My latest op-ed at the Washington Times concerns America’s new status as a center-left nation.

It is not all Mr. McCain’s fault - supporters of small government and the free market have simply failed to make their case to voters. It took a plumber from Toledo to make even a dent in Mr. Obama’s leftist pleasantries, prompting right-leaning voters old enough to remember the Soviet Union as more than an ironic fashion statement to recoil in shock with a cry of “Why, that’s, that’s socialism!” Yet on Election Day, these voters found themselves outnumbered, and not by small margins. They were outnumbered not just by young voters attracted to Mr. Obama’s celebrity or minority voters attracted to his historical nature - though they are legion - but by voters who are tired of the status quo, who have heard no case for the free market on the national stage in a generation, and who want to give Mr. Obama’s policies a shot, and see what happens.

Read the rest of it here.

In an election cycle that saw the explosion of “Fact Check” articles written from thinly-disguised partisan bias, there is one fact that the overwhelming majority of voters going to the polls on Tuesday cannot deny: The 2008 election will finally end.

Regardless of the outcome, we all should be thankful for this fact, if only for the sake of the battered American psyche.

Some academics over the years have intoned that the voting process itself can be considered a legal act of peaceful revolution, in keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-cited musing that “A little rebellion now and then…is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” If this comparison is accurate, then the only logical conclusion in the aftermath of this contest is that, in the modern age, a little democracy now and then is bad medicine indeed for the mental health of America.

America is so very tired of it all – tired of the hacks, the flacks, and the attacks. Ah, for the older, simpler days of politics, when dirty-fingered men would hand out pamphlets on the street corner with more veracity than the accusations of the 24-hour networks.

Closing the book on the 2008 election would take the strength of a full grown elephant and donkey, yoked in tandem, if the volume held a full accounting of the twists and travails of this never-ending contest, with full appendices of fiends and follies.

What a range of surprises the bizarre tome would contain. How could even the wisest minds of Washington have predicted these two candidates, even a year ago, would emerge from the primary season as the party nominees? How could they have predicted that their stances on the war in Iraq, the largest contributing factor to each man’s victory, would barely be a topic of mention in the final weeks of the campaign, pushed aside by the controversy of an Alaska Governor’s fashion choices and the economic viewpoints of a Toledo plumber?

How could they have predicted that John McCain, for years the Republican most popular with the press, would become a jilted lover? How could they predict that Barack Obama, based on fewer than 200 days experience in the U.S. Senate, could predict with a messianic aplomb unseen since the days of William Jennings Bryan, that his election would be retold to children in decades hence as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” with a straight face?

Perhaps most shocking of all: who could have predicted that this cycle, featuring two men who repeatedly declared their ability to unite the country in bipartisan spirit in the wake of eight divisive years, would put the charge of “Socialism” back in common usage?

Speaking to one of his glorious rallies on Wednesday, Sen. Obama claimed that “By the end of the week, [Sen. McCain] will be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

There’s only one problem with that line, of course: Sen. Obama isn’t talking about sharing his sandwich as President. He’s talking about sharing yours.

As the overwhelming favorite on Tuesday, Sen. Obama stands to emerge from this race with the most ethereal presidential mandate of the modern era. How can one give a mandate to a party headed by a politician who insists his election alone will accomplish his policy goals? As the old song goes, he doesn’t want to set the world on fire – he just wants to spark a flame in your heart. And spark it he has - but if the polls are to be believed, it’s very unlikely this spark will transfer to Senate Democrats, who may gain as few as 4 net seats in an election cycle where a 60-vote filibuster proof majority had once seemed a foregone conclusion.

Sen. Obama’s model for success, in other words, is a model dependent entirely on the person of Barack Obama. It is not exactly a model for a new Democratic majority.

Consider former Gov. Mark Warner, poised to win Virginia by a significant margin, as the contrast. In him, you see the model for a pro-capitalist Democratic majority that recognizes the center-right nature of the electorate. Where Warner once denounced social conservatives and gun rights voters as “threatening to what it means to be an American,” he went on to earn “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association, and proved to be a centrist on fiscal issues. Gov. Warner has no buoyant cult of personality around him – his keynote speech to the Democratic Convention earlier this year was widely viewed as a flop – but rather a practical resume of solid government work.

In Gov. Warner, we see the kind of pragmatic politician who represents the policy viewpoints of a permanent Democrat majority. But in Sen. Obama, we see the kind of hubristic politician who could very well squander an electoral victory – attained not so much thanks to his policies or celebrity charisma as fatigue over President George W. Bush – by overreaching.

