The Presidential Election As Boxing Match

National Review Online: McCain Is Sonny Liston or George Foreman; Obama Is Mohammed Ali

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Victor Davis Hanson.

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One way to envision the John McCain - Barack Obama presidential race is as a boxing match - particularly like the famous Mohammed Ali championship fights.

The deliberate McCain is like a Sonny Liston or George Foreman trying to cut the ring in half and force his lighter-footed opponent onto the ropes. For McCain, this comes in the form of numerous proposed town-hall debates, where he hopes that face-to-face questions and answers will fall on his less-seasoned opponent like sudden haymakers.

In turn, Obama is like Ali; his style is to keep moving - and stay out of reach of his opponent. Obama does this through rhetorically masterful addresses to large, adoring crowds. He knows that the more McCain is forced to spar at a distance via set speeches in front of a teleprompter, the more he wears down the elder senator, who appears outclassed on the evening news.

Or maybe the better analogy is Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare. At 71, a slower McCain keeps plodding along at a steady pace, hoping that an overconfident, dashing Obama will rest on his wide lead in many polls, coast, make some more gaffes, and then let him crawl on by. Something like that happened in the Republican primary when the once dead-last, written-off McCain eventually walked past all his front-running rivals.

Pundits talk a lot about Obama’s current 12-15 point lead in the recent L.A. Times/Bloomberg and Newsweek polls. Less noticed is that the two are dead even in the venerable Gallup survey - not to mention that we have more than four months to go until election.

At some point, the steady McCain hopes crowds will tire of the glitzy “hope and change” rallies and demand that the soaring Obama comes down to earth to focus on more mundane, detailed positions that will alienate part of the electorate and so cut down his lead.

McCain must also feel like the mythical Menelaus, who tried to wrestle with the malleable Proteus, the sea god who turned into all sorts of different creatures to evade capture. Each time McCain thinks he can catch hold of Obama, the agile senator changes shape and slips away.

The embarrassing Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Obama has evolved from “I can no more disown him” to going well beyond that by quitting Trinity United Church of Christ altogether.

How about McCain’s effort to tackle Obama as a blinkered protectionist who wants to overturn the NAFTA accords? No longer. Now Obama dismisses his recent protectionist talk as “overheated and amplified” rhetoric while campaigning in Midwestern primaries.

Can McCain the combat veteran still take down Obama as the liberal proponent of gun control? Nope. Obama says he supports the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Washington, D.C., gun laws - attributing his earlier approval of similar gun-control legislation to the indiscretions of an aide who filled out a questionnaire wrongly.

McCain couldn’t even hold the changeable Obama to his primary pledge to use public campaign funds, and thereby cut down his opponent’s significant edge in private cash contributions. The cash-rich Obama has now sworn off public financing.

Horse imagery works for the two candidates as well. Obama seems more a youthful (“She rocks!” he shouts about Hillary Clinton to a crowd), frisky and sometimes impatient stallion. McCain is, of course, the old warhorse, his mobility curtailed from old wounds but still ready for combat.

McCain’s sometimes-pained expressions show that he’s been through all this before in the 2000 primary campaign against George W. Bush (not to mention weathering two terms in the House and four in the Senate). But for Obama, midway through his first Senate term, a presidential run must seem entirely new and fascinating.

This campaign is not just about liberal/conservative or Democrat/Republican. With two such antithetical choices this time around, we as voters have to ask ourselves other, more fundamental, questions: How do we define competency and leadership when a war veteran is set against an anti-war idealist, when one who has seen it all is challenged by one who still wants to see it all, when experience and deliberation are set against hope and change?

McCain and Obama are archetypes who transcend the usual politics. And that’s why we can evoke everything from boxing to the Ancient Greeks to figure out who should win.

But as the two candidates in the months ahead debate the war, energy woes, and a troubled economy, the election will ultimately come down to whether more Americans think a workmanlike old pro can see us through one more time, or more think the times demand we gamble on a charismatic newcomer who promises us deliverance.

[clovisbuford]

LET THEM KNOW YOU WANT HILLARY!!!!!
Posted by JTait2 at 07:57 PM : Jul 05, 2008
You have to giggle at this one.. this is not a Hillary supporter or a dem..just an internet troll looking for votes for Mccain..Hillary is toast and just wants Obama to bail out her campaign debt,, good race but long over.The only question is whether voters will vote for 4 more years of Bush or not with Mccain

[irliberal]

Posted by JTait2 at 11:49 AM

Haha... this person isn''t a democrat. Just another rethugnican about to soil their shorts over Obama becoming president and doing whatever they can to stop it.

It won''t help but it sure is amusing!!

[whofhearted0]

Write in Hillary''''s name on the November ballot. Write in votes ARE accepted and counted in every
state. Don''''t let the Obama liars tell you they''''re not.
Posted by JTait2 at 08:52 PM : Jul 04, 2008


No, they are not. You haven''t done your homework on this subject and you are out of touch with reality. Besides, anyone intelligent enough to read CBS news would not believe you anyway.

A write-in candidate is a person whose name is not printed on the ballot AND who has filed the REQUIRED declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for election to office.

The six or seven states I researched all require ALL write-in candidates for state and federal positions to register ahead of time. Most, if not all, states require write-in presidential candidates to register prior to mid-October in the year of the presidential election.

Look it up.

Clinton has stated that she will NOT declare her intent to be a write-in candidate.

So, if you foolishly write Clinton''s name in, consider it a vote for McSame, because it will not be counted. But then you would not vote for Hillary because you really are a rethuglican who is just trying to confuse people who are far more intelligent than you are.

[lhwrites]

Let''s see. . . McCain was against the Bush tax cuts until he was for them; he was against torture, until he decided it was ok. The Bush administration has proved to be wrong on all counts. McCain has supported Bush''s policies. It''s comical how the author of this article simply choses to ignore all this.

[sanfelz]

And NRO is the perpetuator of fables. Or the hometown ref who gives the long count to the downed fighter. Far be it for NRO to examine issues. So much easier to spin mixed metaphors and tortured analogies.

[mcvet]

This is NO real match regardless of how you try to make it so. McSame has NOTHING and he continues to lie and flip flop so bad that he can''t be trusted to talk alone anymore. As one poster noted he goes NO WHERE anymore with Liberman to whisper the RIGHT words in his ear. He has NO issues to run on and his proposal on the Economy is NUTS! No this is going to be a blow out the likes of which the Republican''s have NEVER witnessed before.

[mcvet]

jusr saw photos of McCain''''s Columbian trip.
Guess who was right there beside him?
thats right....Lieberman...who has to keep him from saying the wrong thing.
This is going to be EXACTLY like the Bush/Cheney arrangement.
four more years of this ****** and all that will be left of our country are the yacht makers and a habndful of their customers.

Posted by ainttaken at 01:31 AM : Jul 04, 2008
+ report abuse

LOL You noticed?? ROFLMAO I just wonder if Liberman can hold up for the entire run?? ROFLMAO

[gunfighter51]

A boxing match! You must be kidding me!

We started with 3 liberals, the first 2 spent more time apologizing to each other and wanting to have a group hug than have a debate.

Now were down to 2 liberals who are afraid of saying anything that might offend the other, and are resorting to using surrogates to do the dirty work for them.

This is''nt a fight it''s a lovefest.

[babooph]

NO- not boxing- Pro wrestling-the news people are the same as the ref.

[jimfinster]

LOL

As I recall, Mohammed Ali usually won!