Photograph courtesy of Flickr user 1flatworld.

For me, the story of the U.S. election run-in has not been the story of the inevitable march to power of Barack Obama. It’s been the story of how an immeasurably more experienced candidate — John McCain — has rendered himself unelectable with a solid month of cackhanded campaigning. When he loses, he’ll blame the economy. The financial crisis turned America against the incumbent Republican even more strongly than they were already. But McCain has had a year and a half to distance himself from Bush, and by all accounts has done it successfully.

Just look at his website. The colour of the Republican brand is red. Notice any red? How about Obama’s website? Notice any blue? This summarizes the contrast between the candidates: the Democrat is a dyed-in-the-wool, super-liberal party acolyte; the Republican doesn’t even want to be called a Republican. The result is that Americans were open to electing McCain, as the polls after his convention speech showed. But he had to close the deal — and that required a sound economic policy and a focussed response to the financial crisis. I think he’s finally on-message now, six weeks too late.

Some in the GOP will blame Sarah Palin — they would be foolish to do so. Palin electrified McCain’s campaign at a time when it was already being steamrolled in the polls: she’s a terrific force and will surely be a threat in 2012. On CBS, she showed the vulnerability one expects from a state politician thrown on to the national stage without preparation. The McCain campaign should have selected her earlier and trained her better.

But McCain himself too often looked unready when the cameras were rolling. McCain’s erratic answers and cranky attitude in the first and second debates undercut every argument to make him president. And yes, the McCain campaign has far less cash — but that was no reason to waste that cash on irrelevant ads about Obama’s distant past. The real John McCain would have made a good president — but we haven’t seen him in this election.

Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 28th, 2008