A regrouped conservative movement, likely to have an even firmer hold on the GOP, will be ready if he does. The successful politicians on the right in 2008 almost all share one attribute: a populist streak that is very strong and vibrant. There’s no question that, as we saw in ‘92-93, the next 2-4 years will find this third of the GOP increase the strength of this variety of politics.

Today, the American people are sending a mandate for change. But getting them to agree on what the word “change” means, and what government results from it, is a very difficult thing. If Sen. Obama makes the mistake of believing that his election represents a mandate for redistribution of wealth, for socialized medicine, for a reintroduction of the welfare state through tax credits to those who pay nothing…he may soon find that his electoral coalition is more delicate than he imagined. Matt Yglesias is already urging him on toward this course, suggesting that this election will grant an unrestrained mandate to American progressives.

The right can only hope the new overlords believe the hype.

We shall see. For now, be thankful the election that would not die is finally, at long last, proving to be mortal. Come Tuesday, put the yard signs away for a bit, and say farewell to our most modern folly. Americans now should take their cue from T.S. Eliot, and saying “Well now that’s done, and I’m glad it’s over,” put a record on the gramophone.

Video by Mary Katherine Ham.

Since I live in the newly swing state of Virginia and specifically in very swinging Loudoun County, and have voted here in every election since I could vote, allow me to point out what would be obvious to anyone who lived here: the amount of enthusiasm for John McCain among the people who get voters to the polls and determine whether this county is red or not is almost nonexistent.

Part of it’s ideological, in the sense that many of the conservative activists in Virginia are more Lou Dobbsian than you might expect (there’s a reason Huckabee beat McCain by a 2-1 margin in Roanoke), but it says something that I can’t even find as many volunteers in this county as George Allen had in the final days after Macaca - the volunteer base was one of the reasons Allen made a late surge, making up a good deal of ground, and still almost won here running against a self-styled centrist Democrat in a year that was terrible for Republicans. Allen only lost the county in 2006 by 7,000 votes, less than 3 tenths of a percent. His total margin of loss statewide was 10,000 votes, less than .5 tenths of a percent. In other words: Loudoun alone determined Webb’s victory.

The Obama campaign has deluged us with smiling volunteers, most bussed in from other places. I got a notebook-sized book, with a hand-written message, left at my door while I was at church the other day. It is the finest piece of political literature I’ve ever seen. It’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. All flowing Gotham font and perfect image selection. It makes Kitten look like the most moderate, experienced Democrat you’ve ever seen. You want to put it on your coffee table.

McCain’s people left a torn door hanger shoved against my door with a picture of him looking like he was constipated. Knocking on doors on a Sunday morning - well, that’s fine for the Democrats, but for the Republicans? Please.

This year, the Republican Party selected the most ideologically moderate, media-friendly nominee of my lifetime. They picked him because, like Dole in 96, he was the guy who deserved his shot. They picked him because they thought the fact that he’d made a career out of stabbing his party in the back would befriend him to the horde or make him difficult for the New York Times to attack.

They thought wrong. As Mark Salter expresses it in what should be held as THE classic rant of this cycle to Jeffrey Goldberg - and it’s all true! - it’s not McCain who’s changed, it’s the media that’s covering him.

JG: What do you think of the assertion that McCain is exploiting his P.O.W. experiences?

MS: I find that very offensive. Barack Obama gets to tell his story why? Because it’s more potent?

JG: How are you feeling about the press these days?

MS: Look, I think, starting with the Democratic primary, there has been a different standard for Obama than there has been for any candidate running against Barack Obama. And maybe this should have set off more warning bells with me. I think much of the media has a thumb on the scale for Obama. I think the thumb has been there the entire time. There are many honorable exceptions, I don’t mean to tar everybody, but I think there’s one standard for us, and one standard for Obama. He has run more negative ads than McCain has run ads. They run from the quite misleading to the blatantly untrue.

Once he stopped jabbing GOPers in the eye with a sharp stick and started running as the nominee of a party, the media reacted:

JG: Looking back, do you think there was something false about your salad days with the press?

MS: No, I’m trying not to draw general lessons about the press or us or the meaning of life out of all of this. Otherwise I’d despair. I think the media is driven by a need to see this history happen. And I think they’ve rationalized it, they think they’re on the level with McCain, that he’s not the old McCain. But he is the old McCain. He just doesn’t know what happened to the old press corps. They rationalize a reason to go get him. Every Obama attack they carry. Every McCain criticism of Obama they rush to blunt even before Obama does.

JG: Putting aside Palin, is one of the problems you’re facing the fact that there’s no foreign policy discussion right now?

MS: Iraq was supposed to be the issue of the campaign. We assumed it was our biggest challenge. Funny how things work.

