Are the media about to ruin Obama's prospects?

Politics in America has its precedents, as much as anything else. It has always been a rough-and-tumble game that has shocked Europeans. Nothing yet said about John McCain or Barack Obama compares to the bile dripped on Thomas Jefferson, or the acid thrown at Grover Cleveland at both ends of the nineteenth century; indeed, it doesn't even compare to the comparatively polite assaults on Franklin Roosevelt or Bill Clinton in the twentieth.

In just over two weeks time, Barack Obama may be able to enter upon the course of the presidency with one stunning fact to his credit (and perception is reality in mediaworld); he will have won without noticeably negative personal campaigning. There have been attack ads. Nothing, though, about Cindy McCain, very little about John McCain's health, very little about Sarah Palin.

That is a prize. It may change the way that people think they can win, and therefore change campaigns, because many people, in that game as in others, follow success like lemmings.

However, I may be too optimistic for once. Obama has had help in this sweet campaign of his. He's been helped, for instance, by the fact that various media have taken up the task of attacking his opponents for him. Today, however, I wonder if the media are not poised to go too far, and if they are not encouraging a backlash, just at the wrong time.

Porn about Palin; stories about her children; assaults on Cindy McCain; and a series of stunningly vicious New York Times pieces yesterday ape the right's treatment of candidates over the years, but are to my mind faintly toxic. One of the links, incidentally, is to a brilliant Glenn Greenwald piece on the whole business.

I find myself wondering how the Republicans and independent voters, and even some of the Democrats I know, will react to the tide of bile washing in as members of the professional and media classes with elite attitudes who have failed to connect with the people for forty years let out their frustrations and their shouts of triumph.

There is something very nasty about the left when successful that parallels the right in retreat. American society is not short of bullies who will surf whatever tide is coming in, and politics may be quickly poisoned--repoisoned-- by their attitudes.

As I wrote yesterday, unless everyone understands that some restraint can be a good thing in life, and that focus in these last few days is about direction and getting the job done, not settling scores, people are going to become even more alienated from politics than they already are. If I can see the logic of this, surely others, including those who matter, can?

The picture with which I've illustrated this post is by Matt Hoye, and is exhibited at CNN.com/politics. It depicts a crowd of at least one hundred thousand people who went yesterday to hear Barack Obama speak.