John McCain Plays John Wayne

John McCain has positioned himself as the John Wayne of politics. He’ll ride out to take on Washington as an independent man with gun-toting Sarah from the frontier at his side. Or, as he puts it, “I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for special interests. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.” McCain belongs to George W. Bush’s party. He embraced him on a public stage in 2004. Will anyone buy his image as a lone gun against the big shots?

Probably. The situation is similar to Germany in 1998: Helmut Kohl had to go and if Wolfgang Schäuble and Angela Merkel had united against the red-green coalition, the CDU would have stood a chance. It might at least have been a close election. Gerhard Schroeder was O.K., but some were put off by the Greens. Barack Obama is O.K. but some are put off by a black candidate. The U.S.A. hasn’t swung to the left as Germany did after Hartz.* But Obama has steadily drifted toward the right in order to improve his election chances. That’s the situation.

In America, Bush isn’t the problem, Congress is. There, it’s popularly believed that spoilsports and partisans fight for every tiny advantage and the result is a sort of political Verdun. Nothing moves anymore. Bush’s approval rating is at 30 percent and Congress’s is at 14, the lowest ever recorded. That affects not only Republicans. Nancy Pelosi, who was praised in 2006 as the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives, watches as her autobiography moves to the discount shelf at bookstores.

A visual comparison of the conventions is somber for McCain. Obama’s power was overwhelming. His words, like polished gems, were presented in a grandiose setting. McCain offered patriotic bricks in an unspectacular setting. He’s one up on Obama in the fact that in his 72 years he’s been militarily and politically closer to death than to life four times. The old man saddles up and rides off into America’s small towns. Barack Obama hasn’t met his match in John McCain, but he’s found a worthy opponent.

*trans. note: the sweeping reforms to the German labor market adopted in 2002