With John McCain’s vice presidential pick only a few weeks away and the race between him and Barack Obama far closer than either of them probably thought it would be at this point, the possibility of McCain choosing Joseph I. Lieberman as his running mate suddenly seems both credible and plausible in a way it didn’t a few months ago.

It appears, from the consistency of McCain’s numbers in the polling data, that he has shored up the Republican base — or, perhaps, that the base has spent the spring and summer taking the measure of Barack Obama and has decided it must unite against him. The latest anecdotal evidence: two recently released anti-Obama books have shot to the top of the Amazon and New York Times bestseller lists. This may not seem like a big deal, but the conservative book market has been dead for two years now (with the exception of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism), and its sudden resurgence indicates something potentially significant.

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