CAMPAIGN SLOG : 409 Days to Go!

On the way to Election Day 2008, the following has happened:

The frantic pace is getting to everybody -- not least the candidates. Demanding wives! Canceled flights! Battles with Satan!

It's all so exhausting.

At the NRA conference yesterday, Rudy Giuliani answered his cellphone right in the middle of his speech. It was his wife.

"Hello, dear. I'm talking to the members of the NRA right now," the former New York City mayor said. He told her he loved her (twice) and reassured her that "I'll give you a call as soon as I'm finished, okay?"

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee showed up for his NRA speech wearing jeans and cowboy boots. "I'm not trying to be cool . . . I've been on Delta," which he said stands for "Didn't Even Leave the Airport." Turns out the former Arkansas governor had one flight canceled and two flights delayed and had no time to change.

We asked him yesterday how many canceled or delayed flights he's experienced. He ticked off 10 cities before saying it might be easier to name ones where he hasn't been stranded. Huckabee pledged his first act as president would be "to fix the air traffic control system in the country."

And on Thursday, John McCain spoke by telephone to a Palmetto Family Council event in South Carolina and said he's been doing "the Lord's work in the city of Satan," NPR reported.

McCain has been using this line for 10 years. Does that mean Satan is winning?

-- Libby Copeland