Frank Rich on the Campaign Polls

In today's NY Times, columnist Frank Rich opines on why the various presidential race polling is showing Obama and McCain running a close race, when given the toxicity of the Bush/Cheney administration and McCain's embrace of it, Obama should be far ahead. Rich makes a number of seemingly accurate observations, including this:

That is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

Of course, this is an environment in which both Obama and McCain sit down with a leading religious leader and discuss their respective faiths, and everyone agrees that Obama provided the most calm and thoughtful responses, whereas McCain seemed to regurgitate previously-memorized religion talking points from his campaign briefings, yet McCain is viewed among religious voters as having done a better job in the session.

Ugh.