I have to admit, the latest public reactions to Obama and McCain are truly mystifying to me. Yes, I know, probably due to my clear bias, but nonetheless, there seems to be a lot more to it than just that.

A week ago, we had Obama make a truly impressive overseas trip, showing his foreign policy weight. The Iraqi president virtually endorsed Obama, saying his 16-month withdrawal program was what Iraq wanted. Obama pulled off all points of the trip virtually flawlessly, winding up (mostly) with a big rally in Berlin, a great speech setting the perfect tone, with Berliners waving U.S. flags, signaling a potential new wave of U.S. popularity and influence under an Obama administration. This should have helped Obama greatly due to foreign policy and Iraq supposedly being his weak points. It helped that during the same time, Bush, and then startlingly, McCain, adopted Obama policies for Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the same time, McCain performed pathetically. Stuck in supermarket aisles dealing with tin can collapses, speaking in front of lots of cheese or alternately at the Fudge Haus after a hurricane blew off his hopes for a helicopter landing on an oil platform (to demonstrate how hurricanes don’t affect oil platforms), McCain was tripping and stumbling throughout the week. And then he started a blisteringly negative string of ads, most of which were not only demonstrably false, but which the media surprisingly tagged as such.

So what are the polling results after that week or two? Obama pretty much steady, but McCain gained a few points. Polling aggregates from Real Clear and Pollster.

What the hell? Are Americans stupid? Sorry to be so blunt, but this should have been a week or two where the doubts about Obama started melting away while doubts about McCain intensified. Usually negative ad campaigns drag both candidates down. But instead, Americans ignored Obama’s impressive performance and rewarded McCain for being a nasty-mannered liar.

It’s gonna be a long three months….