Culvahouse on Palin: "She knocked those questions out of the park."

Andy Barr has a striking piece at Politico citing John McCain's lead vetter in the quest for a VP candidate.

A.B. Culvahouse, a powerful Washington lawyer and former counsel to President Reagan, told an audience of Republican lawyers that for McCain, selecting a vice president came down to three questions: Why do you want to be vice president? Are you prepared to use nuclear weapons? And the CIA has identified Osama bin Laden, but if you take the shot there will be multiple civilian casualties. Do you take the shot?

“She knocked those questions out of the park,” he said at an event held at the National Press Club by the Republican National Lawyers Association. “We came away impressed.”

I shudder to think what answers Palin gave to those three questions.

Okay, it's actually just the second question I'm having trouble with. The first one is fluff, the third one is superficially tough (as in, "Do you have the stones to make the hard call?"). But the second one? "Are you prepared to use nuclear weapons?" What's the correct answer to that question?

Barr's piece never gives a hint as to Palin's answers. But I'm left feeling so much more relieved that, at least for the time being, we don't have to consider a scenario that leaves either John McCain or Sarah Palin with the launch codes.

McCain a Raiders Fan

Oops. Bad news for the McCain-Palin ticket in Denver yesterday. Yes, the Broncos lost, which put Coloradans in a bad enough mood to begin with. But then there was this.

The Last Gasp

I had an engagement earlier tonight, so I missed the live debate broadcast and had to settle for watching the video in installments afterward on ABC News. After all was said and done, I strongly suspect the two candidates will agree on this: thank goodness the debates are over.

Both candidates had a fairly strong debate, inasmuch as they each showed up like savvy politicians. McCain's chronic blinking belies his extreme discomfort, but the root of that discomfort is still a mystery. Is it Obama? Is it the format? Is it knowing how far he's down and how much he needs to accomplish? Is it shame?

I lean toward an amalgam of all of the above, and possibly a dose of chagrin, too. I can't help listening to McCain speak, and even on his strong points, like linking Obama to Hoover ("from a deep recession to a depression") and repeatedly pushing Ayers and ACORN (neither of which will decide the election), I thought "Now here's a man who's swallowed the bitter pill."

John McCain, to put it mildly, looks out of his element. That said, I also think tonight was his best debate, but that it doesn't matter. Nothing that came up tonight improved McCain's position among the people he most needed to impress. If he didn't outright lose the debate on the topic of Sarah Palin's qualifications, then the health care discussion did him in.

Tonight may not have been Obama's overall strongest performance. We may have seen that in the second debate. But Obama scored two important victories tonight on health care and on the people he pals around with. On the former topic, he really distanced his plan from the McCain plan in a way that voters can relate to. During the second debate I thought Obama missed several opportunities there. He explained his plan but didn't expose the incredible weakness of McCain's plan. Tonight he did both, and I felt a different tone throughout that conversation than previously. After the second debate, voters who had just tuned in may have been aware only of two different but more or less equally political plans on the table. Tonight there is a clear plan from Obama, and a clear sense that McCain's health care plan will do less to support those in need than Obama's. "Hey, Joe, you're rich, congratulations." That's McCain's rebuttal. Seriously? Did anybody understand the lateral move McCain attempted to make?

On health care, though, this takes the cake:

Now, 95 percent of the people in America will receive more money under my plan because they will receive not only their present benefits, which may be taxed, which will be taxed, but then you add $5,000 onto it, except for those people who have the gold-plated Cadillac insurance policies that have to do with cosmetic surgery and transplants and all of those kinds of things.

That's McCain making zero sense at the top of the quote, because how taxing benefits works out as "more money" for Americans under McCain's plan is a complete mystery to everyone, including I think the candidate. But John McCain also revealed a telling tendency to trivialize huge issues. People who get transplant coverage--or people who want transplant coverage--are the lucky ones, the ones who have or want more than they need. They're the ones who get gold-plated Cadillac insurance policies. For "cosmetic surgery and transplants and all those kinds of things."

It takes the breath away. I have a couple acquaintances I'd like to touch base with about the triviality of transplants and those kinds of things.

On the second point, who the candidates surround themselves with, which wasn't actually a question so McCain dodged a bullet, Obama made good on the opportunity to spin the Ayers attack into a mention of Joe Biden, Warren Buffet, Paul Volcker, Dick Lugar, and Jim Jones. This may well be lost on many voters, but these guys are heavyweights. We're not talking Phil Gramm and Rick Davis. Obama's team reflects a level of seriousness and thoughtfulness that the McCain campaign can't touch. You want to compare finance management credentials between Warren Buffet and Phil Gramm? How about international security credentials between Jim Jones and Randy Scheunemann? Oh man. That doesn't win the debate for Obama, but it further emphasizes the distance between the two candidates and how they will govern.

