President-elect Obama

One of the things about the US getting a new President-elect is it allows for massive speculation about what might happen in the weeks, months and years after that President-elect takes the oath of office. Of course, any sort of speculation is tempered by the realisation that the future predicted might just be plain wrong. So as I round off today’s trio of posts about the US election, I’m going to hedge my bets and offer three different routes that the Obama presidency might take. And I’m going to cite historical precedents as well, to add some much need gravitas to my speculation.

As far as I can see, it could go one of three ways:

The failure: Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter came from nowhere, won the Democratic nomination and was helped to the White House by the actions of a disgraced Republican President. Barack Obama came from nowhere, won the Democratic nomination and… well, you get the picture. We have to hope though, that Obama does not follow the rest of the example laid down by Jimmy Carter.

There are real dangers that Obama will be a failure. He does lack experience, he seems to function best in a well-organised cocoon and he is going to be going up against massive problems for the US without really having a plan or tangible policies. Offering change is no longer enough – people are going to want him to start making relevant changes for the better as soon as he gets into the Oval Office. He has several weeks to work out what the hell he wants to do; unless he comes up with plans for both home and abroad, Obama could fail like Jimmy Carter. And let’s remember what happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 – he was consigned to the dustbin of history by a grinning, bequiffed Republican.

Long on rhetoric, short on action: John F Kennedy et al

There have been lots of comparisons between Kennedy and Obama; certainly both gents could make a great speech. But when you actually look at the Kennedy administration, he achieved very little. Many of the policies and changes assigned to Kennedy – such as Civil Rights – were actually implemented by Kennedy’s successor, LBJ. The reason why Kennedy is so lauded is because he was murdered – allowing his supporters to argue that he never had the chance to put his lofty ideals and unfulfilled eloquence into practice.

I can’t imagine that Obama wants to be assassinated, so he needs to be wary of the Kennedy precedent. Unless he can find a way to put his words into action, he may well end up like another Democratic President who came to the White House as the inheritor of the Kennedy mantle, only to leave that building after eight years with a decidedly mixed historical legacy and very little to show for his years in office. Yep, Obama might end up like a certain William Jefferson Clinton.

Actually quite good: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

FDR was elected in tough economic times, and managed to transform his country. Whilst his (long) time in office was far from flawless, on balance FDR had a positive impact on the USA. He was an activist President, who used all of the resources at his disposal to bring into play the changes he felt that the USA needed to not just survive, but also to flourish.

Certainly, Obama will be facing serious challenges both at home and abroad. Whilst the economic situation in the US is nowhere near as bad as it was in 1932, there are some parallels. Furthermore, given the situation in Congress, Obama will be well placed to implement any policies that he thinks will help. He is in perhaps the most powerful position of any recent President; if he has an agenda, or solutions to the current crisis, he could do far worse that to use FDR as his benchmark.

Whether he chooses to act or not will be the question, though. FDR took risks – some of which worked out, some of which did not. And Obama has shown himself to be quite risk averse…

I suspect that Obama will not be an out and out failure, nor will he be a stunning success: he will end up as the middle option – full of wonderful phrases but not actually being able to practically implement many of those phrases and platitudes. And I suspect many of those who are seeing Obama as salvation for America will end up bitterly disappointed as the President-elect goes through his term in office. But whatever happens, Obama is in a dizzying place right now. He has the support of a majority of the Americans who could be bothered to vote, and he has a plethora of goodwill coming from across the globe. His presidency is a blank canvass – he can create whatever he wants. And at this point, it would be churlish to wish him anything other than the very best of luck.

But that’s enough about the US election; it is over now, and I can’t see anything dramatic happening between now and the Inauguration of President Obama. This may be the last post about our American cousins for a while. So this blog will be going back to* normal*. Oh yes, there are posts to come dissing Gordon Brown, the Liberal Democrats and explaining why history isn’t quite as simple as some would make it.

John McCain: Why He Failed

Amidst all the jubilation of the Democrats and, in particular, the Obama campaign, spare a thought for an old man. An old man on his last hurrah who has had his hopes dashed. An old man who has given a great deal for his country, yet was beaten in the final analysis by a much younger and less experienced man. Although a younger guy with better hair. Yes, spare a thought for John McCain. Regardless of whether he thought he could sneak a victory in at the last minute or not, the past 24 hours have been shitty for Senator McCain. And the disappointment won’t be going away any time soon.

