Joe Six Pack

McCain's recent downward trend in the polls is best summed up as follows: A lot of ordinary Americans have begun scratching their heads in earnest, thinking "Hey, wait a minute, I know Joe Six Pack, and he's not that damn smart! Isn't this economy stuff kinda complicated?" Aw shucks.

We can throw in as well the observation that we've had Joe Six Pack for two terms now, and for all his Southern charm and "shoot ya straight" politics, it's simply a fact that the economic miasma we've been ineluctably sucked into happened under his watch.

Fair or not, the Credit Crisis has shifted the debate from national defense to the domestic economy, and that tends to favor the Democrats, not the encumbents. It also tends to favor expertise, and a respect for, and sensitive appreciation of, the complexity in our global financial system and in the world all around us.