Below The Beltway

For the moment at least, it appears that John McCain has continued to build on what has clearly been a good summer.

First, the latest Zogby poll shows him leading Barack Obama for the first time since the two men clinched their parties’ nominations:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama’s solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

The reversal follows a month of attacks by McCain, who has questioned Obama’s experience, criticized his opposition to most new offshore oil drilling and mocked his overseas trip.

The poll was taken Thursday through Saturday as Obama wrapped up a weeklong vacation in Hawaii that ceded the political spotlight to McCain, who seized on Russia’s invasion of Georgia to emphasize his foreign policy views.

“There is no doubt the campaign to discredit Obama is paying off for McCain right now,” pollster John Zogby said. “This is a significant ebb for Obama.”

And it’s not just in national polls that this is showing up. As I noted yesterday, the Electoral College projection has tightened significantly over the past six weeks. The RealClearPolitics map now shows McCain beating Obama for the first time:

Clearly, this isn’t the same race that people thought it was going to be in June. Back then, it seemed as if Obama was poised to make a major surge to the point where McCain would enter the convention phase of the campaign with a significant deficit.

Instead, we are faced with a race where the candidates are, essentially, tied while the numbers have been trending in McCain’s favor.

What’s going on here ?

Well, for one thing, I mostly agree with the analyst at Donklephant who says this:

The lesser reason first: The crisis in Georgia brought the whole “3 a.m. phone call” scenario into clear focus. Obama initially seemed like he just wished the situation would go away. McCain took the matter head-on. Whether or not McCain’s approach is the best doesn’t really matter. What I think matters to many voters is that he seemed eager and willing to act decisively while Obama was on vacation in Hawaii. Bad timing for that vacation.

Now, the major reason: The celebrity attack ads have had some effect because they turn Obama’s greatest strength, his charisma, into a liability. The breathless media coverage of Obama’s foreign tour made him look presumptuous. The Berlin crowd in particular made him look more like an international rock star than a man you can trust with serious matters (not saying that’s an accurate portrayal, just an easy perception for some voters to come away with).

Obama overplayed his celebrity and McCain hit him on it. It doesn’t even matter that McCain himself has eagerly cultivated celebrity for years – it matters that McCain has positioned himself as the “serious” candidate and is making Obama seem like a lightweight.

The first factor, foreign policy, has certainly played a role. While I think that McCain did go over the top in declaring a territorial dispute between Russia and Georgia over regions inhabited by ethnic Russians who don’t want to be ruled from Tiblisi to be a resumption of a Cold War or indicative of the idea that future relations between the United States and Russia must be confrontational, it’s clear that his tough stance resonated with people.

Will foreign policy continued to have an impact on the race ? Well, this tidbit from the Zogby poll seems to indicate that it won’t:

Here is how voters rated issues most important to them in choosing a President: economy 47%, War in Iraq 12%, energy prices 8%, healthcare 7%, threat of attack on the U.S. 6%, immigration 5% and the environment 4%.

Foreign policy issues will continue to help McCain and hurt Obama, but it’s unlikely to be a game changer.

The other part of the analysis, though, is spot-on. As much as political pundits may deride it and wring their hands, the truth of the matter is that so-called negative campaigning works.

If Obama wants to regain the initiative in this campaign, he’s going to accept that fact and learn to play the game.

Of course, there is one very important thing to keep in mind when looking at these numbers, and James Joyner puts it thusly:

[T]he real campaign starts Monday with the kickoff of the convention season.  Barring a major crisis, Obama will get a significant, if short-lived, bounce from his vice presidential announcement and what I presume will be a well-orchestrated convention.  He’s a gifted speech maker and he’ll almost certain give a great acceptance speech.  Not as many people will watch as was the case in the days of three channels but he’ll make a lot of people who want to vote for him but are uneasy about him more comfortable.

It’ll then be up to McCain to counter that with a strong VP choice  — I do think that, unlike most years, it’ll really matter for him — and convention of his own.  After that, it’s game on for two months.

And, as the past year has demonstrated, when it’s game on anything can happen.