Right Wing Nut House

It was just a few short months ago that Jon Stewart on the Daily Show had to tell his audience it was okay to laugh after he made a mild witticism directed toward Barack Obama about his switch on campaign financing. It was at that point that a few of us wondered if the comics and writers who shape much of the national conversation would ever be able to lay a glove on the Illinois senator or whether his race gave him a cloak of immunity, shielding him from the barbs and bon mots of the late night comedy crowd and Comedy Central gang.

We needn’t have worried. It turns out the comedy writers were actually desperate for material with which to skewer Obama but the candidate was so new on the national stage that there was no overarching, defining character trait that the audience would have a common frame of reference with which to understand the humor and laugh.

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic persona.

“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.

This is true - up to a point. The fact is, it is very hard to make fun of someone unless you are willing to subsume your personal feelings and treat the subject as just another bozo slipping on a banana peel. The mainstream press is still having a hard time getting beyond their goo-goo eyed worship of Obama’s talents as a stump speaker so it is no wonder that comedy writers and performers would have problems zeroing in on the candidate’s many faults and idiosyncrasies.

There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.

“A lot of people are excited about his candidacy,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It’s almost like: ‘Hey, don’t go after this guy. He’s a fresh face; cut him some slack.’ ”

While the right had been laying into Obama for months about his pomposity, his overly high opinion of himself, and his overweening confidence about winning the election, the general public did not see these traits in the candidate until just recently. It was left to Obama’s ideological allies at The New Yorker to start chipping  away at the marble facade that shielded  the candidate from ridicule and thus, from being portrayed as exactly what he is; a human being with imperfections and a too lofty opinion of himself.

The New Yorker cartoon was notable for the breakthrough in portraying the candidate - even if the target of the satire were his opponents - as something less than a cross between Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ. Touching on all the groundless fears of the right with regard to Obama’s Muslim heritage and his lack of patriotism was nevertheless seen as validating those fears because the idiocy of Obama supporters posited that folks in flyover country weren’t sophisticated enough to see that the joke was actually on them.

Beyond that, the reaction of the Obama camp itself revealed a humorlessness and a surprising sensitivity to criticism that showed a campaign that was taking itself way too seriously for its own good. Any bunch that uptight about a cartoon was bound to step in it sooner or later. This they did with a series of gaffes over the next few weeks that highlighted the candidate’s overconfidence along with an almost regal sense of entitlement that fully manifested itself in prickly responses to a new ad campaign that the McCain campaign began to run.

The fake presidential seal, the constant use of the royal “We” when speaking, the references to himself as president, and finally, his foreign trip last month all worked to shed the image of ice blue perfection so carefully crafted by the campaign and resulted in the candidate becoming fair game for comics, pundits, and late night talk show hosts:

But growing Obama fatigue among voters after his pseudo-presidential visit to Europe and the Middle East has unleashed a wave of satirical fire, mocking Mr Obama for his apparent belief that he has the election in the bag.

Last month Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news programme The Daily Show, had to tell his audience that they were allowed to laugh at Mr Obama after a joke fell flat.

But Mr Stewart made comedic hay during the Illinois Senator’s international trip, mocking his progress through the Holy Land, where he said the candidate stopped “in Bethlehem to see the manger where he was born.”

Late night comic Jimmy Kimmel also cracked a joke at Mr Obama’s expense: “They really love Barack Obama in Germany. He’s like a rock star over there. Impressive until you realise that David Hasselhoff is also like a rock star over there.”

The jokes are important because they increasingly draw on evidence that voters are tiring of Mr Obama’s elevated opinion of himself, the wall to wall coverage of his pronouncements, and the feeling that he should concentrate on voters back home.

But it has been the McCain campaign’s ridiculing of Obama as a world celebrity and poking fun at his messiah-like image that may have done the most damage and actually had an impact on the polls. The blow up over the ad that compared Obama to such celebrities as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton scratched at the soft underbelly of the Obama campaign by attacking the phenomenon of his candidacy and questioning the intelligence and judgment of his most rabid supporters.

This is the risk McCain runs with ridicule; the probability that in addition to his main target Obama, collateral damage will occur when the barbs strike the innocent as well; in this case, the legions of Obama fans who believe their candidate can do no wrong and speak of him as if he is a religious icon. Not that McCain had any chance in swaying these voters but Americans don’t like to see people like that picked on and it could lose him votes among independents and conservative Democrats if his pot shots were seen as cruel and unfair to the Obamabots.

J. Michael Waller, Annenberg Professor of International Communications for The Institute of World Politics wrote a paper in 2006 about ridicule in the public arena and found that the tactic of using ridicule as a weapon could easily backfire:

Laughing at someone – ridicule - is another matter. It is the use of humor at someone else’s expense. It is a zero-sum game destructive to one of the parties involved. Like a gun, it is a dangerous weapon. Even in trained hands, it can misfire. Used carelessly or indiscriminately, ridicule can create enemies were there were none, and deepen hostilities among the very peoples whom the user seeks to win over.

In nearly every aspect of society and across cultures and time, ridicule works. Ridicule leverages the emotions and simplifies the complicated and takes on the powerful, in politics, business, law, entertainment, literature, culture, sports and romance. Ridicule can tear down faster than the other side can rebuild. One might counter an argument, an image, or even a kinetic force, but one can marshal few defenses against the well-aimed barbs that bleed humiliation and drip contempt.

In fact, the Obama campaign had a response to the McCain ad; they played the race card. It’s the only comeback that would have had a greater impact than Obama being accused of being weightless and shallow so they deployed their most potent weapon - with surprising results.

The media to a large extent and much of the public came down on McCain’s side and agreed the ad was not racist - especially after first David Axelrod and then the candidate himself agreed they were injecting race into the argument after first denying any such thing. In effect, McCain’s ad turned the tables on the Obama camp by placing them in the position of attacking McCain supporters with the equally potent race card weapon - and it blew up in their faces.

Another McCain ad which was much more in jest referred to Obama as “The One” and interspersed video of the candidate’s speeches with humorous bits like Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea. The difference with this ad is that the campaign wisely refrained from attacking Obama supporters. This one was aimed directly at Obama’s supercilious opinion of himself.

In both ads, Obama supporters found themselves stretching the point on racism beyond the breaking point, entering the realm of self parody. The specter of Keith Olberman actually talking about the “phallic symbols” in McCain’s “Celebrity” ad bordered on the surreal.  And David Gergen laughably referred to ”coded signals” in the “The One” ad by solemnly informing us that Moses was actually code for “uppity.”  It was like a logic sickness gripped many Obama surrogates who were examining these ads sometimes frame by frame to glean the last ounce of race baiting from them. Needless to say, their revelations were given short shrift by the American people.

It seems likely that the Obama camp will not pull the race card any time soon when the McCain campaign is in the process of ridiculing him.

Indeed, McCain seems disinclined to change his strategy. By attacking what is perceived as their opponent’s strengths, they are whittling away at the Obama mystique while the media plays into their hands and spreads the message far beyond any ad buys the campaign makes. The McCain campaign’s most recent target is Obama’s speaking ability:

John McCain is mocking the oratorical gifts of Barack Obama, recommending that he “should consider someone with a knack for brevity and directness, to balance the ticket.”

“Taking in my opponent’s performances is a little like watching a big summer blockbuster,” McCain sneers in his weekly radio address, “and an hour in, realizing that all the best scenes were in the trailer you saw last fall.”

Obama delivered the Democrats’ officials radio address Saturday, mentioning “Sen. McCain” four times during a policy remarks about Iraq and balancing the budget. McCain snarks at Obama 10 times in his own address.

McCain’s gibe about a less windy running mate is part of a continuing effort by the Republican’s presidential campaign to turn Obama’s strengths against him.

Obama is popular with younger voters, and Americans usually vote for the more likable presidential candidate. So using political jujitsu, McCain used TV ads to portray his opponent as an air-headed celebrity more in the mold of Paris Hilton than commander in chief.

The danger with this line of attack is that everyone knows Obama can deliver a great speech and mocking one of his obvious gifts could redound to McCain’s disadvantage if it is seen he is being churlish or envious rather than making the point that delivering a great speech while actually saying something relevant and important are two different things. It’s a good point but McCain leaves himself open to counter thrusts by Obama. The candidate will speak before 70,000 people in Denver in what will be one of the more dramatic political scenes in many years. It is hard to see how McCain can make the same claims about Obama’s speeches after the voter sees so many people screaming their delight and the commentators no doubt falling all over themselves in trying to outdo one another in singing the speech’s praises.

