Victor Davis Hanson explains the McCain surge and the dramatic turnaround that has resulted in Barack Obama and Joe Biden finding themselves on defense.
What happened to the Obama juggernaut? How did it all go so bad so quickly?
He writes:
There are three reasons for McCain’s sudden surge apart from a successful convention. (In this regard, I think the effectiveness of Giuliani’s comically savage attack on Obama have not been fully appreciated.)
First, the ramifications of not choosing Hillary are now clear: Obama lost a savvy experienced campaigner, who had successfully wooed the white-working class, cemented the Democratic woman’s vote, and would have hit the tarmac running, incorporating the entire Clintonian negative-campaigning mob. Biden brings no upside...
Hillary has to be saying, "I told you so," and she'd be right.
...Second, Palin deflated the Democratic convention bounce. Her charisma and youth sort of out-hoped and hyper-changed Obama. More importantly, she energized and redefined McCain’s stale maverick image into a new “change” tandem—as both he and Palin were now seen as fellow outsiders who bucked the party establishment and would do the same together in Washington.
Less than two weeks ago, it didn't seem possible that someone like the charismatic, youthful Sarah Palin could come along and out-hope and hyper-change Obama.
Who thought someone could breath new life into McCain's maverick image, and make it seem real rather than cliché?
...Third, the liberal media’s attack on Palin was an unforeseen gift and ripped the scab off the old cultural-war wound that usually favors conservatives. Liberal hypocrisy and hysteria were such that the more the likes of a Sally Quinn, Gloria Steinem, Chris Matthews, or Gail Collins went after Sarah, in ways not commensurate with the examination of Biden or other liberal women politicians of the past, the more the public sympathized with a fellow blue-collar victim of predictable elite disdain. There is a deer-in-the-headlights look to CNN/MSNBC reporters in the field as they try to report their Sarah hit pieces—sort of like “I know I look hopelessly biased, and am—but what else am I supposed to do?”
The lib media are stunned. They do have that deer-in-the headlights look.
They're desperate.
Their hysterical response to Palin was a disgrace, an embarrassment, and in the end, very revealing. In short, it was a disastrous miscalculation.
...In this cycle of the see-saw race, expect Obama to take a risk and go really negative as he falls into a gripey, cranky mode.
So now we await the Palin interviews, and, depending on her performances, whether all these short-term trends will either revert or accentuate even more. But don't count on a Palin implosion: if one examines Obama's failed House race, and the weird pull-outs of both his primary and general election Illinois Senatorial opponents, then we sense that he has never really waged a knock-out campaign fight until this past year—and that may not be true of Palin's past scrappy and contested rise to the top.
I don't expect to see Palin implode, but we are already seeing Obama going negative and falling "into a gripey, cranky mode," not befitting the anointed one, the transcendent savior.
For example:
FLINT, Mich. -- Barack Obama broadly accused his Republican rivals of dishonesty Monday, citing former lobbyists working for John McCain, Sarah Palin’s shifting stance on the “Bridge to Nowhere” and their promise to change Washington.
With national polls finding the Democratic presidential nominee trailing or in a dead heat with McCain, Obama began the campaign’s final eight-week push by criticizing McCain’s popular running mate as much as the Arizona senator himself.
He said Palin has an interesting biography — “Mother, governor, moose shooter. That’s cool,” he said — but the election should be about who can change people’s lives for the better. He said that won’t come from a Republican ticket that almost always supports the same positions as President Bush even though they say they will bring reform.
“I mean, you can’t just make stuff up,” Obama said of a new McCain ad that says Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.” “You can’t just recreate yourself. You can’t just reinvent yourself. The American people aren’t stupid.”
Speaking of making stuff up...
Speaking of the American people not being stupid...
From the Chicago Daily Observer:
Now that Alaska is front and center in the news again, it is a good time to catch up on a favorite story, The Bridge to Nowhere, using the Washington Post US Congress Votes Database.
Though Gov. Palin originally supported the earmark spending on the Ketchikan bridge (“to nowhere), she eventually killed the project, chosing to spend Federal money on other infrasturcture programs.
However, Sen. Biden and Sen. Obama voted for funding the Bridge, even when given a second chance by Sen. Tom Coburn, who proposed shifting earmark funds to Katrina relief.
Biden and Obama voted for funding the Bridge. Palin killed the project.
Obama is really floundering right now.
He talks about McCain and the influence of lobbyists when Obama is in no position to be casting stones.
Obama said McCain’s claim that lobbyists will no longer run Washington when he’s president “doesn’t seem very plausible.”
“Sounds pretty good until you discover that seven of his top campaign managers and officials are — guess what? Former corporate lobbyists. So who is he going to tell?
“What they are going to try to do is what they always do, which is attack, go on the negative, distort, mislead, assert,” Obama said, as members of his invitation-only audience of 350 began yelling “Lie! Lie!” Obama just cocked his head in response as if to say he wasn’t going to go there.
Read about Obama and his bundlers.
When Barack Obama promises not to allow lobbyists to fund his campaign and his party, it's not true.
Change? Not at all.
When Obama vows not to "take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs," that's slick talk. I call it a lie, since Obama is intentionally trying to deceive.
...Obama said McCain can’t bring change when he votes with President Bush so often.
“It’s kind of hard to believe that `I’m going to change us from us,”‘ Obama said. He later laughingly labeled McCain’s campaign the “No Change Express,” a play on its slogan as the “Straight Talk Express.”
I thought Joe Biden was going to be the attack dog and the transcendent Obama was supposed to stay above the fray.
I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
McCain's campaign isn't the "No Change Express," but Obama's campaign is increasingly looking like it may be on a "Bridge to Nowhere."
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