The Filter: August 22, 2008

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THEY'RE PAYING ATTENTION NOW
(Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
Why is it a real race now, with John McCain rising in the polls and Barack Obama falling? There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention. It's hard for our political class to remember that Mr. Obama has been famous in America only since the winter of '08. America met him barely six months ago! The political class first interviewed him, or read the interview, in 2003 or '04, when he was a rising star. They know him. Everyone else is still absorbing. This is what they see: An attractive, intelligent man, interesting, but—he's hard to categorize. Is he Gen. Obama? No, no military background. Brilliant Businessman Obama? No, he never worked in business. Famous Name Obama? No, it's a new name, an unusual one. Longtime Southern Governor Obama? No. He's a community organizer (what's that?), then a lawyer (boo), then a state legislator (so what, so's my cousin), then U.S. senator (less than four years!). There is no pre-existing category for him. Add to that the wear and tear of Jeremiah Wright, secret Muslim rumors, media darling and, this week, abortion. It took a toll, which led to a readjustment. His uniqueness, once his great power, is now his great problem. And over there is Mr. McCain, and—well, we know him. He's POW/senator/prickly, irritating John McCain.

THE HARD ROAD AHEAD
(The Economist)
Even though the Republican brand is as contaminated as a Soviet-era reactor, and 80% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, Mr Obama is barely ahead of his septuagenarian Republican rival: in “generic” polling, people prefer Democrats to Republicans by around 12 points, but Mr Obama is ahead of John McCain by an average of only around 45% to 43%. One poll this week had Mr McCain five points ahead. In the battleground states which will determine the result, Mr McCain has steadily been gaining ground; if the polls are borne out, the result, as in 2000 and 2004, will be nerve-janglingly close... Mr Obama could certainly tone down the triumphalism: opting to make his acceptance speech not in the convention hall but in a 75,000-seater sports stadium seems like another mistake, akin to his hubristic rock-star’s tour of Europe. He needs to be a lot clearer and firmer about how he will deal with America’s foes and rivals: his first instinct when Russia invaded Georgia was to waffle. Acknowledging that the Iraq surge, which he tried to block, has worked would also be a sign of tough-mindedness. Most of all, he needs to spend those 68 days showing that he understands, and can connect with, ordinary Americans.

OBAMA VS. AUGUST
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
Over in the Philadelphia suburbs, Rep. Joe Sestak agrees that Obama needs to engage in more down-to-earth campaigning -- "a diner in the morning, a hoagie in the afternoon, a bar at night." But Sestak's advice is directed toward a slightly different end. "It's not so much about whether they know him," he says of his constituents and Obama. "They want to know that he knows them." In other words, empathy, the gift that Bill Clinton kept on giving, is now an Obama imperative. And some of the Democrats' policy mavens see a link between empathy as a personal attribute and the way a candidate discusses policy -- again, something Clinton understood. What Obama still lacks, they say, is a compelling narrative about how Americans who now feel economically insecure will be find their way toward greater confidence. And he needs a few signature policies to drive home so voters can remember them, as Clinton did with health care and job training.

OBAMA AND MCCAIN SEEK A COMMON TOUCH
(Patrick Healy and Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times)
Barack Obama and John McCain ripped into each other on Thursday over how many houses, fireplaces and even wine cellars they own, using allusions to net worth to deride each other while portraying themselves as able helmsmen for a faltering economy. With both candidates convinced that financially pinched voters might hold the electoral key in November — especially in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania — Senators Obama and McCain are taking new, vivid steps to empathize with struggling middle-class and working-class Americans, a tricky task given their own personal wealth... The exchange highlighted how, as economic issues increasingly dominate the campaign, the two presumptive presidential nominees are still searching for ways to connect with voters on the economy. Mr. Obama sometimes seems professorial in response to personal problems, while Mr. McCain seemed more than half-serious on Saturday when he defined “rich” as having $5 million or more.