Bob Dole had much the same problem in 1996 when running for president. Dole’s biting wit could cross the line at times and rather than being funny, his barbs could be cruel and sound unfeeling, attacking not just Clinton but his supporters as well. He was going to lose anyway so you can’t say this tactic necessarily lost him the election but there is no doubt that at his worst, Dole didn’t help himself when it came to his use of sarcasm and ridicule.

Not so Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it was his genial personality or his gentle delivery that smoothed the rough edges of his ridicule but, to take one example, his famous line delivered when confronted by anti-war protestors holding up signs saying “Make Love, Not War” and Reagan quipping “They didn’t appear they could either” drew laughs from his opponents as well. Reagan, like Lincoln, used humor sparingly but effectively. And it was used to make a valid point, not gratuitously simply to score points against an opponent.

How long McCain can continue to ridicule Obama probably depends on how much fodder the Democrat gives his ad people to use. Are we ready for a more humble, less pretentious Obama? Somehow, I don’t think he has it in him to think of himself as anything less than how he sees himself now.

This very well may be the funniest, the most disturbing, the most outrageous video ever seen in a presidential campaign.

It’s a joke, of course - what Slate V imagines would be a viral video response to a McCain attack ad. But it captures the essence of what our friends at Maggie’s Farm refer to as “a typical Obama supporter” - emotional, juvenile, stunted intellectually, and oblivious to the realities of politics. These are the screamers, the swooners, the goo goo eyed 20-somethings who get their news from “The Daily Show” and Letterman and who are supporting Obama frankly because they don’t know any better. They wonder why we have to have arguements about politics, actually believing that everyone should think the same way as they do about all the issues. They are dangerous because they can easily be manipulated into supporting just about anything Obama wants to do.

And there are millions of them.

This is not a majority of Obama supporters. But it is a significant portion of them. And if that doesn’t chill your bones, nothing will.

Barack Obama has given us several real doozies in this campaign. Some of his utterances have been notable for their gooey vacuousness - harmless tufts of rhetorical fluff that cause his disciples to swoon but initiates the gag reflex in the rest of us. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” may draw huge applause and chants of “O-Ba-Ma, O-Ba-Ma” but forces the rest of us to listen to his speeches on an empty stomach lest our most recent repast make an unwelcome appearance in the form of industrial sized chunks of barely digested Cheeto’s.

Recently, Obama tried to explain why he is running for president to a seven year old kid at a town hall meeting. This is a question any presidential candidate worth his salt should be able to tee up, take a mighty swing, and hit the ball out of the park. Even a Democrat should be able to muster the appropriate patriotic bombast and teary-eyed evocation of how much he loves this country and wishes to make it better.

Not our Barack. Forget the bombast. Forget love of country. Let’s just say America sucks and if you want it to be less sucky, elect me:

At a campaign stop in Elkhart, Indiana, a seven-year-old girl asked the Democrat why he wants to be President — and he told her that America has gone downhill:

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”

Of course, as Ed Morrissey points out, we have heard similar deep thoughts from Michelle Obama as well.

The problem is Obama’s incoherence. Is he saying that America is not what it could be? This is standard lefty grist that illustrates their definition of patriotism. Extrapolate out from that thought and you get the “highest form of patriotism,” according to the left - dissent. In order to improve America you must dissent from what is, in order to achieve what should be. I have written of this definitional difference of patriotism between the right and left and Obama himself has spoken of it on more than one occasion.

But Obama slips in an entirely different thought; that America is “not as it once was.” This goes far beyond holding America responsible for its promises of equal opportunity for all and equal justice under the law. In fact, Obama demonstrates an extraordinarily lack of understanding of what America is all about. Of course we’re a different nation today than we were 10 years ago or 50 or 100 years in the past. America was designed that way. It was the Founder’s intent that America re-invent itself at the drop of a hat to reflect changing realities.

Prior to America coming into being, the only way that could occur was through bloody revolution. We have revolt built into our system of government as every four years, we have the opportunity to alter course 180 degrees or, in rarer cases, strike out in a new direction entirely.

This is the essence of America and it is revealing that Obama is disappointed that we have changed. But let’s forget Obama’s ignorance for a moment and look closer at just what kind of country we have today compared to the one that I grew up in.

I use my own life experience as a yardstick because it was roughly 40-50 years ago and that seems a sufficiently long period to contrast the America of today with the America of yesterday in order to judge whether Obama’s critique holds water.

First, allow me to interpret what Obama finds so horrible about today’s America.

* Health care costs are out of control and people can’t afford health insurance.

* The middle class is disappearing as wages have failed to keep up with inflation and real earnings have been dropping steadily (this has been happening since the 1970’s but for the purposes of Obama’s critique, let’s pretend it’s George Bush’s fault).

* Our industrial base is eroding. We are losing thousands of jobs every month to outsourcing and foreign competition.

* The world is warming up and we’re not doing anything to stop it.

* Housing is a mess thanks to the mortgage crisis.

* We have lost respect and no one in the world loves us because we act in a unilateral way on the world stage and pay no attention to the sensibilities of the rest of the world.

I would say that is a pretty fair partial rendering of what Obama thinks is wrong with America today. To draw a complete picture would require a surface the size of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Obama is very fond of telling people that this is the most important election in his lifetime which may be one of the bigger exaggerations of his campaign. Perhaps he means it’s important because he’s in it. If he means the 2008 election is more important than 1968, 1972, or 1980 contests, he is full of it. I would even throw in 1964 if only because it handed the left it’s biggest victory and gave LBJ a mandate to create the welfare state in earnest.

But the question is, to which point does Obama want to return in American history that would secure his children’s future? Where in the past would Obama take us that would make us better than we are today?

The very nature of his campaign destroys his rationale as Ed Morrissey points out:

Everyone feels that we can improve ourselves, but we don’t usually cast it in terms of the country no longer being what it once was. Coming from the Obamas, that doesn’t even make sense. They have talked about how difficult it was to break through barriers, not without some justification, to reach this point in their lives and American history.

Doesn’t that speak to the point that we continue to grow and to learn? And if not, which “good old days” did Obama mean? The 1980s? I doubt it, and if he means the Clinton era, then why did he run against Hillary in the first place?

Once again, Obama got off the teleprompter and put his foot directly in his mouth. He’s not selling Hope, he’s selling Despair, and himself as the snake oil that will cure us of all our ills.

The problem in returning to an America that once was is that the very idea of doing so is a chimera, a dream imagined only by those who fail to grasp the dynamism of the American experiment and how changes made in the past continue to mold and shape America today.

Yes we could return to a time when there was no health insurance crisis. There was a time where virtually every working American got their health insurance through their employer. But that world no longer exists, replaced by an extraordinary revolution in medicine that has allowed us to live a decade or more longer while also seeing government crowd out private insurance carriers by an ever more intrusive presence in the health insurance field. And that 1950’s world would also see Mr. Obama’s opportunities for the kind of life he leads now shrivel to damn near nothingness because of the color of his skin.

And yes, we could travel back to a time when unions were very strong and the pay of average Americans had no problem growing far beyond the cost of living. But that world was one still recovering from World War II with all of our major competitors today still rebuilding from that devastating conflict. Where a kid out of high school in Allentown, PA could be assured of a job at the plant and as long as he punched in and out, stayed out of trouble, and worked hard, he could expect a comfortable, middle class existence.

Those days are long gone never to return. The period from 1946-66 was an historical anomaly, a quirk, a hiccup on the historical timeline. Our industries weren’t just dominant. They were “it.” If a European wanted a car, chances are he bought a Ford or GM product rather than wait 2 years for a Euro-mobile. American steel, rubber, machine tools, and anything else manufactured in the US was in high demand around the world because no one was making them better or cheaper.

The reasons why that is no longer so speaks to our enormous success in remaking the world after the war rather than any intrinsic superiority in the way government worked at that time. How does Obama intend to bring them back? Limits on executive pay? Mandatory unionism? Maybe a well placed nuke or two to recreate the utter devastation in Germany, France, England, Japan, and the rest of the world that took a decade and more for them to recover?

