Obama's Cool Androgyny

THE FIRST METROSEXUAL PRESIDENT. Today, Megan Beyer, the wife of a former lieutenant governor in Virginia, referred to Barack Obama as "in many ways . . . the first woman president." Actually, I can see that in a certain way. One element in Obama's cool is that he has a certain androgynous air about him. I don't mean in any crude sense that he "looks like a woman," but Obama doesn't project the kind of testosterone posturing that signifies someone as "male" in our political culture. That's one of the things that makes Obama unique. David Bowie thin, Buddha-like in his relaxation, and transcending any need to prove his manhood, Obama doesn't have any of the strutting macho that characterizes George Bush, Dick Cheney, or even John Kerry. That wouldn't make Obama the "first woman president" any more than Bill Clinton was the "first black president." But I can see presidential historians someday referring to Obama as the "first metrosexual president."

MITT QUITS. Mitt Romney dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination today. Outside all the money he's going to save on his campaign. I'm not sure why he quit. Sure, Mitt's initial strategy of winning Iowa and New Hampshire fell apart. But there still were a couple of scenarios under which Romney could have won the nomination from McCain. It was especially easy to see Romney pressing McCain's record hard and McCain blowing up about it at some point and ruining his campaign as a result. There was also a strong possibility that McCain wouldn't do very well at managing a front-running campaign. McCain's the front-runner because the Giuliani and Fred Thompson campaigns fell apart not because he's doing such a great job running his own campaign. Mitt should have stayed around to see how well McCain handled prosperity.

THE RIGHT KILLS THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN. People on the right complain a lot about "identity politics" among blacks and women. However, conservatives themselves are the most determined purveyors of group identity in American politics. It's just that the group with which they identify is "conservatives" or now "Reagan conservatives." That's why the right is never going to be satisfied with McCain no matter how many conciliatory speeches McCain gives. He's just not "one of them."

Ultimately, the right is going to kill the McCain campaign after he becomes the Republican nominee. The underlying problem is that the right will be be policing every McCain speech for deviations from conservative orthodoxy and what figures Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter do best is blast away at anything that is not conservative enough. And McCain will have to kowtow to the right if he doesn't want to see his campaign founder on intra-party disputes. Unfortunately for McCain, that means he's not going to be able to do much to convince moderates, independents, and weak Democrats to forget the Bush administration, the war, and the faltering economy and once again vote for a Republican. The Republicans underestimate the extent to which non-conservatives have tuned them out on issues like the war. If McCain wants to win the election, he's positively going to have to move a lot of moderates, independents, and weak Democrats to give up hard and fast opinions. Having to bow to right-wing orthodoxy every time he opens his mouth will prevent McCain from doing that. In my opinion, John McCain doesn't have much more chance of being elected president now than he did last July when he hit bottom.