I love Olbermann. He really nails McCain here for getting his facts wrong on Iraq and then trying to dance around the issue.
I love Olbermann. He really nails McCain here for getting his facts wrong on Iraq and then trying to dance around the issue.
A lot of ground has been covered in the Presidential race since I posted three weeks ago. In fact, I would say this race is moving faster at this stage of the race than most other recent Presidential campaigns.
The big news, of course, was Obama’s foreign policy/Middle East trip. After looking like he had forgotten how to control overarching narratives and themes during the last few weeks, Obama seems to have found his bearing again. This week long trip proved once again that Obama understands how to effectively message compared to most Democrats. Oh, there were negative things about the trip too, so let us break it all down and see what comes out in the wash.
The Good
Obama’s trip accomplished three key things
1) Showed he could be the Commander in Chief, (i.e. negated the ‘lack of experience’ rap.)
2) Showed he had better foreign policy judgment than John McCain
3) Dominated media coverage
In the summer of ’04, John Kerry mentioned that most world leaders privately told him they wanted him to win the Presidency. Republicans poured a mountain sized amount of grief on top of Kerry for this ham-fisted attempt to show he was better at foreign policy than Bush.
But look at Obama. He actually went overseas to talk to foreign leaders publicly - none of this ‘they told me privately’ silliness. Everywhere he went he was warmly received, and better than that, Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, supported Obama’s troop pullout plan! Events in Afghanistan proved Obama’s position that we should focus on that country rather than Iraq.
As the week went on, the debate over the success of the escalation (that initially hurt Obama) ended up exposing McCain as a fraud, since he could not get his facts straight on Iraq and then continued to defend his mistakes, digging a deeper hole for himself. During the same time, Obama expertly and consistently made his case that the escalation had little to do with Iraq’s reduction in violence.
All these things combined, especially Maliki’s support of Obama’s Iraq plan, utterly destroys McCain’s position on Iraq, and certainly obliterates any rationale for staying in Iraq since the Iraqis do not even want us there. So McCain ended up looking like a fool, and Obama looked like the foreign policy expert.
Ultimately, the trip showed he can handle the job of President, dispelling the notion he does not have enough experience for the job.
Lastly, the media covered every move Obama made, and he made all the right moves. There is no better way to win over voters than to dominate the media coverage. As I mentioned in a previous post, the imagery could not be more different between Obama and McCain. Before, Al ‘Noble Peace Prize, former VP, and Oscar winner’ Gore endorsed Obama at a massive rally while McCain has to deal with the embarrassment of Clayton “rape is like the weather” Williams raising money for him. Now, Obama gave a fantastic speech in Berlin in front of 200,000 enthused Germans while McCain is at a German restaurant with 20 people eating cream puffs. That is the kind of narrative and imagery you cannot buy. If that happens a few more times, especially closer to the elections, its all over.
This trip, if the MSM picks up the right meme and Obama and progressives push the right narrative, will end up being the beginning of the end for McCain. Not overnight, but if the narrative Obama has set sticks - that he is qualified to be the CINC and that he has better judgment about defense/foreign policy issues –McCain’s whole rationale for his candidacy crumbles.
The Bad
There was only one concern I had with this trip. (more…)
I have been busy with work the last few weeks, so I have not been able to really explore the Presidential campaign’s various up and downs, but have at least been able to pick up Obama’s conservative drift ever since he got the nomination.
On some level this should happen, as the general election is a more moderate affair than a primary. On another level though, this tactic has disserved the Democrats for years, and if you look at most Republican general elections, they do not move to the middle nearly as much as Democrats, preferring instead to stay true to their talking points.
As a result, Republicans have better brand identity and have functioned more efficiently as a party since they demand greater loyalty and ideological purity.
Their success I believe largely informed the Democratic move to the right, that and the fact that clearer conservative vision, narrower focus, and stricter discipline helped transform what was largely a liberal populace into a decidedly conservative one.
At least in the public’s mind’s they were conservative. Polls for years have shown the public is largely progressive on a myriad of issues. They just were not voting that way. In essence, they were liberal they just did not identify themselves as such.
The Democrats, however, took the wrong lesson from this and moved the Party to the center, rather than try to readjust the public’s perception of liberalism and the Democratic Party as a whole.
Obama in the primary seemed to understand this. He was using religious language and style to describe the moral underpinnings of progressive vaules – a key failure with previous Democratic candidates. He spoke of post-partisanship and a need to move beyond typical Washington gridlock, essentially convincing people that progressive values are beyond politics and what Washington would embrace if it moved beyond partisanship.
Brilliant, and was largely effective. However, what Obama seems to have forgotten (more…)