I teared up when Barack Obama won the presidency. I teared up when he became the Democratic nominee. I also tear up when I talk about my black and Hispanic high school debaters. And, to be fair, I teared up when Colin Powell became Secretary of State. Clearly, the success of ethnic minorities touches me deeply.

By their gentle, relaxed tone and bearing, and humble elegance, Barack and Michelle Obama will be extraordinary ambassadors for this country. By their DNA alone they will force the world to reconsider what it means to be America’s First Family. If President-elect Obama assembles a dream team Cabinet commensurate with his mandate, and if he is given breathing space, time, and a dignified vacation from partisan vitriol, meaningful change is possible.

But, as we bask in the glow of this historic moment, let us consider how Mr. Obama got here. What’s more, let us consider why the equally inspirational John McCain failed so miserably.

There is little doubt that had John McCain run a stronger, more focused, and more truly conservative campaign -- even with Bush’s unpopularity and the topsy-turvy state of the stock market -- the result might have been different. Knowledge of this fact should make all of us cautious about what can and cannot be achieved by Mr. Obama in this still fractured country.

Pundits claim that Obama won this election with:

A. The Dean-conceived 50-state Stratagem (though Obama also picked his spots);
B. An impressive ground game, powered by passionate young voters, union members, and African-Americans (who voted, by the way, in the same numbers they did in 2004);
C. Shrewd cultivation of Internet small donors, who gullibly believed they were funding the Obama campaign, when Obama’s $650 million juggernaut was actually due to …
D. “That One’s” overwhelming advantage among big donors (including Streisand, Geffen, and their Hollyweird friends);
E. An ability to get mainstream media behind the “cause” (BREAKING NEWS: Olbermann and Maddow Added to Obama Transition Team!);
F. The trademark Obama “temperament.”

All of this, of course, is secondary.

Barack Obama won this election for one reason: He Got Inside John McCain’s Post-Traumatic Brain. Summer polls showed that in key swing states -– Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana -- Obama was not fully trusted, he was not believed, and he was not deeply connecting with the white, blue-collar and middle class voters he needed to win.

Hillary Clinton opened up a huge chasm for John McCain, who didn’t need the illegal alien strongholds of Colorado, Nevada, or New Mexico to win this election, or even the ethanol capital of Iowa. He needed only to carry the remaining Bush states and Pennsylvania. That’s it.

And he blew it.

After Obama threw his grandiose lovefest in Denver, McCain failed to realize that Democrats routinely go in for big Hollywood productions, with the requisite liberal rocker elite, and vacuous celebrity endorsements. Republicans do not.

I was at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. By comparison to the Mile-High confab, it was BO-RING. McCain failed to realize is that, in uncertain times, BO-RING IS GOOD. McCain kept saying that Obama was “risky,” but McCain’s own hyper-reactivity showed voters HE was risky.

First came the panicky pick of Palin, an inexperienced, woefully under-educated, if narrowly inspirational, Alaska governor. I’ve written so much about the Wasilla Hillbilly I have lateral epicondylitis from typing so hard. I will only say this: if McCain wanted a “peoples’ choice” he should have run his veep selection like a “Jerry Springer” version of “American Idol.” Then he would have been certain of winning the white dumbass vote. And during the final rounds he might have uncovered a working class heroine who actually knew that Africa was a continent, not a country.

If McCain had chosen the telegenic, economically savvy, if slightly homophobic, Mitt Romney (as Rove, Bush, Barnes, and GOP radio urged), he might have won Michigan, New Hampshire and even Colorado, while energizing the GOP’s wackadoo creationist “base.” Though Romney laid off workers as part of his downsizing efforts at Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, his financial acumen would have helped bolster McCain’s image on economic matters, and his congenial, unflappable persona would have smoothed out McCain’s rough edges, while muting concerns about Romney’s controversial Mormon faith.

Secondly, there was McCain’s chaotic September 24th response to the credit crisis. McCain’s maverick instincts were correct, but he forgot that the eyes of the nation were carefully comparing his every move to those of Mr. Obama. Rushing back to Washington was not a mistake. “Suspending” his campaign was. Just as Bill Clinton’s poorly chosen remarks in South Carolina cost Hillary the black vote, so McCain’s “erratic” behavior during the credit crisis left an indelible impression upon swing voters: “This McCain guy should be under 24/7 care in an assisted living facility, not running for president.”

