Obama and McCain: men of the middle?

With the general election before us, the presidential campaign has at last shifted to the contest most of us have been relishing. John McCain vs. Barack Obama seems a battle of stark contrast: age against youth, experience against brash confidence, the "Great American Century" against 21st century global pluralism. Both project vastly different images of leadership and, consequently, seem to offer equally different options for America.

But what makes both candidates so compelling - particularly in comparison to their predecessors - is that neither are really products of their respective party establishments. As Anne Applebaum points out in the Daily Telegraph, Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee won the support of the "bases" of the Democrat and Republican parties - "blue-collar" whites in the blue corner and conservatives in the red corner. Applebaum suggests that McCain and Obama appeal principally to "unpredictable centrists" and represent an unprecedented a-partisan shift in American politics.

Yet the candidates didn't simply navigate away from their party's "bases" into fresh, politically uncharted territory. The earth has moved beneath the parties' feet. Obama and McCain were wise to spot this change, but it is a transformation they have noticed, not made.