The Obama campaign no doubt wishes they could hold the election tonight, right now, immediately. Three weeks is an eternity, and a lot can happen. But I wonder if the McCain folks, and perhaps John McCain himself, aren't also ready to finally get out the vote, if only to put an end to what has become a palpably unpleasant experience for the candidate and for those of us fortunate enough to watch this chapter of history unfold. I'm not saying it's over, but except for the ads and a few highly orchestrated "news breaks," tonight may have been John McCain's last gasp to prove that he's the man for the job. He needed to stage a brilliant coup to topple Obama, and he fell short of that mark.

Strong Words

Via TPM, former McCainiac Frank Schaeffer unleashes his strongest words directly to the candidate in a letter today in the Baltimore Sun.

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

. . . Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

Take a moment to read this one straight from the source. It's a doozy.

Tim Dickinson on John McCain: A Blistering Biography

It's fun to say "My mother-in-law reads Rolling Stone." Especially since she passed along this incredible link. The nickel version, if I may be presumptuous enough to reduce some 10,000 words, is that the real John McCain biography dramatically undermines the generally accepted mythology of John McCain.

The thesis rests on two key points. A) The pampered flyboy never grew up, never actually underwent that pivotal coming to Jesus that the campaign touts as McCain's revelatory moment, from which point he knew that his life everafter was dedicated to his country first; and B) the Keating-croney politician never truly adopted the philosophies he has espoused since his near political ruin over the savings and loan debacle in 1989. John McCain found a political lifeline in running hard for campaign finance reform and denouncing a system that allowed so much soft money to determine political discourse and policy making in our country; simultaneously, however, the foundation he built to sustain his presidential candidacies was fueled--illegally, since he applied for and got 501(c)3 status as a nonprofit--by those same soft monies and political cronies he so artfully decried.

In telling the back story of the John McCain we see today, Tim Dickinson appears to have done his research. He cites former classmates and POWs, and McCain's colleagues from the Navy, the Arizona Republican Party, and the U.S. Senate. Taken individually, the accounts amount to slightly-more-critical-than-average beefs against a career politician. Put together, however, the criticisms advance an increasingly consistent biography of a John McCain that the campaign wants voters to be desperately ignorant about.

As Dickinson points out, the candidate himself likes to point to his own past weaknesses and mistakes as evidence of his personal and professional growth. Dickinson takes it a step further, though. McCain seems to be aware of the power of the story of his youth to affect political gain. Beyond that, however, the candidate on whom Dickinson reports has little to no use for the lessons that the self-proclaimed maverick claims to have learned the hard way. He is not cool and calm in the face of direct fire; he is not a hero who selflessly puts his own well-being on the line to protect or save others; he does not value the role of coalition building to achieve political goals; he is not the candidate who puts integrity of character and loyalty to truth above personal ambition.

Dickinson backs these statements and many more with disheartening amounts of personal testimonies from the people who know McCain and have worked with McCain since his earliest career in the Navy. More of these statements are made on the record than provided as background, and more are adjoined to a name than delivered anonymously. In an age when sources-who-cannot-be-named-because-they-have-not-been-cleared-to-speak-with-the-media appear to be those most often turned to, Dickinson's determination to rely on named sources to support the bulk of his article is noteworthy.

From crashing three Navy planes to commandeering aircraft to carry out his adulterous affair with now-wife Cindy; from chasing tail across three continents (while married to his first wife) to pulling strings to keep his career afloat; from distorting the actual events surrounding his captivity and torture to distorting the actual events around his second coming as the maverick leader of the Straight Talk Express; from being maliciously smeared and run out of the 2000 presidential race to hiring those very same tacticians to run his 2008 bid, Tim Dickinson devotes every single word to debunking the great McCain mythology that Americans have been asked to swallow whole this election year.

Bookmark the page or buy the issue, and settle in to read a blistering account of the John McCain that only McCain's lifelong familiars could tell.

Ruben Navarrette: Shockingly Sycophantic

Whether Navarrette believes his own spiel or not, I think there are a few people out there who actually think like this. And that's the support he's shamelessly trying to rally, pulling a reverse-cynicism complaint out of his bag of tricks.

