So Barack Obama won.
To tell you the truth, I saw it coming. Not that it makes me some great political prognosticator.
I've spoken to A. Carville "Peck" Foster, chairman of the York County Republican Party, a couple of times since Tuesday. And though he didn't say it in so many words, I get the strong impression that he saw it coming as well.
Don't get me wrong. The local Republican Party ran a good campaign. I stopped by county Republican campaign headquarters a number of times, and saw a lot of competent people working very hard.
It's just that the writing was on the wall after the economic meltdown and the Wall Street bailout. Fairly or not, public outrage attached itself to the entire Republican Party and McCain paid the price.
In the campaign's final weeks, both the Obama and McCain camps sent a number of surrogates to York County. And in the McCain surrogates, I could see the Republican campaign groping for a resonant message as the election approached.
In effect, the message from the McCain surrogates who came to York County was as follows:
John McCain served heroically in Vietnam. Therefore, he has demonstrated the character necessary to be president. And based on that heroic service, Americans have a moral obligation to vote for him.
Frankly, that's not a very strong argument to begin with.
For all the romantic notions about national leadership, any elected position in a representative democracy such as ours is a still basically a job. We hire people to administer our town, county, state or country, and we pay their salary with our tax dollars. In that light, a presidential campaign functions as an extended job interview.
Say you were hiring someone to do a very important job for which you were willing to pay a lot of money -- say, performing life-saving surgery on your child. You're interviewing candidates.
You ask one candidate why you should hire him to do this job. His response is that 40 years ago, he did something very heroic.
You may admire him for his heroism. All else being equal, that may be what convinces you. But if he's told you nothing else about himself in the way of qualifications, he still hasn't given you sufficient reason to hire him.
The other big problem is that the McCain campaign was trying to get this message across to the very American public that four years ago was told that John Kerry's heroic service in Vietnam didn't count for squat.
In fact, Karl Rove's dirty tricks machine actually managed to use John Kerry's service against him -- spreading outright lies about the nature of his service, and suggesting that Kerry's subsequent criticism of the war amounted to treason.
I generally make a point of not taking sides in this blog. But I have no problem stating my opinion that Rove's tactics in the 2004 race were shameful and disgusting.
I have a real problem with the implication that criticizing U.S. military policy -- especially when that criticism comes from a decorated veteran -- is inherently treasonous. As tax-paying citizens of this country, we have an absolute right to voice our opinion on any of its policies. To suggest otherwise is to undermine the very principles on which America was founded.
McCain himself had been a victim of similar tactics during the 2000 primary, when Rove orchestrated a push poll in South Carolina suggesting that the Arizona senator's daughter was illegitimate.
Regardless of how you feel about McCain's bid for the presidency, I find it sad to think that he was twice victimized by Rove's dirty tricks -- once directly, and once indirectly.
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