Victor Davis Hanson:

Obama’s Unknowns

I still maintain that Obama is the easier candidate for McCain for a variety of reasons that remain unchanged. He has no experience in adversarial politics, neither at the state nor federal level. Just five years ago, no American knew who he was. He has never weathered a hostile press conference; and to the degree an obsequious press has ever rubbed him wrong, he seemed offended and off-putting. His wife is a complete loose cannon, far more so than was Teresa Kerry or Hillary Clinton. In a current fawning piece in The New Yorker, we nevertheless still hear her in action:

Back in the Explorer, I asked [Michelle] Obama if she thought that her husband, as the Democratic nominee, could take John McCain. “Oh, yeah. We got him,” she replied.

We “got him” — as if the Harvard duo have had far more life experiences than the man whipped and tortured at the Hanoi Hilton?

Her speeches are tales of woe, with the constant Hillarian refrain “People, ask me how do you do it!” Then references to camp, lessons for kids, etc. follow, with the usual Ivy League Law School loans to repay.

I keep expecting a John McCain to say, “People stop me all the time, and ask, “John, how do you do it when you can’t raise your arms above your head?”

It’s Not Over!

I had a bet with Peter Robinson that Clinton, Inc. would pull out all the stops. I think I will win it. Note the story line emerging: (1) Florida and Michigan should not be “disenfranchised”; (2) the “big” important states, won by popular votes, should not count as much as small red-state “caucuses”; (3) the candidate going into the convention with the more recent wins and the momentum should not be denied; (4) the duty of the super delegate is to weigh the intangibles that transcend mere states won or lost; (5) the Democratic primaries simply don’t reflect popular will, when a Hillary can win Ohio by a landslide (add CA, MASS, NJ, NY, etc.) and yet pick up scarcely more delegates than the loser Obama; (6) how can a caucus delegate in a small state count more that the aggregate votes of thousands in a big-state primary?

And all these innuendos are before we get to Clintonian arm-twisting of the super delegates, and the return of Carville, Begala, et. al. I admire Obama for taking on and nearly dismantling this machine. But he is in a vampirish war where the stake must be driven and left in the heart. So he will have to welcome the fray, go head-to-head with the Press, reply in kind to Hillary, and stop the messianic come-to-Jesus holy man approach — that, yes, got him where he is (but I don’t think any further).

Meanwhile McCain

There is a great opening for McCain in the Dickensian rhetoric of the Democrats. His more honest review of issues rather than horror stories of the hapless eventually will come across as the more serious.

In contrast, their speeches are simply strung-together macabre stories of the repossessed, evicted, uninsured, gas-less, car-less, and undernourished — in other words, just about the opposite of what you see in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I just went to one, in one of the poorest cities in one of the poorest counties in California. The people had nice cars (and big 4×4 trucks!), there was a line at the electronics and photo-lab section check-out lines; 85% of the people seemed to be on cell phones; 60% could be charitably characterized as moderately overweight; and the carts most definitely were not just full of staples.

So far McCain talks of America as an idea, a society in it together, his opponents as the loose confederation of various groups and constituencies, each with a higher insatiable claim on the public purse than its rival.

On “60 Minutes” last Sunday, McCain didn’t do that. He agreed that America was suffering through “tough times” or something like that — it was the one disappointing moment in an otherwise good interview.