Here's an excellent, highly detailed piece of explanatory journalism from the Wall Street Journal, pinpointing how McCain's performance during the October economic crisis did him in. Excerpt:
For all the ads and debates and focus groups, voters also got a gut-check test of how each man would react to a crisis. Says Mark Penn, echoing an ad he had created for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign about how presidents deal with emergencies: "The economy turned out to be the '3 a.m. call' to the White House."How the candidates responded -- Sen. McCain's dramatic moves and sometimes-uneven temperament and Sen. Obama's more analytical reaction and calm vibe -- was a window into how they made decisions. And voters responded.
Mark Salter, a longtime confidant of Sen. McCain, said, "The markets' collapse would have hurt no matter what we did, unless [Sen. McCain] had come out against the bailout" plan proposed by the Treasury, which many voters opposed as a rescue for Wall Street. "But he believed that would have been irresponsible and hurt the country."
Heading into the general-election campaign in June, Sen. McCain had been in a good place. He had won the Republican nomination early enough to be rested and ready after the bitterly fought Obama-Clinton contest.
But in a strategy session of five McCain advisers -- campaign manager Rick Davis, pollster Bill McInturff, strategist Steve Schmidt, ad-maker Fred Davis and strategist Greg Strimple -- the back and forth revealed a fundamental problem. Fred Davis posed a question designed to give the campaign a central focus: "Why should we elect John McCain?" Tellingly, after several hours of debate, the five couldn't reach a consensus.
Er, wow.
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MarcM: "We should know whether or not the policies set in place by Obama in the coming years have borne fruit."
Can you -- or any other Obama supporter -- tell us what those policies will be? The swing voters in the middle who put Obama into office think he's going to exempt earners below $250,00 from any tax hikes ... and give tax cuts to 95% of all Americans. Obama's ads relentlessly pounded home that theme. How is policy any different from what Reagan promised to do 28 years ago?
Reaganite...
Need it actually be pointed out that Reagan both believed in the private sector and individual enterprise, and the nation prospered at it's nurturing, but Obama has absolutely no faith in individuals and believes solely in centralized redistribution?
So, while Obama may speak Reagan-sounding details, his belief in those ideas and in the principles does not exist.
"Can you -- or any other Obama supporter -- tell us what those policies will be?"
If we accept your premise that Obama did not articulate cogent policies for consideration, what does it say about the GOP that they lost by such a margin against such a poorly defined opponent?
For that matter, when did McCain put forward a clear description of his policy proposals? I watched the debate, and if you are going to pain Obama as being vague, where was McCain any clearer?
And Nightstalker, as far as advancing Reagan's alleged belief in the private sector, the GOP abandoned that the day they put forward the bailout plan for Wall Street. They embraced socialism for those at the top of the economic scale. For years the liberals had been trying to sell the idea that the GOP favored "socialism for the wealthy, capitalism for the rest." President Bush put wheels on that statement in September of this year.
GWB kept a low profile during the heyday of the economic crisis while a consensus developed (heavily pushed by surrogates like Paulson) and was criticized for being detached. Obama kept a low profile during the heyday of the crisis while the Congress reached a consensus without the leader of the the majority party and he is hailed as being smooth, calm, measured and "analytical". WTF? Can someone please tell me about some "analysis" that Obama provided while he was projecting a "calm vibe".
It would sure be nice if someone could use the same criteria to judge Obama, McCain, and Bush. (or Fox and MSNBC for that matter).
Ann Coulter nails it (or at least gets it out of her system) in her new column:
THE REIGN OF LAME FALLS MAINLY ON MCCAIN
November 5, 2008
http://www.anncoulter.com/
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