaign-defining double standards (imagine if Hillary Clinton had said that the lives of the military personnel killed in Iraq were "wasted").

-- The Howard Kurtzes of the world are already writing stories about the double standards, and the press is already failing to internalize those stories.

-- Candidates are already losing control of their public image and anxiously strategizing to win them back. (When was the last time you saw John McCain on television NOT being defined by his support for the Iraq war?)

-- Reporters and editors already have fully rationalized their capacity to simultaneously complain that the candidates aren't talking enough about issues while framing all of their coverage around process, polls, personality, drama, strategy, tactics, and gaffes.

-- White House reporters are already drifting off of their beat to cover the campaign. (Put another way, they would rather have their calls returned by Brian Jones and Phil Singer than by Dan Bartlett.)

-- The campaign staffs pretty much HATE the other candidates -- and each other. (And there are already factions within every campaign, with frustrations, competition for candidate favor, fatigue, and Fear of the Spouse running at fall levels.)

-- Intense investigative work already has begun on the major candidates -- with the fruits of some of those efforts coming soon.

-- Second-level campaign staffers are already worried that their candidates haven't been fully forthcoming about their personal finances and "young and irresponsible" behavior to the first-level staffers.

-- Minor candidates (outside the Big 6) are attacking major ones in order to try to fight their way into the dialogue of the 22,500.

-- The staffs of the minor candidates are doing cost-benefit-analysis of the upside of those attacks versus the prospect of getting on the ticket.

-- The battle for endorsements is hot and heavy.

-- Big 6 campaigns are already turning down magazine profiles and refusing network access, because they can afford to be choosy.

-- Pro forma coverage of perceived second-tier candidates has already fallen off a cliff.

-- The campaigns are already contemplating if the press will allow them to skip (or underperform ing) early states.

-- Jeff Zeleny is already making "60 Minutes" cameos.

-- Andrea Mitchell is already in New Hampshire and already (successfully) badgering campaign aides for exclusive interviews.

-- Bob Novak is already making sweeping declarations about which candidacies are dead (wo)men walking.

-- Roger Simon is already tallying Marriott points.

-- Jonathan Martin already has a cold.

-- Reporters are already bored with some of the leading candidates.

Of course, it's still too early (apparently) for reporters to demand access to closed-press fundraisers (even in big public spaces), or to track candidates' private meetings, or to track which Bush and Gore bundlers are up for grabs, but attention is being paid everywhere else.

So: Two days after publicly declaring his presidential candidacy, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attends a 2:00 pm ET house party in Nashua, NH and then heads to Durham, NH for a 6:30 pm ET town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani continues his swing through California today. He's scheduled to speak at 3:30 pm ET to the Churchill Club in Santa Clara and attend events in Fresno.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) holds a 10:00 am ET press conference in Columbia, SC.

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has no public schedule today.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) kicks off the DL21C 2008 Road to the White House Series at Red Sky Lounge at 7:30 pm ET in New York City.

President Bush meets with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus at 10:15 am ET and delivers 2:30 pm ET remarks celebrating African-American History month.

The Senate meets at 1:00 pm ET for morning business. Later in the day, the chamber will likely resume consideration of a continuing resolution (HJ Res 20), or stop-gap spending measure. The House convenes at 12:30 pm ET for morning hour debate and at 2:00 pm ET for legislative business.

Politics of Iraq:
Under the headline, "GOP Expects Defections as House Debates Iraq Resolution," the Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton and Jonathan Weisman report that GOP leadership knows that some House Republicans are going to vote in favor of the Democrats rebuke of President Bush's troop increase. LINK

"A senior Republican aide said the GOP leadership knows that Republicans from districts where the war is unpopular will have to vote with the Democrats to protect themselves. "And that's okay," he said, adding that Republican leaders will not tell their members to stick with the party line."

The over/under seems to be 30/60, but this is, as they say at the Whole Foods on P Street, an organic situation.

The Wall Street Journal's David Rogers takes a look at how Democrats have adjusted their resolution opposing President Bush's troop increase in the hopes of attracting some Republicans.

The Los Angeles Times' Noam Levey and Richard Simon write on the Iraq war resolution and the GOP supporters it is getting in the House. LINK

2008: Obama vs. Clinton:
Now that the race for the Democratic nomination is really underway, ABC News' Jake Tapper gives an in-depth analysis of the types of campaigns Clinton and Obama will have and who they will try to appeal to. LINK

Pat Healy and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times look at how the central issue of Iraq played in both Sen. Obama's weekend in Iowa and Sen. Clinton's weekend in New Hampshire. LINK

"Mr. Obama's aides said they viewed Mrs. Clinton's vote on the war in 2002 and her refusal to explicitly disavow that vote as her single biggest vulnerability, and that Mr. Obama would point it out at every opportunity," the Timesmen write.

And Note the Mark Penn interview where he pleads with Democrats to train all their fire on President Bush and the Republicans on this issue.

"Obama Questions Rivals on Iraq," report the Washington Post's Anne E. Kornblut and Dan Balz. LINK

'"I am not clear on how she would proceed at this point to wind down the war in a specific way," he told reporters before a boisterous rally at Iowa State University. "I know that she has stated that she thinks that the war should end by the start of the next president's first term. Beyond that, though, how she wants to accomplish that, I'm not clear on."'