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The 2008 election is already working out to be a polarizing battle, you might even say, a battle of black and white. Senator Obama, the self-proclaimed and support-backed "uniter," has come under attack recently as independents have started to examine his liberal voting record, and meanwhile Senator McCain, abandoning his centrist policies, has struggled to find his own party, fragmented and alienated by the failures of President Bush. In fact the two major candidates, selected by their respective party's for their wide and varied appeal, have become more controversial figures than those they already triumphed against; the partisan machine is winning.

Mr. Obama's rhetoric is in part to blame. During debates and in victory speeches he habitually won over crowds through his powers of suggestion, often presenting his supporters with two options: change or status quo, war or withdrawal, hope or defeat. Indeed, in one of his most famous quotes he suggested that choosing between good and bad is "what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?"

What Mr. Obama is ignoring or more likely forgetting, is that between the two is a healthy skepticism, something that could have urged Mr. Bush to question if there truly were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, if there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, or if a western democracy could function in a Muslim country.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, having grossly miscalculated independent tolerance for conservative policy, has disaffected his independent base in the process of his rightward shift, leaving his supporters fundamentally sectionalized and ideologically confused. Just two days ago, Political Irony, a popular left-leaning political blog, called McCain a "two-faced maverick of convenience."

Therefore it's no coincidence that the independents who ultimately decide the presidency, are currently struggling to find the gray area between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, the candidate with the 98% liberal voting record who says he will unite the country and the Republican nominee who voted with the exceedingly unpopular President Bush 97% of the time over the past two years. In the end something's gotta give, but it remains to be seen whether Obama will cease the divisive talk before McCain can thinly and safely spread himself across political the spectrum.

Learn more about this author, David Lamb.
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