The conventional wisdom on national polling trends has been: (1) the race is tightening up; (2)once the ups and downs are taken into the race has been flat and unchanging; or (3) it is too soon to pay attention to the polls, the general public won't take the election seriously until after the conventions.
However one chooses to categorize recent polling trends, Obama continues to hold a single digit lead in most national polls. This despite several major campaign events - Obama's overseas trip, McCain's response via the Celebrity ads and the election's general noise. Go below the fold for a different take on the polls, the ads and the campaign so far.
[UPDATED] with a poll.
If we go by polls, after an initial bump, Obama's overseas trip got a resounding yawn from the public. Gallup, Pew and other pollsters found no large movement in public perceptions of Obama's foreign policy skills vis a vis McCain.
Yet, McCain's campaign has been behaving as if it were threatened by Obama's trip. They went on the offense and began a serious of counter attacks. They ran the Paris Hilton-Brittany Spear's Celebrity ads that are still in rotation even during the Olympics - at least in my state. McCain went out to a large motorcycle rally and told a crowd of bikers that he'd rather hear the roar of 50,000 Harley's than the applause of 200,000 Germans any day.
The astute Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal picked up on the biker rally and called it a first sign of life for McCain's heretofore silent base. She thought the roaring motorcycles just might wake up the deadened McCainiacs.
If the long-term effect of the Obama trip has been negligible, why does the McCain campaign keep calling so much attention to it and keep running its celebrity ad? Why does the McCain campaign keep running the ads if they are no longer working?
Anybody see Amadeus, the movie or the play? Remember that movie is really about Antonio Salieri, a contemporary of Mozart's who both admires Mozart and hates him? Unlike everyone else in Mozart's circle, Salieri has figured out just how gifted Mozart is, and it wounds him deeply that a world that should be his has been usurped by a giggling clown.
Maureen Dowd and others have already commented on how jealousy may help explain not just McCain's conduct, but Bill Clinton's and others. Well, maybe the beltway boys have something to be jealous about.
Has a Salieri-like effect begun clouding McCain's thinking? It's possible. Take the Obama trip and the Celebrity ads. More than the rest of us McCain probably appreciates just how extraordinary that trip was. He didn't just count the crowd size in Germany, he read the diplomatic body language. He noticed that King of Jordan drove the presumptuous Democrat to the airport. In the world of diplomats only 'alpha' leaders get unscheduled one on one face time like that. The conservative German Leader Lady put in a bet on the Democratic candidate and Sarkozy came across a little like an Obama groupie.
Although McCain's celebrity ads overtly said that Obama was an empty suit, covertly they said - 'OMG, I can't believe this s--- and I;ve gotta run against it.
Initially the overt message got through loud and clear. And Obama's bump in the polls went down.
If I were a McCainiac, I would worry that the covert message of those ads is starting to come across.
Sure the polls tightened - or more accurately returned to their pre-trip patterns. Sure the polls are flat. Sure it is too soon to take the polls seriously. But I looked at today's Rasmussen and Gallup polls and I heard giggling. Really, really weird giggling.