Barack Obama Under Fire From the Right

It was fatal: having virtually been elected president of the United States a month ago, when two thousand people came to hear him in Berlin, today Barack Obama is reputed to be two fingers from defeat. At the moment that the Democratic party convention, which will designate him as the candidate for the White House, is about to start-–on Monday 25 August in Denver-–the senator from Illinois is described in the American media as a boxer knocked out by the hits the Republicans have thrown and one wonders whether he will be able to retake the upper hand in the coming days and weeks.

It is true that for ten days or so the national polls have been indicating a readjustment that is troubling for the Democrats. However, the method for election of the American president is such that the global measure of voting intentions has hardly any predictive value. The evolution of judgments about John McCain and Barack Obama goes against the opinions expressed about their respective parties. The only conclusion that can be made is that Americans, a majority of whom reject the Republicans, are not yet completely behind the idea of sending the Democrat’s candidate to the White House.

While he has not stopped making news from the time he won the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, against all expectations, at the beginning of January-–inflicting a defeat on Mrs. Clinton from which she was not able to recover-–now Mr. Obama is on the defensive. It is difficult to give full credit to a possible media saturation, criticism that is getting sharpened against the favorite, and errors that he might have committed himself. It seems fair at the least to credit Mr. McCain and his team with a few successful hits that again set afloat the ship of the Republican candidate.

The Arizona senator’s campaign was inexorably stuck in June, after the end of the Democratic primaries and the victory of Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton. The words “hope” and “change” sparkled above the camp of the Illinois senator. The atypical McCain–-with promises of innovation and raising of moral standards brought by his career and, previously, his attempt at the candidacy in 2000-–paled before the youth and brilliance of the young mixed-race candidate, who gave radiant performances on the American political scene. Since then the Republican candidate has brought veterans of George Bush’s campaigns to his team, trained by the principal political adviser to the president, Karl Rove. They came up with aggressive television advertisements, which have been broadcast extensively. Placing derision in opposition to fervor, they compared the success of Mr. Obama to that of pop stars without brains. Crashing head on into the themes of the latter’s principal strategist, ex-journalist David Axelrod-– for whom “the candidate is the message”-–another ad, “The One” accused the Democratic candidate of messianic narcissism, suggesting that he likes to think he’s Moses parting the Red Sea.

The Democratic candidate was reproached for changing his mind over the withdrawal of American troops, which he had promised to put into effect within 16 months of his taking over office, before leaving it to the advice of the generals, then reverting to 16 months. Mr. McCain, one of the principal defenders of the American troop surge in Iraq in 2007 asked the Illinois senator to recognize the success of this strategy, against which he had voted. In face of his refusal, the Republican accuses the Democrat of “preferring to lose a war than the election.”

The Arizona senator is deriving the advantage in particular, for the moment, from a situation in Iraq that allows him to turn attention away from the conditions in which this war was launched, both in terms of its human and financial cost. He was also well served by the entrance of Russian troops into Georgia, which allowed him to justify his radical hostility towards Moscow and Vladimir Putin. The efforts made by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government on the calendar for withdrawal of American troops, and to make the Western powers adopt an intransigent position towards Russia, makes one think that President George Bush and his administration have decided to do what it takes to help Mr. McCain.

The Arizona senator has also won some points on the question of energy. Abandoning his hostile position towards oil exploration in coastal zones, he has espoused the policy of Mr. Bush and the campaign launched by former Republican leader Newt Gingrich on the theme: “drill here, drill now, pay less!” He ridicules the defense of energy conservation by Mr. Obama, commenting that the only response of the Democratic candidate to the increase in gas prices is “Inflate your tires!”

Leftist, Muslim, Drugged

The Republican offensive has been accompanied, in the purest “Rovian” style, by the publication of a book, The Obama Nation (Threshold Editions), edited by Jerome Corsi-–also the author of a slanderous attack against Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. At the head of the New York Times bestseller list –-notably for group purchases-–this book accuses Mr. Obama of being a camouflaged leftist, a clandestine Muslim, and a drug user.

Today there is not much left of the non-sectarian, open, and tolerant McCain who distinguished himself from the Republican right by extending his hand to the Democrats. To counter the powerful movement that has formed around Mr. Obama, the Arizona senator has decided to activate the springs of the most obtuse conservative reaction: money, religion, xenophobia, if not rampant racism. But 81 percent of Americans think that their country is on the wrong track, and the Democrats seem assured of winning additional seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

When Mr. McCain, asked about the number of houses that he and his wife own, he said that he needs to ask his staff (the answer is seven), he opportunely reminded employees, in the middle of the mortgage lending crisis, of the gap that separates them from the Republican establishment. The same happened when he judged the threshold for being rich at 5 million dollars (3.4 million euros) in annual income. As Mr. Obama said, “in that case, at 3 million you’re in the middle class!”

The Democratic candidate thus does not lack chances to counter-attack. The convention that starts on Monday, August 25th, in Denver gives him the chance to retake the initiative.