It shows the stalwart conservatism of the American electorate that even after McCain gave them every reason to write him off – including temperamentally off-key debate performances – he still had a chance to win. Alas, as McCain lurched from one trial balloon to another – William Ayers to ACORN to Joe the Plumber – he reinforced the impression that he was a jumpy, unsteady P.O.W. with a bad case of A.D.D.

Meanwhile, as the benighted Palin was imploding before the softball interrogations of Gibson and Couric, and McCain was empirically showing he didn’t have the “right stuff,” Obama was doing what he does so well: sticking by the script, not getting jumpy, not revealing his true intentions.

Barack Obama’s public persona is so carefully manicured, so deftly managed, his deepest beliefs can only be seen in sideward glances and offhand remarks. Fortunately for McCain, the 24/7 news cycle, and the prevalence of recording devices at every campaign event, meant that on a few occasions Mr. Obama let down his storied detachment. And in those rare moments, the carefully disguised agenda of the South Side community organizer came piercing through.

He was not a Democratic Centrist, though he promised to govern like one. Though he threw out some weirdly reactionary positions on surveillance, guns, and the death penalty to keep everyone guessing, in his heart of hearts, Barack Obama was a genuine “progressive”: the child of Mother Jones, not the Democrat Leadership Council. He was the liberation theologian who spent twenty years in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Baptist Church. He was the sometime colleague of William Ayers, whose methods he abhorred, but not necessarily his assumptions. Obama genuinely believed in Huey Long’s “share the wealth.” It was not exactly socialism, but it sure as hell was not free-market capitalism.

It’s no wonder that poor people saw Obama as their savior. Barack was going to make everything all right for those were “down on their luck,” or who didn’t have the “connections” or “the education” or the ambition to make their way in the world. Obama supporter Peggy Joseph put it best: “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I help him, he’s gonna help me.”



Obama said nearly the same weeks before in his chat with erstwhile Toledo “plumber,” Joe Wurzelbacher.



Suddenly, at a late, critical stage in the campaign, average Americans finally understood what I had been saying for months: Obama was not a Centrist. Mind you, he was not Gerald K. Smith or “Fighting Bob” La Follette either, but, in his economic prescriptions, he sure as heck wasn’t Bill Clinton.

Here was the gift that McCain needed. The vaunted “October Surprise.” And how did the brain trust at Camp McCain frame this gift? As a debate about taxes. When they needed to be their most passionate, lofty and inspirational, Camp McCain talked about the most uninspiring item in their political playbook.

This election was not about taxes. It was about a vision of America at a time of economic and military peril. Obama had a clear progressive “share the wealth” vision. McCain and Palin needed a clear conservative one.

Ayers, Wright, and Obama’s San Francisco fundraiser comments about small-town people clinging to their guns, God and bigotry, and his comments to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth” should have been portrayed as of one piece: deep down, free of the teleprompter, Barack Obama was far left on economic issues.

All McCain had to do was what every single Republican candidate in modern memory had done: GO FOR THE JUGULAR.

Not only rail against “taxes” and “earmarks,” but against bailouts, debt forgiveness, economic affirmative action, and the dissipation of “themos” that comes when government becomes sugar daddy. McCain could have ranted about the ethos of self-sacrifice (Hanoi Hilton anyone?) and personal accountability that made America’s can-do spirit the envy of the world. McCain needed to portray himself as the Responsible Adult, tough enough to say No to bailouts and government coddling of any kind: whether for Corporate Fat Cats or Ma and Pa Kettle.

And, as luck would have it, he was given the perfect chance to display this contrast. Unfortunately, at the height of the credit crisis, when corporate bankers were bawling for a bailout, while Main Street Americans were “whining” that they should be taken care of first, McCain caved. He offered bailouts to corporations AND Main Street. He tried to outdo Democrats at their own game: protecting Americans from their hubris, culpability, and greed. And at that moment, and particularly after the second debate when McCain offered a wild scheme to buy back mortgages, he was no longer a conservative, not even a moderate, but Crazy John McCain out on a limb with no ideological net below.

