American political life continues eerily to copy The West Wing. In the fictional 2006 presidential race, Matt Santos, the young minority Democrat, chose as his running mate an old and experienced party stalwart; Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden, who is as close to a Leo McGarry as you can get these days. Arnie Vinick, the Republican maverick and curmudgeon, out of touch with the conservative base, chose a young, attractive and energetic governor of a small state, with a reformist reputation and solid conservative credentials. John McCain chose Sarah Palin, whose reputation has been made by fiscal reform, rather than the sort of legal crusading for which Ray Sullivan was renowned. You could say that a young man like Obama needed experience to balance the ticket; and an old middle-of-the-roader like McCain needed youth and right-wing Christian credentials to balance his position and excite the Republican base. You could say that they had no choice but to choose whom they chose. Or you could say that the scriptwriters for The West Wing were eerily accurate in their preview of the 2008.
If you stretch it a little, the screenwriters very nearly also predicted the financial crisis currently besetting USof A. In The West Wing the presidential campaign was disrupted by a nuclear accident in a power station over which the Republican candidate had had some regulatory supervision. John McCain, as a committee chairman, exercised regulatory control over the banking and finance sector - or failed properly to do so. In the series, the candidates suspended campaigning for a few days during the crisis - and McCain, in a piece of cynical attempted manipulation, tried to replicate them. Only Obama wouldn't play - the first debate went ahead on time and neither candidate was central to the political machinations that led to the final form of the legislation aimed at solving the fiscal crisis.
If it is the case that The West Wing scriptwriters were eerily prophetic, on election night 2008 we need to be prepared for a tragic death and for the contest to last well into Wednesday morning, until Oregon and Nevada fall into the Obama column and he wins by a sliver in the Electoral College. Mind you, I don't think that it will be nearly that close.
VPILF
The nomination of Sarah Palin certainly stirred up the 2008 presidential campaigns and provided everyone with a week or two of fun. It was the circuit breaker McCain had to have. He needed something completely unexpected to get through to the electorate after the Obama-fest in Denver. But, when the history of the election is written, the nomination of Palin will be seen as the beginning of the end for McCain, rather than the act that led to victory.
For the Democrats, things could not have gone better in Denver. Hillary Clinton graciously endorsed Obama and Bill gave one of his better speeches in support of the candidate. The latter delivered an acceptance speech that will resonate well into the campaign. He established the themes that will be repeated all the way to November 4: the urgent need for change; the concentration on the economic mess created by the Bush policies; the requirement that the government provide a safety net for the disadvantaged; the focus on the needs of working families; and the tying of McCain to the Bush administration's economic and foreign policies. He came out of Denver with an eight-point bump. No wonder McCain's crew thought it was time for something startling. The nomination of Alaska's Sarah Palin certainly fit that description. But what were they thinking? The candidate had met her once only. The background checking had been at best cursory. She came from a small state that was already deep Red. While she provided cut-through to the Christian right-wing base that had been unenthusiastic about McCain, she endangered the ability of the candidate to properly appeal to the independents and shaky Democrats whom McCain needs to win in November. She was a huge risk - and her first few interviews, as well as the on-going scandals in Alaska of which she is a part, have indicated a risk that will not pay off. Like Spiro Agnew, Geraldine Ferraro and J Danforth Quayle before her, she is a surprise nomination who will provide more anchor than motor to the ticket. Admittedly, she has been good for lots of copy in the papers, in the broadcast media and, particularly, on teh intertubes. She has made universal the acronym MILF (Mother I'd Like to "Fondle" - or other words starting with "F" that are a little more direct). She's a poster-woman for the right-wing Republican issues - anti-abortion, pro-guns, anti-sex education, pro-creationism, anti-earmarks, pro-moose meat - until it became apparent that her teenage daughter was in the family way. Now unmarried teenage mums are not supposed to happen in good, loving, Christian families where abstinence is the substitute for proper learning about sex. And it also emerges that she has not in fact opposed 'earmarks', ie the addition by legislators of items of pork-barrel spending into unrelated Bills in exchange for support for those proposals, but actively encouraged a number of such proposals from Alaskan congresspeople.