Global warming? As long as we play lapdog for the Europeans on this issue and ignore the fact that China will be doing nothing to refrain from pouring carbon into the atmosphere as fast as their coal burning industries can shovel it, what good will it do? We’ve already cut our carbon emissions more than the Europeans over the last decade.

The America that once was had its good points and bad points. The changes that have been wrought have had mixed results as well. The bi-polar world has been replaced by, well, us. Europeans like to talk about “soft power” thus making the planet into something approaching rough equality. But I ask you, when Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kim Jung, Il, and a half dozen other thugs hit their knees every night to pray to their God, are they praying to be spared the wrath of Euro soft power or a visit from an F-117 carrying a bomb with their name on it? I rest my case.

Obama is right that America is “not what it could be.” But he is dead wrong to imagine he can take us back to an America that “once was.” America never looks back. And more than any other people - sometimes to our detriment - our people look to the future. The past is erased, trampled by our headlong rush to meet what will be. The present is just a way station, a temporary stop where we catch our breath before continuing that mad dash to create what is now without regard to what happened before.

“It is good to be shifty in a new country,” was actually an adage taught to school children at one time. It spoke to the fact that America has rolled forward like a steamroller, grinding the past underfoot and recreating itself on a regular basis. I have no doubt that the 2008 election will give us that opportunity to invent a new future for ourselves.

Just as long as we elect a president who understands this essential truth that has defined America for more than 200 years.

Three weeks out from the Democratic convention and Hillary Clinton is slowly emerging from her self-imposed summer hibernation to haunt the party with the prospect that she will at the very least, horn in on some of the presumptive nominee’s glory just by her presence in Denver.

Was her low profile the result of her licking the psychic wounds of being defeated for the nomination? Previous losers have indicated as much and we have no reason to doubt that Clinton was using the time between the end of the primaries and just recently to decompress from the brutal campaign and reflect on the future.

But there are some who believe she still harbors hopes that she can stampede the convention and steal the nomination from Obama right from under his nose. It certainly would make for dramatic TV if such a scenario were to unfold but frankly, the idea that Hillary Clinton would cleave the Democratic party in two, alienate millions of African American voters, destroy her position in the party, and possibly cause the loss of the election - all on national TV - is a fantasy. The party pros - Superdelegates - simply will not allow that to happen given the probable fallout for down ticket races. The pros may have serious doubts about Obama at this late stage but getting rid of him won’t solve any problems and will create even bigger ones.

The party - for better or worse - is stuck with Barack Obama as its nominee and they will win or lose with him in November - period.

This reality hasn’t stopped some bitter end Hillary supporters from dreaming there is still a chance to sway the Superdelegates, trying to convince them to abstain from voting on the first ballot in order to deny Obama a quick victory. This is the fantasy imagined by the cheeky group of Democrats who have coalesced under the banner PUMA (”Party Unity My Ass”). Every rumor of a wavering Superdelegate or hint that there are doubts among convention goers is latched on to with the fervor of the true believer, no matter how improbable or false the information might be.

However, facts are facts. Obama and the Democratic establishment have taken ironclad control of the proceedings in Denver and will do everything in their power to make sure that on the surface at least, the party is united behind the nominee. Any attempted coup or attempted coup will be brutally suppressed.

But even though these Hillaryites don’t have a ghost of a chance in overturning the nomination of Obama, that doesn’t mean they can’t cause loads of trouble for the nominee in Denver - especially if they get anywhere near a microphone. And I will guarantee you that every network and reporter covering the Democratic Convention in Denver will actively seek out the grumblers, the apostates, the bitter enders for Hillary, and any other delegates who will offer a dramatic counterpoint to the lovefest offered up by the Obama campaign. The nominee may control the floor. But he and his people have absolutely no say in what goes out over the airwaves. And since conventions aren’t “news” in the true sense of the word but rather “entertainment,” networks will seek out controversy in order to offer “drama” to the viewer.

(Don’t worry, Democrats. They will do the same thing at the GOP Convention a few days later as they seek out disappointed and disenchanted conservatives to speak against McCain.)

Given this dynamic - something the Obama camp is fully aware - what role can Hillary Clinton play in this soap opera? The two sides are currently engaged in a delicate dance of negotiations on just what the former First Lady can do to help the party without overshadowing the entire event:

The New York Daily News reported Friday that Clinton has decided not to submit a signed request to the DNC to have her name put into nomination; party rules require such a move for a candidate to be voted on.

But Clinton aides continue to say publicly that such details are still being discussed in consultations among the Clinton camp, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

“No decisions have been made,” Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said.

“Sen. Clinton is 100 percent committed to helping Barack Obama become the next president of the United States,” Strand added. “She is very appreciative of the continued commitment of her supporters and understands there are passionate feelings around the convention. While no decisions have been made at this time, they will be made collaboratively with Sen. Clinton and her staff, the DNC and Sen. Obama’s campaign and released at the appropriate time.”

Even many Clinton supporters think that offering her name up for the nomination is a bad idea. Lanny Davis thinks it would be “idiotic” and only serve to remind voters of the deep divisions in the party. But the fact that we are three weeks out and those divisions show little sign of healing, gives Hillary an enormous amount of leverage. Talk now is of making her the Keynote Speaker - a plum that might go a long way toward at least healing some of the rifts between the two camps.

The Obama campaign’s “Operation United Party” has had mixed success since the primaries ended in June. The realists like Taylor Marsh and a few other prominent netroots activists have gotten aboard, offering their full support to the presumptive nominee. But there is still stubborn resistance from many who are holding a grudge against Obama and his people. This feeling of resentment extends from the top of the Democratic party down to the base. Here’s Clinton at a recent fundraiser:

“For so many of my supporters, just like so many of Barack’s supporters, this was a first-time investment of heart and soul and money and effort and sleepless nights and miles of travel,” Clinton said. “You just don’t turn it off like that.”

Whenever she has appeared in public in the last fortnight - appearances notable for their low key, almost private nature - Hillary Clinton has gotten huge applause whenever she alludes to the loyalty of her supporters and how difficult it is to transfer those feelings to another candidate. At this same fundraiser, she got a loud ovation when she hinted that she wouldn’t mind if her name was placed in nomination but she would not actively seek it.

This puts the Obama camp in a huge bind. The convention is supposed to be about him, about his achievements. Placing Clinton’s name in nomination and then allowing her delegates to vote for her would distract from the narrative the campaign is trying to construct for the TV audience. Not doing so, however, might instigate a backlash against him that would prove just as embarrassing.

Obama can’t hide Hillary any more than he can try and make her glory seeking husband disappear. Here’s a description of an interview with Bill Clinton that is important for what he didn’t say as much as it was for the tepid, niggardly endorsement he gave the nominee:

Bill Clinton’s resentment came through in an interview with ABC News during his recent trip to Africa. Asked what regrets he might have about his role in his wife’s campaign, he bristled and then shot back, “I am not a racist. I never made a racist comment.” He struggled to render a positive comment about Obama’s qualifications for his old job. “You could argue that nobody is ever ready to be President,” Clinton said. “You could argue that even if you’ve been Vice President for eight years, that no one can ever be fully ready for the pressures of the office.” Pressed again, he responded with an endorsement that could hardly have been a weaker cup of tea: “I never said he wasn’t qualified. The Constitution sets qualification for the President. And then the people decide who they think would be the better President. I think we have two choices. I think he should win, and I think he will win.”

Not exactly a clarion call to storm the battlements for Obama that’s for sure.

With the press eager to jump on every sign of disunity, with a former candidate whose supporters think she deserves her moment in the sun, with a former president probably secretly wishing that he loses in November, and with his poll numbers stagnating or dropping, Barack Obama faces the greatest challenge to his leadership of the party and his chances for victory in November in Denver three weeks from now.

How he handles these problems will no doubt affect the decision of the American people when they go to the polls in November.

GOP heavyweight politico Alex Castellanos weighs in at, of all places, Huffington Post today with a searing post about why Obama can’t win.

First, Castellano wrestles with the question of the moment; why isn’t Obama farther ahead?