I think McCain deserves applause for having his priorities straight. For the past several days, the media and members of both parties have been scaring the daylights out of the American people by calling this the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.

. . . After all the doom and gloom, pundits were then somehow surprised when McCain decided to temporarily suspend his presidential campaign and return to his day job in Congress, where he tried to work out a bailout deal with his colleagues.

. . . McCain showed real leadership this week. And frankly, if we were more accustomed to seeing that sort of thing from our elected officials, we might be less cynical and better able to recognize it on the rare occasions when it surfaces.

. . . The presidential candidates can't run from this issue any more than the rest of the country can. That's why both of them should have cleared their plate and gotten to work on a solution. But only one did.

Spare me. Because we doubt McCain's motive we're cynical? That's an appalling stretch on behalf of a candidate who has milked the public goodwill for every last ounce of stretch left in it. I'm thinking history isn't going to judge McCain kindly, after all this, no matter the outcome. And Navarrette will doubtless find something priggish and glib to say about that, too, in John McCain's defense.

Reax II

I just want to take a moment to observe, after my long rant below, that my outlook is much more rosy now that there's going to be a debate again.

PS: Here's one of the questions that makes me feel better. And here's another.

Reaction

I've never experienced such strong reaction to a politician, positive or negative, as I do now to John McCain. It's what many feel, I think, when they mention George W. Bush. The loathing and revile drips from sarcastic tongues. I've never felt that for our current president. Frustration? Sure. Dismay? Obviously. Disbelief? Regularly. But I've never despised the man. More or less, George W. Bush has simply been the ignorant head of state who's steered us the wrong way for too long.

What I now feel for John McCain is tantamount to what I heard in my father's voice as a child, before I even understood who or what "Nixon" was. It's what I heard in my high school history teacher's voice, when she mentioned how her family wouldn't mention FDR by name, simply referred to him instead, with transparent disgust, as "that man."

I wish I had been as high on Bill Clinton as I am now low on John McCain. I wish that my enthusiasm for the positive change I feel all around me every time I volunteer for the Obama campaign could rival this consuming and daily intensifying negativity I feel toward John McCain.

Let me be clear: I didn't even like the bailout plan. So when I step back, it should not anger me so to hear that it was scuttled yesterday. It wasn't a good plan. The American people deserve better. The U.S. government can't simply invoke socialism when it's convenient, to save the wealthiest 1%, but tell everybody else that they're on their own when it comes to health care and college educations. I'm no fan of the Bush/Paulson plan, but I sort of got the feeling midday yesterday that Democratic leaders and the administration were working out a compromise. Pay out the huge sum in installments. Only give Paulson $250 billion of the requested $700 billion up front. Leave some back for the president to order up should the economy show the need. Allow Congress a 30 day objection period to evaluate the situation. Deliver a sense, however thin, that there might actually be oversight.

As bad as the Bush/Paulson plan was, I was optimistic yesterday that some reality checks had been put in place. Compromises are, by necessity, often disappointing. If what we've been hearing the past week is to be believed, however, this thing had to move forward with a certain urgency. And John McCain "suspended" not only his campaign--which is universally laughable--but also derailed what by all appearances looked like progressive talks between the administration and congressional leaders to work out a compromise that might have promised the U.S. economy and population a little bit of security. Not enough, of course, but some.

Today I am angry. Usually I can maintain a spectator's detachment for all this political tomfoolery, the stunts, the tricks, the bad-faith manipulations. It's politics, right? It's a tough sport. But McCain has riled something in me that I've never known before for a public figure: raw, dripping disgust. Not because the guy has the nerve to get behind a different plan. I'm all for alternative plans. But because he's tacking his election hopes to the safety and security of my future, my family's future. Not just our financial futures, although I'm incredulously considering whether my money actually is as safe as I thought in a simple money market account, of all things, and whether my meager retirement funds might just *poof* disappear one of these days. But with our health and well being. That's what we have to talk about when we talk about the possibility of deep, nationwide, financial collapse.

The guy is a dumb stud standing on the railroad tracks in the middle of the bridge, playing chicken with a locomotive bearing down with a cargo of 300 million. That's why I'm angry. Because John McCain will do anything to win, no matter who or how many stand to lose. I find this loathesome, and little. Such bravado is unbecoming in any leader. If this guy was a small town mayor with a history of blowing up at people and demonstrating a scornful pride in shooting from the hip, if he was bargaining with the economies, pensions, paychecks, and lives of an entire, delicate, social ecosystem, he'd be recalled pretty damn quick.

