Fantasyland

Watching the TV news these days is more and more like visiting a distant galaxy, and luckily one has plenty of internet options to restore a sense of reality. It is astounding to witness the nonstop sniping at Obama’s dazzling foreign trip, after the full-throated Messiah chorus of punditoids insisting that he had to do it to establish his world-leader credibility. Perhaps the chatterers need to keep the race close so that they’ll have jobs for the next three months.

A lot of people have noticed and listed all the contradictory messages pre- and post-Obama tour, but my personal favorite is ABC’s sonorous dismissal of Obama’s flawless performance because the American people are really more concerned about gas prices and domestic issues where ‘McCain has the advantage’.

Say what? How can these bloviators pull such crap out of their nether regions and peddle it as rose water? Pre-tour, they were all breathlessly informing us that McCain’s war-hero status and Senate experience trumped Obama on the foreign policy side. Now all that doesn’t matter?

There was also a lot of insistence from these self-appointed commentator gurus that Obama was getting no bounce from the foreign trip because his poll numbers were holding steady. I wonder what they’ll say now that Gallup shows him opening up a 9-point lead after being in a virtual dead heat two weeks ago.

The conventions are less than a month away, and it will be fascinating to watch the contrast between the genuine enthusiasm for and fascination with the Obama candidacy among both delegates and his huge fan base and the parade of wrinkly white men gathering around McCain.

[Addendum:] The polls also show Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a McCain clone if ever there was one, losing his bid for a seventh Senate term to the mayor of Anchorage. Stevens, 84 and the longest-serving Republican in the history of that august body as well as the subject of a federal corruption probe, has never won less than 60% of the vote but currently trails Democrat Mark Begich by five. But oh yes, McCain is right on the young guy’s heels.