To earn the Democratic nomination, as Fred Thompson points out, Obama ran as George McGovern without the experience, a left-of-center politician who would meet unconditionally with Iran, pull us precipitously out of Iraq, prohibit new drilling for oil, and grow big government in Washington by all but a trillion dollars. In his general election TV ad debut, however, Obama pirouetted like Baryshnikov. With a commercial Mike Huckabee could have run in a Republican primary, Obama now emphasizes his commitment to strong families and heartland values, “Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses.” In this yet unwritten chapter of his next autobiography, Obama tells us he is the candidate of “welfare to work” who supports our troops and “cut taxes for working families.” The shift in his political personae has been startling. Obama has moved right so far and so fast, he could end up McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick.

General-election Obama now billboards his doubts about affirmative action. He has embraced the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption saying, “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…everything.” He tells his party “Democrats are not for a bigger government.” Oil drilling is a consideration. His FISA vote and abandonment of public campaign finance introduce us to an Obama of recent invention. And as he abandons his old identity for the new, breeding disenchantment among his formerly passionate left-of-center supporters and, equally, doubts among the center he courts, he risks becoming nothing at all, a candidate who is everything and nothing in the same moment.

In past campaigns, there have been extremely artful pivots to the center among candidates of both parties. Obama’s turn to the right was an unmitigated disaster. Placing himself above other politicians meant that Obama - to maintain his “authenticity” - needed to stick to his leftist principles and positions in order not to ruin his brand.

Alas, Obama could never come close to winning running on the same platform he ran on in the primaries. McGovern tried it and got slaughtered. Hence, the wild lurch to the center that confused even his most rabid acolytes, angered the left, and put off the great center of American politics who recent polls have shown moving toward McCain.

And what of McCain? The contrast is startling:

In the defining moment of his life, McCain was willing to give everything for one thing, and that one thing was his country. Contrast that with Obama, who has told America that he is “a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” Obama is the talented salesman who seduced one state after another saying “Iowa, this is our moment,” “Virginia, this is our moment,” “Texas, this is our moment,” and then tells Europe, “people of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment.” How many times can Barack Obama sell the same moment to everyone, before he becomes Mel Brooks in “The Producers”? Who is Barack Obama? His campaign, as it reupholsters him before our eyes, says we can never know — perhaps because Barack Obama does not know himself.

Perhaps many of us have underestimated the sheer power of McCain’s life story, it’s hold on the nation and effect on the voters. Certainly, as Castellano points out, the contrast with Obama is striking in that regard. McCain’s trial by fire says something very profound, very deep about the man that is resonating with voters as they compare the two candidates. With a spectacular lack of success, the left (not the Obama campaign) has tried to paint McCain as a panderer, a flip flopper, and a man without character or conscience.

On the other hand, McCain’s attacks against Obama are biting, caustic, sarcastic, and ringing true which is why he is staying close to Obama and why, in the end, all the re-invention Obama can muster isn’t going to matter:

John McCain is a complete and well-formed man. Barack Obama is completing himself. As he moves to fit what he perceives to be a right-of-center country, he distances himself from the simple and authentic passion of a young candidate who once pledged “Change We Can Believe In.”

The major differernce between them is in the core of the two candidates; one, rock solid while the other is molten - still forming under pressure and not yet completed.

McCain could still lose badly. People are not paying much attention to the race at this point and it very well may be that when the final determination is made by the voter, they will put aside any concerns about Obama and elect him president. The GOP brand has been damaged so badly and generated so much disgust and anger that in the end, it may be too much for McCain - despite his heroic life story and the heroic effort he is making in the campaign - to overcome.

But Obama will have hurdles to overcome as well. And whether he can define himself sufficiently in the voter’s minds will go a long way toward determining his fate.

This post originally appears in The American Thinker 

Next month, I will mark 4 years blogging about politics, culture, government, and the human comedy/tragedy that one finds on the internet - specifically liberals and their never ending quest to redefine terms and twist language, making it a willing servant to their political agenda.

I am not one of those purists who started to blog in order to “have a conversation with myself” or “seek to know myself better.” I have never made any bones about the fact that I see this blog as a stepping stone to making money as a writer. In this, I have been somewhat successful thanks to those of you who have stuck with me through everything - all my apostasy, my curmudgeonly moods, my lame attempts at satire or humor, and my contrariness on many issues on which we have come to disagree.

Beyond anything I could have imagined, this blog has become an extraordinarily personal undertaking. I suppose that’s because writing is a very personal craft - a curse and blessing for which I had no clue 4 years ago when I started. I am blessed because many a fine folk have been supportive, encouraging, unstinting in their praise, and solicitous when I screw up - a happenstance that occurs far more often than I care to remember.

If my blog attracted only those who usually agreed with me and thought I was the bee’s knees when it came to commentary, blogging would be a marvelous daily exercise. But there is another side to blogging that most of us never talk about; the relentless, daily pounding of negativism, hurtful epithets, and outright spewing hatred that arrives in the form of comments and emails from the other side as well as other blogs linking and posting on something I’ve written.

We all like to think of ourselves as having thick skins and that such criticism rolls off our backs and never affects us. This is the macho element in blogging, one of its more unattractive and dishonest aspects. In this, some of us feel obligated to give back in kind, something I have done on too many occasions to count. Yes, I regret it. And believe me, I have often been the initiator of such ugliness.

Still, there are many bloggers on both the right and left who shame me with their equanimity in the face of the most virulent and nasty personal attacks. Ed Morrissey comes to mind on the right. The folks at Crooked Timber and Obsidian Wings on the left are generally cool in the face of such criticism as well.

But this is not a confessional post where I recognize my sins and ask forgiveness. I am what I am and doubt I will change. Rather, it is my intent to highlight the fact that despite my predilection for using violent language in my defense or to ridicule my political opponents, I have always granted them a certain rough integrity in their beliefs - that they are wrongheaded not evil; that they are arrogant and stupid, not unpatriotic or that they hate America.

If I have ever crossed that line (and I can’t think of an occasion where I have) then I do, in fact, regret it. Because in the give and take of political combat, things are often said that are not meant to respond to argument but rather to inflict pain. In this, I am as human as the next person and am not immune to being wounded by those who attack my integrity, honesty, character, and especially my writings even as I try and parry the thrusts in much the same way.

This is to be expected when dishing out as much sarcastic bile as I have poured on to this website the last 4 years. As a former leftist, I know exactly where the soft spots are, where to hit below the belt and make it hurt. Politics is a full contact sport and this kind of combat is not the “old politics” or the “new politics.” It is simply politics as it has been practiced and will continue to be practiced as long as free people are free to assemble in a free country.

I think a cracking good argument can be made that politics is much more civilized today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. Nevertheless, there is an element to political debate that is present today that was not present back then. And that is the deliberate misinterpretation of intent by the left in many conservative critiques of liberal dogma that has led us to this unhappy point in American history where any criticism levelled at a black Democratic candidate will eventually be deliberately misconceived (or stupidly misconstrued) as an attack on his race.

Allah at Hot Air has been all over the issue of the left deliberately twisting the intent and meaning of criticism of Obama to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion that the attack is racially motivated and, by extension, the attackers are racists.

Goldstein has written a book on his blog over the years in intentionalism and the deliberate rebranding and redefinition of terms and language in order to either cut off debate entirely or redefine the debate by surrendering logic and reason and buying into a false narrative created by the left that gives them the advantage. Goldstein shows how this is especially true in identity politics and how the rank dishonesty of deconstructionism has poisoned political debate.

There is little original thought I can add to either of those excellent critiques so I would like to explore this phenomena on a more personal level. Every anti-Obama post I’ve written on this site or anywhere else has elicited several comments alluding to me as a racist or implying that my criticism is racially motivated. All conservative bloggers have gotten this treatment to one degree or another so I am not alone in experiencing this. It doesn’t matter whether I am serious in my criticism or not. The de facto conclusion reached by these commenters is that the very act of criticizing Obama and that I don’t want him to be president can only mean one thing; it is the candidate’s race that is my primary motivation for opposing him.

As I mention above, I play pretty rough with my political opponents and make no apologies for doing so. And if calling me a racist was done as a regular part of the internet mud wrestling that goes on I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

But the intent of branding me with the scarlet “R” of racist is not simply to inflict pain but rather to stifle and cut off debate. There is no answer I can give to the charge, no proof I can offer, no words that would prove otherwise. The charge simply hangs there, tarring me and discrediting what I write in the minds of some who, although fair minded about most things, might buy into the liberal narrative and wonder if subconsciously I am some kind of closet klansman.