Make no mistake about it, this was the last chance saloon for McCain. Pretty much all the other candidates in this election could have another go for the Presidents – Clinton, Palin (*shivers*), Huckabee (*retches*), Romney, Biden (possibly), maybe even Edwards (if people can get over his inability to keep his pants zipped up outside of his marriage) – these people could all have another shot at the Presidency. Had Obama lost, he certainly could have done (and, I reckon, would have done). But for McCain, the game is up. He’s 72 now; the next time the Presidential Election circus comes to town, he’ll be 76. He’s not running again. His White House dream died at 4am this morning.

But I’m not going to spend too much time wailing on behalf of John McCain. His real time – the moment when he should have won the nomination and then the presidency – was eight years ago, but he lost it to Bush. This time he looked more than ever like a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he really didn’t help himself, and his defeat has as much to do with his own actions as with the man he was up against.

There are some things that McCain just could not help. He is in the same party as a deeply unpopular, and also hated, President. That party has also developed political schizophrenia, torn between fiscal conservatives and rabid, Christian fundamentalist loonies. And McCain worked hard to distance himself from his President and from his party. But ultimately he is Republican, and this year was perhaps the worst year to run as Republican since 1976.

Events also seemed to conspire against Senator McCain, and it never helps when the economy tanks and you are representing the incumbent party. Yet here, there is more McCain could have done. Yes, events are unpredictable, but politicians have complete control over how they respond to them. And as the US economy slipped into a critical state, McCain’s choice of at first denying there was a problem, then noticing the issue before suspending his campaign to look presidential looks in the cold light of day like a not just a strategic blunder, but actually a campaign calamity.

He also dropped the ball by going very negative on Obama at a late stage in the campaign. Whilst he stopped short of doing the cut throat character assassination himself, all the talk of Obama being a pal of terrorists, and the rumours about Obama not being Christian or being a Muslim were not just untrue, but also showed the level of debate that McCain was aiming at. Yeah, Obama’s lofty sentiments about change were (and are) completely intangible, but at least they sounded positive. To attack an opponent during depressing economic times adds to the sum total of misery within a country, which is never going to go down to well.

But for me, the real blunder was the choice of Vice-President. At first, Governor Palin really seemed to help the McCain campaign. However, in the final analysis the only real ways in which she gathered praise was by being female, and being able to read from an autocue at a national convention. As soon as the razor thin Palin façade was scratched, it became clear that America was being asked to put an out and out, fundamentalist winker a heart beat away from the Presidency. After eight years of having a out and out, fundamentalist wanker as President. And given his health problems and age, McCain’s choice of vice-presidential candidate took on an even more urgent and important tone.

And it wasn’t just the person who was the issue with McCain’s choice of Vice-President. After all, Biden is a twice failed Presidential candidate and Kinnock plagiarist. He also has a tendency to have what you might call foot-in-mouth disease. But Biden was a dull choice, uninspired, but safe. Palin was a gamble – a massive, scary gamble. And McCain has made it clear for everyone – when you gamble, things can go wrong as well as right. Ultimately, though, he should have known just how much of a risk Palin was. He should have done the leg work, he should have met with her more than twice, he should have her had her properly vetted. And had he done all that, he might have seen that Palin would end up as a millstone round his neck rather than the life jacket he so desperately needed.

McCain comes across as someone who has fought his whole life. The sad truth for him is that he lost his final battle. And when you look at it, the failure was down to him as much as it was down to anyone else.

Obama's Victory

Well, he won.

There’s lots to write about today, and there will be websites and column inches filled with hyperbole and a combination of both wonderful analysis and mindless rhetoric. This blog will be no exception. And expect to see the word “history” banded around a lot this morning. After all, things become even more important if you stick the tag “historical” on them. But fuck me, Obama’s victory probably warrants that tag like few other events do.

Before I go into the business of autopsying the McCain campaign and looking into my crystal ball to see what Obama’s presidency may be like, let’s just stop for a moment, and look at what Obama has actually achieved. Regardless of whether you think that Obama is a combination of Jesus Christ, John F Kennedy and Luke Skywalker all rolled into one great package, or whether you think that Obama is an evil lefty ally of evil terrorists everywhere, you have to concede that he has achieved a great deal. A year ago, he was a candidate on the periphery of the Democratic primary season. 4 years ago, he was elected as the junior Senator for Illinois. 8 years ago, no-one had heard of him. Now, he is President-elect of the United States.

And in his brief time in American politics, he has managed not just to climb to the top of the tree, he has also managed to build up a formidable election machine. An election machine that manage to slowly wear down the might of the Clintons, and destroy the widely held assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. And he also managed to comprehensively beat the Republican election machine that has seen off, in the past eight years, a Vice-President and a highly experienced and (in some circles) respected Senator. This time last year, the Obama candidacy looked like he was placing a marker down for future Presidential elections. Now, he is president-elect. It is pretty good going, all told.