HITTING HIM WHERE HE LIVES
(John Dickerson, Slate)
On Thursday, the presidential race reached a whole new level of nasty... The subject of this spat—stay with me here—is how many houses McCain owns. The Obama campaign recognized this gaffe for what it was: The number of Americans who do not know how many houses they own is so small they could probably fit in a golf cart. It is not a problem that afflicts the average American family. The campaign rushed to make an ad showing McCain as out of touch, but it strays into even more radioactive territory by making a subtle dig at McCain's age. (Listen to the narrator's tone when he says of McCain: "He lost track, he couldn't remember.")... So much for Obama's aspirations about lifting our politics out of the gutter. Those promises are easier to keep when you're ahead in the polls, and Obama's double-digit lead has disappeared. McCain has run a string of ads attacking Obama's record (often by misrepresenting it), and his good friend Joe Lieberman has questioned Obama's patriotism. We have officially reached the "all's fair" stage of the campaign... McCain responded so violently because the attack is potentially devastating in an election that is likely to be all about economic issues. But merely engaging in such a fight is also a threat to Obama's brand.

MORE:
Why the Home Debate Matters (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post)
In politics, there is nothing worse than appearing out of touch. From time immemorial, a candidate who is effectively portrayed as forgetting about the "little" people, of having "gone Washington," of living higher on the hog than voters, loses. Class remains a powerful motivator for many voters in the country. Politicians are forever trying to cast their candidacies as closely rooted in the communities from which they sprung -- a purposeful attempt to ensure that voters know that the candidate "understands the problems of people like you." Put simply: The worst thing you can call a politician is an elitist. And so, seen through that lens, it makes perfect sense why Democrats have picked up on John McCain's comment that he wasn't sure about how many houses he and his wife own -- comments made to Politico's Mike Allen and J-Mart -- and why Republicans have fought back so quickly and so hard.

Take the McCain House Tour! (Paul Schwartzman, Washington Post)
Indoor and outdoor swimming pools! Spas and state-of-the-art fitness centers! Views of the Arizona mountains, the Pacific Ocean and downtown Phoenix! John McCain isn't just a presidential candidate. He's a veritable bling-master, worthy of an "MTV Cribs" episode, those televised tours of brazenly gilded homes led by celebrity owners like 50 Cent, Hulk Hogan and Bow Wow. Except that the good senator may trump them all. His family's real estate holdings are so plentiful that not even McCain is sure of the number. "I'll have my staff get back to you," he told a reporter from the Politico Web site when asked. Whatever the count, we couldn't get McCain to lead us on a "Cribs"-style tour of his real estate, the senator being ever-busy trying to add another rather impressive property to his portfolio (1600 Pennsylvania Ave.). So we'll take you on a McCain flyover ourselves, a coast-to-coast jaunt that covers at least five cities and three states.

MADE MEN
(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)
As Cindy McCain faithfully shadows her husband in his quest for the presidency, it's hard to imagine that she was once the senior member of their partnership. Looking back, McCain's steady march from admiral's son to war hero to White House contender seems almost preordained--certainly unrelated to the brittle blond cipher at his side. Cindy brings to mind the political wives of yore--a perpetually demure and deferential presence. All the more so in an age of Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama. But the reality behind this political creation myth is far more complex. McCain was a relative nobody when he married Cindy Hensley--a middle-aged divorcé working a mid-level job in a far-off bureaucracy. It was the Hensleys who would breathe life into his prospects and provide a springboard for his ascent. Their ambitions burned every bit as brightly as his did. Except that, unlike McCain, they'd long since hidden their motives from public view.

MCCAIN ADVISERS SAY STANCE ON ABORTION IS CRUCIAL FOR NO. 2
(Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times)
Senator John McCain has narrowed his list of potential running mates to a handful of candidates and appears unlikely to select anyone who supports abortion rights, several advisers close to his campaign said on Thursday. Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota are the top candidates as Mr. McCain and his advisers gather over the next several days at Mr. McCain’s cabin near Sedona, they said. McCain associates recently put forth two other candidates, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, as possibilities. Both men support abortion rights. People close to the campaign also floated a wild-card choice, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq. They said it was not beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. McCain would ask him to join the ticket, although General Petraeus has no experience in elective government and has said repeatedly that he is not interested in the vice presidency.

