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.

I n every Presidential election, it’s my experience that reports of fraud tend to be a bit exaggerated. Yes, there will always be a degree of problems - but most of those are of the human error variety, not purposeful lawbreaking. With so many millions voting, and so many election officials who are really just volunteer librarians, mistakes are bound to happen. The Electoral system helps guard against these things mattering, and I am fairly confident that outside some isolated incidents in big cities, voter fraud won’t change who wins the Presidency tomorrow. Corrupt as they are, I doubt very much that ACORN will provide the margin of victory.

Now, when it comes to local elections, I think the story is the reverse. Voter fraud can have a huge impact on a local level, and yet it’s almost always underreported. ACORN can’t make a difference in the presidential stakes, but they can make a difference in who becomes the next mayor, commissioner, or Congressman. And it’s surprisingly easy for that to happen in an environment where election laws and regulations are shockingly lax.

Consider where I live - Loudoun County, Virginia, arguably the swing county in a swing state, and one Obama is absolutely certain to win if you’re keeping score. Here in Virginia, you can go in and vote absentee early - a slightly different arrangement than other states, but quite straightforward in practice. An enormous number of people, more than 450,000, have taken advantage of this so far. All you have to do is go to your local office, stand in line for about 30-45 minutes, fill out a form, and vote.

At the Loudoun location on Saturday, they weren’t requiring picture ID - not even a Federal one, just any ID. Turns out you don’t need one. How convenient.

But if, in theory, Virginia decided to require that you present an ID as opposed to just sign a piece of paper (which will only matter if there’s a lawsuit, of course, which costs money and time and is politically dangerous), it’s awfully easy to get ahold of a Virginia voter card with someone else’s name on it (perhaps one of these fun creations). Especially if you rent rather than own.

You see, in a state with more than 400,000 newly registered voters since the last election, polling places have changed a lot. The Volunteer Firehouse location where I’ve voted all but once in the past 8 years can’t contain the polling place this year, so it’s moved. So have the polling places for much of Loudoun. The local Election Board was kind enough to send out a mass mailing informing every voter effected by this change a few months back.

And they were also kind enough to include a new voter card, with your name, address, and local polling place printed on it.

Personally, I received five voter cards in the mail. One was mine - four others were for people who have not lived in the house I rent for more than three years. Five different names. Same address. They sure do make it easy.

Useful, that. If you were interested in helping your guy, whoever it is, win.

It’s really quite easy to do a bit of DIY Election Fraud in an age where they send the Voter Card, info and all, direct to you. But hell, you won’t even need it in the Old Dominion - there’s no ID required. Just sign the paper promising you’re cool, and your vote matters just as much as everyone’s.

It’s like leaving the front door wide open for days, and being surprised that the TV is gone when you come back.

Democracy: you’re doing it wrong.

Update: More here and here.

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.

A small hypothetical for you all to entertain as you watch tonight’s debate:

When Joe Biden first ran for the Senate, he ran as a Democrat in a Democratic year. In Washington, he’s been a fairly moderate Democrat - a servant of MBNA and the credit card companies in Delaware, he’s been a frequent friend of the corporation and the businessman. He’s played the Washington game a bit - sending his son to a high-class lobbying job, playing both sides of Clarence Thomas during that nomination debacle, putting his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion - but on the whole, he’s never been a radical.

Is it that hard to imagine Biden as a Republican, instead of a Democrat?

His voting pattern is not all that dissimilar from Senator Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, or Biden’s former colleague, moderate GOPer Bill Roth. Highly educated and ambitious from his youth, he has the brash ego of a career politician and a penchant for outrageous remarks that far exceed any Macaca moments. He likes the military and Amtrak and corporations. He likes America. He dislikes hippies. He’s fairly moderate in ideology and testy in temperament.

On the other side, you have Sarah Palin - a rural feminist, with a strong religious undercurrent, a blue collar background, a PTA member, a Union member, pro-gun, pro-life, and pro-military but a bit isolationist and rather libertarian on gay rights issues. A son in the military - a recruit, not an officer - and a Huckabee-esque penchant for bashing authority. She can’t be painted into any particular corner ideologically, but she is hated by government bureaucrats as much as she is loved by the citizens of her state.

Is it that hard to imagine Palin as a Democrat, instead of a Republican?

She’s the member of no old guard, no political establishment, has no family wealth to fall back on. Her astounding political win in a relatively minor state comes hard fought against the male-dominated Republican leadership. She does so by taking a populist anti-corporate and anti-establishment position, talking in very blue-collar terms about climate change and the need to install immediate reforms. If there’s a comparison on the D side, she’s the female Jim Webb: brash and inspiring, the people who like her adore her, and the people who dislike her hate her intensely.

Imagine this debate, for one moment, with Sarah Palin - the socially traditionalist (need those evangelical swing voters!), blue collar union member, telegenic Democratic Veep nominee - and Joe Biden - the old white guy who’s been in Washington forever, wedded to the credit card companies, who’s never done anything but be a lawyer-politician, who’s gotten money from every interest group and traded favors with everyone under the sun - as the Republican Veep nominee?