Also, Obama has managed to do all this without really committing to anything other than supporting change.

But not is not the time for casual snipes about Obama – they’ll be enough time for that over the next four to eight years. And whilst I am far from sold on Obama, I don’t think I will be alone in admiring what the man has achieved. Circumstances and the actions of his opponents played their part in his victory, but a lot of the credit has to lie with Obama.

Put simply, the boy done good.

Election 2008: Vote Against Bush

So, it is Election Day over the pond today. And millions of people are going to chose which man is going to lead the free world from January. Well, lead the free world and attack any country who messes with his nation.

I think a lot of people will be wanting not so much to vote for McCain or Obama as vote against George W Bush. After all, Bush’s time in the White House has come to resemble not so much a political administration as a series of biblical plagues that has befallen the United States over the past eight years. Seriously, America in 2000 was a prosperous nation with a budget surplus, largely united at home and respected abroad. In 2008, the economy has sunk beneath the waves of a crippling recession, the nation is fighting two increasingly unwinnable wars and the nation seems deeply divided between large liberal enclaves and great swathes of hysterical, Christian fundamentalists. When the flood waters hit New Orleans a few years ago, they didn’t just wreak havoc on that city and its citizens, it also washed away any residual respect and confidence that the majority of the USA had in its leaders.

So yeah, people would be well within their rights to want to vote against W. And if Dubya was running, pretty much any candidate could not so much beat his sorry ass, as bury it in an absolute avalanche of an electoral landslide.

The problem is Bush isn’t running.

In fact, both of the main candidates have made a point of not being George W Bush. Obama’s campaign is pretty much based solely around not being W. If I had to summarise Obama’s campaign, it would be with the Senator standing next to two posters, one saying “Change”, and the other depicting George W Bush. Obama would then alternate, between pointing at the poster saying “change” whilst nodding and smiling, and then pointing at the poster of Bush and shaking his head whilst looking sad. You can praise his campaign as much as you like, but when you truly break it down, it isn’t much more complicated or innovative than that summary.

McCain has also pushed himself away from being associated with George W Bush in anyway. That is no mean feat, since he tends to vote with Bush and is in the same party as the incumbent President. However, he has still managed to treat W as a radioactive lump of crap. His strategy towards Bush has been simple – he wouldn’t touch George Junior with a shitty stick.

So what is the Bush hater to do? Who can they vote against, if they want to voice their strident disapproval of the inbred, slack-jawed shaved chimp of a redneck who has being running their country for the past eight years?

The best plan is to vote against McCain. Not because of who McCain is, or what he stands for. But rather because of his choice of Vice-President.

Make no mistake, Palin represents an extension of George W Bush. A more feminine and slightly more eloquent version, to be sure, but still just an extension of W. She is the same type Christian fundamentalist, gun toting, hunting, creationist, anti-abortion redneck moron as the incumbent President. She is George W Bush’s monster; a cliché of a Republican, born of years of suckling at the teat of the Christian Right. It has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with her world view. She shares the same mindlessly simplistic outlook on the world as the person who has run the US since 2001. Frankly, she makes Dan Quayle looking like Abraham fucking Lincoln.

Americans will go to the polls today and cast their votes based on a whole host of different factors; the economy, the War on Terror, the characters of the candidates vying to be President and so on. But for anyone wishing to absolutely reject the Bush years, then I urge you to vote for Senator Obama. By rejecting McCain, you will also be rejecting a campaign that feels it is appropriate to put an ignorant, narrow minded idiot within grasping distance of the Presidency as a sop to the Christian Right. Palin represents an extension of the Bush administrations – and surely to Christ 8 years of Bush-esque leadership is enough.

Barack Obama: A Politician For Our Times

Whilst he has my grudging support, I can’t claim that Barack Obama – despite the relentless, exhausting hype surrounding him – is an inspiring choice for US President. In fact, the only reason why he has my support is because he isn’t running with that self-styled pitbull in lipstick or, as I prefer to think of Sarah Palin, the fundamentalist in borrowed clothing. Barack Obama is the least worst option; and as such, he is very much the politician of our times.

Despite the media spotlight shining on him, Obama has still managed to fail to explain what he stands for. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what he doesn’t stand for – he isn’t like George W Bush, he isn’t like Hillary Clinton, he doesn’t like the Iraq War and he thinks that the current economic crisis is a bummer. However, there is precious little from that candidate on what he does stand for, other than the audacity of hope. Which sounds great, but when you really break it down, it is not unlike a Miss World candidate wishing for world peace. It is a great aspiration, but it would be nice to know how the ruddy fuck we get there.