Denials only give credence to the charge. Having to disavow you are a racist gives the battle to your opponent because anything you might say to defend yourself can be twisted and deliberately misconstrued as more evidence of racism. On the other hand, silence denotes assent in many people’s minds so not saying anything is as good as being forced to walk around wearing that scarlet “R” on your bodice.

This is not a question of whining about the unfairness of it all. I am pointing out a fact relevant to the debating of issues in this campaign and the relative merits of the two candidates. It is something Allah has pointed out with some heat and scathing criticism as he did in the post I linked above where David Gergen was caught making the same patently ridiculous charge about McCain’s “celebrity” ad being filled with codes and hidden meanings about Obama’s race:

In which the single dumbest, most paranoid racial charge of the campaign is recycled on national television by a former presidential advisor and current Harvard professor. I said it before but it bears repeating: If you take this logic to its conclusion, there’s literally no non-racist way to accuse a member of a minority group of having an outsized ego. Any synonym you can conjure - elitist, arrogant, “megalomaniac narcissist” (to quote Hitchens) - can all happily be dismissed as “code,” regardless of whether the subject might in fact (a) display his very own presidential seal, (b) be known to describe rural voters in terms that call to mind Cletus the slackjawed yokel on “The Simpsons,” and (c) oh, by the way, lead his very own cult with himself as godhead.

George Will makes a point I made myself last week, that the irony of all these bad-faith charges of racism is that most of the GOP’s knocks on Obama’s ego are straight out of the playbook they used against “haughty, French-looking Democrat” John Kerry. Granted, there was no “Moses” ad for Waffles, but that’s because most people hated him; Obama is adored to an absurdly iconic extent, especially vis-a-vis his actual accomplishments (in Lindsey Graham’s words, “fame without portfolio”), which is why he gets goofed on as leading people to the Promised Land whereas Kerry got the windsurfer treatment. (Although there are plenty of goofs on Obama along the same dorky windsurfer lines to be found if you look around.) The real “tell” here, though, is what Gergen offers as further evidence to support his point - that McCain, when asked about affirmative action, said he opposes quotas. A perfectly mainstream conservative position, and certainly one McCain would also hold if he was facing Hillary, but because he’s facing Obama McCain’s no longer allowed to talk about it.

Getting back to the personal, beyond the political tactic there is a psychic cost born by the target of such attacks. The towering injustice of the situation is extraordinarily frustrating. But that is the commenter’s intent - to checkmate his opponent and either provoke a wild response or have the charge go unanswered and thus win the argument.

Those who accuse all liberals of being unpatriotic or un-American perhaps have no cause to grumble when an equally malicious lie like “racist” is directed at them. But having such an epithet tossed in my direction - especially as it has been done recently - I find to be reflective of a mindset that is terrified of open debate and thus resorts to twisting semantics in order to obscure a flawed critique. They can’t argue the issues so the magic word is applied and debate instantly ceases.

As I have written since the beginning of the campaign, this tactic will be hauled out at regular intervals and used to great effect. Allah might be able to define it. Goldstein might be able to analyze and critique its psychological underpinnings and origins.

But they can’t stop it nor can they mitigate its effects. It is the major reason we can’t have an intelligent discussion about race in this campaign or at any time. And the fault, dear lefties, lies not in the stars but with you.

It may be tempting to look at the latest indictment of a Republican lawmaker and conclude, as my sainted grandfather did many years ago, that “all Republicans are crooks.” A loyal Chicago Democrat through and through, none of us had the heart (or courage) to mention to grandpa a few of the more brazenly corrupt scandals that had tainted the Cook County political machine run by Richard J. Daley, the current mayor’s father.

The indicted lawmaker, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), is charged with seven counts of lying on a financial disclosure form. Using the recent past as a guide, this is pretty tame stuff. But it is highly unlikely the prosecutors are through with the 85-year-old senator because just over the horizon are almost certain indictments for bribery relating to work done on the senator’s house to the tune of $250,000 in gifts from VECO, an oil services firm. It seems the CEO of VECO, seeking government contracts, wanted to get extra chummy with the senator and offered to pay for most of the expansion costs on Steven’s house. Actually, it worked out pretty well at first. Stevens doubled the size of his home and VECO received some nice, rich government contracts.

Alas, no good bribery scheme lasts forever. Two VECO executives have already pleaded guilty to bribery charges and the chances are very good that they will roll on Stevens and testify against him. It would be an ignoble end to a career that has defined all that is wrong with pork-barrel spending in Washington. Stevens was one of the biggest abusers of the “earmark” process and funneled tens of millions of dollars to his home state over the years in appropriations that were snuck into bills without debate or discussion.

The problem, of course, is not grandpa’s “all Republicans are crooks” meme. It’s that the rising expense of congressional campaigns and growing power of lobbyists have combined to offer temptations for corruption that have proven irresistible to a frighteningly large number of members of Congress — both Democratic and Republican — over the past 25 years.

The controlling factor regarding political corruption appears to be which party is in power at any given time, rather than any predilection toward crookedness by one party or the other. Take the Democrats of the 1980s and early 1990s. Ensconced in power for 50 years, Democrats were involved in scandal after scandal that rocked Capitol Hill. The parade of crooked pols included five House members and a senator caught up in the ABSCAM scandal where Arab businessmen/lobbyists (played with great effect and glee by FBI agents) openly offered huge dollops of cash in exchange for immigration and banking favors.

The videotapes of the encounters with the lawmakers bordered on hilarious. One greedy Democrat, after stuffing $25,000 in his coat and pants, actually asked the FBI/Arab businessman “Does it show?” All of the Congressman — including a young John Murtha who appeared to turn down the bribe but later seemed to be wavering — knew full well what was in that briefcase and they couldn’t take their eyes off of it. As a morality play, it was a huge hit.

There was Congressman Charles Diggs of Michigan who was convicted and sent to jail for receiving kickbacks from the salaries of his staff after giving them raises. The good people of his district were either unaware or didn’t care that Charlie was in the klink because, despite being jailed, he was re-elected. Diggs resigned rather than face certain expulsion.

Then there were the “Keating Five.” The Ethics Committee in the Senate determined that three Democratic senators had improperly interfered in a regulatory matter on behalf of Charles Keating, real estate mogul and owner of several Savings and Loans that had gone under. Two other senators — John McCain and John Glenn — were absolved of wrongdoing. McCain was the only Republican named in the ethics complaint.

There were others — House Speaker Jim Wright most prominent among them — who were either censured for unethical behavior or under investigation for malfeasance of one kind or another. The rash of special prosecutors during the 1990s also targeted many Democrats who served in the Clinton administration.

The adage “power corrupts” is too simple. There are many who hold power who manage to maintain their integrity. Senator Larry Pressler from South Dakota was seen on tape refusing ABSCAM money and immediately reporting the meeting to the FBI. And most congressmen and senators make an attempt to hold onto their values while serving the nation.

But in the last eight years, we have seen a serio-comic parade of Republican hooligans whose shocking greed has altered the meaning of corruption.

The rogues gallery includes:

— Feb. 22, 2008: Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Arizona) indicted on charges of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other crimes in an Arizona land swap that authorities say helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.

— June 11, 2007: Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) arrested in a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. He is now asking a state appeals court to let him withdraw his guilty plea.

— Jan. 19, 2007: Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for trading political favors for gifts and campaign donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

— March 3, 2006: Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-California) sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. He collected $2.4 million in homes, yachts, antique furnishings and other bribes in a corruption scheme.

— Oct. 3, 2005: Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) charged with felony money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Republican fundraising efforts in 2002. One charge has been dropped and two others are being argued before a state appeals court.

Other shoes that could be dropping:

– John Doolittle (R-California) who is caught up in the Jack Abramoff mess and also has ties to Duke Cunninghams’s partner in crime Brent Wilkes. Either or both investigations may hit pay dirt.

– Jerry Lewis (R-California) is enmeshed in a federal investigation into a lobbying firm headed up by former Republican Congressman Bill Lowery. It is alleged that Lewis, former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, steered hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and other appropriations to clients of Lowery who then gave to his campaign. It is one the largest bribery investigations in California history involving local governments, universities, and private companies.

– Don Young (R-Alaska) is another Alaska congressman caught up in scandal. It appears that Young inserted an earmark in the budget after the House and Senate voted on a bill (but before Bush signed it) worth $10 million to construct an interstate interchange. Nothing really extraordinary in that except the interchange was not to be located in Alaska but someplace slightly further south — in Florida. Apparently, a developer raised a lot of money for Young’s campaign just prior to the earmark being surreptitiously placed in the bill. Feds are investigating.

