Personally, I think it is – the way he’s acting like he’s already President started grating on my conservative, Republican nerves about a month ago…and now I perceive it is grating on the nerves of independents as well. Rich Lowry over at NRO’s The Corner gets some insight on this:
Musings from a shrewd friend on the latest turn in the race (quoting roughly): “The Berlin speech was overreach. This is the moment we were waiting for Obama—to over-step. No candidate has ever acted in this fashion. No one has ever campaigned in front of foreigners. He’s showing hubris and contempt for the rest of us in how he considers America fundamentally broken and he’s the solution. Messianism is usually a quality you don’t want in a president. This was always the soft underbelly of his candidacy. They’ve gotten too caught up in their own story. What always does in a celebrity? Overexposure. The question now is whether Dana Milbank is the bird leaving the wire and every other bird in the press follows him or not. If this narrative sets in, Obama might have to move up his VP announcement to change the story.”
That Milbank piece, by the way, is devastating towards Obama:
President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour
Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.
Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president’s) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.
Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him.
Later in the piece Milbank notes how an Obama press release stated that Obama looks forward to working with the Pakistani Prime Minister…the only trouble with that, of course, is that there is that tiresome detail of an actual election to go through. The only thing I can figure is that Obama feels himself a man of destiny and that its all sewn up. Obama and his people are starting to believe their own PR.
Now, don’t get me wrong – as of today, July 31st, 2008, Obama still has the inside track to the White House. If the election were held today, we’d probably find ourselves with a President-elect Obama…but Obama’s support hasn’t grown since he wrapped up the Democratic nomination, and there are indicators that it has actually shrunk. His various triangulations towards the center have been mechanical and very pro-forma…and Obama seems to believe that a few words of centrism and conservatism is enough to allay all concerns about his liberal extremism…meanwhile, he counts on a fawning MSM and GOP fear of being called racist to carry him effortlessly over the finish line. Hubris has ever been the undoing of men in public affairs – and Obama has an overabundance of it.
As I said the other day, this election is a pure toss up – and if Obama thinks he can coast to an easy victory in November, then he’ll end up getting thumped. Hard fought, the election can go either way with Obama holding the edge…but if Obama figures he’s already won, then he’ll lose, and lose rather badly.
UPDATE: John Kass notes that he’s addicted to Hopium.
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