History’s Tide
March 20th, 2008Spent the morning working on a variety of things — a collection of poetry I’ve been writing for awhile, baseball season previews for BaseballEvolution.com, reading from a few books on metaphysical Russian literature, and looking at George W. Bush’s September 12th, 2002 speech to the United Nations. I gave it another look because Christopher Hitchens refers to it as the most misunderstood speech of the Bush Presidency and I must say, I come away from it even more convinced that the War in Iraq was and is just. I recommend it to you, Dear Reader, if only because I’m sure you haven’t looked at it in a long time (if ever) and would benefit from doing so on an intellectual, historical and political level.
Two interesting polls are out today: Clinton is leading Obama significantly, and McCain has a lead over Obama and Clinton now, according to Gallup. I’ve always preached that polls are often insignificant at this time of year but in this case, not so much; obviously, it has real-world ramnifications for the Democratic primary campaign but what is quite interesting, to me, is that McCain would be over anyone at this time. He has not truly had the time to start to do the things I expect him to do to the Democrats to win the Presidency: he has yet to campaign hard, define his opponents or make in-roads all over the country, yet he has already taken a lead by some polling data. This campaign is not a Democratic lock (as I have previously argued that McCain will win the Presidency) and I am starting to think that Barack Obama has peaked with his speech, which history will record as a masterpiece of sorts but it seems to have furthered a slip in the candidate’s standing now, today. I’m not sad to see it, as I don’t believe him to be a strong candidate for the Democrats or a good potential President, but I am a little surprised that he’d start to lose to Clinton this late in the game. He should have locked it up by now.