– Gary Miller (R-California) is under investigation by the FBI for a real nice real estate scam that’s been ongoing for years. Three separate properties he has bought for a song, sold for a ton, and then claimed the local government declared “eminent domain” forcing him to sell. Miller would then not claim the profits as taxable capital gains due to the “imminent” seizure of the property. One problem: this time, the local government of Monrovia is denying it threatened to invoke eminent domain.

– Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania) is under federal investigation for getting caught using his staff for campaign purposes. Note I said “getting caught” because they all skirt the line between official business and campaigning — or go over it in an overt fashion.

– Mark Foley (R-Florida) may not have broken the law but his steamy emails to barely legal kids who were former House pages epitomized a culture of corruption on the Republican-controlled Hill when it was revealed that several GOP Congressional leaders knew of Foley’s interest in the pages and did nothing.

There are also a half dozen former Republican members of Congress who are under investigation for activities carried out while they were serving in the House.

And Democrats are in trouble too. William Jefferson (D-Louisiana), last seen ordering National Guardsmen in New Orleans to assist him in saving items from his house during hurricane Katrina, was caught with $90,000 in his freezer and has been indicted on 16 counts ranging from bribery to wire fraud relating to his business dealings in Africa.

Also, Allan Mollahan (D-West Virginia) is under investigation for steering earmarks to campaign contributors and business partners.

In 2001, Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) was sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of racketeering and accepting bribes.

The common thread running through almost all of these corrupt practices is cash for campaigns. The non-profit group Public Citizen spells it out in black and white:

The cost of congressional campaigns has skyrocketed, from an average of about $87,000 spent for successful House elections in 1976 (about $308,000 in 2006 dollars) to an average of $1.3 million spent on winning campaigns in 2006. Successful Senate candidates in 1976 spent an average of $609,000 (about $2.2 million in 2006 dollars), and in 2006, the average Senate winner spent an astonishing $9.6 million.

Starting the day after they are elected, House members must begin raising more than $1,000 a day to amass large enough war chests to wage their next campaign, while senators must raise more than $3,000 per day.

It’s not just the money game that has changed. Lobbyists have gone far beyond simply advocating the passage of legislation to benefit their clients. They have become one-stop shops for corruption. Junketing with their favorite members, bestowing goodies both large and small on their targets, they can also raise copious amounts of campaign cash. And the competition among the lobbyists is so ferocious that things were guaranteed to get out of hand. In the case of Jack Abramoff, they did. The lobbyist spread millions around Capitol Hill and was hugely successful in getting his clients what they wanted and needed from government. In no time, he went from a minor player into the big leagues in terms of billings.

Unless something is done to reform both campaign finance and lobbying rules, the chances are excellent that in a few years the Democrats will have their own sorry bunch of lawbreakers and scofflaws with their mugshots plastered all over the Internet. That is the culture on Capitol Hill at the moment.

And despite promises from both John McCain and Barack Obama to reform this mess, the prospects for real change seem remote.

Several weeks ago, the McCain campaign reinvented itself by sloughing off some deadwood, replacing incompetents with pros from the Bush-Cheney team of 2004, and overall, tried to bring a sense of order out of the chaos.

McCain brought in proven winner, Steve Schmidt, to ride herd on the new outfit and tighten up message delivery which had become so scattershot that Republican politicos warned the candidate that he risked everything unless some discipline was applied to the process of organizing and promoting what the candidate was trying to accomplish.

So far, the results are very mixed. There are signs that the campaign is indeed more organized, more focused especially in developing a coherent set of issues that resonate with the voters.

But the message machine is still broken - especially when the McCain team goes on the attack.

Marc Ambinder talked to former McCain campaign confidante John Weaver who was not impressed by the campaign’s latest efforts in going after Obama:

With the release today of a McCain television ad blasting Obama for celebrity preening while gas prices rise, and a memo that accuses Obama of putting his own aggrandizement before the country, Weaver said he’s had “enough.”

The ad’s premise, he said, is “childish.”

“John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down,” Weaver said. “Whatever that means. And I recall Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush going overseas and all those waving American flags.”

Weaver remains in contact with senior McCain strategists and, for a while early this year, regularly talked to McCain.

The strategy of driving up Obama’s negatives “reduces McCain on the stage,” Weaver said.

“For McCain to win in such troubled times, he needs to begin telling the American people how he intends to lead us. That McCain exists. He can inspire the country to greatness.”

He added: “There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn’t at Obama’s. For McCain’s sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop.”

I saw the ad and wondered, wtf? What does Brittney Spears have to do with presidential politics? The ad seemed petulant, as if the candidate were complaining that it was unfair that Obama was more popular than McCain.

Childish indeed.

I’m sorry, but there’s just no other way to put it; McCain’s campaign is still foundering, sinking slowly beneath the waves as the Good Ship Obama’s wake continues to slosh over the gunnwales on its way by.

What is the number one issue on people’s minds these days? The price of fuel outstrips everything else in importance. Not only do gas prices speak to people’s fears for the future but energy dominates the voter’s own perception of their economic well being. Every single day, we should hear from the McCain campaign a single, boring, refrain; just drill, baby! The polls show overwhelming support for doing just that. Obama is on the wrong side of that divide and has in fact, led with his chin on this issue on a number of occasions begging McCain to knock his block off and score big.

Case in point, Obama now tells people to keep their tire pressure up and everything will be just fine:

There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy. Making sure your tires are properly inflated — simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling — if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!

Ed Morrissey tears into this simple minded sophistry with relish:

Er, no it couldn’t. The Green River oil shale formation could produce at least 800 billion barrels of oil alone, enough for over 100 years at our current rate of consumption (20 million barrels per day). Would inflating our tires eliminate every single drop of oil we use? Of course not! Nor would it save any significant amount at all. Tire inflation could improve gas mileage by about 3%, which would relate to about 600,000 barrels of oil a day at the most absurdly optimistic extrapolation.

Ed points out later that most cars made in the last 25 years don’t require a “tune-up” every 5,000 miles. Most manufacturers recommend a tune up every 100,000 miles.

But the point isn’t tune-ups and inflated tires. The point is getting more energy. And Obama and the Democrats are dead set against that. While everyone has figured out that drilling won’t completely solve the main problem of energy independence, it’s a nice stop gap measure and has the advantage of a relatively short turnaround time. It might take a decade for alternative energy sources to begin to make a dent in our oil usage. But the effects of drilling - if begun now - can be measured in months.

But we don’t hear this from the McCain camp. This should be the dominant message coming from the campaign. Instead, we get “Obama the celebrity” or “Out of touch Obama” which is a silly claim to make from a guy who can’t even operate a personal computer.

The Fix interviewed several GOP strategists who seem less than impressed with the way the campaign’s message is being delivered:

Sigh,” emailed one senior party strategist who later added: “Every Obama ad since his announcement has fit nicely into a theme, an argument. McCain ads are just catch as catch can, one wild swing at Obama after another. Their increasing bitterness reflects a campaign that is more about some sort of therapeutic frustration venting for the staff than any coherent strategy to elect McCain. It’s unprofessional to the core.”

Another high-level party operative grumbled: “It seems like they are talking to the press pack, not voters.”

That first critique may be a bit harsh but it speaks to the confusion the campaign is experiencing in trying to figure a way to dent Obama’s armor. Right now, the playing field is still wildly tilted in Obama’s favor - partially because many voters still see him as the agent of change and partly because despite some questions being raised by the media lately, Obama still enjoys overwhelming press support - so much so that while Obama’s press was outstanding on his recent trip abroad, the candidate received a dead cat bounce in the polls. The race is where it was before the trip even happened.

This may sound like good news for McCain except he doesn’t appear capable in taking advantage of it. It is Obama who is his own worst enemy and it looks like it will continue to be that way:

Obama seems to have everything going for him. A fresh face. A smooth, cadenced speaking style suited for TV. A message of change at a time when Americans historically favor change, after one party holds the White House for two terms. And after several convictions of GOP legislators.

Obama’s got tons of money. An attractive family. Energized followers. A media that’s curious about the new guy and tired of….

…the dogged old POW one. High gas prices, a poor housing market, a two-front war ongoing and a slightly sagging economy, all of which should help political challengers. Not to mention an unpopular incumbent president.

