The 2008 Presidential campaign trainwreck

10 September 2008, 0115 EDT

Over the last two days the Presidential campaign imploded. The McCain campaign has gone completely Rovetastic. Obama’s caugt a virulent strain of foot-in-mouth disease. And don’t get me started on how the Palin pick has provided the media with a perfect excuse to avoid the hard task of talking about, you know, issues and, instead, to focus on triviality.

Meanwhile, the emerging contours of the horse race looks pretty much like a repeat of 2000 and 2004, with any net bump for McCain over Obama already gone from every national poll except for Gallup’s ~~political crack~~ daily tracking poll.

I can’t help thinking that we’ve crossed the Rubicon into the brave new world of politics as reality television. And it ain’t a pretty sight.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.