The Republicans ignored the fact that with the exception of the surge, John McCain has been out of step with the base about just about every policy he’s chosen to stick his neck out to support. He’s just burned too many bridges along the way to this moment. If you don’t get the people who can deliver 2,000 home schoolers on 24 hours notice to support you, you can’t win this state.

Nowhere is McCain’s wrongness about one of his key issues, the public financing of elections, going to hurt him more than in the Virginia TV market - Sunday afternoon, over the course of multiple football games, I saw what felt like 75 Obama ads - three separate ones, alternating, repeating every commercial break - messages of fix your health care, cut your taxes, McCain is a fraud. I did not see a single McCain ad. Not one.

The public financing gambit from McCain was always based on the proposition that, with the right candidates in either party, an agreement of restrictions on the weapons at hand would be good for democracy. It would enable both candidates to engage in a dozen town hall meetings, which McCain loves, and spread their message in limited and less negative form. But when you count “1, 2, 3″ and drop all your weapons but a Bowie knife, and the other guy is standing there with a Surface to Air Missile on his shoulder, saying “Eh, I changed my mind,”, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

Winning Northern Virginia exurb voters, like winning most elections outside of an urban environment, is done by having volunteers, activists, and targeted GOTV efforts. It is done through massive mobilization and organization and, on a few key policy points, running well-designed and well-targeted ads (Obama has the luxury of not having to target at all - he’s doing the sledgehammer method, running ads on every channel I watch, every sporting event, every comedy show, even late night cartoons). I was stunned at the number of mobilizers, organizers, and longtime volunteers who were sitting this McCain ride out completely before the Palin pick (which energized the volunteer base like nothing else - her rallies are easily twice the size of his). And this isn’t just true in Virginia. But those are the stories for the morning after.

This morning, this showed up in my inbox. I walk to this park every week, sometimes twice. And on Wednesday, Barack will be coming to town.

This Wednesday, October 22nd, please join Barack Obama in Leesburg, where he will talk about his vision for creating the kind of change we need.

Change We Need Rally
with Barack Obama

Ida Lee Park
Festival Field
50 Ida Lee Drive, NW
Leesburg, VA

Wednesday, October 22nd
Gates open: 3:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 5:30 p.m.

RSVP

http://va.barackobama.com/LeesburgChange

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required; however, an RSVP is strongly encouraged. Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For security reasons, do not bring bags and please limit personal items. No signs or banners permitted.

Obama’s about to head to Hawaii to see his ailing grandmother - poor gal, the one he called a “typical white person” - but a rally in Leesburg, VA, a place that elects a solidly moderate GOPer in Representative Frank Wolf like clockwork every two years, is more important.

The Lesson: The Media is a fickle creature. Grudging respect is not a basis for a successful electoral campaign. And running Old and Busted against the New Hotness is a whole mess of Fail.

Here’s my latest Washington Times oped, on Joe Wurzelbacher’s questioning of Obama, and how it shows McCain’s limits. The closer:

“The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not reason,” G.K. Chesterton mused a century ago. “The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it.” America’s electoral choice in 2008 is no longer based on reason, on the whys and wherefores of established fact, or on the citizen — the plumber — expressing his view. It is based on the new unshakeables of feeling and sentiment, on a state of mind expressed eloquently in Mr. Obama’s surprisingly honest slogan — no, not the ever-present affirmation of “Yes we can,” but the bastardized Latin of his hubristic presidential seal: “Vero Possumus.” Literally translated, it is an exclamation with all the balance and reason of a toddler stamping his feet: “I do it!”

And soon enough, barring a thousand more Joe the Plumbers brave enough to withstand the assault, he will.

Read it all here.

My latest op-ed over at the Washington Times concerns the dueling perspectives of John McCain and Barack Obama on our economic woes - and how both fail the test:

So, here’s a story to tell the grandkids around some future autumn kitchen table. Once upon a time, the American people, facing the greatest global economic crisis in a generation, headed to the polls to choose the next leader of the free world and custodian of the formerly free market. Their options were limited to the dashing young lawyer and the battle-tested combat pilot, two men who for all their appeal had never run a state, a town or a business - large or small.

It’s shocking to consider how Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama come to the challenges of the day with such little economic knowledge of their own. If both won their respective primaries thanks in the largest part to their positions on security issues - Mr. McCain elevated by his undeniable vindication on the Iraq troop surge, Mr. Obama fueled by a vibrant antiwar upsurge that now seems like little more than postwar bitterness and should change little about the outcome of the conflict - neither comes to the fray knowing more about the economy than what others tell them. And for advice, one has the banking lobby whispering in his ear while the other has the corrupt handmaidens of Fannie and Freddie holding his purse strings.

