A Second Hand Conjecture

According to a new Associated Press poll 46% of the public thinks Barack Obama is too inexperienced for the presidency, and only 36% say the same of Governor Palin. So much for that line of attack.

In contrast with both, a staggering 80% feel Senator McCain has the right experience for the job. An almost unbelievable contrast of opinion in a presidential election.

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(photo: Tom LeGro)

Christopher Hitchens notices a pattern with anti-Palin rumors: their troubling tendency to turn out highly exaggerated or entirely fabricated, in a very short turn.

[A]s often as I have forwarded some alarming e-mail about her from a beavering comrade, I have afterward found myself having the sensation of putting my foot where the last stair ought to have been and wasn’t.
(Slate)

Hitch gets close to what’s happening there by recalling Walter Dean Burnham’s prescient 1960s prediction that Ronald Reagan would one day be president, based on Ron’s inability to exude hostility and thus not attract it. This is slightly misdirected. Reagan attracted as much hostility as any politician in the modern era from the political left, save perhaps Nixon. The trouble consisted in that the product of that hostility, criticism, didn’t seem to stick. Or even worse, seemed to possess a counterproductive property.

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My guess is that if I were a liberal, I would find Obama to be an attractive candidate.  Surely the man is well spoken, charismatic – and whatever else you may believe negative about him, Obama is nobody’s fool.  Even if I were liberal, I might be a bit concerned about his inexperience.  But – I imagine he would get my vote anyway.

Thus, I find this bit of news/gossip almost difficult to take seriously.  Some people think that Obama is going to select John Kerry as his running mate?  The same guy who couldn’t beat George W. Bush when his ratings were on the downslide?  The fellow who lost an election you would think that 74% of Democrats could have scooped up with relative ease?

Obama seems to smart to me for this.  Then again – we have all seen much stranger happenings in politics.

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(photo: Chris Dunn)

John Bolton argues that the future of Russian imperialism in Eurasia rides on the outcome of the US presidential election. Unsurprisingly, he pitches McCain: “First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved are always the best indicators…McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack.”

That’s evidently a sentiment shared by the American electorate.

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Fausta is fed up with the pundit’s question “who will be the next Reagan?” She mocks the impulse by asking “who will be the next Abraham Lincoln?” The genuine “next Reagan” of course wouldn’t be looking to the past at all, but to the future.

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According to SurveyUSA polling, Bloomberg would do best in NYC in a three-cornered presidential race against Obama and Huckabee. Even then though he only manages 28%. Via: Politicalwire

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