The short-term impact of the Palin nomination was a huge bump in the McCain poll numbers. In the daily tracking he went from five to eight points behind to five in front. But the effect appears to be very short-term: those tracking numbers soon levelled out and then started to slip back. By the time of the first debate, and immediately thereafter, Obama was back to an average five-point lead in the national tracking polls, and ahead in the state-by-state polls in most of the 'purple' states (the American electoral map divides states into 'red', for those safely Republican, and 'blue' for Democrat states; the swing states are generally then called 'purple' and the presidential election is determined by which of the purple states changes party in the electoral college). The Palin nomination had another, more counter-productive effect: it encouraged many more people to give money to Obama. The Democrat candidate has eschewed public funding for his campaign. That means that he is not tied to any fiscal limits on campaign funds (although the limits on the amounts that individuals and organisations can donate remain in place). In the wake of the Palin nomination, Obama had an additional 500,000 citizens making donations to his campaign, and collected a record $66 million in the month. She might well have activated the Republic conservative base, but she had a newtownian equal and opposite reaction with Democrat-leaning voters. Palin's ineptitude in her first few interviews (for example, she showed clearly that she had no idea what the "Bush doctrine" in foreign affairs meant) and McCain's flip-flops on the economy (first it was in sound shape, then, when the AIG and Lehman Brothers collapses became apparent, it was in urgent need of much stronger government oversight) have not helped. Nor the fact that many of the star turns have ended up available to all through the wonders of the Internet: McCain on The View; Palin's interview stumbles on the Bush Doctrine; Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's devastating five-minute turn as Palin and Hillary at the start of Saturday Night Live; the same two actresses a few weeks later as Palin and Katie Couric on another SNL sketch; and David Letterman's devestating attacks on McCain following the latter's opting out on a promised appearance.
There are a number of factors that make the 2008 election intriguing, not the least the impact of a black major party candidate and whether there is likely to be a race-based reaction from the voters in the privacy of the poll booth. There's also the presence of Sarah Palin; the experience, and middle-road attractiveness, of John McCain; the seeming determination of Obama not to engage in low-road politics; the equally strong determination of the Republican attack machine to plumb the depths (the ads suggesting that Obama's stranger-danger education of younglings is somehow sex education for five year olds is but the first of many); the politicisation of a coterie of young and enthusiastic Obamists and the corresponding lack of enthusiasm among some Republican core voters; the sleeper issue of the possible rorting of the vote when digital means are used - as in Ohio in 2004; the unknown unknowns of the debates, the economy and the war on terror; and just how unpopular the Shrub is. How these all play out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess. Mine: Obama, with about 320 electoral college votes.
Opposition ain't easy ...
The persecution and assassination of Brendan Nelson by the inmates of the asylum at Canberra ... has been completed. Malcolm Bligh Turnbull now has the con. The trouble for the Libs is that they have sacrificed one pragmatic populist with no underlying philosophy for another. Not only that but, at a time when bankers, particularly merchant bankers, are seen as being responsible for the economic disasters besetting the western economies, the Libs have chosen to be led by someone overwhelmingly identified with merchant bankery. The change in leadership hasn't had a great impact on the polls, although the Libs might creep a point or two back towards equilibrium. At the moment, despite a failure to take the initiative on many of the important issues of the day, Kruddy continues to dominate the events in Canberra because the opposition have no strong philosophical position from which to launch a concerted attack. I will watch, with interest, whether my old debating mate Malcolm can find a defensible position of his party.
... incumbency is harder
The streak is over. For the first time this millennium a state Labor government has lost power, although it's hard to say that the Liberals won the election. After 21 successive victories by the ALP in state and territory elections, the WA government suffered at 6 per cent swing on 6 September, but less than 3 per cent of that went to the Libs. As a result, the ALP ended up with 28 seats, the Libs 24, the Nats 4 and 3 independents. As the Nats and independents agreed to support the Libs, they have taken government. This will be the first of a number of changes in government in the states. With a change of government in Canberra, and a series of lacklustre or incompetent state governments, not to mention adverse economic conditions, things won't be east for incumbents over the next year or two.
First written:late September/early October 2008
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