Obama represents the new breed of politicians - he stands as perhaps the most shining (certainly the newest) example of the dubious line of publicity hungry politicos that includes Blair, Clinton and Cameron. Those politicians who don't rely on ideology or policy details to get them into power. Instead they focus on looking good for the cameras, and grinning in the right company. They remind me a little of used car salesmen - except they actually have nothing to offer, and even the best possible used car salesman needs a product to sell before they can fleece you for your money.

It is often said that politicians will do pretty much anything to get elected. Obama et al stand as a rebuke to this truism. Don't get me wrong, they'll do pretty much anything to get elected but they stop short of doing just two things. They won't tell you what they believe in, or what they plan to do when they actually get into power. That's the audacity of hope, see. You have to be audacious enough to hope that Obama will be good when he gets into power. All he is actually willing to commit to is being less awful than his opponent.

Post of the Day #2

From the Moai (who is e-mailing me from a public library, as a useless aside) I give you this appraisal of Sarah "In No Way Am I Compellingly Loopy" Palin. Made me laugh out loud, if only for this quote:

It takes gumption and spunk and other made-up words that hearken back to another time - a realer time - a whiter time - back when men were men and women were men and great big hairy-chested frontiersmen of the plains wrestled oxen and caribou and the savage Injun Man in their mighty conquest of the West before succumbing to explosive amoebic dysentery! And with the help of God and millions of dollars in energy industry donations, Sarah Palin will give us that dysentery again!

You know, I reckon a vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for dysentery. So vote Republican if you like having the shits!

Election 2008: Let's all go debatin'

The second 2008 US Presidential debate happened. Actually, saying it "happened" makes it somehow sound much more dramatic than it actually was. So let me rephrase that - the second 2008 US Presidential debate kind of took place. I think.

Obama won - although he didn't have to do much more than turn up to secure his victory. Increasingly, and as the polls turn against him and his campaign, McCain resembles a grumpy, tetchy old man with chronic constipation. He seemed to treat the debate like he is treating his entire battle against Obama; as an inconvenience that shouldn't be happening to a Senator of his calibre.

Whilst Obama won, however, a lot of the coverage seems to be saying that he failed to deliver a "knockout blow". The closest he got was citing McCain singing "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" again. But then I got thinking about it. When do people ever really deliver a knockout blow at these sort of things? Most of the really famous debate moments are not so much one candidate kicking the other in the teeth, but rather one candidate saying or doing something immensely stupid. Take Jerry Ford claiming that Eastern Europe wasn't under Soviet domination in 1976. Or the reprehensible Jimmy Carter in 1980 claiming that his daughter was crucial to his decision making process about the bomb. Or there is my personal favourite - Michael Dukakis responding to a question in 1988 about the death penalty and a theoretical scenario about the rape and murder of his wife like a particularly emotionally cold replicant. None of these examples was really about what those candidates' opponents did - they are simply foot in mouth disease, through and through.

And where does this talk of "knockout blows" come from anyway? These are debates, not boxing matches. Talk of knockouts creates images that are far more exciting than the boring, tepid reality of a US Presidential debate. In fact, calling them debates is probably pushing it. They are far more polite, structured and meaningless that Prime Minister's Questions in this country. Watching a US Presidential Debate is effectively watching boring people, being boring, about boring things, at a boring venue somewhere. The talk of "knockout blows" and other associated hype comes from the media, who are so desperate for something other than endlessly repeated stump speeches that they make these debates into something far more exciting than they are or, indeed, ever could be.

However, the media hype means that these *debates* are important, and will help to decide the outcome of the election. And as it stands, Obama is winning both the debates and the election. Barring an October surprise or a real turnaround in the next debate, President Obama - once just a pipe dream of the more naive US Liberals - is rapidly becoming a reality.

A New York Update

Here in New York, I'm struggling to find a Ron Paul badge. Probably because he dropped out of the race a long time ago. And I am struggling to find a McCain badge as well. So I have settled on two Obama ones, one of which claims he "rocks". For me, The Who rock, Obama - as a slightly dull politico - doesn't. That said, I am wearing my badge with pride, showing my reluctant support for a man I can't even vote for. Man, Obama should be grateful.

But here in the US they really know how to do elections - with petulant debates and angry campaign ads, through to shafting the nation's economy to score cheap political points. So much so that even the hardened election watcher in me is sick of the US election. Which means I am now off to do something far more productive with my time - look for Spiderman webslinging around the roof tops of NYC. 

Sarah Palin and the Media Limelight

It now appears that Sarah Palin, the newbie politician who has somehow wound up on the Republican ticket as Vice President, is now not only more popular that John McCain but is getting more popular than Barack Obama. Which is not bad going for a person who just weeks ago was a complete non-entity.

