It's one thing to run for the Nomination, it is something else to run for the Presidency. John McCain is, despite the smear ads and the campaign season...personally popular. It is too early to say anything definitive yet, but I think once the Veep selections are done and debates are had a better picture will emerge.

Why isn’t Obama doing better in the polls? Maybe because people are starting to see through his eloquent speeches, and are realizing that there isn’t much substance behind what he’s saying. His ‘inflate your tires and tune up your car’ response to the question of how to lower gas prices illustrates this quite well.

David W. is right. The primaries are one thing, the actual race for the Presidency is quite different. For example, Obama faces much tougher choices than McCain when it comes to selecting a VP.

First, it is obvious the man will not tolerate anyone who can outshine him in any way. That is why Gov. Kaine (of Va.) would be a good bland-but-palatable choice for him. As for McCain, he only has to choose a relatively young governor, someone who will do no harm.

McCain can count on the pro-life vote by default although we all know that he is going to do absolutely nothing about it. Let's face it same-sex marriages and euthanasia are coming faster than a freight train and there is no real political opposition to it because the GOP will do nothing to preserve marriage or the sanctity of life.

As for Obama, the more people know him, the more they realize that he is an empty suit. His vain rhetoric is reaching the point of diminishing returns. When Thomas Dewey kept repeating his platitudes before adoring crowds, little did he know that the fickle American voter was already planning to vote for Truman.

In those days, Truman had supported a series of unpopular civil rights measures. In the same manner, McCain supports a series of unpopular immigration measures. In doing so, McCain has already shown he has something that Obama has not: a certain moral backbone that allows him to stray from the ideological pack.

The polls are close because one good looking phony is being pitched against someone whose competence, strength, and ability to face the rigors of the office can be seriously questioned. McCain is a risky choice but Obama is at best an open question. the voters are beginning to see that and no amount of media coverage is going to validate a phony over an old warrior.

That is the lesson that 'President' Dewey learned. The golden mouthed newyorker got to be President on the cover of Life Magazine. The haberdasher from Independence, Missouri got to be President for real, in spite of all his shortcomings.

A serious and open consideration of the still existent strong sub-culture of racism in American society, not only in the South but especially in the major northern cities, could help explain the "likely voters" favoring McCain by about 4%. This is an important and timely taboo topic that polls cannot get people to openly discuss. Adding to the complexity in discerning a quantitative value for this phenomenon is that much of the negative response to a potential "black" president may be based on an unconscious and emotionally based anger and fear that cannot be directly apprehended and communicated at a communal level. We are coming to realize more and more the down side of political correctness and the consequences of the lack of more honest and open healing of old wounds in our immature American so called "culture of death".

Uh-oh - Ludacris is supporting Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulcGldJlKiA

Obama is not doing better in the polls for a number of reasons, the most telling are:

1) There is a significant substrata of racism that still exists in this country. It is not mentioned. It will not be talked about similar to being introduced to an otherwise distinguished gentleman and noticing his toupee is crooked.

2) The American people have just about bought hook, line and sinker the neoconservative canard that they are in mortal danger from terrorists and need a "macho" military leader like John McCain to protect them.

The debates should be interesting because I think Obama will eat McCain's lunch in the debates. McCain will come across as old and cranky and may forget the question.

Disclaimer: I am neither an Obama nor McCain supporter.

Hey Brian:

Knowing your soft spot for good humour, the Obama´s trouble you are pointing out is far from being an enigma: USA’s cartoonists are having a feast painting him inflated by a sucker press-multimedia.

Those suckers (“franeleros” or shoe polishers in Spanish), are the butt of jokes among many dictatorships, and funnily enough now in the first democracy of the world.

Save your laughter for when they start their… “self-criticism” communist style.

Cheers!

I just heard Newt Gingrich (Fox News I believe) on TV and he was repeating your words almost verbatim. Obama's theme is himself. He has a "manifest destiny" doctrine about himself.

Put him in charge and give him the House, Senate and Media and call it The Apocalypse of Hope. Ha!

Carlos, I like the dry-acid style of Gingrich, specially when putting down the pompous-arrogant pundits of the BBC.

For that line of satire, I recommend you to review the Glenn McCoy cartoons in the NYT.

Cheers!

I think the answer is fairly simple: There are more media alternatives now for the public to get information about a candidate. And those alternative sources are far less likely to be uncritically adoring of every rehashed leftist like Obama who comes down the pike.

I often don't much appreciate the shallow, sound-bite nature of Fox News coverage, which, while not biased in favor of Far-Left politics, still rivals other networks in its superficiality.

That being said, there is now a variety of points of view available through a spectrum of media outlets that simply did not exist only a few short years ago. With Fox cable news, talk radio (the oldest alternative media outlet), and the huge impact of the internet and the effective use of not only text forms like online articles and blogs but the revolution taking place via internet audio and video podcasting and live streaming--the old stranglehold that the major press outlets used to have over the editorial point of view has vanished.

And the public (those politically engaged, at least), thanks largely to the "alternative" media (which are growing ever more popular; now superseding the older traditional media outlets in audience share) of talk radio, web sites, and Fox news, is becoming more savvy to the doublespeak of politicians. It is harder for a politician to pull the wool over the public's eyes because the media message is much more diverse now. And in the case of left-wing, super-"liberal" politicians like Obama, the fact that media outlets like CBS and NBC and the New York Times often fawn over him has much less of an impact on public perception than it would have 20 years ago. Many more Americans now see through the leftist media bias because there is a growing reality out there of alternative sources for news and commentary.

Drudge is more important now to the impact of the daily news cycle than the New York Times, whose circulation, ad income, and staff size has been plunging and shows no signs of stopping its downward spiral. The editorial point of view of the LA Times is now quite irrelevant. They are also a sinking ship. Fox has been beating CNN and other cable news networks for several years in ratings and the gap is growing. The fact is, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times, are far less relevant to shaping the way a politician is perceived by the public than they used to be. They pretend to still be major players and act like their approval is something every politician must pursue, but the reality is they are dying on the vine and less important every day to public opinion.

Thank goodness for new media, such as cnsnews.com, newsbusters.com, townhall.com, EWTN (I just watched the World Over with Raymond Arroyo live on my laptop computer through internet live stream), the Catholic News Agency, Drudge Report, talk radio, Fox News (though they could use much improvement), smart and incisive blogs that address politics and the news of the day, and many others! And, of course, Inside Catholic is a part of this positive phenomenon.

You are absolutely right. He is a phony. A cardboard prop for the socialist/communist backers and power of the current far left Democratic Party faction. It is all starting to come out now. His background, his past associations are all coming out now. Up until June, it seemed to be a referendum against Hilary and "The Clintons". It didn't matter what the substance of the individual running against them was. Now it does and we are all finding out what a crock Obama is. This is now a referendum against an out of control media push to affect government here and the socialist/communist entity and candidate the party of Jackasses are fronting. A socialist is nothing more than a communist that hasn't learned how to handle a gun yet.

I don't comment much on the political discussions that take place here, but...

why are falling into the trap of discussing personalities and not issues?

I would think that Obama isn't leading as well as he could (in fact, by the above numbers, he isn't leading at all) because the gas price issue and the Democrats's refusal to actually do anything about it is hurting them all.