Numbers don’t lie… The Gallup organization has predicted the winner of the 2008 presidential election. The next president if John McCain…if you’re a USA TODAY reader. If not, then Barack Obama is the next chief executive. Allow me to elucidate.
    Gallup conducts polling for the USA TODAY daily newspaper. When they polled for the Monday paper, Gallup asked “likely voters” whom they support in the election right now. A month ago, McCain trailed Obama in a poll of this type by 6 points. In the survey published Monday, McCain was leading Obama by 4 percentage points. The numbers were collected between Friday and Sunday from a sample of 791 voters.
     Gallup notes a difference between “likely” voters and “registered voters,” the difference being that the likely voters may have voted more often in the past (which makes them more apt to vote in the future) and say they have given a certain amount of thought to the election --while the “registered” respondents are counted whether or not they voted in the past.
     Polling all registered voters for the general media and not just USA TODAY, Gallup finds Obama comes out the winner with a nice post-World Tour bounce of eight points in the daily poll as tallied on Sunday, July 27, with 48 percentage points to McCain’s 40. The average score for Friday through Sunday is Obama 48.33 percent to McCain’s 40.33 percent. Gallup interviewed 2.674 registered voters over the three-day period.
     BUT… Counting registered voters just for USA TODAY, a sample of 900 interviewees, Gallup finds Obama leading with 47 percent to McCain’s 44 percent –a three-point lead.
     Is the difference in sample size? Gallup counted more voters for it’s standalone poll and fewer for its USA TODAY poll. Between likely and registered voters they got two different results. It stands to reason, from this pundit’s perch, that Gallup accurately predicted the outcome of the election, at least in one try out of two.
     Or, as they say in horse racing, “Pick ‘em.” It does make you wonder what's the value in having polls anyway, when they can be soinaccurate. Let's face it. There is something goin on here between the  likely voters and the registered voters. One group is not being  forthcoming, I fear, about their true intentions.  If that isn't the problem; if the size of the sample is what is making the difference; then perhaps we shouldn't even be taking notices of samples smaller than 1,000 interviewees...

     Going by the gut… which is the highly unscientific way that most of us predict political outcomes, Obama is still the favorite. He is the one exuding a glamour not seen in presidential politics since Reagan, or perhaps even Kennedy. Boss Tweed once said, complaining of Thomas Nast’s political cartoons, “My voters can’t read but they understand those damn pictures!”
      William Marcy Tweed’s complaint was echoed by Richard Nixon’s people in 1960, after the debate with John F. Kennedy. On radio, listeners tended to think that Nixon had bested Kennedy. On television, Nixon, who was recovering from the flu, looked gaunt, His gray suit melted into the background. He may have had just a hint of 5 o’clock shadow. People tended to just stare at the handsome, tanned, fit-looking Kennedy in his dark blue power suit. TV viewers gave the debate to Kennedy.
     And that’s what’s going on now. McCain looks like a sack of wet cement. Obama looks like the cover of GQ. Never mind that Obama has shifted his position in so many areas. Never mind his narcissism on the World Tour trail. We instinctively like leaders who look the part. Obama does.
     Republicans may be consoled that McCain has kept it as close as he has. When you distill all the results of all the polls the answer you get is “dead heat.” And that may be an advantage to McCain because Obama’s camp thinks their man has already won. That kind of arrogance, or hubris, if you will, often earns the reward prescribed by Aristotle: downfall.

Strategy 101…Barack Obama rates the invasion of Iraq as the “worst strategic blunder” ever made by the United States. When we withdraw from that country, he adds, we need to send our troops to where the real front line of the War on Terror is: Afghanistan (and maybe Pakistan).
     Where do we begin?
     The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks but because the U.S. Government believed that Saddam Hussein was building an atom bomb and had other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Bush’s CIA believed it. Clinton and his CIA believed it. Our NATO allies believed it (even if some didn’t support the invasion). And we knew for certain the Saddam had used poison gas, on his own people, and that he was a murderer and torturer capable of using WMDs if he had them. That’s why we invaded. But Saddam had either dismantled or hid any evidence of WMDs.
     That was bad enough, but inexcusably, the government, especially the departments of Defense and State, had no plans to restore peace and order in the country after the invasion. The way was opened first for lawlessness and then for outright insurrection.
     Five years have passed and we have finally defeated most of our foes in the country, including “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” But Obama still maintains that the war was a strategic blunder, says knowing what he knows now he would still vote against The Surge and that the real center of gravity of this conflict is in Afghanistan.
     Here is why he is wrong: Iraq sits between Iran and the rest of the Middle East, including Israel. Iran has made a satellite out of Syria and Lebanon, but with a free, democratic Iraq sitting between Iran and the Levant, the ability of the Iranians to dominate the region is severely hampered. With a free Iraq, Iranian hegemony in Syria and Lebanon might be broken. Iraq blocks overland aid and reinforcements from Iran going to Syria, Lebanon or to Palestinian terrorists.
     Iraq sits on great underground lakes of oil. Victory in Iraq means that their oil will not become a bargaining chop in an Iranian power play, but will be available to all who can afford to buy it. If Iraq becomes a U.S. ally, we could station troops and air power there to keep an eye on Iran without having to risk carrier task forces in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf.
     Finally, a free and democratic Iraq will prove to the Muslim world that democracy and its institutions are not incompatible with Islam.
    Afghanistan does have strategic value. It harbors Osama Bin Laden and the remnants of Al Qaeda. Eliminating them would cripple terrorist groups around the world. Defeating the resurgant Taliban will reduce the influence of the Islamist fascists in Pakistan. Obama is right to propose a surge—if you will—in U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to achieve these goals.
     But when you look at the geographic position of Iraq, its oil and its potential for containing Iranian expansionism, there can be no doubt that Iraq has more strategic value to the United States. Our challenge now is to get the Iraqi government to let us stick around as we have stuck around in Japan and Germany: as a friendly presence insuring that country’s lasting security. 

Am I imagining this?…Or is Barack Obama just a teensy weensy bit full of himself, taking his victory lap around Europe three and a half months before the election? The Daily Show said Obama visited Bethlehem while in Israel just to have a look at the manger where he was born….

Does anyone here know how to play this game? …Wailed Casey Stengel when he managed the hapless 1961 New York Mets. Senator John McCain might be excused if he were to wail Stengel-like about his campaign team. It’s a fine thing when a guy with all the experience in the world, like McCain, looks like a duffer on the campaign trail while Obama, who not that far removed from his days as a neighborhood activist cuts a fine presidential picture.
    Sic semper Republicans…Thus be it ever with Republicans. They seem to have lost the knack for political campaigning. Campaign staffers have been providing McCain with plenty of gaffes for him to apologize for …while Obama strikes presidential poses at the Wailing Wall, Berlin and etc.
     McCain’s effort has the same lack of fire we saw in George H.W. Bush’s 1992 bid and Bob Dole’s 1996 attempt. What McCain needs is a James Carville-type organizer who gets everyone on message –the SAME message, it should be stressed for this lot—and who is not afraid to get tough with the opposition. We deserve to see a little more fight from McCain, if only to toughen up Obama for the job he is well on course for winning.