The question that screams out at me, though, is "why?" Why is there do much focus on Palin? Yes, she is photogenic (relative to the likes of McCain, most people are) and yes, she can make a half decent speech. But she has less experience that Obama, her political ideals are similar to those of the utterly reviled George W Bush. Reviewing her CV and politicial positions, she should be about as popular as a bout of explosive dysentry. Yet she is the darling of the US media. She is being treated like the Second Coming of... well, of Barack Obama.

So why all this attention? Well, the Palin story is an interesting story. Plucked from obscurity, pushed into the national limelight - it makes for damn good copy. But the reason why the Palin star is shining so brightly at the moment is also because, well, her story is new. And it is newer than the Obama story; that story is now a little bit old and tattered around the ages. This shows why politicians who were once media darlings are now languishing in the shadows or finding themselves being eclipsed by brighter, younger political types.

Think about Hillary Clinton. At the beginning of the decade, the story that the First Lady might become President was dynamite. It was exciting; more importantly, it was new. 8 years later, all the novelty has gone from that narrative. It is about as new and exciting as a Discman. And one of the reasons why she failed to win the Democratic nomination - ignoring her increasingly shrill and demented public image - was that her story was now less exciting that the Obama story. The former First Lady becoming President was old news; the charismatic, young black Senator fighting an underdog campaign to become president was far more novel.

Likewise, the reason why McCain was (until recently) languishing behind Obama in the polls was because his story is old hat now. Yes, McCain's history is simultaneously striking, heart-breaking and interesting - and he has achieved a lot more in his (albeit much longer) life than Obama. But we've been hearing stories about McCain since 1999/2000 (his first bid for the Presidency) - and there are only so many times that those stories can be rehashed. When you have the newer story of the charismatic, Kennedy-esque black Senator to write up, well, that story will always get the nod over the endlessly told McCain biography.

Which is why McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate is a genius piece of media manipulation. She has removed the focus from Obama by having a newer story that the Obama tale. Obama's "journey" has now reached saturation point in the media. Palin is a breath of fresh air that the media is latching onto.

Now, you can shout against this mindset - Lord alone knows I want to, but that is something for a different post - but the simple fact is that the media is focussed on the newest story. At the moment, Palin is that story and Obama is suffering as a result.

Of course, this election is far from over and it is more than possible that Obama could still grab a sizable win. However, that isn't going to happen if he lingers on simply being Barack Obama. That is old news now. Likewise, he isn't going to turn it round by talking about pigs in lipstick. He needs a real, eye-catching headline grabbing moment to turn the tables and take the shine off Sarah Palin. He is more than capable of doing this if he realises that this is what he has to do.

Sarah Palin, Commander in Chief

The Economist on Sarah Palin:

"Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: “I’ve been so focused on state government; I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions."

Now the inital excitement about Sarah Palin's selection by McCain has died down, we can take a more objective look at what she represents. And it isn't good. Forget her gender, forget the fact that her daughter is pregnant. Look instead at the candidate. This inexperienced governor from a highly atypical US state whose views on the nation and the world make George W Bush's look expansive could end up just a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Yes, she is photogenic. Yes, she can make a rousing speech in a room full of friends. If she wasn't able to do either of these two things, then she would still be a nobody governor from a nowhere state. But the role she is running to shadow requires a great deal more that just those two things. Her lack of experience could be spun so she is presented as the Washington outsider; that spin is blunted when you realise that, ideologically speaking, she is very similar to the incumbent President. Change will only come to America if the candidates concerned actually want change. If you put Bush Jr and Palin next to each other, the only real differences are cosmetic - she looks a lot less dumb than him. Ideologically, they stand shoulder to shoulder.

Much has already been made in this election of the similarities between real life and The West Wing: Barack Obama as Matt Santos, John McCain as Arnold Vinick; you could even cast Joe Biden as Leo McGarry. But Palin's sudden elevation to the national political stage reminds me more of another US political series - the far inferior Commander In Chief. In that, a typical, right wing Republican President puts a photogenic, maverick independent female on his ticket. He dies in office, and that Vice-President becomes President. It is tempting to point out the similarities between the premise of the show and the situation for the Republicans. The truth is that McCain is far closer to being the maverick independent, whilst Palin is the dyed in the wool, carbon copy Bush era Republican. If McCain is elected, and then shuffles off this mortal coil, America and the world will not thank him for his choice of Vice-President when they realise she is the same as what has gone before.

McCain has done himself, and his campaign, few favours with his selection of Vice-President.

Vice-President Palin

Well, that was a genuine surprise.

