In the wake of Erica Payne’s razor-blade, ray-of-sunshine appearance on our program this past Tuesday, I’m making a conscious effort to be less cynical. Not surprisingly, it’s not working out very well.

It’s these polls. These Godforsaken, never-ceasing, often misleading and usually unsettling polls. Rather than letting me know which candidate the country is getting behind, these polls are starting to feel like something I’m on all fours in front of, if you catch my drift. Take the recent Zogby poll that shows John McCain leading Barack Obama by 5%. Even more unbelievably, the Arizona senator who disavowed an intimate knowledge of economic matters is leading Obama by 9% among those surveyed on who is better equipped to handle the nation’s faltering economy.

I’ve had casual conversations with colleagues who assure me that polls mean nothing, that the results are often baked in to the cake, and that by paying attention to the demographics and numbers of people surveyed, one can usually find a way to make the numbers mean anything.

This doesn’t make me feel any better.

American elections are all about public perception. I tend to think that those mysterious “swing voters”, those coveted but ill-defined phantoms of independence, are going to end up getting behind the guy who looks stronger. For at least the past two weeks, that guy has undeniably been John McCain.

Take his verbal coup yesterday regarding Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the success of the surge. McCain looked strong, Presidential, secure in his beliefs and muscular in his commitment to American supremacy at all costs. People buy that sort of thing. In bulk.

This places Obama in yet another hard-to-define, subtle and somewhat nebulous position. His overwhelming point, of course, is that we absolutely never should have been there in the first place; he fundamentally opposed creating the mess that John McCain pats himself on the back for cleaning up. And he’s right. Trouble is, the nation seems to have accepted the war in Iraq and moved on; the idea that it was an unjust, unnecessary invasion seems to be something people are tired of talking about, a subject met with the same exasperated rolling of the eyes as the latest Britney Spear’s child custody controversy, but exciting even less genuine interest. It still makes our blood boil, of course, but by and large Iraq has vanished from the headlines and is well on its way to going down in history as a mismanaged but ultimately successful foreign policy venture. I know, its goddamn ridiculous, but my thermometer tells me that’s the current temperature of the United States. I’ll leave you to imagine whether that temperature was taken orally or otherwise.

John McCain reminds us that he was not attacking Barack Obama’s character or patriotism (although he very plainly was), but was instead questioning his judgment. Ooooh. Good one. Lots of applause after he said that. Sounds good. Sounds strong. So do McCain’s constant reminders that Obama voted against troop funding, even though they are totally inaccurate and calculatedly mischaracterized. You think that matters? Yeah, I provided a link to a Media Matters story right there about McCain’s mischaracterization – you think the voting public at large would bother to click on it? You will, and for that I applaud you. Most people wouldn’t, and they’re out there applauding for John McCain and his “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” oratory.

The obvious rebuttal, and the correct one, is that John McCain is the last person who should be talking about judgment. He threw himself behind the war in Iraq 110%, he swallowed all of the misinformation like a listless warrior starving for an excuse to pillage, and he moved seamlessly from one revelation of the Bush administration’s lies to the next without ever acknowledging his responsibility for eagerly lapping them up. Like so many of our politicians, by rights he owes us an apology.

And like so many of our politicians, he could easily sail in to the White House on a ship of perceived strength and uncomplicated, salt-of-the-earth appeal.

The next time I see a poll, I’ll be hard pressed not to hang myself from it.

Good morning!

Best,

Derm

P.S. I already linked to this story above, but please do give it a read. If Barack Obama could make this case as strongly as McCain makes his, he could probably win.