Presidential campaigns are pretty nasty business, as was this one. But, due to artful spin by Mr. Obama, portraying himself as above dirty politics of "division", -an image supported unceasingly by a fawning "tingle-up-my-leg" press- he was seen by many voters as occupying the moral high-ground, far above the fray that has entangled lesser men... his hands are clean, the "good guy" won, and a just history is being made. A lot of people do feel very good about it, no doubt.
McCain on the other hand, was busy disappointing everyone by reverting to a "negative" campaign... "he's changed" they uttered. What were we to expect, after all? He was as "desperate" as The One's ascension was "inevitable". But, how do such views stand up to post-election scrutiny? Arguably not too well... as anyone who thinks the tactics of John McCain (who resolutely refused to introduce the topic of the repulsive Rev. Wright, fearing the kind of racial divisiveness that bothered the Rev) were overly "dirty" or "negative" must not remember the 1988 Bush campaign of Willie Horton... when a very large number of Mr Obama's supporters were 5-10 yrs old (no coincidence there). By traditional standards, the GOP's tactics in this campaign didn't offer much to be offended by... and the party also didn't benefit from what used to be thorough vetting of their opponent by the mainstream media... a duty our Constitution was built upon.
Barrack Obama might be a lot of things... but he ain't stupid. He and his advisors knew perfectly well that if the voter's analysis focused on his thin resume, past connections, and/or prior tests of character... or even his legislative/attendance records... vs that of John McCain... he hadn't a very good chance of winning the Presidency. So, like the best military tacticians, he drew his enemy out-onto the battlefield, to a time and place of his own choosing... one where he could best leverage his strengths, while exploiting his opponent's weaknesses. For the Democrats, this battle had to be fought in the here-and-now of the MySpace generation; where Mr Obama was handsome, young, clever, glib, and the right man- at the right time...and right NOW. And to keep the focus on the present, this would need to remain a referrendum on George W Bush... the main "problem" of "now". This disengenuous, yet fully 21st century strategy fit right-in with his focus on the youth vote; they cared little about history's past humiliation of both socialism and pacifist notions... and most of them weren't here for it.
And what an opportunity to rebel against your annoyingly yuppie-era parents... a chance to establish your intellectual superiority with an embrace of the New Left; it's no coincidence that the larger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate seem to have swung to the left... not the moderate tone from candidates you would have thought necessary for such Democratic gains just four years ago. The BHO-enamoured youth of 2008 have more in common with their hippie-era grandparents (interestingly, most Obama supporters I know are over 60), and one could see this cyclical political echo of the past was jump-started by the deja-vu war protesters in 2003-2005. I was instantly struck then by the emergence of 20-somethings alongside allied 60-somethings walking arm-and-arm in tie-died shirts and bell-bottoms at these protests in the US and in UK/Europe, like old craftsmen of the Vietnam era protests handing down skills to their apprentice Iraq-war-hating interns (Wow, you're into Hendrix, too? Cool!). Their one-world ideals contrast sharply with the combative world view of the Bush Administration, as well as Mr McCains; and in their new political alliance with a majority of non-whites (at least for this candidate), became a political force to that the Reagan-built alliance of religious rightists/military hawks/pro-business conservatives simply couldn't overcome.
The enlistment (both formally and informally) of new media/bloggers/social networking in support of this "now" strategy was highly effective, also- plus had the built-in, self-fufilling prophecy of making Obama ever-more the "cool" candidate- in obvious contrast to McCain, the "old fossil" and "dinosaur" that once in self-deprectating humor had remarked he "doesn't know how to send and e-mail"- which was then shamelessly exploited by the Obama brigades. Never mind that McCain staffers have long handled that for him, due to the fact that his extensive war/torture injuries make it almost impossible for him to use a keyboard.
To steer the discourse in this election away from his own inauspicious narrative, and keep the debate focussed on the present, BHO had also had to stay on the offensive, with the pedal-to-the-medal right to Nov. 4th. How to do it? Connect Bush to McCain in any way possible, with a reckless disrgard for the truth... while informal allies go for an all-out character assasination against both McCain and Palin. Obama didn't want to dirty his white gloves, of course- and he didn't have to; he had the de-centralized, albeit unipolar propaganda ministry of the net age at his disposal, as well as a complicative MSM and e-press to do the dirty work. And to the delight of the DNC, it was often as if some in the traditonal media were trying to compete with e-media outlets/blogs by being even more blatantly partisan and outrageous (similar to how standards of language and obscenity on network TV plummeted in the 90's, in an effort to compete with the cable networks' more racy fare). When it all went a bit beyond the pale, finally bringing protest from some quarter, The One could just raise his hand and make it clear he "condemned" the attacks... and was of-course no way connected to them. I found it surprising so many Americans where so receptive to such a claim- seemed pretty incredulous to me, considering his background (and questionable m.o. in prior election victories) in the ruthless world of bare-knuckle Illinois politics. So while the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and myriad liberal bloggers went about their mission... often supported by the MSM in a feeding-frenzy on the GOP nominees... all Obama had to do is continue to tie McCain to Bush in every other paragraph he uttered... and let his loose association of allies do the rest.
