It's now official: the John McCain surge is happening. How just it is that The Surge's greatest advocate should now enjoy a surge of his own partly based on the success of the surge that he advocated for Iraq for so very long.

National polls now report what various state polls have been signalling for several weeks: that the election has swung to Big Mac. Just as GWB managed to move up and past John Kerry during August thanks importantly to Kerry's ignoring the Swift Boat thing, so has Big Mac moved up and past BHO in large part because BHO went on vacation and was out of the loop during the vital 10 days in which Big Mac's campaign hit its stride.

However, Big Mac's surge is not just about the candidates. Events in the real world have changed, and thus changed the entire national discussion. Russia's attack on Georgia has completely altered Americans' view of overseas dangers. Victory in Iraq has become assured, and Big Mac (and to some extewnt, GWB too) is getting kudos and the credit. Lastly, gasoline at $ 4.00 a gallon has become everybody's every-minute concern, and Big Mac's call for drilling of offshore oil ASAP has been well even enthusiastically received by voters.

Amazing that in politics things change. BHO rose from obscurity during a year when voters were fed up with evident failure in Iraq and were fed up with the Bush administration's inability to take charge of things -- remember FEMA and Katrina ? But Katrina was three years ago, and FEMA has since becme VERY responsive, as the aftermath of the San Diego area wildfires proved. Iraq, once a case study in feckless incompetence, has now been won. Who'd have thunk it ? Yet here we are.

Big Mac, who has been steady eddy all along, gets his kudos and his reward for being right first -- as he puts it, "putting the American people ahead of party." He has proved that he can be RELIED upon. I cannot think of a surer way to win an election. Meanwhile, BHO makes rookie mistakes every day. No disrespect -- he is what he is, an untried adventurer who took his chance when it looked like a good chance. Sometimes in politics you gotta take the chance. And he is far from finished politically. He may well lose the election, not because it was un-loseable but because THINGS changed. So will he. In 2016 BHO may well look completely unlike the left-wing, indecisive, academic dreamer that he seems now.

Meanwhile, it looks to be John McCain's time, at last. America will not regret it.