I've said this before, though not in such harsh terms. If the last eight years were terrible under an easy going nincompoop, what would four years under an angry sleazebag political cannibal with axes to grind and this terrible thirst to prove something, to be right, look like?

Jim Jordan on McCain's Pick

What do you think? Sound about right, or is it just Democratic spin?

“He feels a little like Walter Mondale,” said Jim Jordan, a Democratic political consultant. “He’s a respected Washington lifer who’s run into political forces that are bigger than himself. And he’s responded by making a decision that feels panicky.”

From this analysis in the NYT.

Steve Schmidt on Sarah Palin

He said it: "By any objective measure, Gov. Palin is more qualified for the presidency than Barack Obama."

For those who don't know, Schmidt is senior strategist for the McCain campaign. I'm looking forward to specifics on those objective measures any moment now.

Assessing the Palin Scene

Yglesias passes along this (preposterous) nugget: McCain has been on the campaign trail longer than Palin has been governor.

Are you kidding me? She's been on the city council, the mayor of a small town, and governor for half a term. The gimmick is to peel off disgruntled Hillary voters and undecided married women, but please. McCain: "She's exactly who I need, she's exactly who this country needs, to help me fight the same old Washington politics of 'me first' and 'country second.'"

I've really tried to be cautious about this all day. My initial impression is that she shows up well and speaks very well. She's likable, and as the old boys will no doubt say, she's got pluck. She seems like a scrapper, though I find it hard to believe that she'll be well enough briefed not to flub some big ones. Joe Biden will have to tread carefully so as not to be perceived as condescending, but I'm already licking my chops at the prospect of hearing "And you madam are no Hillary Clinton!"

To suggest that Clinton supporters should be attracted to this pick is insulting. Clinton herself is in a prime position to live up to her word to get Barack Obama elected and take on Palin in a no-holds-barred-this-ain't-a-beauty-contest public discussion of the complex challenges the country faces today. If the McCain camp thinks that Palin can really hold her own against the withering litany of Democratic arguments against her, then Schmidt & Co. have either vetted their candidate extremely well or not nearly well enough.

The more I read and listen, the more ridiculous it all gets. The danger, however, is to remember that the average voter is not very well informed. If the media give McCain/Palin a pass, if all the nuance gets dropped from the media message and Palin gets the shot to simply appeal to voters, then this could just slip on by and shock us all. I'm inclined to think the opposite is more likely and that the rocket will break apart as it enters the atmosphere. Especially after my exposure to the campaign machine this week in Denver. David Plouffe comes off as the real deal, somebody who knows his stuff. Obama himself is known to run a tight strategy, control the message, stick to the plan. And we don't have to discuss his political intelligence or his rhetorical skill. David Axelrod (whom I did not see in person) is highly regarded as a political strategist--the general you want on the field. Howard Dean and the DNC appear poised to complement the campaign in every necessary way (especially since the Obama camp effectively controls the DNC at this point). And Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore and of course Joe Biden appear ready to make the public appearances that go along with this campaign and to actually enjoy themselves in the process. All told, this team simply will not miss the opportunity take apart the McCain/Palin agenda, starting with the very decision to pick Palin. But they've got to make it stick, and if 2000 and 2004 taught us anything its that there's never a sure thing.

All that, and we haven't even seen yet how the Obama camp will manage the ongoing investigation into Palin's possible abuse of power in AK. This is gonna get interesting.

McCain Tone Deaf in Ohio, Struggling with DHL/UPS Merger

John McCain has gone completely tone deaf to his own campaign stump:

"And that's the problem in our nation's capital. It's not just the Bush administration, and it's not just the Democratic Congress. It's that everyone in Washington says whatever it takes to get elected or to score the political point of the day," said McCain, who has served 26 years in Congress.

Emphasis mine. Kudos to the L.A. Times for following up the quote with the "26 years" tag line. The article, by the way, is especially interesting. In a nutshell, McCain backed a 2003 deal to sell cargo handler Airborne Express to German-owned DHL. Now, business is bad and DHL's owners want to cut losses and get out. According to an Ohioan quoted in the article, this could lead to a loss of 40,000 jobs in 9 southeastern Ohio counties.

Where it gets even trickier is that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, lobbied on behalf of DHL's owners back in 2003, and McCain ponied up. The senator actually helped deep six an amendment to a congressional spending bill that would have kept the U.S. military cargo handling business a U.S. business. In other words, McCain paved the way for foreign interests to handle shipping needs for the U.S. military.

