Barack Obama, John McCain and a pundit’s heart torn in two

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg is getting a tingly feeling in his political pants over a potential Barack Obama-John McCain matchup in 2008. Since Weisberg’s political appetites are a reliable reflection of Washington’s pundit class, we can all look forward to a steady diet of Maverick reruns until the 2008 primaries begin or one of the senators has a public fit, whichever happens first.

McCain is a long-time crush of Weisberg’s and most of the political press. No matter what the pandering weasel does, the press love him. They love him for standing up to Jerry Falwell; they love him for not standing up to Jerry Falwell. They love him for opposing torture; they love him for caving on the issue (actually they didn’t notice that he caved, but they’d love him even had they done). Now, though, it appears the McCain infatuation has faded enough that Weisberg’s heart is open to another. That’s bad news for McCain because where Weisberg goes, some dozens have gone before.

Obama is unquestionably an attractive politician, and he offers two qualities in particular that Weisberg finds irresistible: a hankering for bipartisanship and the ability to talk about religion without sounding like a complete dork. Religion is important because everybody says so; bipartisanship is important because for more than a decade now, many congressional Democrats have cussedly refused to become Republicans and thereby fueled partisan rancor while demonstrating a fundamental misapprehension of how a two-party system is meant to function.

Weisberg says Obama can talk about religion “without upsetting those offended by the mixture of religion and politics.” That may or may not be true; perhaps Weisberg polled some friends about it. What is true, according to my own informal poll, is that exactly two thirds of the people who are wary of that mixture are wary because the inevitable follow-on seems to be the mixture of religion and government, a situation with which Obama is not as ill at ease as one might hope. (The other third just thinks it’s creepy.)

Despite Obama’s obvious attractions and a cooling of ardor toward McCain, Weisberg makes clear in closing that while he’s looking, he’s not quite ready to jump.

Skeptics note that we’ve been through swoons like this before—including for McCain in 2000. Obama could turn out to be just another liberal fad, like Howard Dean in 2004. Once he decides to run, the cynics assure us, his halo will tarnish or crack. And maybe so. But this time, maybe not.

Ah, John, John, John; they’re going to ditch you for the trophy husband. Quick, do something iconoclastic!

You’ll note that Weisberg just couldn’t help but take yet another swipe at Howard Dean. The motivation for that is Dean’s crackpot scheme for making Democrats competitive across the country even in years when the GOP isn’t in full meltdown mode and Democrats don’t have an audaciously charming young presidential candidate to run against the rascally old maverick one.