Potholes in Obama's Path

What could stop Barack Obama from becoming president?

The expectation--let's face it--is that it's his race to lose. Even some conservative pundits say privately that they don't expect John McCain to be able to pull it out. It's just a Democratic year, they believe--and the fact that Obama may outspend McCain by 3-to-1 or more (while the media barely rapped his knuckles for abandoning his public financing pledge) just adds to his advantage.

At the same time, it's hardly a slam dunk. For all his supposed advantages, Senator O has about a six-point lead in most polls (leaving aside that outlying Newsweek survey). There are, understandably, doubts about his readiness, given his newness on the national scene. And then there is what is often described as the groundbreaking nature of his candidacy.

Beyond that, there is a sense--didn't Hillary Clinton warn about this?--that he is about to get a ton of stuff dumped on his head. That he needs to be battered and bloodied if McCain is to have a shot. That the election will essentially become a referendum on Obama. That is why, as I reported yesterday, the campaign is taking pains to present him as a basketball-playing, bike-riding dad who watches ESPN and could live down the street from you.

Here's something you may not have thought about, considering that recent presidents hailed from places such as Hope, Ark.; Dixon, Ill.; Plains, Ga., and Yorba Linda, Calif.:

"Americans also have never sent a Chicagoan to the White House, and one intriguing question posed by his candidacy is whether they are ready to now," says the Chicago Tribune.

"For all his talk about change, Obama remains a product of a Chicago and Illinois political culture renowned for corruption and filled with characters who range from felonious to just outrageous."

In the New Republic, Drew Westen declares that "the only road that could take McCain to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the low road, one of the few pieces of infrastructure left in good repair by President Bush. His father paved it against Michael Dukakis, George W. Bush repaved it running against John Kerry, and the GOP repainted the dotted line in now-Senator Bob Corker's 2006 contest with Harold Ford. The path to success for McCain is to make the election a referendum on his opponent, by working in silent concert with 527 groups and media outlets such as Fox News to pursue character assassination, guilt by association, and, most of all, the effort to paint Obama as different, foreign, unlike 'us,' and dangerous (and did I mention that he's black?)."

But how exactly is McCain responsible for those other campaigns? Westen continues:

"Over the last several weeks, McCain has been running 'The American President,' an ad with all the trappings of positivity, but that actually sets the stage for all future attacks. The attacks will not come from McCain. They will come from the [momentarily] dormant 527s behind them, giving McCain plausible deniability while they make the presidential contest about Barack Obama's differentness and activate unconscious racial sentiments that Republicans have preyed upon for four decades.

"The name of McCain's ad itself suggests both its positive message and its more insidious subtext: What other kind of President is there? An un-American President, someone who is not really 'one of us'? An anti-American President? Or perhaps just an African-American President."

That seems a bold prediction, given that there are no conservative 527s with any money, while MoveOn, which is not a 527, is hammering McCain with that "don't take my baby" ad.