Presidential predictions

My amateur prognostication last October -- when John McCain was polling third among Republicans and his campaign was in debt -- was that McCain was the Republicans' strongest candidate, and that winning the Republican nomination would be the harder part for him: If John McCain won the Republican nomination, he would be most likely to win the presidency.

That seems about right today, now that John McCain has in fact become the Republican nominee and Democrats have managed the impossible and turned a broadly favorable political situation with no real policy disagreements into a civil war and the longest primary fight since 1968.

The latest poll averages at Real Clear Politics show John McCain edging out both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, by 0.5 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.

I would expect McCain to "close hard" in the last days before the election. McCain is the safe vote. He has no real liabilities in experience, credibility, partisanship, corruption, plausibility, or likeability.

I would also expect the economic/financial picture to be brighter by Election Day. The numbers may worsen in the current quarter and possibly into the next, but unemployment is still very healthy, at 4.8 percent, and the economy was still growing in the last quarters for which we have statistics -- 0.6 percent in Q4 and 4.9 percent in Q3. The problems so far have been related to the mortgage crisis and the high cost of a barrel of oil. But the stimulus package should help offset the oil inflation, and federal mechanisms are right now being brought to bear on the financial dislocation. Even some of the analysts preaching recession are looking for better numbers by the third quarter.

Iraq is a won war, though it could still be lost, and today the Iraq issue is not the vote-loser for Republicans that it was just a year and a half ago. What is more, Iraq became America's showdown with international jihadism and al Qaeda, and America won. John McCain can be expected to make that point forcefully and repeatedly.

Democrats have become the anti-war party, which historically has shut them out of the White House. Democrats became the anti-war party in 1968 and lost seven of the next ten presidential elections; they became the anti-war party in 1864 and didn't elect a two-term president until 1916. Americans do not elect pacifists, or those who can't take their own country's side in a war, as president.

McCain's age may be an issue, but 71 isn't as old as it used to be, and a solid, young vice presidential pick should mitigate any age concens, plus McCain should be able to make a virtue of necessity with his age, like Reagan did in 1984 especially.

And McCain will be the only candidate in November who fits the presidential "profile". John McCain is an old male WASP (not "Anglo-Saxon" per se in McCain's case, but Protestant British Isles), Episcopalian, which happens to be the most common denomination among presidents, and even named "John", which happens to be the second-most common name among presidents. McCain matches the profile of 42 of the 43 presidents of the United States (the Irish Catholic John Kennedy being the one real exception to the "profile" rule).

I do think a black man or a white woman could become president of the United States, incidentally, but that it would more likely be a conservative woman or conservative black man, not the Clinton and Obama types.

Much ink has been spilled on the subject of the President's low approval ratings, but the lesser-told other side to that story is that the Democrat-controlled Congress has consistently had approval ratings of about ten points lower than the President's for nearly a year now. And all the talk about Democrats out-fundraising Republicans in the presidential race has neglected the fact that Republicans have been winning the fundraising battle of the National Committees.

Plus which, Democrats have no strategists and organizers -- to my knowledge, at least -- to equal Ken Melhman or Karl Rove, both of whom have started advising the McCain campaign. Rove is a towering intellectual of American politics and government, and understands every heartbeat.

And at this point there are no apparent spoilers -- third party vanity candidates who siphon enough votes from one of the big two to throw the election result. The only third party character with a hat in the ring thus far is Ralph Nader, who could only possibly take votes from Democrats, but who is of course unlikely to manage much more than half a percent or so of the national vote.

So there is one man's forecast. I do think the race will be close, that the campaign against Hillary Clinton would differ from the campaign against Barack Obama, and that there are any number of unforeseeable events that could alter the landscape radically, including even attacks in America or overseas. But based on everything I know now, and everything I can foresee, John McCain is the most likely next president of the United States.