The three images of this election, in the voter's mind

SPECIAL REPORT: "The three elections: Voters must decide whether the economy, security or 'values' matter most to them," The Economist, 4 October 2008.

Naturally, in the Good magazine piece I wrote on the election, I—the foreign policy expert—went for security, when the norm under the Boomers is economy-versus-values.

The conventional wisdom before the financial crisis is that Obama wins on economics and McCain on security, so values could be the tipping dynamic.

Now all that seems OBE.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. They are in their 20's. They are all for Obama. Now think about this...the first President they were aware of was Bill Clinton. The fall of Saigon, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, the KGB, even the fist Gulf War, does not mean a thing to them. They have friends of color, they have gay friends, they are looking at the world through different eyes. I have talked with them and they don't see a world free of terrorists. They think that it is something that they will just have to live with, like bad weather and taxes. They really have not see us at our best. They were not even born when we went to the moon.