Prominent Conservative Writer Krauthammer Gives The Race To Obama

[Mr. Peabody]

Charles Krauthammer is the Pulitzer-Prize winning conservative writer who coined the term "The Bush Doctrine". Recently, he was in the news when he was repeatedly referred to by Rush, Hannity, conservative media, and even the Republicans on this board for his defense of Palin's inability to discuss The Bush Doctrine.

In today's Washington Post, he all but concedes the race to Obama.

In the primary campaign, Obama was cool as in hip. Now Obama is cool as in collected. He has the discipline to let slow and steady carry him to victory. He has not at all distinguished himself in this economic crisis -- nor, one might add, in any other during his national career -- but detachment has served him well. He understands that this election, like the election of 1980, demands only one thing of the challenger: Make yourself acceptable. Once Ronald Reagan convinced America that he was not menacing, he won in a landslide. If Obama convinces the electorate that he is not too exotic or green or unprepared, he wins as well.

When after the Republican convention Obama's poll numbers momentarily slipped behind McCain's, panicked Democrats urged him to get mad. He did precisely the opposite. He got calm. He repositioned himself as ordinary, becoming the earnest factory-floor, coffee-shop, union-hall candidate.

He's been moderate in policy and temper ever since. His one goal: Pass the Reagan '80 threshold. Be acceptable, be cool, be reassuring.

In doing so, he continues his clever convention-speech pivot from primary to general election. In a crowded primary field in which he was the newcomer and the stranger, he rose above the crowd on pure special effects: dazzling rhetoric, natural charisma, and a magic carpet ride of transcendence and hope.

Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he's a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own -- fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

I don't care how far ahead Barack is in the polls, I still consider him the underdog until he actually wins the election. There's still one month, two debates, and other "factors" that will play themselves out before this thing is over.

[DarrinS]

I agree with Krauthammer.


All Obama needs to do from now until Nov 4, is just not do anything provacative and continue selling "McCain == Bush". I'd also keep Joe the-human-gaffe-machine Biden on a short leash.

[Mr. Peabody]

I agree with Krauthammer.


All Obama needs to do from now until Nov 4, is just not do anything provacative and continue selling "McCain == Bush". I'd also keep Joe the-human-gaffe-machine Biden on a short leash.

Well, let's see what the "October Surprise" is this go around. It would be hard for me to believe that the McCain campaign doesn't have something that they are waiting to drop in a week or two.