I’ve been trying to hatch another Palin-related magazine spoof, because it’s fertile ground and I’m confident I’ll be able to come up with some funny concepts. But right now, almost two weeks into this festival of absurdity, it’s clear who’s ultimately responsible for how badly Obama is getting hammered this week: Obama himself. Yes, the media are not shying away from their perennial role as Bringers of the Stupid. Yes, Palin’s shortcomings are terrifyingly obvious, and McCain has now made it utterly clear (if it wasn’t clear already) that he’ll do anything to get elected, even if it means sacrificing the safety and power of the country he claims to love so much. Yes, the so-called intellectuals of the right (Bill Kristol, Victor Davis Hanson, ad nauseam) are contorting themselves into pretzels to defend a VP nominee whose lack of qualifications would trigger an attack of apoplexy if she were the other side’s candidate. It’s all ridiculous.

But as many smart observers have apoplectically pointed out in the last 24 to 48 hours, Obama desperately needs to launch the aggressive war we always knew he’d have to fight to win. The McCain campaign has Obama on the defensive—a preposterous turn of events, given the dozens of major lines of attack that could be launched at McCain.

As Josh Marshall wrote earlier today, “Winning and losing is never fully in one’s control — not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure.” Obama’s gotta pull out his fists and start pummeling McCain and Palin—and he needs to have hundreds of surrogates out there doing the same thing every single day. We Obama supporters love many things about our candidate, and one of them is his temperament: He’s honest, thoughtful, gentlemanly, fair-thinking, even-keeled, not impetuous, and doesn’t appear to get angry easily. These would all be very good qualities in a president. But Obama has to get to the White House first. He appears to be afraid of bruising his own fists, when he should mainly be worrying about whether his fists have so much power that they’ll launch their target into low-earth orbit.

The Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry were devastating for two reasons. They were devastating in a direct, literal way, because they made a significant portion of the electorate believe that John Kerry faked the details of his military heroism, and thus was dishonest and not worthy of the presidency. But more important, the attacks were devastating in an indirect, metaphorical way, because they convinced millions of undecided voters that John Kerry didn’t know how to defend himself. And if he couldn’t defend himself, how could he defend his country? Voters formed an impression of Kerry as a bullied loser instead of an aggressive fighter—and aggressive fighters get elected, bullied losers don’t. Obama is facing exactly the same problem right now. If, in the next couple of days, the Obama campaign doesn’t launch a highly coordinated assault on McCain/Palin’s countless weaknesses, he’s going to lose the literal battle as well as the metaphorical one. And then we’re all doomed.

It’s hard to see how the Obama campaign will go from 0 to 60 200 in a matter of days, but that’s what’s necessary—and the Obama campaign knew, or for god’s sake should have known, that all of this was coming. Right now they seem to be caught totally flat-footed. How could they not have known what they’d be dealing with? This suggestion from Josh Marshall would be a good start. Obama must—and can!—seize the narrative within the next week. But will he? I’m getting nervous.