WSJ - We begin with the three words everyone writing about the election must say:
Nobody knows anything. Everyone’s guessing. I spent Sunday morning in Washington
with journalists and political hands, one of whom said she feels it’s Obama, the
rest of whom said they don’t know. I think it’s Romney. I think he’s stealing in
“like a thief with good tools,” in Walker Percy’s old words. While everyone is
looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s
quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while.
Obama and the storm, it was like a wave that lifted him and then moved on,
leaving him where he’d been. Parts of Jersey and New York are a cold Katrina.
The exact dimensions of the disaster will become clearer when the election is
over. One word: infrastructure. Officials knew the storm was coming and everyone
knew it would be bad, but the people of the tristate area were not aware, until
now, just how vulnerable to deep damage their physical system was. The people in
charge of that system are the politicians. Mayor Bloomberg wanted to have the
Marathon, to show New York’s spirit. In Staten Island last week they were
bitterly calling it “the race through the ruins.” There is a disconnect.
But to the election. Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and
the assumptions as to who will vote? Who knows the depth and breadth of each
party’s turnout efforts? Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John
Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before
the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were
quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.
I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.
Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000
in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning:
People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold.
His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way he’s caught
his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has been positive,
future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the one about
what’s going on at the rallies is moving.
All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a
longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a
patriot, I’ll join up But now I am pro-Romney.” Why? “I’ve spent time with him
and I care about him and admire him. He’s a genuinely good man.” Looking at the
crowds on TV, hearing them chant “Three more days” and “Two more days”—it feels
like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.
1 comment:
f all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. When it comes to national presidential races, he is a finely tuned political instrument: He read the field perfectly in 2008. He would know if he’s losing now, and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there doing what he has to to fight the fight. But he’s still trying to fire up the base when he ought to be wooing the center and speaking their calm centrist talk. His crowds haven’t been big. His people have struggled to fill various venues. This must hurt the president after the trememdous, stupendous crowds of ’08. “Voting’s the best revenge”—revenge against who, and for what? This is not a man who feels himself on the verge of a grand victory. His campaign doesn’t seem president-sized. It is small and sad and lost, driven by formidable will and zero joy.
I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.
Post a Comment