Old is Beautiful

Why is McCain suddenly neck-and-neck with Obama?

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice cried as she fell through a deep hole and into Wonderland, where none of the familiar natural laws appeared to work. If she fell through a hole in America and into Election-Wonderland today, Alice would probably cry, “How can John McCain, pre-ordained loser, be snapping at the heels of the darling of fortune, Barack Obama?

The pro-Obama magazine, New Republic, got all excited over “John McCain’s extraordinary endurance.” Obama’s “Victory Column bonus” has disappeared. The Senator from Illinois returned home from Berlin at the end of July with a 9-point lead over his opponent. This past Saturday, Gallup was reporting they were tied. Rasmussen, the institute that operates with the largest random sampling (around 3,000), reported on Tuesday the candidates were even at 44 percent each. On the question, “which way are you leaning,” McCain actually came out ahead, 47 to 46 percent.

As Alice sailed into Election-Wonderland, she would be puzzled: Obama is young and cool while McCain is old and shopworn. The 71-year old is a political friend (as opposed to a deadly enemy) of George Bush, but still a Republican. And Republicans have bequeathed the nation the Iraq war, a recession, and a struggling dollar. If Alice studied American history, she would remind McCain that, since Roosevelt’s administration, only one party has won the White House three times in a row. That was under Bush’s father, after two consecutive Reagan administrations.

McCain occasionally makes nonsensical statements like saying that Iraq and Pakistan share a common border. Then he sharpens his attacks, as he did with the TV spot where Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Obama appear in the same picture. The message: Obama’s a light-weight too, famous only because he’s famous.

The old man from Arizona also leads in the empathy ratings. He scores three points higher than Obama on the “who do you like” question. What’s going on here? Is race being used as a weapon? Facts don’t support that theory. Only 8 percent of white voters feel that a candidate’s skin color is a determining factor. What then? Here are two plausible theories: first, Obama fell into the “arrogance trap” as Hillary Clinton did in the primaries with the idea of “inevitability.” Obama acted as though he were already President, talking openly about his “transition team.” Second, his halo was also tarnished as he drifted increasingly to the right – most recently when he supported the classic Republican concept of offshore oil exploration.

Voters may also feel like saying, as Alice did, “Curiouser and curiouser.” If Obama’s just another typical politician, we would rather have the Senator we’ve known for 26 years, not the young upstart who has only been there for three years and who voted “abstain” 120 times during that period.

In any case, Obama’s associates are beginning to worry. As the anti-Bush New Republic claimed, “Just because the numbers all support Obama doesn’t mean he can’t botch the election.”