Davis earned a reported $590k for his various lobbying efforts for the German company. McCain says that, since Davis hasn't been involved in any of that since 2005, there's no conflict of interest. What'd McCain get, I wonder?

Most recently, he got the opportunity to tell some distraught Ohioans a little bit of "straight talk": "I can't assure you that this train wreck isn't going to happen, but I will do everything in my power to avert it"; and, "I can't look you in the eye and say we're going to avert this."

As reassuring as those comments weren't, McCain promised to launch an anti-trust investigation into the proposed DHL/UPS merger that would all the German company to earn back some of its losses and get out of Ohio. And after promising to investigate the deal on the Senate floor, McCain said "And that's the problem in our nation's capital. It's not just the Bush administration, and it's not just the Democratic Congress. It's that everyone in Washington says whatever it takes to get elected or to score the political point of the day."

Like I said. Tone deaf.

CNN Says McCain's Humor Could Do Him In

CNN writer Rebecca Sinderbrand makes a series of excellent points in this article. Is anybody reading?

Little Miss Buffalo Chip

This is too much, really. Be sure to watch the video. Just when we thought we couldn't dumb-down the presidency any further . . .

The Carpool Poll

Best. Poll. Yet. And it's merely August. Oh, the little joys of election season politics.

Why McCain Should Stand With Bush?

William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal has an interesting and salient take on how McCain could "find himself on defense through November": keep avoiding the president.

Allowing himself to look afraid of being in the president's company hurts him in two large ways. For one thing, it cuts against Mr. McCain's most attractive trait: his fearlessness. This is a man running as someone who stood up to his captors in Hanoi, who stood up to his own party, and who, as president, would be willing to stand up to America's enemies. For such a man to fear photo ops with the president broadcasts an insecurity that will only feed into the Obama campaign. And the press smells it.

. . . Mr. McCain's reticence will also hurt him with his own party. While the president's general approval ratings may be down in the 30s, among the GOP faithful the numbers are up in the 60s. These numbers, moreover, do not track intensity: The people who have stayed with Mr. Bush this far have been through the fire with him. They are not likely to be excited by a nominee who makes a habit of dissing fellow Republicans like Phil Gramm, whose crime was trying to support their nominee.

In other words, McCain dilutes his brand by avoiding GWB, and he also pisses off his base (they were never really his, though, were they?). The alternative? Get cozy with the least popular president (according to CNN) in American history.*

Sounds like a damned if he does situation if I ever heard one. What's a candidate to do? Well, distracting folks from this issues (on which his politics do bear a striking resemblance the those of the man he would replace) is a good start. Camp McCain wins the past week's tussle when it comes to dictating the terms of the campaign. As for all the rest? Folks like William McGurn and myself will be watching closely to see how this plays out.

*No comment as to the scientific integrity of that poll, nor any other conducted over the past 232 years.

McCain the Underdog

John McCain, the veteran lawmaker, 2-time presidential hopeful, and long-time Washington deal maker, pleads underdog status in his race against the junior senator from Illinois.

At a Cherry Hills fundraiser this week, McCain said "We're the underdog in this race . . . But I am pleasantly surprised that we are only behind a few points in most polls. There's even one crazy poll where we're ahead by a few points."

I think that's a smart move. Play the expectations low, and every close poll suggests less about Americans' faith in McCain, which is not essential (as evidenced by GOP success in recent presidential elections) but mistrust and discomfort with Obama. McCain doesn't have to wow the voters to win this thing. He just has to stay steady, and make out that Obama is an underperformer. After all the hype about hope and a new kind of politics, Obama really has to deliver--at least on the perceptions front--in order to tie up the contest.

More McCain in Colorado

"I have to win here." John McCain on the Centennial State.

McCain's Frequent Colorado Visits

John McCain is making a whole lot of visits to Colorado these days. After a much publicized Denver town hall meeting three weeks ago, when a protester was removed from a walkway outside the event simply for carrying a sign that read "McCain=Bush," McCain returned to Colorado last Friday to address Latino veterans, blast Obama on foreign policy, and make a quick stop in Aspen to meet the Dalai Lama.

The Denver Post also reports that McCain will be back in the pivotal western state today, raising cash and rallying support.

So why is Colorado so popular for McCain? It could have something to do with Barack Obama's efforts to put traditionally red states in play. To be sure, Colorado is more of a purple state in recent years, and boasts a Democratic governor and a majority of Democrats at the state level. It could also be because Obama has one big campaign date here in the near future: August 25-28. The more time McCain can spend in Colorado without upsetting the city's status quo (little old librarian ladies aside), the more public support--especially among undecided voters--the Republican may be able to draw away from the convention.