On one hand, it would be a great choice. Palin is female, and likely to appeal to moderate Democrats who favoured Clinton for the Democratic nomination. She is also a Washington outsider; the only candidate on either of the main tickets who is not a Senator.

Yet... she is perhaps the only politician in the US who can make Obama look highly qualified. No-one in the US has really heard of her outside of Alaska. And she will be the one who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, serving under the oldest President in history who has already had serious health problems. Palin could become President if the McCain-Palin ticket wins in November - and are the American people really going to be willing to take the risk with an inexperienced governor of a small, remote state who could end up as President?

Whatever happens, this much is clear - McCain has take a massive gamble with his choice of Vice-Presidential candidate. It is a far bolder choice than Obama's, and I kind of admire that willingness to take a risk. Whether or not this choice will blow up in McCain's face, though, remains to be seen...

Quote of the Day - Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton on Barack Obama:

"Everything I learned in my eight years as president and in the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job," the former president said.

Love it. “The right man for the job.” Not the right person, or the best person, but the right man. Even as the Democrats shout to the rafters about their newfound party loyalty, you can still see it, And still feel it - the slight, bitter rancour that the Clinton faction still feel about their defeat. Obama is the right man for the job; they still feel that the best person didn’t win.

Vice-President Biden

So, Senator Joe Biden is Obama's choice for Vice-President. A man who memorably dropped out of a run for the Presidency over 20 years ago for stealing from a speech by... Neil Kinnock. And he has been added to the ticket by Obama to add political weight. Sheesh. Still, at least Obama didn't cave into pressure and go for the Clinton option.

Right now, it is tempting to go for the historical parallels. And just as many look at Obama and see JFK, so you could look at Biden and see LBJ. A respected, capable and experienced Senator added to a ticket to balance a more photogenic but far less experienced Senator. And on some levels, Obama and Biden might want history to repeat itself. After, the JFK/LBJ ticket won. But that is probably where they would like the historical precedents to stop. After all, JFK was gunned down allowing LBJ to become a briefly popular president, before being utterly destroyed and discredited by the Vietnam War.

Of course, Biden also reminds me of someone else - this time a fictional character. Namely, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry in The West Wing - a hugely influential figure in the Democrats chosen to balance the ticket of the far less experienced Matt Santos. Which is hardly surprising, given who Matt Santos was based on. But again, this comparison might not offer Biden a lot of comfort, given the eventual fate of McGarry in the final season...

One house, 7 houses, it is all the same

John McCain on that difficult business of remembering how many properties he owns:

"I think ... I'll have my staff get to you"

Fair enough. I mean, it is a tough question and we all struggle to answer it from time to time. Think about it; how many properties do you own?

Oh… so you do know. Hang on, yes, it is easy to remember. Unless you are fabulously wealthy and own multiple properties.

Seriously, this could be really damaging for McCain. He has painted himself as the down to earth candidate – one of the people – unlike that elitist Obama. His general attitude and demeanour have helped him to build up a lot in common with the electorate. What will lose him that support from the man on the street is the revelation that McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. This revelation is even more damaging when you consider that, at the moment, people are struggling to keep their own single homes. Yes, McCain has a right to own as many homes as he likes and spend his fortune in any way he likes. But to not even know how many homes he has. That reeks of political incompetence and arrogance that undermines his claim to be a man of the people.

But, as it stands, this only *could* be damaging for McCain. Politicians have screwed up before in their quests for the White House and their campaigns have survived. Whether or not this really screws McCain up is down to the response of the Obama campaign. Early indications show that Obama is prepared to use it – but whether it becomes a millstone around McCain’s wrinkled neck comes down to whether Obama truly has a killer instinct

BarackBook

Ladies, Gentlemen, I give you BarackBook.

Now, I'm not one hundred percent convinced that it is as funny or as clever as it thinks it is, but it does at least represent the Republicans going with something approaching gentle satire. Rather than vicious, personal jibes. Although if you click into some of the *friends*, it does get quite near to the bone.

What does make me smile is the comment at the bottom:

Paid for by the Republican National Committee. Not Authorized By Any Candidate Or Candidate's Committee.http://www.gop.com/

Copyright 2008 Republican National Committee

BarackBook.com is a parody of Facebook.com

I'm pretty sure that John McCain genuinely didn't authorise this site. After all, given his knowledge of the internet, he probably doesn't know what Facebook is.

Election 2008: Obama and the polls

So the polls are narrowing, and it looks as if the decrepit McCain is gaining on the empty Obama. And as far as I can see there is one clear reason for this - the Obama World Tour!

