Tortoise edging ahead of the hare in long race to the White House

THERE’S nothing like travellers’ tummy to focus the mind on the US election when you have been confined to your hotel bedroom with nothing to watch in English but CNN.

There are just 10 more weeks to go in this seemingly interminable election and American voters are beginning to home in on the choice confronting them. The reality, amid the information blur, is that few of them have the time — or, frankly, the inclination — to examine the voting records of senators Obama and McCain or even their policy stances across the ever-widening spectrum of issues.

Slightly curiously, for instance, American voters appear to be telling pollsters that they, at one and the same time, know little about the relative newcomer from Illinois but have also heard quite enough about Barack Obama.

Whatever about such fickleness, the truth is the electorate will make their choice as to the leader of what used to be called the free world with the benefit of, at best, a sketchy idea about the contenders’ opposing ideologies.

What does find resonance, though, are impressions about their remarkably different personalities as they come across through newspapers, television, the internet, endless campaign ads and, not least, rumours that have bubbled up over the long months since the primaries began.

Mental images of Obama not saluting the Stars and Stripes probably have more subliminal impact than any number of documents detailing the finer parts of his war on terror policy.

Likewise, a sidebar column about John McCain’s latest melanoma test might leave as much of an impression as his confession not to knowing as much about economic issues as perhaps he should.

It used to be said the personal is the political. Nowadays, it is equally true the political has become the personal and it is on that basis that November’s election will probably be decided.

So long as any candidate remains within certain parameters of policy acceptability, general impressions regarding likeability, judgment, consistency and groundedness count for at least as much as stances on what the media decides are the issues.

And that explains McCain’s remarkably strong showing in the polls. Obama might attract more media attention — in the US as much as here — and he might have many times more money to spend than his Arizona opponent but his ratings appear stuck when conventional wisdom has it that he should be streets ahead. After all, isn’t America in recession and isn’t the war in Iraq supposed to be a big vote loser?

Perhaps it’s because when it comes to character, the Vietnam vet beats his upstart rival hands down. It’s a cliche, but McCain really is someone voters can imagine having a beer with. He comes across as solid, experienced and, crucially, makes no demands on voters.

When Michelle Obama says people’s lives will never be the same again if her husband wins, many shudder. McCain, meanwhile, has carved out an image for himself as an old-fashioned protector who provides reassurance in difficult times. “Leave it to me” he seems to be saying while, at the same time, making loud attacks on Obama’s capacity to be commander-in-chief.

It’s working. Obama is stuck in a rut below 50% while McCain’s strategy of agreeing to disagree with voters but presenting himself as the safe choice is allowing the tortoise to get ahead of the hare. All those decades of military and Senate experience are bearing fruit.

Things can change, naturally. Obama should receive a boost from his address to the Democratic faithful in Denver tomorrow night — so long as he has learned from the mistakes of his much-anticipated but much-ridiculed Berlin speech when, for instance, he claimed Belfast’s peace lines have come tumbling down when they haven’t.

McCain also has substantial drawbacks, not the least of which is his closeness to President Bush’s views on a whole range of matters. Furthermore, the downside of being reassuring is being dull.

And the age factor does count — far more in American minds than the race factor, which is a peculiarly European preoccupation (probably because we can’t imagine anyone of African descent becoming head of state of any European country, let alone Ireland).

However, American voters do remember the later Reagan years when it appeared their president, tragically, had already been afflicted by the onset of Alzheimer’s.

At 71, a President McCain would be a good 10 to 20 years older than his Russian, British or French (but not Chinese and Indian) counterparts.

Issues are still not totally irrelevant either and McCain’s positions on healthcare, education and overall economic management can appear a bit wobbly at times.

Obama’s weaknesses are different but perhaps even more challenging. He derides unsubtle caricatures of himself as some force from outer space with a funny name who doesn’t look like any of the previous 43 presidents of the United States. But in a sense he is tilting at windmills. So far, mainstream Republican representatives have been remarkably silent about his African-American background.

Nevertheless, a negative stereotype of him has sunk in deep in parts of white working-class America and it was the Clintons’ supporters, not McCain’s people, who created it. Being black might not matter so much, but his middle name — Hussein — really does trouble some voters, idiotic as it might appear.

MORE generally, the sense that Obama is just a bit too well packaged, a bit too good to be true (or even wholesome) makes it hard for some Americans to believe he really is the mainstream centrist he now portrays himself as.

The Obama campaign’s attacks on the number of houses McCain and his wife own is really as good as an admission from them that their candidate has difficulty convincing voters he is a regular guy who understands their lives, their problems.

In a funny way, it’s the American version of class politics: Obama went to Harvard, McCain to the university of life via the US navy.

And it’s because Obama invokes such negativity among some voters that when it comes to the issues, he has to work so much harder when he alters course. While voters see McCain’s decisions as an extension of his character, they are trying to figure out Obama’s character by looking at his policy decisions. When Obama flip-flops, is it because he really is a different kind of politician, one with a genuinely open mind — or is it because his pollsters have calculated he is on the wrong side of public opinion?

Mercifully, we won’t have to wait too much longer for the American people’s verdict on that conundrum in what appears more and more each day like a referendum on Obama’s character rather than a conventional choice between two different conceptions of that great country.

Which reminds me: 10 more weeks of CNN? I couldn’t stand 10 more days. Time to go and see a pharmacist for this stomach bug of mine.