Across the pond

There have been some sensational developments this week in the US Presidential election which have grabbed the headlines and dominated the television news bulletins. All the news media followed up on the New York Times front page story, on which the Times men had been working since November, alleging an improper relationship between John McCain, the Republican front runner, and a thirty year old blonde lobbyist. As for the Demcrats all the media brought their megaphones to let the world know that Barack Obama’s wife is ‘unpatriotic’. Her comment that she has never felt proud to be American until the last few weeks when a rising tide of Americans have expressed their approval of her husband.

To judge by the headlines the message of these two stories is clear. The smear of McCain has produced a backlash. McCain has come out looking much stronger, because the conservative Republicans, some of whom have been booing McCain in public, have rallied to his support. If America’s most liberal newspaper is attacking McCain he must be worth be a worthy champion for all right thinking Americans.

Contrast the treatment of the unguarded comment by Mrs Obama, which to fuel doubts about her husband’s policies as well and doubts about whether he can ever win a Presidential election let alone govern the country. See the latest story by the Gerald Baker, the chief American correspondent of the London Times, headlined ‘Obama: is America ready for this dangerous leftwinger?’ 

Careful reading of all the important stories this week leads me to a quite different conclusion. This week may well be seen in retrospect as an important turning point. It may prove to be the week that the Democrats united behind Obama and began the long haul campaign to defeat the real enemy, the Republicans. And it may prove to the week when Republican doubts about whether the candidate their voting system has chosen as Presidential candidate has any hope of winning.

Looking at the Demcrats first. One of the least noticed news items this week was the result of the voting from Demcrats Abroad. I was alerted to it by an old friend on a long visit from the US. She told me that she had just posted her vote for Obama, while he husband had put his cross against Hillary Clinton. The tally for the Democrats Abroad total resulted in a whopping 82 per cent victory for Obama, a far bigger win than any votes cast on the other side of the pond.

How to explain this? One news story on this I read revealed that the majority for those Americans living in Oxford was even greater. That is easy to explain. Obviously the vote was dominated by the kind of egg-head lefty academics who are fierce critics of middle America. But the number of American academics living abroad is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of managers and businessmen, whose livelihoods depend on appealing to consumers of all political persusions.

Why did they vote for Obama? Two possible reasons. First, in living abroad, they are much more aware of the damage the Iraq war has done to America’s reputation in the world and Obama has been against that war whereas Cllinton supported it. Second, Obama consistently emphasises the unity theme. His rhetoric insists that his administration will include able people of all political persusions. His policies are in fact little different from those of Clinton. The too-left-wing to win criticism can be equally applied to Hillary Clinton, who is notably to the left of her husband on issues like national health.

Stateside two states voted on Tuesday of this week. Wisconsin voted 62 per cent for Obama and the much smaller Hawaii, where Obama once lived, gave him 75 per cent. Most of the media coverage suggests the race is still open. The opinion polls in Texas and Ohio, who vote on 4 March, both show a slim lead for Clinton. If these two states and Pennsylvania vote for Clinton she could still win.

But she would have to win by huge margins to overturn the votes Obama already has in the bag. The latest tally shows Obama with a lead of 160 votes over Clinton from the elections. As for the super delegates, those senior Democrats who can choose which way they vote at the Convention, Clinton’s majority has been severely eroded. According to the latest Associated Press analysis, her majority has been whittled down to 60, leaving Obama with an overall lead of one hundred votes.

Hence my conclusion that Clinton cannot win now unless something totally unexpected happens. And the chance of more of the super delegates switching to Obama in the next two weeks is very high, as they above all see the need for a unified party to beat the Republican side.

In contrast, the chances of disunity breaking out on the Republican side looks much greater. The New York Times article hit the world headlines because it considered the possibility that McCain had slept with a young blonde eight years ago. In its somewhat ponderous way the Times admitted that they did not have any hard evidence for this. Aides of McCain had told them that they had warned McCain eight years ago that he should should curb his friendship with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for powerful business interests. They had no hard evidence that Vicki was a Moncia Lewinsky, although they did establish she was a frequent visitor to his office during his bid for the Presidency against Bush senior. And that McCain had travelled with her in flights paid for by her bosses.. But both McCain and Vicki denied the allegations. Compared with the story sweeping Australia at present about a council employee, Beth Hill,  has admitted mixing up her job by steering contracts to those who had sex with her and gave her expensive gifts, the NYT had a non-story.

What the Times story did establish very clearly, however, is that McCain wrote letters supporting her businessmen clients who were lobbying for big contracts. In retrospect the Times would have avoided the stick it got from the rest of the media if it had not mentioned sex. If it had said explicity that McCain had an avuncular relationship with this young woman, and that his fondness for her had led him seeking favours for her clients.

This is undoubtedly true, which is why McCain hired on the best lawyers in town last December to try and dissuade the Times from publishing the story, which the Times had put to him long before they published the final version. The established hard evidence matters, because the events are eight years ago, they demonstrate that McCain is not the squeaky Mr Clean which is his current image. He has consistently campaigned, particularly against Romney, as the ethical independent who was free of the party machine and better able than anyone else on the Republican side to resist the efforts of the hundreds of lobbyists in Washington who are paid by big business to influence Senators, Congressmen and Presidential staff to enable them to win contracts and pay as little tax  as possible.

So the events of this week leaves the Republicans in a far worse mess than the Demcrats. The only other candidate left in the Republican race, Mike Huckabee, has no chance of getting the support of all the party. To change horses at this stage of the campaign would be quite unprecedented. All Republicans must be hoping that this story will die a death long before November. But at week’s end it showed no sign of so-doing. One of Vicki’s clients, Paxson, the boss of PaxTV, went public supporting the Times version of these events.

Anything I write here, of course, might be overtaken by events in the next few weeks. Maybe FoxTV will find a blonde white lobbyist who might have slept with Barack Obama.

Now that would give the headline writers a field day.