What a difference a week makes, eh? A week ago, everybody and their brother (or sister) was wringing their hands, speculating over whether the Democratic Convention would do enough to show unity, whether Obama had the chops to demonstrate he was ready to be President, whether he could project strength against a slow slide in poll numbers in his election against McCain.
And then...McCain decided to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Never mind Hurricane Gustav. Hurricane Sarah is the real bombshell here. And in that one pick, McCain demonstrated by his failure in his first true executive decision. Despite having nearly 30 years on Obama, Obama now seems like the grown-up in the race.
Think about it. Despite the fact Obama had a longer primary fight than McCain, and only had a few months to switch gears to general election mode, he took a measured, cautious, and thorough approach to picking his running mate. The prospective candidates were vetted for weeks. He brought in a separate team to do the vetting. And he came up with a pick that most of the mainstream media praised: Joe Biden.
McCain, meanwhile, floated the names of several people he was vetting, only to reverse course in two days to pick someone clearly designed to pander to two separate portions of the electorate: disaffected Hillary voters, and evangelical Christians.
How "mavericky."
By picking Palin, McCain took away in one fell swoop his primary argument against Obama: Obama is risky. He's a celebrity. You can't trust the young, green, wet behind the ears Obama. Hasn't been there long enough, can't get it done, too radical.
The story isn't Palin's daughter, Palin's earmarks, Palin's former association with a political party willing to secede from the union, or even Palin being the least prepared VP pick in the modern history of politics.
The story is ALL of those things, but more importantly, McCain's utter lack of vetting in his prospective candidate.
Obama said his pick reflected his desire to have someone strong enough to disagree with him, to question his judgment, to help him make the right decision.
McCain's pick is now his political "soul mate." Never mind that McCain had only met Palin once before, and spoken to her briefly over the phone. We are now to believe that McCain has a puppy dog crush on his running mate, as if this is the person he'd been waiting for years to run for President with (even though during McCain's last presidential run, in 2000, Palin was mayor of an Alaskan town of 8,000 and supporting Pat Buchanan for President.)
Even as the news broke about Bristol Palin, McCain's campaign went off, slamming the smears about Palin and saying they knew about Bristol, and that the family should have their privacy, all the while trashing the Obama campaign for stoking the rumors (something totally unfounded).
Meanwhile, Obama, in measured, calm tones, said his campaign would have nothing to do with dragging a teenager into the race, saying it was out-of-bounds and generating praise everywhere for his stance.
After 8 years of a glorified frat boy in the White House, eight years of rash decisions, like rushing into a war in Iraq, eight years of incompetence, and eight years of cronyism, John McCain demonstrates once and for all where the real change is going to come from, and it's not coming out of St. Paul this week.
As much as the McCain camp wants to steal the change mantle from Obama, they demonstrated a total tone deafness that will resonate until November: they still don't get what real change is.
Real change is having a grown up in the White House. And Obama has finally demonstrated wisdom beyond his years...and even beyond McCain's years.
Time to elect a grown up as President. Time to elect Barack Obama.