Recently I’ve been up to my proverbials in a project, but seemed a good time to post some observations on the state of the US presidential race. Not least because some formerly friendly acquaintances who recently goaded me into an email flame war need to be set straight on a couple of points.

First, the “where’s the bounce?” meme. Why, in a year of Republican electoral armageddon, is John McCain still within striking distance of victory? Why isn’t Obama’s lead bigger? Or if you believe USA Today’s LV screen (here’s some thoughts on that), why is McCain ahead?

Here’s the better meme. Obama 2008 = Reagan 1980. First from novelty and metrics, then from worldview. Pretty graphs after the jump.

Novelty

Why, in a year of Republican armageddon, is John McCain within striking distance? Because as we’ve noted before, this election is about Obama, because the referendum on the last 8 years is over. And Obama is *new*. No Western country has ever elected as its head of government anyone with skin darker than Rafael Nadal’s. A 46-year-old black man with an exotic biography? Of course voters were going to have to get used to that.

They also had to get used to Reagan. In the summer of 1980, despite Carter’s presidency being judged an utter failure, Reagan lost a 16 point lead because voters weren’t sure that they could see Reagan in the White House. Carter’s campaign encouraged every doubt — ones that on the Left, particularly in Europe — never really went away, that Reagan was a warmongering maniac. That history unfolded after his presidency in a way that fitted Reagan’s narrative a lot better than the Left’s has seen his reputation improve in the 20 years since, even among his enemies.

Reagan was ideological novelty, Obama’s novelty is mostly biographical, but also has a policy component.

The dumbass meme through the Democratic primaries was that Obama’s positions were indistinguishable from Clinton’s, particularly on healthcare. Not true. Why would he refuse to budge on ruling out mandates on a health insurance reform plan? Because he’s been hanging out with Richard Thaler, the University of Chicago economist whose excellent new book, Nudge, takes the cream of behavioural economics applied to policy. The doctrine of “libertarian paternalism” or “Nudge economics” is that you let people make their own choices, but you set the “default setting” to a socially desirable outcome. You want people to contribute to pensions? Take it out of their paycheque and enroll them in a scheme, *unless they opt out* - in which case the choice is theirs. The same principle is at work across Obama’s domestic policy. That so few pol corrs have noticed is a function of policy-resistant campaign coverage.

Metrics

So let’s look at the 1980 race:

Carter led through most of 1980, because voters weren’t sure about Reagan. Obama’s recent trip through the Middle East and Europe was a step towards putting those images of Obama in the minds of voters - visiting troops, looking the part with Sarkozy, and inspiring 200,000 Berliners to turn out waving American flags instead of burning them - that will address the same “not sure about” factor. Bill Clinton in Ireland is the last time any American politician received such a greeting abroad. And that itself was a standout in the last 40 years. These things matter.

Comparisons with other election cycles are worth looking at, but the generic environment looks a lot more like 1980 than any election since - and possibly with more voters tuned in earlier - with Obama as Reagan in the novel challenger role. The difficulty for McCain is that, if the novelty-discomfort is with Obama’s skin colour and biography, then it’s going to be a tough choice to make - around now. It was one thing to tar Reagan as a ideological radical, but would McCain really be willing to stoke racial fear about Obama? McCain’s own family makeup (Bridget) suggests he would be unwilling to go there, but a standard ideological attack on Obama seems unlikely to succeed. If it’s true that the determining factor is voter comfort with Obama, McCain’s dyspepsia about his loss of media darling status seems to be clouding his ability to accept that analysis and settle on a strategy that exploits it, in a way he can live with on November 5.

As the Obama campaign was at pains to flag, over and over, they didn’t expect to see a short-term bounce from last week. If anything, they expect to see some softening. But the presidential semiotics of Obama’s trip are essential for defusing doubts that could go off in the voting booth. He looked utterly at home in the role.

The state of the race at this point:

Worldview

The Phil Gramm let-the-banks-create-whatever-frankenstein-finance-they-like, any-recession’s-all-in-your-head/Rush Limbaugh being-American-means-consuming-more-than-China economic/environmental disaster zone is revealed in all its bankrupcy. The John Bolton America-is-destined-to-rule-a-world-empire foreign policy is in even worse shape. They’re both perverse caricatures of the strong and optimistic view of the world that was the core of the Reagan Revolution, which I grew up on. But those caricatures are the actual positions that John McCain is reduced to.

Both are carictures, but they go a lot further. They are actually perversions of Reagan’s original thinking. They are rooted in a “the world is scary and we must recreate a glorious imaginary past when we were invulnerable” view that Reagan never shared. Reagan had a two-part message formula that worked. Face reality — pivot — be optimistic about the future. Obama has mastered the formula, which isn’t about ideology; it’s about leadership. David Milliband’s piece on Labour’s travails strikes a similar balance today.

The second part is what led most Reagan obits. The ‘face reality’ part is less remembered. Facing reality means being honest about the challenges of the current situation: The economy is in the tank; we have an energy crisis; we’ve squandered our moral authority and military strength. [Funny how even the analysis isn't too different.]

Carter never got beyond the ‘face reality’ part in 1980; neither did John Kerry in 2004. John McCain blew right past it and is in neocon fantasyland. “Things are fine. The recession’s in your head. We’re ‘winning’ in Iraq and should stay there indefinitely.”

Realism without optimism - or, dare we say, hope - is despair. Optimism without realism is delusion. You need both to move forward. And we definitely need to do that.

The failure of many on the right to be intellectually honest about Obama, because of whatever class of prejudice, is not only setting them up for massive electoral failure but is tempting them to lines of attack that will lead them to dishonour.