When the voters make a choice at election time, their decision is often not about whether they support the candidate’s policy platform as neatly laid out in a manifesto, but whether they trust the candidate’s judgement in the heat of an as yet unknown crisis. In making that decision, voters rely on all manner of quite unpredictable observations of the man or woman asking for their vote. And so they should.
It is in this context that Obama’s inability to ‘deal with’ Sarah Palin could prove quite telling. First he decided to attack her, then to congratulate her. Perhaps in frustration, or even by mistake, he then made an inopportune comment on the stump a couple of days ago. Now he is being tarred as sexist, and seems quite outraged that the media dare even level such an accusation, yet equally unable to make it go away. Since McCain turned the tables on Obama by his choice of VP, he has had neither the strategic judgement nor the political agility to steady himself in the face of a surprise. And should it really have been a surprise in the first place?
It may be over-stating it, but when the world isn’t being swept along in his wake, Obama’s messianic fervour, that is his making, turns all too quickly to self-righteous indignation, which may be his undoing. When events are not unfolding according to the prophecy, he seems at best unsure of what to do…And that is not a quality needed in a President.
Compare that to the McCain campaign, which, when faced with a less than emphatic first reaction to Palin, stuck with the plan, and the narrative they wanted to establish – that she was a gutsy fighter who would make it through and deliver. Moreover, they turned the media criticism to their advantage, by claiming it was evidence that she made the establishment uncomfortable – precisely the narrative they had wanted in the first place. Team McCain have proved much more sure-footed in the face of adversity – and they are being rewarded with medium-term praise after short-term criticism.
McCain is at his best when he’s under pressure, Obama when he’s riding high. I know which quality I would want in a President. And that’s not because I’m an inherent McCain supporter…I am captivated by Obama…but the lingering doubts persist, and recent days are making them worse, not better. He still has a lot to prove…not, for me, in policy but in person.
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Obama would be a disaster as a President. He is a magnificent speaker, but he lacks any kind of ability to deliver. He is very much a Tony Blair figure, who always went for the sound bite, despite spinnning that he was ” doing the right thing”
You couldn’t be more wrong. The one thing that has been a mark of all of Obama’s campaigns is his unflappability. He doesn’t panic and he doesn’t take the talking heads seriously. He and his staff devise a detailed, well crafted plan and they stick to it. It was astonishing how accurate Axelrod’s leaked spreadsheet of the primary race predictions was and he won with a plan that most considered unworkable. Obama certainly did not attack Palin as you claim. You can’t confuse left-wing blogs and commentators for the Obama campaign otherwise the GOP would be seriously stuck considering its associations. Right from the start Obama was polite toward Palin and they were briefing day in day out that it was about McCain not Palin. They weren’t phased at all. And guess what after a couple of weeks the Palin bubble has burst just as they knew it would. The polls show that she now has the worst favourable ratings of all the candidates and has pushed more and more people toward Obama as his new and growing lead proves.