DEM DILEMMA

Posted at 7:29 p.m. ET

Who thought we'd be calling anything "Dem Dilemma" this week?   This was supposed to be a coronation, the start of a new Democratic era.  We on the other side had thoughts of being exiled to Devil's Island.

But a funny thing happened to the Democrats on the way to the ceremony.  Charles Krauthammer explains that the candidate himself, Barack Obama, has kind of messed things up:

He has an interesting history, but in no way dramatic or heroic. Nor has he done anything of any significance in his 47 years other than write two rather favorable histories of himself. His greatest achievement in life is, of course, winning the Democratic nomination for the presidency. But as a reason to elect him president, that has the same kind of circularity as does his “we are the ones we've been waiting for" refrain.

Obama’s problem is that he has compounded it with a detached imperiousness and unnerving grandiosity so completely disproportionate to his own accomplishments. Grandiosity in a de Gaulle is one thing, though even with him it often reached the point of the ridiculous. But Obama?

Obama would probably consider deGaulle small change.  Did deGaule carry Santa Monica?

The beginning of Obama’s decline in the polls was the Berlin speech. It took a while for the absurdity of that event to sink in, and for the McCain campaign to take perfect advantage of it in parody. Not only did Berlin (as a stand-in for a host of grand Obama gestures) prove a liability in and of itself. But, additionally, it accentuated the basic thinness of Obama’s history and experience.

And...

The point of the Democratic National Convention is to pad the biography and to make it look dramatic and heroic. And, on the other hand, to try to control the Obama acceptance speech, which he scheduled as a mass cult-of-personality event in front of 80,000 screaming fans at Invesco Field. Obama’s task is to make it sober and measured. Success is possible.

But the fact, bitter for Democrats, is that Obama tends to lose support the more people get to know him.  His poll numbers have actually declined this week, at least so far.  That is the Democratic dilemma.

August 26, 2008.