I could see it. And I wonder how the media would treat it differently.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson has the right idea.

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.

>> 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.

For a presidential candidate who has based so much of his message on an appeal to a new generation of voters thirsty for hope and change, Barack Obama said something a few weeks back which almost seemed – dare one use such an epithet – uncool.

Speaking to an audience in Indiana, Obama talked about the latest national ill he hopes to cure from the Oval Office: the scourge of video games, embodied by the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV. Admitting that he was only prompted to make the remark based only on a morning news report about how the game will “break all records and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it,” Obama spoke in the stilted, uncertain tone politicians tend to use when they’re describing a subject with which they have little familiarity. Here’s a hint to listening: it has the same false certainty of Republican Senator Ted Stevens when he infamously described the internet as a “series of tubes.”

“These video games are raising our kids,” Obama said. “Across the board, middle-class, upper-class, working-class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of their time not on their studies, but on entertainment.”

Obama’s remarks don’t come from out of the blue – they’re just the latest in a series of steps that set up video games as an opportunity for him to bolster his “values” street cred for a general election. In February he urged University of Texas students to “turn off the TV and stop playing GameBoy,” in another dated reference. And in 2006 Obama rather rudely returned a donation from Doug Lowenstein, then-president of the game industry’s Entertainment Software Association.

Obama isn’t alone in his dislike for gamers – during her time in the Senate, Hillary Clinton introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would’ve expanded the regulation of game sales and imposed heavy penalties on stores who accidentally sold the game to underage customers. And more than a few politicians in both parties took to the airwaves in anger in response to the release of one of Rockstar’s previous iterations of the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the “Hot Coffee” mini-game that could be unlocked within modified versions. But it’s clear that when it comes to video games, there are far fewer Republicans who have a problem – this is a Democratic issue.

What is it about video games that infuriate so many Democrats? What is it about these games that make them emulate ambulance chaser Jack Thompson, the ever-present clownish Florida attorney who would probably find a way to blame video games for acne and crabgrass? And why is it that these political leaders refuse to acknowledge the plain truth: that the video game industry as a whole has undergone a massive change for the better in the years since Tipper Gore’s crusade against the evils of Ice Cube?

Over the past eight years, the Federal Trade Commission has significantly stepped up their monitoring of the video game industry. The unspoken message: shape up, or we’ll start cracking down. And to their credit, the industry responded as we would hope responsible members of the marketplace would: they stepped up their support for self-regulation, they made the rules clear for gamesellers, and they made a sustained effort to educate parents on the ESRB game ratings that are now the industry-wide standard.

According to the FTC’s 2007 report on their “mystery shopper” monitoring program, the area of greatest improvement over the past eight years has by far been the video game sector. In 2000, 85% of underage customers teens were able to purchase Mature-rated games – today, that number has been more than cut in half, down to 42%. By comparison, 39% of underage customers were able to buy an R-rated movie ticket – and that’s comparing a purchasing system with a stagnant model that has been in place for more than thirty years to one that has expanded drastically, rocketing to $18.8 billion in sales in 2007.

It’s not just the industry that’s matured, either. Gamers themselves are growing up – according to research by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, over 35% of parents American play video games, and 93% of their children, numbers that will only increase in the future. Engaging systems like the Nintendo Wii and the vast arena of online play have taken video games from a pursuit for teens alone to a cross-generational platform for group entertainment. And as Harvard psychiatrists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson find in their new book, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games, the overwhelming majority of young players use games not to play out violent fantasies, but to relieve stress and relax.

Obama’s tired anti-gamer rhetoric about slacking and laziness starts to sound particularly silly when you consider the creativity, ingenuity, and strong social conscience at the heart of the grown-up gamer community. For an example, one need look no further than Child’s Play, a charity founded in 2003 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of the webcomic Penny Arcade, which has given over two million dollars in donations from video gamers of toys, games, books and money delivered to more than 40 children’s hospitals worldwide. Not bad work for a bunch of underachievers.

If Barack Obama wants to take on video games as his latest straw man for America’s manifold problems, that’s his business. But he should be smart enough to recognize that gamers can’t be caricatured anymore: too many people have played these games without being inspired to do violence and mayhem. Gamers look increasingly like America as a whole, and they want to take responsibility for the upbringing of their own children. The same Hart study found that 85 percent of voting parents say that they – not government, retailers or game creators – are responsible for monitoring their children’s exposure to games. Sorry, Clinton and Obama – that’s one less area where voters want the government to play daddy.

Let’s give the Illinois Senator a pass on this one, though. It could be he’s just stressed out from the campaign trail. If he wants a break, he might consider a trip to Liberty City to blow off some steam. At least it’ll take his mind off of whatever Rev. Wright is up to today.

originally published at Right Side Politics