In the event, Democrats and their supporters had a field day, desecrating the GOP nominees at-will... while legitimate concerns raised by the Republicans (including standard vetting issues now fully neglected by the media) regarding Obama were either quickly countered as "racist" or "that old politics of attack and division". Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't ever once recall John McCain mentioning race in any way... never; but we got plenty of pre-emptive strikes from Obama, playing the race card in his (false) predictions that he'd be discredited by the GOP as "not looking like the presidents on dollar bills" and "having a funny name". What is that, if not race-baiting? Mike Huckabee had a pretty funny name too... but didn't seem to harbor any such concerns. Both new and mainstream media's disregard for impartiality in allowing such blatant double standards in this campaign (ITAR-Tass demonstrated more journalistic independence), thereby allowing Obama and his allies to write the script and slap McCain silly while he had his (one, good) arm tied behind is back was a comprehensive disgrace... no wonder half the electorate feels like they just got mugged. This inequitable complicity will forever change the role of the media in American Presidential politics- as will Obama's (again unchallenged) 180-degree turn on the campaign's initial public financing. Billion-dollar spending, deployed in a lengthy financial artillery battle of attrition will now be the standard... with any previously envisioned finance reform (as proposed by McCain) dead for the forseeable future.
Obviously, John McCain had trouble countering such a wide-ranging assault upon him and his running-mate; his campaign seemed to assume that the background of the candidates, as well as what they'd done in their political careers (if anything)... not just what they're saying now... would, as it has traditionally, matter to the electorate. These were assumptions borne of the confidence of a man who knew who he was, and what he'd done- and also felt his record made it more than apparent he was a competent and trustworthy man... he had nothing to hide, and no reason to feel he'd be on the defensive regarding issues of accomplishment or character. But while McCain accurately saw life as being a movie... which of-course it is, in reality... Obama deftly turned this the perceived reality in this election into a digital snapshot freeze-frame; a handsome, smiling, charismatic, and adored fresh face, vs a old, irrelevant relic of "George W Bush's" failed Republicans... And for a photogenic, "historic" candidate with a past he really didn't want to talk about any more than he had to... it worked like a charm.
"Those who don't learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat it" said George Santayana. Well, a freshly-taken snapshot doesn't offer much history.... but the US electorate wouldn't have had to look back very far into the previous century to see examples of how appeasement of an aggressive enemy is always a mistake... and no further back than 1990-91 to see a large empire imploding due to the countless failures of socialism. Not only were many of the Obama supporters apparently ignorant of the lessons of history... they simply didn't want to hear about it. Perhaps the waves of propaganda from friendly media simply drowned-out the warnings, but it seemed to me that there was a well-documented record regarding the unglorious past of a number of Obama's proposals and philosophies... and many more BHO-specific red flags about his past public statements and radical associations.
But no matter what came out, it just didn't matter, it seemed. Anything that went against the zeitgeist of Obamamania was brushed aside as "the politics of division" and an incredulous "attack"- regardless of the preponderance of evidence, nor gravity of the charges. His supporters were cult-like in their suspicion of non-believers... "don't you dare take our dream away- we're in far too deep to walk away from this now". It put Obama in a position of being able to claim he was pretty much anything he wanted to, and have it widely accepted, like that he was a bipartisan centrist,...when his record and past statements had showed precious little evidence of it. And while not all of his voters were in this trance, one his support acheived critical mass, and he was the fashionable choice of youth, trumpeted by almost all media outlets, the swing voters became easy meat. With such a high level of enthusiasm among his core supporters, it is hard for those around them to resists after a year of this... just ask someone who grew-up in the Third Reich. Due to the blind support he thus enjoyed, Obama was also able to change his positions on major issues often, and without as much as a peep from the media. That is also how they got away with ripping Palin apart on issues of questionable relevance like her wardrobe, daughter's pregnancy, and the now resolved "Troopergate" (where she tried to protect the public from an alky rogue cop who tasered a ten-year-old) while showing little interest in Joe Biden's belief that 1929's President Roosevelt made a TV address regarding the depression... although it hadn't begun yet ...he wasn't President then... and there was no public TV yet.
The 2008 Presidantial race all came down in the end to a campaign of how you looked, sounded, and had the audacity to portray yourself... the first presidential election in history where what you've done, how you've done it... and who you did it with... didn't really matter to over half the electorate. It was a tailor-made situation for a guy who had no shame in writing two self-absorbed books on his "personal struggle" to succeed... while playing hookey from his day job in the Illinois and US Senate... and the 52% of the electorate that doesn't see anything wrong with that. And while all Obama's books and speeches feature the theme of how he had to carry the extra load of racial prejudice every step of the way... it seems more to me that it made him (along with his talent for speaking and sharp elbows) the prodigal son of the Democratic party at an extremely young age, with almost no distinguishing accomplishments of any kind (except getting elected)... and this was, in-fact, his ticket to the White House.
What won this election in the end was a cash-turbocharged, high tech self-promotion machine... with the Obama campaign and it's allies writing the entire script, the star's glowing biography, and then the rave reviews, too. It sounds like the daunting prophesies of Orwells' 1984- and all in stark contrast to the actual 1984, when a real, modest, and accomplished man of honor, Ronald Reagan, won 49 states... and gave this country some of the best years in it's history.