The tortoises and the hares
Tom Baxter
Editor, Southern Political Report
July 29, 2008 —
Last week, as the presidential campaign neared its final, 100-day sprint, our clan went to the beach. In retrospect, that vacation was well-timed. The sense that this was an important juncture in the race hung heavy over last week, but we’ll be a while knowing exactly what it meant, and the Gulf of Mexico as good a place as any to puzzle over it. From the beginning, this race has seemed a classic tortoise-and-hare matchup. As Barack Obama jetted from one foreign policy triumph to another in the Middle East and Europe, while John McCain waited vainly in New Orleans for a helicopter lift to an oil rig, that point was made even more vividly clear. After the big “Ich bin ein Obama” speech in Berlin, this was proclaimed to be the Democratic candidate’s best week in the general campaign so far. But American elections are hard to judge by German crowds. In the fable, the patient tortoise overtakes the careless hare. That doesn’t mean this race will turn out that way. McCain didn’t help himself much last week, with the George Bush 41 photo op and the swipe at Obama over his canceled trip to a military hospital. What you can say is that by the inexorable ebb and flow of the American electorate, McCain almost certainly will seem to be gaining ground some time over the next three months. On this point, a week at the beach has been particularly instructive. That great transformation by which Americans are reducing their gasoline consumption at a rate approaching 10 billion gallons a month is not yet visible along the string of developments that line Santa Rosa Beach. We suspect we got a better deal on the big beach house where the family – 12 people and two dogs – stayed, because of worries that higher gas prices would make it harder to rent. But there were still plenty of Tahoes and Escalades, and people who seemed not much worried by the price of gas or shrimp. Watching a line sprinkled with SUVs and trucks inch its way along the beach road toward the highway like giant sea turtles attempting to spawn, the thought came to mind that this is a tortoise-and-hare race in more ways than one. This year’s election has attracted much more attention, much earlier, than is normal in presidential contests, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who will decide it has already tuned in. Instead it means Americans supporting both candidates are sharply divided between the hares, who were wired into the race before the first YouTube debate, and the tortoises who only now are sorting out their opinions. Both McCain and Obama will be introducing themselves over the next few weeks to a lot of Americans who still don’t know them. There’s a tortoise-and-hare contrast with respect to the issues in this election, as well as the timing of their choices. A big part of the electorate – the hares -- really has embraced the change message, as it’s called. They understand that one way or another, the big-wheel ride past the pristine beach is about over, and seek the candidate who can best guide the country through the transition. But it’s hard to believe after a week at the beach that a harder to measure but still sizeable cohort of American voters who don’t envision any significant difference in their lifestyle, any more than they did after 9/11 and the War in Iraq. Do those voters drift toward McCain, even though he too has signaled the need to turn the page and take problems like global warming and the trust of our allies more seriously? Or do the tortoises stay home, and wait for the tide to shift?
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