In Colorado later this afternoon, Barack Obama will pounce on Dick Cheney's endorsement of John McCain earlier today. From the prepared remarks:

I'd like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn't come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington's biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney's support.

But here's my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain's going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?

Colorado, we know better. After all, it was just a few days ago that Senator McCain said that he and President Bush share a "common philosophy." And we know that when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain and Dick Cheney share a common philosophy that thinks that empty bluster from Washington will fix all of our problems, and a war without end in Iraq is the way to defeat Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So George Bush may be in an undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney's out there on the campaign trail because he'd be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain. He knows that with John McCain you get a twofer: George Bush's economic policy and Dick Cheney's foreign policy -- but that's a risk we cannot afford to take.

A huge gift.

It isn't every day that the Obama campaign alerts reporters to a glowing endorsement of McCain, but Dick Cheney -- he of the approval rating in the teens -- is another matter.

So the Obama camp was quick to blast out to the press this vid of Cheney saying today that "the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain":

Cheney's claim that McCain is the "right leader" for this particular moment is particularly interesting in light of the Arizona Senator's recent claim that he was "terribly disappointed" with the Bush administration on the economy and in light of his call for a "clean break" with the admin on energy. It'll be interesting to see if the McCain press operation highlights this particular endorsement.

Late Update: To be a bit clearer, either Cheney doesn't believe McCain's claims that he represents a change from Bush-Cheney policies, or Cheney thinks that a clean break from his own policies is what's called for right now. The latter doesn't seem terribly likely.

Dick Cheney jumps on the "let's bash the Times and MoveOn" Merry-Go-Round, saying the following at a GOP fundraiser today:

Like most Americans, I admire the integrity and the candor that General Petraeus showed in his hearings before Congress. And the attacks on him by MoveOn.org in ad space provided at subsidized rates in The New York Times last week were an outrage. (Applause.) It's bad enough when politicians turn their backs on a war they voted for and supported when it was popular. But no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American soldier at war is mocked and insulted. (Applause.)

Hard to imagine actually applauding such stuff, but Cheney certainly knows his audience.

Man, President Bush's numbers are just plain awful. A new CBS poll finds his approval rating at 31%, with a staggeringly low 21% approving of his handling of the Iraq war -- the lowest number he's ever received, CBS says. Pessimism about the war is at an all time high, even worse than it was at the same point during the Vietnam War: "Opposition to the war is now taking on historic proportions, with 62 percent saying it was `a mistake' to send U.S. troops to Iraq — slightly more than told a Gallup Poll in 1973 that it was a mistake to send U.S. forces to Vietnam."

"By a 2-1 margin, Americans now say they have more confidence in congressional Democrats to handle the war than in the president," the poll continues. "Nearly six in 10 Americans want to see some kind of a drawdown in U.S. troop levels, including 25 percent who want all U.S. forces removed from Iraq."

It's hard to imagine that these numbers could get worse for the White House. But if things continue along this same course, they probably will.

I just got off the phone with Heidi Halley, a woman from Maine whose husband is a fallen soldier. Yesterday President Bush met with her privately, and news of their meeting was reported in a local Maine paper, the Kennebec Journal, which reported that Halley objected to Bush's policies and that Bush responded that there was "no point in us having a philosophical discussion about the pros and cons of the war."

But Halley has just told me that she went much farther in her criticism of Bush, telling him directly that "he was responsible" for the deaths of American soldiers and that as a "Christian man," he should recognize that he's "made a mistake" and that it was his "responsibility to end this." She recounted to me that she told Bush: "As President you're here to serve the people, and the people are not being served with this war...I was very direct."

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