A lead’s a lead, but political strategists are puzzled.

As many analysts have been saying for months, the race is Obama’s to lose. But those analysts didn’t take into account such a feeble effort coming from the McCain campaign. McCain has to do something positive, say something about the future rather than these constant “gotcha” charges that only play into Obama’s “new politics” theme and his contention that McCain is part of the old way of doing things.

Can the ship be righted in time to catch and defeat Obama? I am guessing not. The problem is apparently partly due to McCain himself:

Sen. John McCain last week delivered one of his sharpest critiques yet of Sen. Barack Obama’s Iraq policies, carefully reading a prepared speech that accused his Democratic rival of failing the commander-in-chief test and promoting ideas that would force American troops to “retreat under fire.”

But just hours after his crisp performance, the Republican presidential candidate blurred his own message with an offhand comment to a television interviewer that Obama’s proposal for a 16-month time frame for removing combat troops from Iraq might be a “pretty good timetable.” That seemed to run counter to his attempts to cast Obama as naive on foreign policy, and it sent his aides scrambling.

And there you have the McCain campaign in a nutshell. For a former military officer, McCain appears to lack the discipline necessary to win the race.

It may come to walling McCain off from the press - fewer avails and press conferences. But whatever is done must be done quickly. Time is running out and the Obama campaign is too smart, too well funded, and too motivated to allow for the kind of weak, unfocused attacks on him that the McCain camp has tried this past fortnight.

If I were a gambling man - and believe me when I tell you that I would place a bet on the outcome of a tiddlywinks match - I would put McCain’s odds of winning the presidency at 5-1. My good friend Rich Baehr at American Thinker gives McCain a one in three chance of pulling it out but that may be a tad optimistic.

The London line has it Obama a prohibitive 2-7 favorite with McCain’s odds at 5-2. Clearly, the pros are skeptical about McCain’s chances given all the factors at work today.

But oddsmakers only deal with the here and now and with probabilities for the future. McCain could have a true senior moment (moreso than he has already demonstrated) and disappear from contention. Meanwhile, Obama might commit a faux pas so serious that even his slavering devotees in the press would have to report it. Granted, the incident would have to be monumental - like some enterprising reporter discovering Obama begging the Maoist New Party for their endorsement in his 1996 state senate race while accepting volunteers from the radical communist group - but it could happen nonetheless.

The odds of McCain self destructing are probably greater than Obama’s which is another reason he is such a strong favorite.

The only other chance I believe McCain has is to change the dynamics of the race at a fundamental level. Right now, Obama has all the advantages. The issues that matter most to the American people - the economy, health care, Iraq - are either playing into his hands or, as with the war in Iraq, he has been able to manipulate his position to appear out in front of the situation. Bush, McCain, and Petreaus may all disagree with the idea of a 16 month timeline for withdrawal but enough dust has been kicked up by Maliki and Obama himself so as to obscure the candidate’s flips and flops on the war. That’s just the way it is and bitching about it won’t change the fundamental fact that Obama is going to get a pass on Iraq and perhaps even receive a boost if his slaves in the media get their way.

McCain will do no better with the economy (a general issue that speaks more to the voter’s comfort level with their personal financial situation) and health insurance where people appear to favor more government intervention.

But McCain has a couple of ace issues that are in play and that the American people are much closer to his ideas than Obama. I’m talking about gas prices and anti-preference referendums that are on a couple of ballots this fall but something McCain could turn into a national issue.

McCain’s embrace of his home state’s anti-discrimination referendum is being called a flip flop and rightly so. In the past, McCain has opposed these ballot measures, calling them “divisive.” But with voters all over the country overwhelmingly in favor of repealing these preferences in hiring, academics, and the letting of contracts, McCain would do well to embrace these referendums where ever they are on the ballot.

In addition to Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska will also have the civil rights measures on the ballot. There is also a chance that a couple of other states might have referendum to vote on if organizers can gather enough signatures and work their way through the gauntlet of challenges being made by liberals. If McCain were to fully support these measures, it could be as important to his chances in some states as the anti-gay marriage referendums were to Bush’s victory in 2004. The important thing is that these civil rights measures have won and won big everywhere the voters have been given an opportunity ot vote on them.

It would make for a nice little wedge issue for McCain if he could tie his efforts in with some popular ballot initiative like the anti-discrimination laws. Given the majorities they have passed in other states, identifying his campaign with scrapping quotas and other preferential criteria might tip the balance in his favor on election day.

The other issue that is in play in which McCain has a huge advantage is the oil drilling issue which translates directly into voter anger over gas prices. My personal belief is that the blame for our current situation has many fathers on the Hill and in the White House from both parties. We were given the gift of 35 years to solve our energy dependence problem and fumbled the ball miserably. Both parties muffed the chance and here we are, 35 years after the Arab oil embargo exposed our vulnerability to foreigners with regards to our energy supply still promising to do something about it.

In the intervening years, our foreign policy has been held hostage by these desert potentates . And we’ve accepted it because it meant that gas would stay cheap. Well, now we have our foreign policy still being held hostage and gas is $4 a gallon, nearly doubling in the last year. Democracies may not do well at long term planning but we’re geniuses when the wolf is at the door howling to get in. Now that we have no choice, I am supremely confident we are going to lick our energy problem - and a helluva lot faster than Obama and the left can possibly imagine.

There are many things we have to do in order to get our energy house in order; build nuclear power plants, increase our use of “alternative” energy sources like solar and wind (no, alternative energy will not come anywhere close to ever - ever solving our energy needs but increasing their use is still a good idea), self-imposed fuel savings such as we’ve already seen with the huge drop off in driving compared to last year, and manufacturing energy efficient cars and appliances.

I am unconvinced that government mandating such efficiencies is any better than letting the market do so. If auto makers want to go bust, let them keep building SUV’s and if people want to go broke filling the tanks of those behemoths, let them. However, I give a little more credit to the intelligence of the American auto maker and consumer. The price of gas and other fuels will be the primary determinant of how great the impetus toward energy efficiency will eventually be realized.

But we can also drill. And drill. And then drill some more. And when we’re done with that, just for good measure we can drill there too. No one is saying we can become totally independent of foreign fuel sources by drilling offshore, in North Dakota, or in the west where we have tens of billions of barrels of oil locked up in shale. But reducing our dependence would be a nice goal and if in the near future we could import 25% less than we are now because we are tapping our own sources of oil, it would go a long way toward reducing the price of gas at the pump. It would dampen speculation by stabilizing the supply while bulking up our inventories which would also have a calming effect on the market.

Here is where McCain can hit a home run. And Obama would be left out on the mound watching as McCain ran rings around him. By large majorities the American people want us to start drilling and start drilling now. Politicians who get in the way of that sentiment do so at their own risk.

Obama is trapped by his environmental left into basically saying “Prices are high. Shut up and learn to live with it.” He may make a few tentative steps toward nuclear power generation but here again, McCain can run him ragged by boldly embracing a program to build as many nuke plants as can safely be built in the shortest amount of time.

At almost every turn, McCain has the advantage on this issue and he should be constantly pushing for drilling responsibly but on a large scale and as quickly as possible. He should also open government lands to the drill bit.

Now it is true that McCain has been pushing the drilling angle but he has been doing it in a half assed manner, almost as if he is apologetic about it. The problem, of course, is that he has left himself open to charges of hypocrisy because of his global warming position which is decidedly against any additional oil coming to market. The two issues are not incompatible. There are still ways to reduce carbon emissions while drilling for all the oil we can handle.

But the entire drilling issue is symptomatic of what is wrong with McCain’s campaign. Listless, directionless, and only recently has any semblance of organization begun to be seen. He isn’t going to win by playing it safe. He has got to take chances, be bolder in his policy proposals. And standing up for drilling offshore and anywhere else that a realistic field can be tapped would be a good first step.

These two issues can redefne the race if McCain has it in him to embrace what they represent; the core concerns and values of his natural constituency. If elections are about getting more of your people to the polls than the other guy can get his people to the polls, McCain better start thinking about what will motivate his voters to get out of their easy chairs on election day and cast their ballot for him. Otherwise, he is going to get slaughtered.

