The Obama landslide

The Palin mistake only compounds his problems. McCain would have been a better president than Bush, but he's eight years too late. If something happened to him and Palin was put in charge, very few people honestly believe she will do an even halfway competent job. She is the one part of his campaign that does represent change, but it's a scary kind of change: not what people are looking for in a time of multiple crises.

That brings me to the next range of issues.

Crisis leadership

It's very seldom that there is the range of crises currently facing the US: peak oil, mitigated by worldwide economic collapse (as if that is a solution), all layered on top of climate change.

The US now needs a leader with the mass appeal of a JFK, the long-range vision of an FDR, and the unifying skills of a Nelson Mandela.

It’s not totally clear to me that Obama has all of the above, but it is clear that McCain falls far short.

His campaign has been one of the most divisive I've witnessed. It is all very well for the ignorant to label Obama's tax proposal (that goes back to the tax rates in the time of one of the most popular presidents in recent times, Bill Clinton) as “socialism” but for McCain to repeat this is just absurd. His campaign has not done enough to stop ridiculous claims that Obama is a Muslim (as Colin Powell put it, it's not true and anyway why should anyone care?). They also keep harping on the by now thoroughly debunked “palling around with terrorists” claim. This is not even smart campaigning, let alone the question of dishonesty that is raises. When you are up against a candidate who can outspend you by as much as seven to one in battleground states on advertising, going negative assumes a level of risk not seen in previous campaigns.

Obama certainly has crowd appeal; even his opponents recognise that. On long-range vision, his case for heavy investment in alternative energy is a good sign, even if he is putting too much store on the bogus concept of “clean coal” (contrary to what we are widely lead to believe, even if this technology works, it will not fix existing coal power stations, so it is a total fraud to use “clean coal” as an excuse for continuing to build coal power stations). On unifying, he seems to be doing pretty well.

So as the transformational figure needed in a time of extreme crisis, Obama at least has the potential to do what needs to be done. Before the election, I would have scored McCain higher. Back in February, I blogged on the US election, starting with the words “Lucky, lucky Americans”, comparing their options with the incumbent. But McCain’s entire approach is to appeal to the section of the Republican Party that didn't like him before (Palin; calling Obama a “socialist”; allowing others to label Obama as a close associate of a “terrorist”).

Ignoring the rest of the country is a massive failure of judgment at a time when the US demands clear and decisive leadership of a kind only required in the past at rare times of extreme crisis.

Reality check

That in my judgment the US requires such a transformational figure doesn’t mean that the average US voter sees this. All the polls point that way, but I don’t recall seeing one that directly asks the exact questions needed to determine if people agree with my assessment of what’s required. Nonetheless, the fact that Obama is a better fit to my requirements and the fact that he is energising a wider base than any candidate for decades indicates that he is making some strong connections with broadly-held perceptions.

Given how much hangs on this election, I hope Obama is up to the challenge.

Another opinion

The New York Times has recently editorialised on the same subject, giving Obama one of the strongest endorsements I've ever seen them give a candidate.