Aug 22, 2008 Zoon Politikon

Star-Crossed?

I don’t get Barack Obama. Sure, he was annihilated by Bobby Rush back in 2000 in a primary campaign for a Congressional seat, but ever since he’s seemed like such a star-crossed politician:

2004 Senate race: Jack Ryan, a wealthy Republican who shares the name of Tom Clancy’s heroic CIA agent and later-on US President, is forced to withdraw from the race after it came out that he wanted Jeri Ryan, Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager, to engage in all sorts of ‘deviant’ sex acts (at least, I imagine that Family Values-Oriented Republicans would consider these acts to be deviant). Oops.

The Republican Party eventually scares up carpetbagger and certified whackjob, Alan Keyes, to run against Obama. Obama annihilates Keyes by a 43 point margin. 

2008 Democratic Primary: Obama defeats the vaunted Clinton machine in Iowa, throwing the seeming inevitability of Hillary’s electoral capability into terrible disarray. Although the elections dragged out for six months, it seemed virtually certain after the dead tie on Super Tuesday that Obama was going to win the Democratic nomination.

2008 Presidential general campaign: John McCain, who should have been destroyed by Obama before now, continues to hang on by continually taking advantage of his most ardent constituency: the traditional media. He exploits Rudy Giuliani’s brilliant noun+verb campaign strategy (“a noun, a verb and 9/11”) with his supposedly difficult-to-talk-about P.O.W. experience (“a noun, a verb, and P.O.W.”). 

McCain seems to have overplayed the P.O.W. card, though, as not even that (ahem) brilliant strategy has not deflected McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he owns. McCain’s campaign PR team tried to parry this striking blow by announcing to the world that:

[McCain] is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years—in prison.

dun-dun-dun! Apparently the media has started charging for their former free ride for McCain on the strength of his 40-year-old P.O.W. experience. About damned time.

Anyway, Obama. His opponent for the Presidency seems to be on the verge of self-destruction. A smart-sounding, funny-named black guy is about to accept the Presidential nomination of the Democratic party in a year where the entire country hungers for change and a President who seems to care about them. McCain doesn’t even know how many houses he owns. He thinks that Americans are living in a ‘mental recession.’ He’s about to get pounded.