The Republican Party establishment now seems to see McCain as a piece of freeze-dried Reagan jerky. They believe they can reconstitute his conservative credentials if they marinate him long enough in think-tank effluent. They will work tirelessly to conceal all rough edges and wave away all contradictions. This is the impressionistic way of rebuilding the Republican Party; a portrait of the Reagan Coalition, painted by Monet. A flurry of brushstrokes and, before you know it, McCain is all things to all people. Conservatives say they might end up voting for McCain if he'd just stop talking. Its not just that he's silent about the reasons conservatives have to like him, its that he's aggressively promoting the reasons they have to dislike him.

Meanwhile it seems that Barack Obama is a postmodern Henry Wallace. Obama does not even have a Fatherland of Socialism to front for; instead, his alternative loyalty is a sort of “floating referent,” a frame that can be as easily occupied by environmentalism as by Islamophilia. Like most multiculturalists, his knowledge of the rest of the world as it actually exists seems to be very limited. So is his grasp of current history.

Therein lies one of John McCain's big problems, because in this lack of contact with the real world, real history and real human nature, Obama is in perfect synchronization with the Democratic base voters. He thinks like them, is enunciating their world view, and reassuring them that their values are correct. It's much easier for him to reach out to the middle without alienating his base than it is for John McCain, who is already distrusted.