Dateline: BUCHAREST

Below is the latest and brightest attempt so far by McCain to go negative on Obama. [Much better than the previous clip, which is spectacularly unfunny].

The video follows the, by now, traditional line of attack, which aims to portray Obama as glitzy, but hollow. I.e., charismatic but lacking substance. The video makes a somewhat less than subtle comparison with Britney Spears, and then makes the dooming question: Is he ready to lead?

Fair enough. From then on, however, the video becomes logically flawed. It goes on to expose two of Obama’s stances, as an illustration of the said thesis: opposition to offshore drilling, and raising electricity taxes. The idea behind this is, I think, to illustrate the prior thesis. Obama is not ready to lead because his policies are bad. Where is the flawed logic? Well, Obama, like Bush Jr., can turn out to be very good at leading. Now, whether the policies that come out of the business of leading are good or bad, is an entirely different story [or fish food, to translate a Romanian expression]. Obama can be very ready to lead, can be good at leading, and still his policies could be bad. Two different issues here, conflated by a stiff, uninspired and uninspiring McCain campaign. If I had one advice to give to McCain, that would be: hire Stephen Colbert! But, then again, his price tag might be beyond McCain’s budget.

More about this on Justin Webb’s blog.

Below is Barack Obama in Tiergarten, Berlin, in front of a crowd of 200,000, during his Middle Eastern/European tour. The tour was aimed at boosting his foreign policy credentials in the US, where he faces stiff competition on that particular front from the veteren McCain. Confronted by the press regarding Obama’s triumph in Europe, McCain replied, wryly, that he is keen on visiting Europe - not as a candidate, but as president-elect.

Obama’s rhetoric skills at their best here, performing an amazing speech [kudos to his speech-writers]. I find it hard for Obama to actually live up to the huge expectations he created, if elected in the fall. But I say that his performance in office is only half as impressive [in both rhetoric and general policy lines, and substance] as what we’ve seen so far, he would be on a course to changing US image abroad, and possibly even of restoring soft power to the declining hegemon. Can you say Kennedy?

Have a look at this excellent article from the  Economist. It takes apart, bit by bit, the Hillary campaign machine, and points to all of its malfunctioning parts that led to the biggest upset in recent American elections history.

To sum it up, Hillary lost because she was slow to grasp the formidable power of change versus the diminishing perceived relevane of experience, and because she lacked Obama’s vision in terms of using new media and the internet to connect, galvanize and rally supporters, and raise money.