Barack Amok

Will someone please tell Barack Obama to get his damn act together?

Recent polls show John McCain pulling even with Obama with the Reuters poll even showing McCain ahead by five points. Granted, this result was due to polling done while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii and the Russians were on the march in the Caucasus region, but it also reflects how laid-back and gentlemanly Obama's campaign has become at a time when McCain has staffed his campaign headquarters with young punks taking lessons from Karl Rove's playbook.

Obama's cerebral approach to the discussion with California evangelist Rick Warren didn't help him much. While he articulated complex policy positions in a philosophical tone, McCain stuck to terse, brisk statements that the audience ate up. As John Farmer of the Newark Star-Ledger noted, McCain had problems not unlike Obama's in relating with evangelicals before this, but he clearly came out ahead.

Could this be the Clinton curse? Bill and Hillary have run the Democratic Party since Bill was elected President in 1992, and every time they passed the party leadership to someone different - Gore, Kerry - it went back to them like a boomerang, and it's almost as if they've rigged the mantel of party leadership to satisfy their lust for power. Indeed, they act as if they own the party outright. If Obama loses in November, Hillary will be the front runner for the 2012 Democratic presidential nomination and they will continue to bend the party to their will. In the meantime, a President McCain would surely pack the the Supreme Court with jurists who are intellectually in sync with the Austrian National Front.

Obama should be ahead. He's right on the economic issues, right on Iraq, and probably right on the Caucasus crisis. He has not articulated hid positions forcefully, however, and he has apparently not taken McCain's challenges seriously enough. Recent statements from Obama himself on abortion and the economy show a new, more cutting attack against McCain, however, and he seems to be regaining his footing. This could be short-lived, however, as Obama has a history of getting his campaign in high gear only to get stuck in second again.

Perhaps the convention and his as-yet unrevealed choice of a running mate will shake things up for the better. But Obama can forget about making the election about George Walker Bush. McCain has distanced himself tremendously from the current administration. Also, while the economy and Iraq are issues that favor Obama, there are enough voted unaffected by the former issue and supportive of McCain on the latter to give him an edge in the general election.

McCain might have helped Obama today, though. He appeared to have endorsed a voter's suggestion that the draft be reinstated.