Setting traps for Mitt

The final presidential debate is tonight, and you know as well as I do that the Obama team is looking for ways to get Mitt to walk into a trap.

Last week, Mitt walked into a trap – the "act of terror" trap – that had Rush Limbaugh about to splatter himself on his studio's walls. Barack saw the trap coming – he may even have set it – and urged Mitt toward it ("Please proceed, governor"), which reminded me of a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon about the cat and the clothes dryer, that I described here last week.

Mitt, obviously, didn't see it coming. Thus, an opportunity for tonight, where the object is foreign policy, a realm full of traps for someone who knows the territory the way a sitting administration does.

Bill Keller, writing in this morning's New York Times, set an obvious, and very broad trap, nudging Mitt toward saying reasonable things about a reasonable presidential foreign policy, things that would infuriate the severely conservative core of the Mitt constituency. I almost wish that would happen, to view the photos from space of the southern and central regions of the nation being defined by the explosions.

So that's not a likely trap. Keller himself, at the end of his piece, acknowledged it was not something that he would expect. I will be looking, though, for some kind of trap to develop, and for the signs that everyone knows it's coming, but Mitt. It helps make the debate more interesting.