The (expanded, updated, tweaked, nipped, and tucked) Sunday print column:

They spoke to me about the downfall of America, with fear burning in their eyes. It was vintage "tea party" talk, the kind of stuff we’re hearing every day.

C.A. Alexander, a businessman who looks like an airline pilot, said, "We’re just feeling helpless. I get paranoid about the future of our country." Ralph Leatherman, a worker in bib overalls, said, "Our country’s gone, it’s just gone." Orville Capes, a plumber, lamented, "We’re losing this country without fighting the battle." But they agreed it was time to fight hard and take the country back; as retired Navy vet R.W. Phillips said, "I never wanted to be a protester or activist or political person. The system has forced me to become everything I didn’t want to be."

Well, guess what: Those fed-up folks were all planning to vote for a third-party candidate named Ross Perot. I conducted those interviews down in North Carolina...in 1992.

»  More All tea'd off, but then what?

It was a nutty week like any other, perhaps moreso...

Democratic sleaze pit of the week. Put your hands together for Illinois. The ex-governor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, was just re-indicted on 24 counts. The new Democratic senatorial nominee (chosen in Tuesday's primary) used to be the veep of a bank that loaned millions to shady characters, including a convicted bookmaker who ran hookers. The new Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial nominee was pinched by the cops a few years back for holding a knife to his girlfriend's neck; this happened shortly after his wife filed for divorce and asked the court for a protection order. Illinois Democrats did manage this week to re-nominate incumbent governor Pat Quinn - despite his chief rival's TV ad, which featured 1987 footage of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington complaining about how Quinn was "a totally and completely undisciplined individual who thinks this government is nothing but a large easel on which to do his PR work." There's no way to know whether Washington still feels this way, because he's dead. No word yet on whether Washington voted in Tuesday's Democratic primary.

Republican smear artist of the week. That would be Mitch McConnell, Senate leader of the No brigade. Even though FBI director Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill the other day that the failed underpants bomber has cooperated with the FBI's counterterrorism agents - "It is a continuum in which over a period of time, we have been successful in obtaining intelligence, not just on day one, but on day two, three, day four, and day five, down the road" - McConnell has twice denigrated the FBI agents by comparing them to a certain softball pitcher with suspenders. McConnell on Fox News: "Probably Larry King has interrogated people longer and better than that." McConnell on CNN: "I mean, Larry King would have a more thorough interrogation of one of his witnesses than the Christmas bomber had by the Justice Department." (McConnell also says it's outrageous that the failed bomber is being processed through the civilian court system - forgetting, naturally, that the Bush administration successfully processed roughly 150 terrorists through the courts, including shoe-bomber Richard Reid and al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui.) Anyway, with respect to McConnell's Larry King analogy: Isn't there something a tad odious about a Republican seeking to score partisan points by denigrating the FBI?

Polling statistic of the week. Every so often, in this space, I find it useful to highlight the baseline obliviousness of our fellow Americans. The latest Pew Research Center poll features a News IQ Quiz, and it's a doozy. How many Senate votes are required to break a filibuster and move legislation to passage? Only 26 percent of the public knows the correct answer (60). And how many Senate Republicans voted late last year to pass the health care reform bill? Only 32 percent of the public knows the correct answer (zero, zip, nada). The shares are even worse among young people (ages 18-29, Barack Obama's strongest '08 cohort); only 14 percent know how many voters break a filibuster, and only 16 percent know that the Senate GOP was a total No on health reform. No wonder the Republicans aren't paying any political price for their obstructions (the latest classic: Alabama Senator Richard Shelby puts a "hold" on 70 Obama nominees because he thinks his state isn't getting enough federal pork). Most Americans simply tune out what's going on.

»  More The envelope, please

On page 222 of his newly-released book, The Politician, which tracks the downfall of John Edwards, former aide Andrew Young recalls how the candidate's entourage braced for a media frenzy in the wake of the National Enquirer's first Rielle Hunter revelation, in October 2007:

"The (Enquirer) accusation and (Edwards') denial rippled through the mainstream media but did not build into a wave. In fact, if you got your news from the big papers or TV networks, you probably didn't know a scandal was rumored...Remarkably, the senator's denial, Rielle's statement, and our effort to keep her away from reporters and photographers dampened interest in the story advanced by the Enquirer and a few other outlets. From mid-October to mid-December, we heard barely a peep from the press."

He was particularly relieved that The New York Times hadn’t peeped; as he notes on page 96, “even in the Internet age, The Times still sets the media agenda, especially where TV network news operations are concerned.”

But in mid-December, the National Enquirer followed up by reporting that Hunter was pregnant with Edwards' child. The Edwards camp squashed that one by claiming publicly that Young, in his role as Edwards' doormat, was actually the father. As Young writes in his book, the whole point was to quash the scandal in advance of the impending Iowa caucuses. (This was around the time when Edwards made the cover of Newsweek; in the article, which highlighted his popularity in Iowa, he vowed: “I’m going to speak the truth.”) Again, everybody braced for a media frenzy. From page 240: "But to our relief, no serious newspaper or TV network picked up the story because they couldn't find a source to confirm it."

»  More Nary a peep

As evidenced by the results last night in the Illinois Republican primaries - the first intraparty contests on the '10 political calendar - it's not yet clear whether the clamorous and diffuse "tea party" movement packs any punch at the ballot box.