I know it is not politically correct to say that Obama “creeps me out.” That’s because immediately after uttering such blasphemy, our friends on the left would put me on the couch and matter of factly inform me that I am suffering from “The White American Disease” and recommend a torturous rehabilitation that would include watching 6 hours a day of “Blaxploitation” films and continuous viewings of Roots in order to inculcate the proper amount of white guilt and outrage directed against white males into my racist psyche.

That’s fine. Just don’t include the execrable remake of Shaft in with the bunch. I much prefer the original with Richard Roundtree as the title character. Now that brother was kewl. He oozed class. And when it came to getting back at the man, he had no equal - all others were pale imitations. Samuel L. Jackson may be a better actor. But he’s something of a nerd, isn’t he? Roundtree, despite not being a gifted thespian, was anything but a nerd.

Anyway, this was a hard list to compile, especially since I didn’t want to get into his physical appearance. I understand he’s very healthy and works out all the time but good Lord, can’t we put some meat on the poor guy? He makes Jack Sprat look like Arne. No doubt there is a standing rule in the Obama campaign that absolutely, under no circumstances, is the candidate to be photographed next to a bean pole.

People can’t help how they look so perhaps it’s best we not include any physical attributes in this creep out list. Besides, Obama’s most obvious distinguishing physical characteristic is hard to miss. Lots of people have commented on it and been chastised for their shallowness. Considering how it dominates his appearance, it is strange that he never did anything to lessen its impact.

No, dummy. I’m talking about his ears.

TOP TEN THINGS THAT CREEP ME OUT ABOUT OBAMA

10. It creeps me out that whenever Obama makes an appearance, the rain stops falling and the sun comes out. As a rationalist I am loathe to ascribe a direct cause and effect to this phenomenon except that it happens quite frequently and the rainbow created by the sun breaking through the clouds spells out “Yes We Can!”

Probably just a coincidence…

9. It creeps me out that there are about twice as many women at Obama rallies as there are men. Now I am not of the Melvin Udall School of anti-feminist thought (when asked how he writes women so well, Udall responds “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability”). But what is one to think when watching the reaction of females as Obama is speaking? I’m sorry, but it is hard to imagine a man covering their mouth, chest heaving, barely able to contain himself and then ooooohing and aaaaaahhing when the messiah says something particularly vapid and innocuous.

Elvis, I can understand. But a politician?

8. It creeps me out that the press seems hypnotized by this guy. Grown men and women blubbering like babes when talking about how exciting he is, how mesmerizing he is when he speaks. It’s as if “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has come to life and the pods have been placed in every newsroom in America. It isn’t just Crissy Mathews and MSNBC. It’s news anchors at CNN, reporters for Time and Newsweek, editorial writers at WaPo and the New York Times. Big media is in the tank for this guy in a big way. They have thrown off all semblance of fairness (never mind objectivity) and just don’t care that people know they are in Obama’s corner. They can’t be shamed into changing. They evidently won’t be deflected from doing their best to elect Obama.

This kind of thing causes the hairs on the back of my neck to prick up - like walking through a graveyard at midnight. It is just plain creepy - no other word for it.

7. It creeps me out that Obama’s rhetoric about America is so apocalyptic. It is “the worst” this or “the most” that. He is a serial exaggerator - so much so it would be impossible for anyone to debunk all of his outrageous “doom and gloom” claims.

And what’s really, really creepy is that after addressing this litany of horrific evils perpetrated by Bush and the Republicans, he holds himself up as just the man to fix everything. If the United States were as bad as he describes it, no sane person would want to live there. And yet, Obama will ride to the rescue and “restore” America.

Shining knights on white horses riding to save us is one thing - we’ve seen that before many times in American politics. But Obama’s powers extend beyond Coolidge’s Hoover’s promise of a “chicken in every pot” to a promise to heal the souls of America and Americans.

I don’t know what’s creepier. The candidate saying it or his supporters believing it.

6. It creeps me out that with the exception of most conservatives, Obama’s radical associations and radical past - including his being on a first name basis with an unreconstructed terrorist - doesn’t seem to bother many people. What am I missing here? When Obama makes an actual political alliance with a radical Maoist organization like The New Party, going so far as to attending their meetings and recruiting their members to work on his state senate campaign, why is there no call for the candidate to explain himself? Nor has there been any effort - save a couple of scattered stories in the National Review and elsewhere that detail Obama’s association with the radical group ACORN.

It’s as if the entire “Obama movement,” made up mostly of good, mainstream Democrats, is so in thrall to the candidate that they can’t see the warning signs of this fellow’s true radicalism. They dismiss his past by simply pointing to the here and now and saying “See? He really is a moderate kind of guy after all.” We don’t know that because no one has ever - ever - asked him to explain why he sought the endorsement of a radical communist group when running for the state senate and why he associated himself with the radical group ACORN.

Beyond creepy. Truly scary…

5. Has there ever been a creepier presidential hopeful’s spouse than Michelle Obama? She actually said this to a political gathering last February: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Rarely has there been a creepier utterance by a major candidate for president or his spouse (Ron Paul has said some very, very creepy things). This one set off alarm bells in my head the moment I heard it. It elicited the question that many of us who oppose this guy have been asking more and more frequently lately.

Just who in the hell does this guy think he is? “Require” us to do what? “Demand” what? Besides coming off sounding like Evita Peron, Michelle Obama has a very weird view of the art of politics which works by persuasion and not by compulsion.

That one registers a 8.5 on the Creepy-O-Meter.

4. It creeps me out that Obama continues to speak as if he is president already and that the election is some mere formality that if he had his druthers, we could do without. His use of the royal “we” is very weird as well. Jack Tapper of ABC News noticed the same thing about Obama and his staff. Just one example of many: During an interview with ABC’s Nightline, he said he “wouldn’t be doing my job as Commander in Chief” if he just did whatever the generals said in Iraq. Obviously, it is not his job. And this is not the only example as Tapper points out in that Newsbusters piece.

A couple of times where the candidate falls into the mental state of what he would do as president and referring to himself as already elected would be understandable. Obama does it all the time and is seemingly unaware of how it makes him appear.

3. I find it very creepy that Obama removed the American flag at the back of his plane and replaced it with a great big “O?” Tell me that doesn’t creep you out. The flag and the “O” would be just fine. But why remove the flag?

Judging by the way he has flip flopped all over the place on the flag pin mess (which I believe is a non-issue whether or not he wears it but the flip flopping is of legitimate concern) it should call into question just what this guy believes. Again, warning bells should be going off in everyone’s head and either the press is too cowed to ask him questions about it or they just don’t care.

2. I can’t believe every American wasn’t creeped out by Obama’s fake presidential seal that he featured for exactly one day at a conference of governors. This story actually gave me a slight feeling of panic wondering if this guy is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur or…what? I couldn’t think of another reason any candidate would have the audacity of overweening pride and destructive ambition to create, approve, and then display such an artifact. Did someone bother to ask the candidate what he was thinking when he approved the use of that seal?

I thought not. The press may not have liked the answer.

1. The number one thing about Obama that creeps me out is the ease and comfort with which he lies. All politicians lie. Presidential candidates lie more than other politicians. But Obama’s lies are brazen and breathtaking. His explanation for why he allowed his kids to be interviewed by “Entertainment Tonight” was so ridiculous as to be a parody of the truth. But he was allowed to get away with it because the venues he chose to “explain” his demonstration of parental stupidity were friendly or, as in the case of Good Morning America, hardly a news outlet at all.

Presidents lie all the time. They do so for a variety of reasons - mostly to save their political hides. But Obama lies as a matter of course and has a familiarity with the practice the begs for an explanation. Krauthammer thinks it’s ego. He sums up everything that creeps me out about Obama here:

Obama may think he’s King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” which, translating the royal “we,” means: “I am the one we’ve been waiting for.” Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule — it was pointed out that he was not yet president — induced him to take it down

He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, “you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish” — a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how “embarrassing” it is that Europeans are multilingual but “we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, ‘merci beaucoup.’” Obama speaks no French.

His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism … that you come out of your isolation. … Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

I try to laugh and make fun of the candidate’s hubris, the wild eyed, gyrating women who nearly swoon when he speaks, the supporters who walk and talk as if they were programmed - but my heart is rapidly losing the desire to make sport of this situation. Unless he shoots himself in his own foot, this man is going to be the next president of the United States.

And that, dear subscribers, is the creepiest thing of all.

This post also appears at The American Thinker