Obama's popularity in Colorado--and especially in Denver--could actually take a hit depending on how much of a disruption the Democratic National Convention makes in people's daily lives. Furthermore, if business resulting from the convention is not as good as the projections, Denverites and Coloradans may be inclined to see that as a negative in the Obama hype column (though in fairness to the candidate, both the Dem National Committee and the city of Denver will have as much or more to do with that as the candidate and his campaign).

Never mind that it's apples to oranges. John McCain will be out on national TV reminding folks that he's been to Denver a dozen times this year and never tied up city streets or wreaked havoc for local businesses. Bottom line is, if people in Denver get frustrated during the convention, they might actually be inclined to buy into what they hear.

Obama vs. McCain: A New Poll Shows Americans Struggle to Identify With Values, Background

The Wall Street Journal has an article this morning analyzing voter unease with Barack Obama as compared with John McCain. The subtitle reads, "Poll Finds Background, Experience, Are Advantages for McCain."

Fairly enough, I suppose, the article points to results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicating that half of all voters are trying to figure out what kind of president Barack Obama would be. Only a quarter, says the Journal, are focused on what kind of president John McCain would be.

I leave conjecture to the reader. Of course, I think I already know what kind of president McCain would be, and I don't think so positively in that regard. But that's my bias.

My BS meter didn't go off until paragraph 4 of the Journal article:

The challenge that presents for Sen. Obama is illustrated by a second question. When voters were asked whether they could identify with the background and values of the two candidates, 58% said they could identify with Sen. McCain on that account, while 47% said the same of Sen. Obama. More than four in 10 said the Democratic contender doesn't have values and a background they can identify with.

Emphasis mine. It's true, I'm not exactly sure what Obama's values are, though I believe they revolve around freedom, democracy, and opportunity for all Americans, and also a core belief that America has nothing to fear from simply listening to global neighbors. Oh yeah--and something about hope. Where the WSJ/NBC News poll goes over the top, though, is in linking an understanding and ability to identify with Obama's values with an understanding and ability to identify with his background. The mixed-race child of a Kenyan and an American? A son left behind by his father and raised by his mother and grandparents? A Harvard educated lawyer? An inner city organizer? A professor of constitutional law? A best-selling author? A successful state lawmaker turned U.S. senator turned Democratic nominee for president?

When you do the math, it's amazing to me that only 4 in 10 responded that they could not identify with his background and values. Barack Obama is not an "average" American. The difference between this election and any that has come before is that the candidate is not afraid to admit this fact. Can you think of an "average" American candidate for president? Not in my lifetime. Probably not in yours. Right off the bat, the biggest factor separating presidential candidates from average Americans has to do with money. These people are wealthy. Members of the richest class in America. Millionaires. That alone presents a monumental dividing line between candidates and the average Americans they seek to represent.

What's more, how many Americans can really identify with John McCain's background? This is where the misnomer roots itself in unspoken ways. McCain is the child of a strict Navy upbringing, the imprisoned and tortured soldier, the decorated serviceman. Beyond that, he's a career politician married to an astonishingly wealthy heiress. He has a son serving in Iraq. One more thing: he's an old man who by his own admission doesn't use a computer. To be sure, I can't identify with McCain's background any more than I can with Obama's. But McCain is white, and that signals an instantaneous recognition, or suggestion of recognition, in the United States today. For the most superficial reason I can think of, John McCain fares better in this poll: his skin color affords him the advantage in America of not having to answer questions about his ethnic background.

This is how "background" becomes such a weighty word in this poll.

In Obama's case, rather than position himself as a prototypical, average American, he would challenge the country to see that "average" must no longer be linked with "American" in order to achieve representational democracy. He's saying that the American today is not average; the problems and challenges we face are not average; the catchall "average" leaves too many Americans of voting age on the outside looking in. The myth that a President Obama would shatter is that footage of a president raking brush on a Texas ranch and joshing around with reporters actually qualifies a son of wealth to represent himself as "average."

In this election season, Obama's bid has been characterized as a cultural campaign, a post-racial campaign, and a post-partisan campaign. The candidate has been much touted for leaving behind the old politics of Washington to usher in a new era of inclusion, thoughtfulness, and hope. I buy some of that and can leave some of it behind for the spin it is. But if there's one thing that Obama's successes have shown us thus far, it may be that Americans are ready for the first, post-average candidate in modern history.