Read it all over at the WT website.

I watched very little of it, but I think Ezra Klein’s assessment sums up the opinions of the blogosphere rather tidily:

This is a pretty traditional debate performance for Obama. Strong on substance. Few mistakes. Little in the way of killer instinct or decapitating lines. McCain, by contrast, is offering an uncommonly strong performance powered, as far as I can tell, by his raging contempt for Obama. He won’t look at him. He’s using “what Senator Obama doesn’t understand” the way Joe Biden uses “ladies and gentlemen.” His constant refrain is the places he’s visited, leaders he’s befriended, aging advisers and presidents he’s known. Obama is conveying the fact that he thinks McCain wrong. But McCain is conveying the fact that he thinks Obama an unprepared lightweight. One of these is a stronger claim than the other.

Obama is without question the more appealing fellow on a stage: he has a commanding presence, an engaging smile, a great voice for the thing. He makes things seem more substantive just by talking about them (where the same lines repeated by, say, John Kerry would seem limp and trite). He’s also fantastic when it comes to changing the subject - he can easily glide from a tough topical question to a series of vague and nice sounding policies (hence Lehrer’s frustration at points tonight). But he also has the smart professor’s disease of talking long and being a poor self-editor, thinking that using a string of numbers is an argument, and generally sounding like he loves the way he talks. This makes him ideal for a campus debate, or excellent in a venue where his opponent is restrained (see: Clinton, Hillary), but poor in a situation where the other debater comes to the forum carrying a lead pipe in his craggy old hands.

McCain is used to the dueling of the Senate floor - he’s a poor speaker generally, not an inspirational vocalist, and a reader and a narrator as opposed to an elucidator of things. Where Obama can make any muddle seem appealing, McCain is oftentimes forced to either skip the muddle or get bogged down in it and lose the audience. McCain won very few of the debates during the GOP primary, and when he did win, he often seemed like a mean old man berating students for being idiots. But he does have his moments, and when he gets a good clip going, McCain ceases to seem mean, and instead comes across as a supporting character in a David Mamet screenplay, smiling jubilantly as he brings that pipe down.

In this situation, with this opponent in the arena, McCain seems rejuvenated. Where Obama is young and smart, McCain is old and forceful. Even his smile is wartorn and uneven next to Obama’s gleam and Denzel Washington-like symmetry, but the unevenness gives him a certain grace. McCain is the known quantity on stage, and he has nothing to prove; most of Obama’s slights about him being Bush 3.0 just don’t sell, because his brand is so well-defined already. This gives him a slight advantage, as Klein notes - Obama has to come to these debates to close the deal, to sell himself as the next President, to convince the last waverers not to jump over to the other side in a time of uncertainty. McCain, on the other hand, just needs to convince people that Obama is unready to lead, a gamble in a dangerous time, a guy who’s better suited for the celebrity circuit than the Oval Office.

There’s something oddly amusing about these seeing these two very odd characters go at it. Neither of them really know anything about the biggest issue in this election, the economy - one’s a soldier, one’s a lawyer. McCain is the more emotional of the two, more inclined to act on gut instinct and passion, while under Obama’s soft exterior is a more calculating and capable politician. Four years ago, one never would’ve predicted that either of these men would end up on this stage.

Now we’re stuck with them, and there’s nothing else for it. So let’s hope they’ll still take paper money for popcorn at the next one.

My latest oped in The Washington Times seems to be suffering from a CMS-based problem that cuts off the first sentence. Thankfully, if you got the paper on Monday, you know what it says. But in case you didn’t, here’s the lede:

The news last week that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor had been contacted for vetting purposes by the Vice Presidential selection committee of John McCain’s campaign was met with one of two reactions: a whispered “now that would be interesting,” from conservatives who are quite familiar with Rep. Cantor’s history and capabilities – and from all other parties, the sound of one giant cacophonous “Who?”

Yet while Cantor is not the household name among Republicans of other potential veep choices, such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in many ways choosing the young Virginian would be in keeping with McCain’s unique style of principled risk-taking, a throwback to his maverick origins, and one that might just cinch the election in November for the GOP.

Since I wrote my column, an initial attack on Cantor from the Democratic National Committee has been released. Oddly, for such a brief attack, the word “Jewish” appears five times, including the line “Both Abramoff and Cantor are Jewish.” That’s apparently the best they can do.

Read the rest of the oped here.