Yes, travelling the world like he had already become President won him a lot of plaudits. However, it won him a lot of plaudits outside of the US. And being a popular Democrat outside of the US in this day and age is not difficult - frankly we would support a dribbling, screaming infant for President as long as it claimed to be a Democrat rather than a Republican. And Obama's strategy becomes even more flawed when you consider he is courting support from non-US nationals - ie those who can't vote. In the meantime, people in the US will be understandably confused as to why one of the candidates for President is not trying to get their support, and instead is already behaving like he has won. If I was an ignorant redneck in a Mid-West state, I would be fucking enraged*.

The election is still months away, and the polls (that are generally still seeing a slight Obama lead) could shift again, and there is every reason to think that they might shift in Obama's favour as there is to think they might shift in McCain's favour. But there is one big problem that Obama faces - namely, that he is running as the candidate for *change*.

*Change*, as totally nebulous as it might be, is a great thing to be supporting - if you are running against a candidate of the status quo. The problem Obama has is that change will happen anyway come January 2008. McCain, should he win, will be (mercifully) different to Bush. Change is coming, regardless of whether people vote for Obama or not. Obama needs a clearer reason for people to vote for him - it can't simply be a case of change, because if McCain was canny enough, he could run as the candidate of change too.

Looking at the Obama campaign, it seems to me that they haven't quite twigged yet that they are not running against George W Bush. Yes, if Bush was standing for President again, they would be whuppin' his sorry ass! But he isn't. They are up against the far more moderate McCain. And the constant moves by Obama to the right are strategic misfires - he needs to be distinguishing himself from McCain, not making himself more like his rival.

This being a high-profile election means there will be no shortage of armchair pundits offering their half-baked advice on what Obama should so to guarantee his victory come November. And given that, I'll throw my half-baked opinion into the ring as well. World Tours may be nice boosts to the ego, but they are going to mean the square root of fuck all to a voter in Arkansas or Delaware, who has never been abroad and doesn't really approve of the idea of there being a world outside of the United States anyway. The Obama campaign would be far better served by having their candidate making the case for why he should be President, and what he can offer the voters. It sounds like a really basic piece of advice; yet it is one that the Obama campaign seems to be in need of.

*Of course, if I was an ignorant redneck from a Mid-West state I would be fucking enraged anyway - not least at God for making me an ignorant redneck.

Election 2008: Dead Time

From the outside looking in, this is the dull time in any US Presidential contest. The dead time. The nominees will need millions, if not billions, of dollars to call each other a slag on a national scale, and that money doesn’t just magically appear, you know. They’ll be doing the hard graft – fund-raising chicken dinners, delivering the same stump speech to self-important businessmen and local dignitaries across the US. Both McCain and Obama will be crawling up their potential donors’ arseholes in an attempt to raid the wallets, at the same time as secretly hating those donors with a passion. But from the outside, this fund raising dead time is just repetitive and boring.

And yet, this time in any presidential contest fascinates me. Because you can start to imagine what is happening behind the scenes.

Both sides will now be thinking exactly how they will fight the coming General Election. I imagine Team McCain are thinking about the best strategies to “take the fight to Obama”. I can see John McCain raging at his subordinates, demanding to know why they can’t smear Obama’s Vietnam record. And I can imagine those sub-ordinates explaining in a gentle, calm way that Obama was a toddler during the height of the Vietnam war, and no matter what McCain might think, people still don’t think toddlers should fight at the front line. And then Team Obama will be sat around, no doubt pondering whether they will actually be able to do the unthinkable, and run a presidential campaign without committed to any policies. At all. Ever.

What is even more fun is thinking about all those different politicians from the same parties who have been slating each other through an incredibly cannibalistic primary season making friends again. The BBC carries this story about Obama making friends again with Bill Clinton:

An Obama spokesman said the two had had a "terrific" conversation during a 20-minute telephone call.

Yes, and one can imagine that after that 20 minute phone call both men simultaneously got off the phone and muttered “fuck you very much”. They’re not friends. They hate each other. Any claims that they are friends are about as credible as the Cabinet here in the UK saying they support Gordon Brown – a big old bag of bollocks.

But the reason why they are suddenly friends is the final reason why this is such a fun time for the US Presidential Election. Because, behind the scenes, the negotiations, debates and arguments are happening about who should take the Vice-Presidential roles on the two tickets. No doubt Hillary Clinton is absolutely convinced that she will be the Veep for Obama – hence Bill trying to make friends with Obama again. And I am equally sure that the Obama HQ has regular moments of despair, as the wonder what the hell they are going to do with that “Hillary problem”. Over in the Republican camp, the mentalist Mike Huckabee is probably waiting for the call from McCain to ask him to become Vice-President – after all, in Huckabee’s demented little world, he is God’s own politician. In the meantime, any Republican politician who lives even slightly in the real world is wondering whether they will get the nod from the decrepit McCain. I mean, for the love of fuck, surely McCain won’t choose to run with the man who took a phone call from God at a fucking fund raiser?

