Fuggedabout the Primaries. It’s Time For The Main Event: That’s Obama & McCain

For not entirely altruistic reasons – including a mix of over stimulation and exhaustion — I hope that when the sun comes up on Wednesday morning Hillary Clinton will have seen the light and is heading home to Chappaqua with with Bill and Chelsea.

The mathematical chances of Clinton taking the Democratic nomination away from Barack Obama without huge victories in both Texas and Ohio tomorrow are slim to none depending upon how you do the math.

Some 35 primaries and caucuses and 20 debates later, there also isn’t a whole lot more for Clinton and Obama to say to differentiate the kind of president they assert that they will be. In Clinton’s case, that’s a whole lot more of the same things we’ve gotten over the last 16 years. In Obama’s case it’s a vow to change a whole lot of those same things.

Obama has been looking past Clinton toward John McCain for some time now. Same for McCain looking past that pesky Mike Huckabee toward Obama.

The Republican primary season has been notable for low expectations as the majority of a field of six largely indistinguishable candidates jostled to see who could do the best George Bush imitation while pandering to the party’s jittery conservative base. McCain has prevailed not by virtue of his strengths — save for perseverance – but because of his opponents’ weaknesses.

The Democratic primary season has been notable for high expectations as the majority of a field of nine largely distinguishable candidates jostled to see who could be the biggest populist. Obama has prevailed because of his strengths — notably the vision thing — although Clinton has been a worthy opponent who happened to be tone deaf to an electorate desperate for change.

But enough is enough and although the party conventions are still five months away, John Edwards has asked his delegates to stick with him until then and Huckabee continues to be a nuisance, it’s not too soon for the heart of the most important presidential campaign of my lifetime to begin.

The backdrop to that campaign could not be darker. The economy continues to implode, the dollar is in free fall, the budget deficit is out of control, the Bush administration continues to thumb its nose at the Rule of Law, and America’s world standing has tanked.

I for one am more than ready for the primary horserace to end and the Obama-McCain smack down to begin because I and other voters need some answers and Clinton needs to keep secret her tax returns.

While Obama began to put meat on the bones of his hope-and-change mantra as the primary campaign unfolded and has an impressive number of policy papers on issues ranging from Iraq to global warming, I continue to have substantial concerns over how he and a presumably Democratic Congress will break the logjam in Washington as well as undo some the greater excesses of the Bush Era. The burden is on Obama to explain beyond feel good-isms how that will happen.

My number one issue is the conduct of the so-called Global War on Terror and on that Obama is refreshingly specific compared to Clinton’s persistent waffling on GWOT’s bastard child, the Iraq war. Obama has offered a reasonable timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals that strikes fear into the Baghdad regime. He also goes an important step further and vows to change the mindset that got us into this mess to begin with.

While McCain has basked in the glow of his reputation as a maverick, the record is less than charitable to him on that count. While that recent New York Times story on his alleged dalliance with a lobbyist was a mess, McCain’s claim that he has gone straight since he was burned by the Keating Five scandal is bunk. I have substantial concerns over how much of a maverick he really will be. The burden is on McCain to state in explicit terms how he will be different than The Decider.

Certainly not on Iraq, where McCain has staked out a position that is a carbon copy of President Bush’s, changing rationales and all. He not only has no troop withdrawal timetable, but crows that it would be just fine if our sons and daughters stay in Iraq for 100 years. Worst still, he is a poster boy for the mindset that got us into this misadventure and could get the U.S. into others such as military strikes against Iran.

Obama’s proseletizing has been awesome, but he needs to get more specific. McCain can’t afford to get more specific because the more he does the more he seems like Clinton in conservative mufti — and we know what has happened to her.

When all is said and done, the campaign may come down to dueling versions of patriotism.

It wasn’t until I heard Barack Obama speak two days before Super Tuesday that I fully realized the inherent patriotism in his message; the crowd of 20,000 or so crammed into the central square in my hometown certainly did. John McCain, of course, believes that as a war hero he has the franchise on patriotism, but I have some bad news for him:

In 2008, speaking out against what ails America and vowing to correct it is a lot more patriotic than embracing the dreary status quo.