The Sensible Center: Back To The Future, McCain Style

Its probably evidence of my political naivete, but my biggest single disappointment of this political year has been the clear decision of John McCain to go with the old "Us vs. Them" strategy designed by Karl Rove.

John Heilemann, who continues to impress with his thoughtful columns in New York magazine, reminds us all of what this is all about, starting with the rhetoric at the GOP Convention.

:"The script was old, the act was tried, the performances ludicrous to the point of being comical. And the whole ugly circus was made all the more ridiculous by the performance of McCain calling for unity amid the howling hyenas, grinding his way through a speech text whose archaic cadennd with Palin’s in particular, that if you actually tried to reconcile them in your mind, the titanic degree of cognitive dissonance would make your head explode.

But there is a reason the Republicans keep falling back, again and again, on such hoary tropes. The reason is that, from the age of Nixon to the era of Lee Atwater to our current (yes, apparently, it’s not dead yet) epoch of Rove, they have all too often worked. Us versus them is a potent message—and one tailor-made to a candidate with the name Barack Hussein Obama. Who, need it really be pointed out, is plainly not like you.

Will it work again? Who knows? With the emergence of Sarah Palin as the wild card in this year’s race, we are once again in this mind-bending election year wandering around, deep in the wilds of political terra incognita. She is one of those plot twists too incredible even for Hollywood. “Anyone who says they can tell you how it’s all going to play out, how the pieces all fit together in a presidential campaign, is kidding you,” Axelrod says. “You can’t really understand the story until it’s written.”

- Richard Holcomb