These are the interesting times, people, if you picture the unreported conversations going on behind the scenes. I imagine it all as one of the more interesting episodes of The West Wing, albeit with less piety and more swearing. And it won’t last forever. Soon we’ll have the nominating conventions, and then the endless bitching of the actual Presidential campaign.

Election 2008: Terror, terror, everywhere

One of John McCain's staff has got himself into trouble after making comments about terrorism. Apparently another terror attack on the US "Certainly it would be a big advantage to (McCain)".

The response has been tedious in the extreme - Obama slates the aide, McCain distances himself from the aide, and the aide apologies. So far, so good. You could argue the aide is right in his analysis - well, maybe, but you do have to admit it was a pretty dumb fucking thing to say. But the even more worrying comment for me came in that aide's follow-up:

"I recognise that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration." (My emphasis).

Seriously, you what, now? Security is more important than anything else, in the world, ever? That's just pigging stupid. Security is (and must) be a key consideration, but in conjunction with other things. Like, you know, freedom. After all, if we all lived in bomb proof bubbles in concrete shelters we'd be pretty fucking secure - although the quality of live would be absolutely shocking. There is a trade off between security and other considerations; security cannot be placed before any other consideration.

Plus, other considerations will increase security, as insane as that might sound to paranoid politicians everywhere. But it is true. A strong economy means more contentment which is turns means a lesser chance of people being radicalised and therefore increases security. Likewise, health is another key consideration - it doesn't matter how secure I am if my body is consumed by rancid cancer.

This mindless veneration of security is a major problem today. It leads to crap policies like the Patriot Act, like 42 days detention. The only way to guarantee security absolutely is via totalitarianism, and make no mistake about it - that is where the priorities of McCain et al will lead.

Election 2008: The Clinton Millstone

On some levels I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Yes, he’s got what he seems to lust after – the chance to run for President. He actually stands – despite a massive lack of experience – the chance to get elected President. He’s not done too badly for himself.

Yet he has a massive headache. In fact, he has an eyeball popping migraine of a problem. It is, of course, Hillary Clinton. Now, Obama and his campaign might feel she is no longer a problem – after all, he seems to have finally consigned her campaign to the dustbin of history. Yet she still looms over him, like a shrill, demented sword of Damocles. Because, having failed to win the nomination, she now has set her razor sharp, Terminator-esque eyes on the vice-presidential nomination.

The simplest thing to do would be to offer Clinton the vice-presidency. He would have her onside, and he would have the considerable support she mustered in the primaries behind him as well. Yet how long would it be until she started to think that she was the one running for President rather than Obama? If their ticket won the White House, how long would it take her to assume she was President? You’d have to be delusional and arrogant to make that that sort of assumption – but after her endless campaign for President, you could argue that Clinton is both.

However, the latest intelligence seems to suggest that Obama is shunning Clinton. Fair enough, but this strategy has risk attached to it as well. And that risk can be summed up by the question “just how insane is Hillary Clinton?” If she is snubbed again, what will she do? I doubt, given her campaign for the Presidency increasingly showed the *tenacity* of a rabid poodle savaging a child’s face, that she will simply shrug and walk away. So how destructive will she be? Will she just refuse to campaign for her unlikely victor? Will she start a whispering campaign against him? Will she completely lose the plot, and run as an Independent - thus throwing the chances of the Democrats winning the White House back straight down the crapper?

Make no mistake; Hillary Clinton is a millstone around the neck of Obama. And it is a millstone that could drown the Obama campaign, just as surely as it drowned the once invincible Hillary ’08 campaign.

Clinton '08 - No More

And finally... she bows out.

There will be some who will be advise Obama to make Hillary Clinton his Vice-Presidential candidate for the election in November. And there is a case for that - she clearly has some support in the Democrats - how else would she manage to drag out her campaign for so long?

And yet... would you want Hillary as your Vice-President? Would you want her in your White House, constantly trying to become involved in every aspect of your administration? Would you want her running her own presidential campaign, whilst you run for President? Would you want her running for President, whilst you run the country? And would you want her secretly praying you get gunned down, so she can take your Presidency from you?

Maybe I'm being harsh about Hillary Clinton, but her campaign has highlighted again and again her naked lust for power. She wants to be President more than anything else, and will not let anyone or anything - even reality - stand in her way. If I was Obama, I'd be very wary before I made the call to Hillary, asking her to be my Vice-President.