The Republicans are given to accusing Barack Obama of being an "elitist". This charge is unfounded and totally unfair.

I don't think that "elitism" is Obama's problem, I think he suffers from what I believe psychiatrists call "grandiosity":

Roget's II: Thesaurus defines grandiosity as "boastful self-importance or display" and offers the words "ostentation," "pomposity" and "pretension" to further illustrate this definition. In short, it is an exaggerated sense of one's importance, power, knowledge or identity. It often has religious overtones. The term "grandiosity" is used to describe the larger-than-life feelings of superiority often experienced by those in a manic episode.

In short, I think Barack Obama is crazier than a bedbug, even crazier than The Decider himself. God help us all in every corner of the globe if he is ever elected.

With that cheering thought I bid you all a fond adieu and Godspeed.

This, barring unforeseen events, extremely unforeseen, will be my last post till the beginning of September.

On Friday I will begin one of those month long August vacations that southern Europe is famous for. I'm going up to the mountains near Madrid, surrounded by eagles and cows and other creatures that crawl and slither, to sleep and to read and to walk and to sleep some more. I won't even read the papers except on weekends. I shall miss your company and think of you often.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

James Wolcott over at Vanity Fair has produced what is one of the most complete, tightly argued, and surely the best written critique of the McCain campaign's "Obama Superstar" ad.

However in it, Wolcott makes one point that highlights a great American contradiction that I would like to riff on.

In fact, in this phrase he illuminates a major facet of the American personality. Here is the phrase:

America is a country based on celebrity, a country where nearly everybody wants to be a celebrity, an American Idol, and decrying the cult of celebrity is an empty exercise in moralizing.

If there ever were two characteristics that set Americans apart from other peoples, it is the intensity of their worship of celebrities and their endless, empty moralizing.

In fact the two things are closely related.

Americans use their celebrities as archetypes on which to exercise their moralizing.

Americans, while they worship their celebrities, devour them.

Celebrities are by definition open to judgment of the most trivial kind: it is the "death of a thousand cuts".

American celebrity, therefore, is very destructive and Obama is in fact walking on very dangerous ground.

McCain's people are on to something.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

People are all like, "whaddya, whaddya?"

"David, are you endorsing John McCain?"

No, not really.

I thought that the best possible candidate for president this year was Al Gore.... and I still think so.

First, because I consider him the "President in Exile". He won and we were all robbed.

Gore was against the war in Iraq and probably he would have paid attention to the CIA report on Bin-Laden that Condi and Dubya ignored. Much of what has been bad in these eight years, including stiffing Kyoto and torturing prisoners, would surely have been avoided had Gore been installed in the White House in January 2001.

To top it off, Gore is now a Nobel Prize winner. He is universally recognized as a person of "vision" with real live, clearly stated, well known, credible, unflipfloppable positions on some of the most important issues of our time.

Electing him president this year would have been the closest thing to rewinding history I can think of and a true, unmistakable, message to the world of the repudiation of George W. Bush and all his works.

Al Gore shouldn't have had to even run for the nomination this year. He should have been drafted at the convention in an act of acclamation with everybody applauding everybody like the sort of thing that the Bulgarian Communist Party used to be famous for.

I understand that some people find Al Gore dull. To those people I suggest they buy a video game and press the buttons till they grow hair on their palms.

As to Barack Obama.

When the Democratic field was narrowed down to Hillary and Obama I had trouble believing how decadent it all was. A "dynastic wife", like Sonia Gandhi or Cristina Kirchner running against a fairy tale. The winner to run against a semi-crippled, septuagenarian of questionable temperament.

This in a country of 300,000,000 people, the richest, most powerful nation on earth, a country that thinks itself "a light unto the nations", a nation of fabled ice-cream.

This is not to deny Barack Obama's talent. Not since Ferdinand Waldo Demara has anyone gone farther with less reality to back him up.

If he had ever been the successful governor of an important state or even the mayor of a big town or done something difficult and dangerous in his short time in the Senate I could buy this. But no.

Who knows, Obama might have made a good Veep on Gore's ticket and after eight years in that office, he would have had an easy, natural shot at the presidency. As it is, if he loses this year simply because people don't want to vote for a "question mark", it is going to set back race relations in the USA by decades. There won't be a black person in America that will ever believe that Obama lost for any other reason than because he was black.