>> A quick post on Obama v. McCain at Saddleback: the initial reports confirm my feeling that McCain was surprisingly good, and Obama performed very poorly in a venue that seemed otherwise made for him to make inroads.  Revolution in Jesusland correctly points out that Warren teed up the abortion question perfectly for Obama. And he still couldn’t manage it.  Jake Tapper points out that Obama caught very few breaks, and meandered through answers as the audience sat silent.  This isn’t just the advantage of McCain’s incredibly powerful story - I love how they still have to explain IXOYE to folks - he seemed genuinely at home with a group of evangelicals that are not, frankly, part of his natural base, in front of a pastor who is decidedly favorable toward Obama.

And frankly, I found the one question I thought Obama would’ve been prepared for - about judicial nominations - to be one of his worst answers of the night.  How does Doug Kmiec respond to arguments from the candidate he has risked all to support when he says things like this?

Asked which existing Supreme Court Justice he, as president, would not have nominated, Obama immediately said he “would not have nominated Clarence Thomas…I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of constitution.”

For good measure, he added he would not have nominated Antonin Scalia, “although I don’t think there’s any doubt about his intellectual brilliance.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, whose confirmation Obama voted against, “was a tougher question only because I find him to be a very compelling person.”

This little icanhas-friendly banner was inspired by the announcement yesterday by the McCain campaign that you can create, for a mere $250, a banner expressing your unique satisfaction with John McCain. I’m not sure what to say to this idea, but it reminded me about how aesthetically unappealing presidential campaigns tend to become - their logos the product of hours of debate and committees populated by people who’ve never designed anything worth emailing.

If you want a sign of how conventional politics is, and how the innovation of the Obama campaign really is finally catching up a national campaign with the design trends of the ’90s, check out this collection of presidential bumper stickers, 1960-2008. I particularly love how Fred Thompson’s sticker is crowded, illegible, and the color of prune juice, as if designed for the Law & Order-watching retirement communities of Florida in which he put so much hope.

The best part of any designed branding, though, has to do with the font choice of a campaign. Ah, these are some doozies. And 2008 is no exception - as one of my favorite typography blogs Ask H&FJ recently pointed out. The originators of the Gotham font so famously used by The New Adonis, they even mocked up graphics with the Hillary and McCain fonts in their proper place:

Nor were these designers alone in their fascination with these choices. The New York Times hosted a roundtable on McCain’s font, the overused 90s relic Optima (which nonetheless still has some gravitas, since it’s the font displaying the names of so many heroes on the Vietnam Memorial). The descriptions can get a little silly, but there’s truth in this ridiculousness:

While it is not the most robust sans serif ever designed, it is not entirely neutral either. It embodies and signifies a certain spirit and attitude. And if a typeface is not just an empty vessel for meaning, but a signifier that underscores personality, then it is useful in understanding what the candidates’ respective typefaces are saying about them and their campaigns.

The designers questioned have some interesting thoughts - some like the selection, most hate it, but many concede that it’s a choice that has a good deal in common with McCain’s personality. The newest entry in the presidential stakes, Libertarian Bob Barr, has a font that seems like a solid midwestern pro-American creation, suitable for a beer can or a local sports bar - neither of which, I think, would meet the approval of the Prohibitionist candidate for President (yes, there still are those). Chuck Baldwin, the televangelist Constitution Party candidate, has a logo that looks as if it should grace a can of Play Doh or silly putty. Over at the Green Party, the colorful logo of Cynthia McKinney pits an offkilter insurgency against a staid old Nader logo that looks not unlike his original presentation more than a decade ago. It’s honest, at least - even his logo looks like dried-up ’80s-era socialism.

Asking whether this odd grabbag of out-of-touch designs are any more a sign of what lies within each candidate than Obama’s famous O logo illustrates how foolhardy this talk is: football players don’t pick their NFL team based on the logos on the helmet, or pick a sport based on whether they want to wear Nike, Reebok or adidas. All that Obama’s campaign has done is recognize that they should start abiding by the rules of a different game - not the tired old design choices of prior candidates, with the same color arcs and blocky typefaces, but with the attitude of tried and true corporate ad agencies. Sell a candidate like you’d sell a good pair of shoes, and the same people tend to listen and react.

Of course, if you want to see real font-leveraging in action, you have to go back to the good old days, when things were cool and slick. Yes, the glory days, before everything had to be grungy and worn-in: the 1980s. Watch this first. Read this second.

>> I got a little heat when I raised the issue a few months back, but no one should be surprised that now the nomination belongs to McCain, the MSM is crowing about the Natural Born Citizen issue.  Personally, I doubt that the Senate bill will resolve anything - there will still be a lawsuit about this at some point - but it is nice to occasionally be called clairvoyant.  It happens rarely enough for me outside of NFL predictions.