Consider the Democrats' Field of Dreams

In the movie “Field of Dreams,� Kevin Costner quotes the character Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones, as saying that sometimes the cosmic tumblers fall into place, opening portals to possibilities.

 They’re open for the Democrats this year. Everything broke right for Barack Obama. While a safer Iraq might have helped John McCain, the economy tanked, helping Obama. Associations with Rev. Wright and the terrorist Bill Ayers bounced off Obama, while McCain and Sarah Plain were flayed alive by the press.

The result is that a political field of dreams has opened for the Democrats which they haven’t seen since they last controlled the White House and Congress in the early 1990s.

 The Democrat game plan includes everything from universal health care to restoring America‘s supposedly damaged reputation in the world, from bringing back rights they say were lost under the Bush administration to appointing liberal judges. The New York Times says Barack Obama is a proven leader who can address all our military, moral and economic woes.

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Talk about dreams. Obama is a smooth talker, but he’s not a proven leader. He’s done nothing on a national level except spend most of his one senatorial term running for president. His political inclinations are not suited to the vital center but to the far left. He has no more experience than Palin, but while the press has hurt her on that subject, it has helped him by ignoring his inexperience and instead touting his calm presidential demeanor. If that qualifies Obama to be president, then Palin’s ability to connect with people makes her Eleanor Roosevelt.

 Based on experience alone, Obama never should have beaten guys like Joe Biden and Bill Richardson in the primaries. But as a liberal black man Obama is the Democrat field of dreams itself, the resurrection of the Kennedy Camelot myth and the culmination of the Civil Rights movement. Democrats in and out of the media have been waiting for him all their lives.

With Barack in the White House, the Democrat to-do list will include “restoring� America’s reputation as the last best hope of freedom in the world. The mainstream press shares this dream, but the notion that we should even aspire to be the main beacon of hope is wrong. Every country should be just as much a beacon as we are.

Nor are we delinquent because of a few cases of waterboarding and some unilateral foreign policy decisions. Most countries had to be coerced into helping in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even when bribed, they don’t help for long. We do most of the heavy lifting. We don’t need to regain their respect; they need to earn ours. As for waterboarding, it ought to be used in Wall Street investigations.

The Bush administration has gone its own way at times, but sometimes the bad cop role is better than the good cop. Sometimes it works better than making deals with dictators that they break later. Let’s hope Obama can simply use his powers of inspiration to talk Ahmadinejad of Iran out of his dream of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

But don’t hold your breath. For much of the last eight years the Democrats haven’t done anything but go along with things like war and wiretapping, only to bail out when things got tough, claiming no responsibility. That’s not leadership; it’s political opportunism.

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Despite his lack of experience, it looks like Obama will win big on Nov. 4, although the tumblers could still shift. Maybe Hillary Clinton, who has her own field of dreams, will sue to recount the primary votes, or there might be a groundswell of write-in ballots for the ticket of Joe the Plumber and Obama Girl. Or, if neither of those plausible events occur, maybe something truly crazy could happen like a McCain/Palin victory.

Joe Biden said that a President Obama would be purposely tested by our enemies shortly after taking office, and that voters should support him no matter how he reacts. Biden was not talking about McCain too, just Obama. It was a breathtaking admission of Obama’s lack of actual stature in the world, but the mainstream press virtually ignored it, which was another breathtaking example of their bias for Obama.

 Obama said recently that the conservative bias at Fox News cost him three points in the polls. That’s probably true, but the liberal bias everywhere else has added 12 points to his total, a huge net gain. The press will always be on his side. Katie Couric will always be a smitten schoolgirl, and Chris Matthews will always get a tingle up his leg.

 The cosmic tumblers are in place in newsrooms and voting precincts around the country. Obama is going to have the longest presidential honeymoon since George Washington.

Mark R. Godburn is a bookseller in Canaan.