It's Over

Frankly, I don't think this US presidential election is even going to be close.

Bottom line: people vote for candidates they warm to personally—at least, the voters who swing elections do. Who do you want appearing on your TV screens for the next four years? That's what really matters, and it is reasonable that it should—in the US system, a president is a symbol of the nation, and his primary power is the “bully pulpit.”

In the likeability stakes, Obama looked good at first, but he does not seem to wear well. “Where's the beef?” applies more aptly to him than it ever did to Gary Hart. He has now run out of interesting things to say. Biden was never there—amiable in a way, but audibly full of helium.

McCain is hard not to like. Because of his ability to improvise, used so effectively in town hall meetings, he remains interesting to listen to more or less indefinitely. Television is, in the end, an intimate medium, and this works better for him than for a set-piece orator like Obama.

And Palin? Sorry, but every magazine editor knows that both men and women would rather look at an attractive woman than any man. Not any woman, perhaps, but a babe, certainly. Who isn't going to want to see her on their TV screens for the next four years? Sexist, perhaps, but true, and it will work for her. At this point, everybody wants to see more Palin.