But, that is still no reason to put the atomic bomb in the hands of a "question mark".

So, no, I am not a big fan of McCain's, but he seems real to me.. "The last man left standing".

I don't think Dennis Kucinich is going to get elected in a write-in campaign, so I guess that leaves John McCain.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that Barack Obama’s Berlin bounce is fading. Obama now attracts 45% of the vote while John McCain earns 42%. When "leaners" are included, it’s Obama 48% and McCain 45%. Both Obama and McCain are viewed favorably by 56% of voters.(...) Obama enjoyed two very strong nights of polling on Thursday and Friday. His lead grew to six-points for results released on Saturday (see recent daily results). However, polling on Saturday and Sunday showed the candidates much closer with single-day results similar to polling from before the Berlin speech. Obama earns the vote from 77% of Democrats, McCain is supported by 82% of Republicans. Unaffiliated voters are evenly divided.

It simply isn't happening.

Barack Obama was received like a rock star in Europe and John McCain has had what everyone considered his worst week ever, chock full with fluffs and nonevents.

Bloomberg's description is perfect:

Obama's eight-day trip to the Middle East war zones and Europe was almost perfect. The Democratic candidate looked and sounded presidential and reassuring, while avoiding missteps.
The contrasts, often unfairly, with McCain at home were stunning. One looking vigorous in a helicopter over Iraq, the other in a golf cart with former President George H. W. Bush -- 155 years of age between them.

...and yet the polls aren't moving.

I titled this post "Barack Edsel", because I'm actually old enough to remember the Ford "Edsel".

It was the classic, textbook case of an enormous marketing blitz designed to sweep the nation, that didn't sweep.

The father of a friend of mine actually bought one and neither he nor his kid ever lived it down.

For those of you too young to recall the Edsel fiasco, this is how Wikipedia describes it:

The Edsel was introduced amidst considerable publicity on "E Day"—September 4, 1957. It was promoted by a top-rated television special, The Edsel Show on October 13, but it was not enough to counter the adverse public reaction to the car's styling and conventional build. For months Ford had been circulating rumors that led consumers to expect an entirely new kind of car when in reality the Edsel shared its bodywork with other Ford models.

My reading is that at this time, with the economy in the tank, two wars going badly and Maliki shilling for him, Obama should be at least 20 points ahead of McCain.

I saw the other day, that at this point, Jimmy Carter had a 30 percent lead on Gerald Ford. Obama, on the contrary, has the slimmest of leads and hasn't broken the 50% barrier. (cough, sputter, putt, putt)

Contrary to what many think, I believe that the "undecideds" are looking for the merest excuse to swing to McCain. He can fumble and flub all he wants and it doesn't touch his numbers, but any serious gaffe or "October surprise" will sink Barack Obama like a stone.

It seems to me that McCain would have to be found wandering around Washington confused and unable to find his way home to lose this one.

PS:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain moved from being behind by 6 points among "likely" voters a month ago to a 4-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama among that group in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. McCain still trails slightly among the broader universe of "registered" voters. By both measures, the race is tight. The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I received the following comment to a post of mine:

(...) Please shut up because your perspective is meaningless and insulting to those of us living amid the realities of the US political scene that you appraise from afar as if it were only an object of academic study.

I just wanted to say in my defense here, that the entire world is affected by American politics, even the most banal and self-indulgent versions of them, and millions of people all over the world are panting to give the you the benefit of their views and most of them would offer fewer compliments than I do. I however, have a certain command of the American version of the English language, which enables me to present an alternative point of view in pungent fashion. I am not alone in my views, believe me: to quote a best seller, "my name is legion".

I would also add that from a certain distance American reality is much easier to diagnose than from up close. When you've been away some time and you return, one of the first things that strikes you (literally) is the massive quantity of manipulative messages an American is subjected to every hour of his or her life. The outlines of what passes for reality in America are severely blurred by this unceasing bombardment. Within what José Martí called "the belly of the beast", there is no "forest" only "trees".

I would say from personal experience that America can only be fully understood from abroad..