President Obama?

Captain Ed thinks Barack Obama has damaged himself significantly with his decision to renege on his promise to use public financing during the campaign:

Has the glow dimmed on the political messiah? I think this latest reversal may have permanently crippled that feeling of phenomenon and returned Obama to Earth as just another politician. Unfortunately, Obama has nothing else to offer but that sense of difference — and if he’s lost that, he’s in big, big trouble.

Now, I myself have touched on the theme that Obama, rather than being something new under the sun, is just another politician, so I know where the Captain is coming from. Obama is not only just another politician, he's very nearly become a caricature of the evasive, dissembling, pol. His answers when trying to explain past actions are so transparent that he would be embarrassed if he had a sense of shame. His answers when talking policy, whether foreign policy, energy policy, or tax policy, reveal a man who understands little of world affairs, economics, or money markets. Obama has not spent his life thinking deeply about the these issues; he's spent his life mouthing the left-wing dogma on these issues that he learned during his university days and early days in Chicago. That's why his policies seem so retro-1970s, why he never strays from the tired orthodoxies of the left. It shouldn't take long for someone with even a modicum of knowledge in these areas to conclude that Obama is an empty suit who is utterly unfit for the presidency.

But it appears right now, notwithstanding Captain Ed's and my own observations (and the observations of thousands of others who've reached the same conclusions) that Obama will indeed by our next president. The Hillary voters, so upset a few weeks ago that their girl was repudiated, are already making their way back to Obama. The Rust Belt states - Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan - that Obama did so poorly in during the primaries, and which he will certainly have to carry in order to win the presidency, are now polling in his favor. So the two non-policy issues I thought McCain had going for him, a rift among pro-Hillary and pro-Barack Democrats, and the reluctance of older, white, blue-collar Democrats to vote for a left-wing black man with an exotic name, both appear to be non-issues, at least at this point. Of course, there is always the Bradley-effect or, as some call it, the Dinkins-effect, in which both Tom Bradley in L.A. and David Dinkins in New York City both led in the polls but were defeated soundly on election day; i.e. the tendency of more non-black voters to tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate than will actually do so. And, of course, there is still a campaign to be waged. McCain, so far as I can tell, is a pretty bad campaigner but at least he has a persona that the American public respects, plus a career with some solid accomplishments behind it (no matter how much I disagree with many of those accomplishments.) Will Obama be exposed for what he is during the campaign through his sheer incompetency? Or will the mainstream media's continued bias towards Obama help shield his limitations and views from the American people through election day? Time will tell.