Game Changer?

Update: Today, October 23, Alan Greenspan testified before Congress about how shocked he was at the explosion of this financial crisis. He also laid blame at the feet of investors, insufficient vetting of borrowers, and faulty credit ratings issued to many sub-prime mortgage backed securities. Anyone who contests my previous article now has to argue against Alan Greenspan as well.

We are in the home stretch now, gringos! For Barack Obama, it looks quite promising. Any benefit he had last week is now magnified by the endorsement of Colin Powell -- all fence stradlers are now noticing severe gaols pushing them to the left. The right is scrambling desperately: claiming he's a socialist, he cavorts with terrorists, and we just don't know enough about his past (whatever the hell that means).

But all these claims have me wondering...where's Bin Laden? This time in 2004, the race was just barely tilting toward John Kerry when (to the delight of Bush loyalists) Bin Laden was on TV telling us that no matter who we elect, we're still on his shit-list. I couldn't help but feel our electorate was the object of mass reverse-psychology: telling us it didn't matter, in a way that made it matter very much.

Fear makes people irrational and this stunt was no exception. Bin Laden understood the dynamic of our political leanings and he exploited the perceived weakness of John Kerry to encourage people to vote for Bush by reminding us that he had gone nowhere. If anything this should have been the clearest sign of failure of Bush's first term, the man we spent so much time, effort, and cash to nab is still at large -- and he feels secure enough to flaunt it. While we can't say definitively what would have happened under a Kerry administration, it seems obvious that Bin Laden was far more comfortable with the devil he knew.

Think about the current perceived weaknesses of each candidate: Obama/National Security and McCain/Economy. To the degree that one weakness is more pronounced as an issue the electorate moves to who they perceive as being strongest in that arena. As long as we're talking about the economy, Obama wins. If we're talking about national security, McCain wins.

To me, it's obvious that McCain has been trying to change the subject for weeks -- nonsense about Bill Ayers, ACORN, and so on...But this all seems to fall into the same black hole gobbling up the Dow. McCain needs an external factor to change the conversation from the economy to security. McCain needs a terrorist attack equal in scope and impact to 9/11 between now and the election. What will be lacking in the public mind, should such an event occur, is the degree to which an Al-Qaida attack would be equal to an Al-Qaida endorsement of Senator McCain.

Let's look at the benefits to Al-Qaida of a McCain administration:
1) Continued Economic Strife (this will be the case no matter who's elected).
2) An Energy Platform built around Oil -- Al-Qaida funding does come from OPEC nations. Greater US consumption of oil means more money for Al-Qaida.
3) John McCain's apparent disliking for the UN, the EU, and real diplomacy will keep the West fractured in the face of this grave threat.
4) If McCain does win (assuming the numbers today are right), it will be by a VERY thin margin -- and because of the divisive nature of his campaign will leave our nation more fractured.

With Obama, we would be trimming our dependence on oil and would be reinvigorating the image of the US around the world (McCain simply cannot achieve this, see #3 above). And if Obama wins (assuming the numbers today are right) he will do so by a fairly substantial margin and a sizeable public mandate.

This is not to say we've seen the last of Al-Qaida. We will almost certainly face an attack within the next year -- this has been their MO for the past 15 years. From the first World Trade bombing in 1993 (one month after Clinton's first inauguration, when republicans argued against his preparedness), the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (3 months before mid-term elections when republicans accused Clinton of issuing military strikes to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal), USS Cole (in the months leading up to the 2000 elections, when Clinton did not respond for fear that he would reap the same criticisms as in 1998), and 9/11/2001 (nine months after Bush's first inauguration).

Al-Qaida's strategic move during the next presidential term will be to make a President Obama look ill-prepared and a President McCain to look steadfast and resolute -- those strategies are what will further their objectives to destroy the west.