It would be a good idea, I think, if the Democrats would get unified behind my guy’s candidacy instead of running around in circles like so many chickens, in a panic. Everybody, it seems, has some advice for the young Senator from Illinois, including me. Even Politico is piling on, with John Harris’s column today, filled with advice for Obama supposedly from Bill Clinton. Maybe we should all shut up.

In the wake of the first Palin interview, I’m thinking that the Governor of Alaska is already becoming old news, and that the more she talks the more she will tie herself to the tired old ideas of the Bush administration. I’m also thinking that the reason I got excited about my guy in the first place, back when I was a Clinton supporter, was that he reminded me of the excellence of my country at its best. Without appealing to chauvinism or nativism, without preaching American exceptionalism, he reminded us all of the America we can take pride in honestly. Right now John McCain is reminding us all on every hand of America at its worst, of patriotism that really is the last refuge of scoundrels.

I’m also thinking maybe Obama should apologize to Bill Clinton, as John Harris suggests. It might help unify democrats.

Simply put, Clinton will never be fully at peace with Obama until the Democratic nominee makes clear—in emphatic words, in public—that Clinton is not in any way racist, and did not try to “play the race card” during the Democratic nomination contest, as some commentators have suggested.

There’s no question that Clinton was impolitic in comparing Obama’s victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s victory 20 years earlier. But Clinton is understandably outraged that people would argue this remark negated a career-long commitment to racial equality—and that Obama stood by mute while such charges were made.

Clinton swallowed his medicine with his speech for Obama in Denver. Obama has still not fully swallowed his by making a public defense of Clinton on race.

I have criticized both Clintons for attacking Obama in ways that may have countenanced racism, but perhaps Harris’s advice is good no matter what may be the long truth about that issue. Obama could achieve a lot by putting his arms around Bill Clinton. Aside from anything else, the gesture would grab a lot of headlines and, again, be a reminder of America at its best.

And speaking of America at its best, an honest politician (and I believe that Obama has striven to be such) should put his own ad writers on notice that they are not to stretch the truth, not even a little. FactCheck.org find some occasional Obama stretchers in the media mix. They don’t help, it seems to me.

Well, there’s more advice, and I just offered to shut up. My guy is unveiling new ads and campaign emphases today. David Plouffe maintains the campaign is on course and will stick to its long term plan and also “that the attention being paid by national news media outlets to events like Obama’s lipstick comment was not mirrored in local news coverage.” Maybe we all need to quit obsessing about the lies coming out of the the Republican campaign. Maybe in the long run they will only hurt McCain. So at the end of the week I’m remembering those optimistic words of Shakespeare’s Earl of Kent, as he sits overnight in the stocks in king Lear.

Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!