The Note: April Foolishness

April 1, 2008 -- Consulting those who are certainly no fools, we offer A Peppering of Robustly Insightful Learnings From Otherwise Occupied Lawyers, Socialites, Deities And Yeomen:

Donna Brazile knows that, after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton finally agree to join forces, they'll come together to select the keynote speaker for the Democratic National Convention -- and will promptly rule each other out.

Scott Reed hears that the Clintons have already booked their house on Martha's Vineyard for Labor Day -- with an option for keeping the place for all of September.

Kevin Madden sees green rooms stocking up on hairspray just in case Mitt Romney gets the VP nod (and has it on good sourcing that Rudy Giuliani will go back to being a Yankees fan now that New Hampshire doesn't matter to him -- like it ever did).

And a few headlines we wouldn't be shocked to read on this of all days:

Forget Gore: It's Draft Dean

Clinton Finally Faces Fire: Penn, Ickes Gunfight Wounds Three

Messiah Endorses Obama; Clinton to Challenge Lord in Credentials Committee

Wright: 'Cosby Show,' 'Fresh Prince' Reruns Too Loved by White People

Cubs Win Series; Clinton Won't Concede

Fed Bailout Boosts Clinton Campaign

Gore to Earth: 'What Have You Done for Me Lately?'

So the calls continue for Clinton to make way for Obama, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't joining them -- despite her endorsement of the nomination going to the delegate leader.

An intriguing comment from Pelosi, D-Calif., on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday makes a version of the Clinton argument for staying in the race: "I would not assume that Sen. Clinton would not be going to the convention as the frontrunner. We don't know what these next elections will do. We will do not know what the conduct of the campaigns, the next four to six weeks, will produce," Pelosi said.

Is the speaker saying that conduct matters too -- that Clinton would be justified in waiting around for an Obama mistake? Maybe not. . . . She added: "But I do think that as it evolves, one of them, one of them is going to have to realize that the numbers" will seal the nomination. (And who might that be?)

Pelosi has this in common with the vast majority of uncommitted superdelegates: She's not crazy about talk of the fight going to Denver: "I do think that it is important for us to get behind one candidate a long time before we go to the Democratic National Convention if we expect to win in November."

Pelosi also dropped a political issue on President Bush's lap Tuesday, telling ABC's Robin Roberts that China should never have been awarded the Olympics, and urging the president to consider boycotting the opening ceremony of the Beijing games: "I think boycotting the opening ceremony, which really gives respect to the Chinese government, is something that should be kept on the table," Pelosi said. "I think the president might want to rethink this later, depending on what other heads of state do."

Meanwhile, recalling the accuracy of all those forecasts of Sen. John McCain's demise, it's worth considering how this week's biographical tour -- conducted as the presumptive Republican nominee, while former rival Romney practically begs for a spot on his ticket -- would once have sounded like a stellar prediction for April Fools Day.

Yet here he stands this week, with the Democrats in their own peculiar purgatory of paralysis, and him with a chance to reintroduce himself without the clutter of actually having a political opponent at the moment.

His trip highlighting important sites in his background started in Mississippi on Monday, near the airfield named for his grandfather, and continues Tuesday in Alexandria, Va., at the high-school he attended (and where the would-be oldest president picked up the nickname "Punk.")

The tour is bringing his memoir to life (and television visuals), per ABC's Bret Hovell. "For those members of the general electorate who have not read Faith of my Fathers, Sen. John McCain's bestselling memoir, worry not -- the presumptive Republican nominee has delivered a speech for you," Hovell writes.

In his tour, "he will highlight formative experiences in his upbringing, and how they have shaped his character and political experience. Monday's speech, focusing on his family, touched on many of the themes of his standard stump speech through that prism."

"Aides hope the week-long trip will cement in the public's mind McCain's personal history and his military service," Michael Shear writes in The Washington Post. "The tour will end Saturday with a rally in Arizona on the courthouse steps where then-Sen. Barry Goldwater announced his presidential bid in 1964."

Said McCain, on "GMA": "I'm not running on the Bush presidency. I'm running on my own service to the country, my own record in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, and my vision for the future."

McCain on Tuesday will call for expanded school vouchers and merit pay for teachers, and will endorse retention of the No Child Left Behind Act.

This on the legend that is his temper: "As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone whom I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life," McCain plans to say, per excerpts released by his campaign.

"In all candor, as an adult I've been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my years and station when I believe I've been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve. Self-improvement should be a work in progress all our lives, and I confess to needing it as much as anyone. But I believe if my detractors had known me at Episcopal they might marvel at the self-restraint and mellowness I developed as an adult. Or perhaps they wouldn't quite see it that way."

McCain caps his April Fools Day with an appearance on Letterman Tuesday night, with Clinton scheduled to hit Leno on Thursday.

McCain's fund-raising -- while still lagging -- is picking up. McCain "has moved to transform his ragtag primary campaign into a general-election operation by boosting fundraising, establishing control over the Republican National Committee, and beginning a conversation with voters who live in states where he has not campaigned," Michael Shear and Dan Balz write in The Washington Post.

And McCain is enjoying the full-throated backing (at least for now) of congressional leaders whom he's never been particularly close to.

"A Republican leadership strategy memo calls for an all-out attack on Democrats' 'misinformation' campaign against the Iraq war as both parties refocus on the issue ahead of next week's update from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq," S.A. Miller and Christopher Dolan report in the Washington Times. "The memo instructs Capitol Hill Republicans to court conservative bloggers on conference calls and talk-radio hosts -- including by holding a nationwide 'radio row' on April 9 -- to fend off Democrats' desire to 'ignore reality and insist on immediate retreat.' "