Why John McCain could still beat Barack Obama in presidential race
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Regular readers may recall that all those months ago, when Hillary Clinton was a dead cert for the Democratic nomination and John McCain was the RINO (“Republican in Name Only”) outsider who had too many enemies within his own party to be a plausible candidate, I went out on a crazy limb and predicted that Barack Obama and McCain would be fighting each other for the presidency come November.
So now for the second half of my prediction: that John McCain would win the general election.
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John McCain seems more able to relate comfortably to ordinary working people than Barack Obama.
This bit may seem even more far-fetched, especially if you are following all this through the eyes of the British media, whose cynicism about domestic politics seems to be bizarrely mirrored (which is to say, reversed) by naivety about American politics. But I am standing by it. If anything, the events of the past few days have confirmed my view….[McCain] seems more able to relate comfortably to ordinary working people than Obama.
This may well be a function of his background as a military officer who was conspicuously loyal to his men, having refused to abandon them when he was offered release from a Vietnamese POW camp.
And this brings me to what may still prove to be the most significant fact about McCain: he is a war hero. (Indeed, in this respect, he bears more of a resemblance to John Kennedy than does Obama.)
He has proved himself to be unflinching in danger and courageous under fire. When people (especially Americans, who still regard military bravery as an exemplar of virtue) come to choose the man to lead them through a crisis, that will count for a lot.
To European eyes (and to some American ones, too) this is an election to determine how America sees itself: can it elect its first black president? Can it present itself to the world in an entire