It's a race again, rather than a coronation. McCain is drawing closer to Obama, probably because of two television adverts and his backing for offshore drilling. The ad that deployed images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to mock Obama's celebrity was amusing, but another, called "The One," is having a big impact on Christian conservatives. The Dems argue that it echoes the typeface and the language of the "Left Behind" evangelical Christian novels, subtly suggesting that Obama is the Antichrist. In the ad, when Moses parts the Red sea, Obama's quasi-presidential seal emerges, just as the Antichrist does in the Book of Daniel.
Obama could retaliate with an ad that showed McCain as the Old Man of the Mountain—except that he's in enough trouble with the older generation already. A Fox News survey of voters in their 40s finds that McCain leads by 11 points among men and four among women. Among over-50s, men prefer McCain by nine points and women by three.
Traditionally, men above 40 tend to vote Republican, but that is balanced by women of all ages preferring the Democrats. It may be a hangover from Hillary but at this stage, Obama is doing much worse among women than Kerry or Gore.
In the detailed July Gallup survey, Obama led by 47 to 44 per cent among registered voters. But among "likely" voters, McCain led by 49 to 45 per cent. Naturally the result hinges on the definition of "likely," and it emerged that Gallup was giving a 10 per cent weighting to under-29s in its tally—an age group which accounted for 16-18 per cent of the vote in the 2004 election and who by all accounts Obama is signing up in droves. But Gallup pointed out that even if they reweighted the under-29 vote to 17 per cent of the total, McCain would still lead among likely voters by two points.
If Obama wins… release the tapes
The September issue of the Atlantic has an article on where Hillary Clinton's campaign went wrong. It unearths a memo from her strategist Mark Penn, urging that Obama be portrayed as less than fully American. The killer quote is: "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his centre fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."
Compare this with the theme being pushed by the McCain campaign, usually through surrogates. For Democrat- turned-independent Joe Lieberman, the election is a contest "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first… and one candidate who has not." Mitt Romney says that Obama "looks towards Europe for a lot of his inspiration" and that "John McCain is going to make sure that America stays America." Rudy Giuliani, commenting on Obama's Berlin speech, accused him of capturing "an anti-American feeling" in Europe. And, of course, McCain has said that Obama would rather lose the war than lose the election.
The fuss over this has distracted attention from another leaked memo, dated 30th December, in which Penn wrote that if Obama wins big in Iowa, the campaign should "Release the tapes. Create immediate pressure that deprives him of oxygen." Which tapes? What is their content? And where are they now?
The five o'clock guys
Obama and McCain each have about 300 people who can claim to be a foreign policy adviser. These can be divided into three groups. There are the heavyweights, like Dick Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger. There are a few, like Obama's Tony Lake, who signed up the rest of the 300-odd advisers and divided them into groups. And there is each campaign's "five o'clock guy," who runs the daily 5pm press briefing and gets face time with the candidate.
China's embassy is troubled by both five o'clock guys. Obama's Greg Craig was Tibet co-ordinator at the state department under Clinton, where he tangled with Chinese diplomats. McCain's Randy Scheunemann is a neocon who lobbied for Taiwan (he also ran an NGO called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq).
The Russians don't like Scheunemann either—he was behind McCain's pledge to push Russia out of the G8 even before it invaded Georgia. Scheunemann also accused Condi Rice of "appeasement" in 2006 when she agreed to a Russian request for a UN resolution on Georgia's breakaway province Abkhazia.
Winning the pet vote
Obama has promised to buy his daughters a dog once the campaign is over. The American Kennel Club has responded by holding a vote to suggest a breed. The choice is between a Bichon Frisé, a poodle, a Chinese crested, a soft-coated wheaten terrier or a miniature schnauzer.
But Obama may have left it too late to win the pet vote. According to the Kennel Club, 63 per cent of American homes have a pet—and a Yahoo poll found pet owners prefer McCain by a 42:37 margin. McCain leads among the country's 75m dog owners by 43 to 34 per cent, and the 88m cat owners by 41 to 38 per cent. McCain has long covered all possible pet-owning options, having a menagerie that boasts several dogs, three parakeets, two turtles, a cat, a ferret and a shoal of saltwater fish.
