The title will be instantly recognisable to fellow fans of The West Wing, and Boris Johnson. "After this, therefore because of this" - the fallacy that an event that follows must be caused by a certain event because it preceded it.
It gives me no pleasure at all to say this, but clearly from the polling, John McCain is going to lose this race. And at the same time, he selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The left loathes Palin and therefore, McCain will lose. Right?
Wrong. He will lose, and the polling directly reflects this, because the US and world economy has fallen off a cliff. McCain was way behind until the Republican National Convention and his selection of Sarah Palin. Her speech in the face of personal attacks on her family was sufficient, improbable as it seemed, to put McCain ahead. Rallies with her were record-breaking. She then gave a couple of lousy - edited - TV interviews but in the unedited Vice-Presidential debate she triumphed.
McCain is not losing because of Palin. Rather, she is the only reason he was not this far behind much earlier. Rather, he is losing because of the most basic fact in politics; the economy, stupid. McCain ought never to have been in contention. With Bush's unpopularity at the end of an eight-year Republican White House, and Obama's sensational oratory, his youth, his being the first African-American major party nominee, and McCain's moderate profile which made him anathema to the base, this should have been a twenty-point landslide from the start.
A moderate Obama victory was turned into a landslide by McCain's losing gamble to suspend his campaign and ask for postponement of the first debate. I admired that gamble, but gambles always involve risk. As the US and world economy plummets, Americans will simply vote for change in the White House. Palin has been, overall, an oustanding performer and remains an excellent bet to be the first woman President in 2012.