UNDECIDED VOTER? THERE MAY BE NO SUCH THING
(Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times)
Can't decide between Barack Obama and John McCain? Chances are your brain already has. Using a simple word association test to look inside voters' heads, Canadian and Italian researchers found that many voters who thought they were undecided had unconsciously made up their minds. heir decisions arise less from careful deliberation of the facts than from deep-seated attitudes that they have little awareness of, the study found. Inside their brains, undecideds are often partisans, although "they do not know it yet," said Bertram Gawronski, a University of Western Ontario psychologist and senior author of the study. The researchers said it was all part of an unconscious decisiveness that manifests itself in the hundreds of mundane and snap decisions people make every day, such as choosing which shoe to put on first or which seat to take on an empty bus.

THE HILL-BILL SHOW
(John Heilemann, New York)
This is part one of the conventional thinking about the convention and the Clintons: Boy, they pulled a fast one! Part two is the converse: Man, Obama got played! The Clintons will overshadow him. They will undermine him. By caving to their demands, he came across as weak. “If Hillary Clinton can ride roughshod over this guy, what do you think bin Laden is gonna do?” was how the Clintons’ former Svengali Dick Morris put it on Fox. Morris is a lunatic, no doubt, but plenty of sane Democrats share more-temperate versions of these views. To which I say, with due respect, what a pile of steaming horseshit. Obama’s so-called capitulation to the Clintons is rooted not in lily-liveredness but in cold-eyed calculation. And if his team orchestrates the convention with anything like the savvy, care, and ruthlessness with which it ran his bid for the nomination, the Clinton double act, deliciously distracting though it will be, will also be quickly forgotten—in no small part because of the pitch-perfect, good-soldierly performances that both are likely to turn in. They will do so not because they wish to see Obama win. They will do so because they understand that to have any hope of profiting later from his downfall they must leave no fingerprints.

AT RALLY, FINDING CLINTON'S AID TO OBAMA TOO TEPID
(Damien Cave, New York Times)
Minutes after pushing through the rope line to thank Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for “all that you do,” Robin Shaffer said she was worried. She feared that the senator she respected and admired for being tough and experienced had not done all that she could to unify Florida’s fractured Democratic Party while campaigning here on Thursday for her former opponent... Many who had supported Mrs. Clinton’s run for president shared Ms. Shaffer’s opinion. Democrats who said they had recently accepted that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, would be the Democratic presidential nominee greeted Mrs. Clinton’s 30-minute speech — her first rally in Florida on his behalf — with warmth but also demands for more...  In all, Mrs. Clinton mentioned Mr. Obama’s name about 10 times. But at some points she sounded wistful. She pointed out, for example, that it was her third time at Florida Atlantic University as a proxy for a presidential candidate. “I’ve been here three times,” she said. “In 1992, for my husband. In 1996, for my husband” — the audience laughed — “and in 2008, for Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.” Guy Montes, 63, a retired shift manager for United Airlines and a Clinton supporter in the primary, said later that Mrs. Clinton’s heart did not seem to be in it.

THE CODE OF THE WEST
(Ryan Lizza, New Yorker)
In his low-key, no-frills way, Ritter may be in the vanguard of what the national Democratic Party is becoming, both in its demographics and its policies. After about four years of lively discussion, strategists and Party leaders have decided that growth for Democrats is more likely to occur in the conservative but idiosyncratic West than in the solidly Republican South. Barack Obama’s campaign, for example, is competing seriously in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico—places where Democratic Presidential candidates have had only limited success during the past three decades. A significant reallocation of resources to the Western states is likely to have remarkable political consequences. As an election nears, voters in swing states like Colorado get much more attention from candidates, and a party’s consulting class spends a disproportionate amount of time developing strategies tailored to the demands of these spoiled voters. Over time, the political process may change the very outlook of a party, forcing it to become more attuned to the peculiar issues and coalitions of new voters. (That’s the effect that Iowa and New Hampshire have had on both parties.) As the Democrats take the first steps toward remaking themselves as a Western party, Ritter’s Colorado offers a glimpse of what may be the Democratic future.