Tea-party activists had been vocally touting two particular Republican candidates, both of whom apparently fit the bill as conservative insurgent outsiders: real estate developer Patrick Hughes for the U.S. Senate nomination (he was challenging an insider, moderate GOP congressman Mark Kirk); and wealthy businessman Adam Andrzejewski for the gubernatorial nomination (he was challenging a slew of GOP insiders).

Well, the returns are in. Hughes and Andrzejewski, the tea party-annointed candidates, were both slaughtered.

The hype leading up to primary night suggested otherwise. Mark Kirk was always the favorite for the Senate nomination; he's a well-known commodity in Illinois, thanks to his House tenure, and novice Hughes didn't have much time to get himself known. But tea-partiers insisted that Kirk's moderate record (he voted Yes on the Democratic cap-and-trade bill, he's pro-choice) would prompt lots of other tea-partiers to flood the polling places and cast protest votes for Hughes. Their big talking point was that, in a low-turnout statewide GOP primary (in Illinois, that's about 700,000 votes), the tea-partiers would dominate by dint of their outsize enthusiasm. Hence, their publicized hope was that Hughes would make it close.

»  More Weak tea?

 
The landslide majority of Americans who now support the concept of gays serving openly in the military - 69 percent of the public, according to Gallup - would be well advised to tamp down any expectations of speedy reform.

Granted, President Obama did vow during his State of the Union speech to work this year with Congress and the Pentagon to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law that requires gay servicepeople to hide their true selves. And, granted, Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen are expected to announce - at a Senate hearing today - that they're taking the first substantive steps toward a future in which gays and straights will be able to serve together without the caveat of the closet. And, granted, there's considerable support in Congress (at least on the Democratic side) for repealing DADT, particularly at a time when the strained military can ill afford to lose "mission critical" people whose sole infraction was that they were outed for who they really were.

But I sense that this process to put America in sync with virtually all our major allies (24 nations, including Britain and Israel, allow gays to serve openly) will move with all deliberate speed (to borrow the old Supreme Court phrase) - that is to say, with all the speed of a snail moving through mud.

Gates and Mullen are expected today to announce that they will appoint a couple people to oversee a group that will draw up plans for a full integration of the armed forces. The planning phase alone could take at least a year (should there be rules barring public displays of affection? should there be separate-but-equal barracks? what about ports of call in countries to ban homosexuality? should the brass require sensitivity training for recalcitrant soldiers? should military benefits be paid to gay spouses?). Which means that the actual implementation could take many more years - just as the full racial integration of the armed forces, first announced in 1948, was not virtually completed until 1954.

»  More With all deliberate speed

President Obama's close encounter on Friday afternoon with the House Republicans - an extraordinary public event, now archived forever - has prompted many observers to compare it to the freewheeling British House of Commons, where the prime minister and the opposition party routinely go toe to toe, bloodying each other in turn. That analogy seems overdrawn.

The British political pugilists don't preface their sneering remarks by saying that it's "an honor" to be conversing with the prime minister (as at least one House Republican did when addressing Obama). And the British opposition mocks the prime minister while he speaks, grumbling and rumbling in their seats, in what can best be described as orchestrated scorn. By contrast, the House Republicans listened politely and quietly, moved only once to a rumble of disbelief when Obama insisted he was not an ideologue.

Still, by contemporary American political standards, it was a remarkably refreshing dialogue; for once, opposing camps were not hunkered in their respective bunkers, firing off their polarizing messages. If you're similarly hunkered, go ahead and decide for yourself whether Obama or the House Republicans "won" the faceoff. Or you can step back - as I am - and simply take a look at the president's communication strategy.

In part, he was trying to channel Aaron Sorkin.

»  More Obama and the Sorkin strategy

State of the Union theater, in three acts:

Barack Obama's conservative critics were predictably steamed on Wednesday night, when the president had the temerity to describe the steaming pile that George W. Bush dumped in his lap. This passage, for instance: "At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program....That was before I walked in the door."

That passage is basically accurate. Bush defenders would prefer that Obama behave as if America started with a clean slate at the moment he took the oath, because willful amnesia would excuse them from owning up to the mess they made. Their argument, as we know, is that Obama should be roasted at every opportunity for talking so much about what he inherited, apparently in the belief that it is unprecedented and disgracefully unpresidential to heap blame on one's predecessor.

Here's another passage: "The problems we inherited were far worse than most inside or outside of government had expected. The recession was deeper than most inside or outside of government had predicted. Curing these problems has taken far more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted."

»  More A SOTU speech trilogy

President Obama's State of the Union speech was studded with newsy passages - shout-outs for nuclear power (when was the last time a Democrat did that?) and capital-gains tax cuts (shades of George H.W. Bush) and partial domestic spending freezes (we hear you, Massachusetts) and community college revitalization (important to the children of modest-income families) and open military service for gay people (one sentence, but finally)...plus a verbal smackdown of the corporate-friendly judicial activists swaddled in their robes just a few feet away.

Nevertheless, what struck me most were these numbers: 7127 and 516.

His speech ran for 7127 words. Yet the issue that has dominated policy and political discussions over the past year (seemingly to the exclusion of almost everything else), the issue on which Obama has hoped to base his legacy, was mentioned in a mere 516 words. It came up roughly at the midpoint of the speech, and quickly vanished.

Basically, Obama treated health care reform as if it was a fragment of day-old lettuce in an overstuffed deli club sandwich.

»  More A few hundred words