At that moment, millions of Americans decided: “Heck, if both candidates are for big government, we might as well go with the easygoing guy who actually believes in big government.”

And then it got surreal. The bad news just rolled in. The Bush-Cheney administration, in cahoots with a lapdog GOP Congress, had left this country with the largest deficit in our nation’s history. This singular achievement was achieved through an un-GOP prescription drug benefit, a vast new Orwellian bureaucracy (Homeland Insecurity), an expansion of domestic spying that would make Stasi blush, two poorly executed wars, surplus-depleting tax cuts, and the Jamba Juice topper: almost a trillion dollars in bailouts, loans, and assorted debt forgiveness to ostensibly “save” an economic system that had gotten into such dire straits in part because of Republican overreach.

And against such a fortuitous backdrop, what did our war hero do? McCain campaigned the last pivotal days of the election against 18 billion dollars in earmarks. McCain was fightin’ mad about $18 billion, when he just signed on for close to a TRILLION DOLLARS in new government growth. The patent absurdity of the Bush-McCain economic doctrine, their complete abandonment of GOP fiscal principles, was now laid bare. Laffer Curve indeed.

There was no longer a conservative or moderate message. There was no longer even the McCain “maverick” message. There was only the senile, robotic bromides of a tired old man.

It was too late to recover anyway. Obama had already done his damage. He had, for instance, gotten McCain to believe that Jeremiah Wright was off-limits. The very embodiment of Obama’s progressive share-the-wealth liberation theology was off-limits? For what reason? Because McCain had weakly wooed some crazy fundamentalist preacher? Please. Wright was part and parcel of Barack and Michelle Obama’s worldview. Obama’s unscripted slips clearly revealed that he and the Reverend were ideological soul mates, even after Obama threw Wright under the bus.

But McCain wanted to win pretty, forgetting that Republicans never win pretty. They are the masters of the specious Swift-Boat attack, the Willie Horton ad, and the homo-hating ballot initiative. McCain failed to realize that no matter how decent and civil he tried to be, how hard he worked to bring bipartisan consensus to immigration reform, global warming, and many other liberal causes, he was still going to be branded as “McNasty.”

As his message and his campaign slipped away, McCain worried more about legacy than about winning. In other words, Obama had now gotten fully inside McCain’s head. It now seemed as if McCain wanted to lose. In his nationally broadcast election eve speech in Prescott, Arizona, McCain didn’t attack Obama once. A guilt-ridden McCain seemed hemmed in by his own conscience. It was if he didn’t want to stand in the way of “providence.”

Obama, the artful dodger, had gotten the pugnacious war hero to play nice. As a result, McCain never closed the only winning argument he had: that Barack Obama is a populist, who will share the wealth that others have earned, and who will not demand the kind of personal responsibility, discipline, and accountability we need to conquer the problems before us.

If McCain had opposed the bailout of both corporate America AND Main Street, he would have shown the courage, wisdom, and strength to attack Obama on other fronts. He could have portrayed Obama as soft on crime, soft on border control, soft on terror, illiteracy, deadbeat Dads, drug dealers, illegal aliens, real estate speculators, banking regulators, Iran, North Korea, and Hamas, and soft on all those people who took out loans they KNEW they could not afford.

In a sign that he might be getting the point, in the final hour in Ohio, McCain finally brought out “the Terminator,” Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take on “the Redistributor” for his weak arms, thin legs, and meat-less policies. But it was too late. Schwarzenegger and other GOP attack dogs should have been deployed months before.

In the end, McCain thought this was a game of whack-a-mole, but it was a game of Barry Ball. As the country watched the Arizona Senator and his Alaska Airhead desperately fly to swing states in the futile hope of hustling up last-second support, Obama, like some John Wooden prodigy, coolly stayed the course. And despite the touching tragedy of losing his grandmother the day before the election, Barack Obama must have been smiling inside. He stuck to his guns, while getting his opponent to flounder. He kept his cool, while getting his opponent to lose his.

In a center-right nation, Barack Obama pulled off a modern miracle: becoming the most liberal president in American history without ever breaking a sweat.