In a Washington Post interview this morning, Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, said that “this election is not about issues…[It] is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”
Okay, this sounds really, really bad–and it is. Davis is admitting that Republicans don’t focus on issues, but personalities. Indeed, this has long been a go-to strategy for the GOP. Republicans effectively framed Dukakis as a weakling by pounding away at his seeming lack of fortitude; Clinton was nailed as being “Slick Willie” and a dishonest womanizer; Kerry was supposedly an effeminate snob; and now they’re telling us that Obama is an un-American “celebrity.”
The personality card also worked in the other direction as well, with Republicans constantly stressing the noble character of their candidates: Reagan as the optimist, Bush II as the cowboy you can have a beer with, and McCain as the indomitable POW.
Democrats are no saints, but the tenor of their presidential campaigns tend to focus on governance–i.e. their priorities and methodology in conducting the affairs of the state–more than the character of candidates. Hence Bill Clinton’s “it’s the economy, stupid,” John Kerry’s emphasis on his readiness to serve and be the anti-Bush, and Obama’s talk about compromise and unity.
In general, Republicans like to attack candidates for who they are; Democrats talk more about how they’ll lead. The GOP is more inclined to, as Fred Thompson just put it in his RNC speech, “remind you of the man behind the vision”–and tear down the other guy. This is smart and sly, yes, but also distortive: people lose site of the actual problems and issues at stake and instead vote for who they like.
Davis has admitted that the McCain campaign is committed to keeping this cycle going. That’s sad, dangerous–and further proof that McCain campaign really is “McSame” when it comes to GOP politics.
So here’s Part II of the 60 Minutes interview (Part I is below). Again, pay attention to the way that Obama and Biden interact–very natural, very authentic. Something that struck me in this interview is how well Obama deals with answering questions that, before a lesser politician, would be an invitation to disaster.
In Part I, 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft said that Obama was trying really hard to appeal to blue collar voters by drinking beer, which he “doesn’t even like,” and bowling. These are the type of ridiculous comments that invite politicians to step on their own toes. You can imagine a candidate, shocked by Kroft’s suggestion that he’s not a man of the people, laying his folksiness on way too thick here: “Steve, I love beer. Drink it all the time. Nothing more American than a big, cold brew. And I love bowling. I bowl all the time. I’m an avid bowler.”
Bam! Suddenly you have a clip of the “liberal elitist” clumsily trying to assert his folksiness–something Republicans can point to as proof that Obama is a phony snob, a la John Kerry’s 2003 cheese-steak fiasco.
But Obama doesn’t fall for it. He brushes off the question (“where do you get this stuff?”) and points out the the bowling was about “campaigning” and “having some fun” (imagine that!). Essentially, he offers a common sense response to the kind of ridiculous campaign-season question that we see all too much of nowadays. He simply acts–wait for it–reasonable. And sadly, in American politics, that’s an accomplishment.
Obama is similarly level-headed when, in Part II below. Kroft asks him why he’s not doing better in the polls, given how unpopular the Bush Administration and Republicans in general have become. Here Obama could have decried McCain’s dirty campaigning or offered an empty political platitude (“November is far away”). But instead, he gives a thoughtful answer about how Americans “want to get this right.” This is a good, classy answer to the toughest answer a candidate can face: “why aren’t you winning?”
I know people nail Obama for being aloof, but really, I’m a big fan of the fact that he manages to understand how much of politics–and political coverage–is reckless goading. I don’t want a president who’s going to take the bait every time.
If you haven’t seen the clips of Barack/Biden on 60 Minutes, I’m posting them here, with some commentary. Part I is below, Part II to follow.
Watching this interview, my overriding thought was this: I really like the way that Obama and Biden interact. They seem genuinely friendly with one another, and also have a good fire & ice thing going, what with Obama’s serenity and Biden’s bluster. The one word that I would use to define the Obama/Biden dynamic would be “complementary”–not just as candidates, but also as potential colleagues. They just click.
This isn’t something we see that often in Prez/VP dynamics. In recent years, Republican presidential candidates have picked stooges (Quayle, Palin) or evil geniuses (Cheney). Jack Kemp was neither, but he and Bob Dole were antagonists–as Time magazine pointed out in 1996, Kemp was “partly responsible for the single most painful political betrayal in Dole’s life.” The point is this: the GOP President-Vice President dynamic has always had a deep undercurrent of artificiality to it. They’re rarely collaborations between two like-minded equals.
Democrats have tended to be less extreme in the extent to which they plug in a polarizing VP, but there’s some definite incongruity between Presidents and VPs on the Dem side as well. Kerry and Edwards always had a strained relationship, and that awkwardness came through in their campaigning. And it’s hard to imagine two people who’d relate to each other less than smooth Bill Clinton and dour Al Gore.
But Obama and Biden really seem to be on the same wavelength. Obviously, all presidential tickets are a marriage of political convenience, at least to some extent. But I like seeing this kind of instinctive harmony between a President and his Vice President.
The ease and comfort with which Obama and Biden interact is particularly striking in contrast to McCain, who has partnered up with someone who he met all of three times before choosing as VP. The fact that McCain feels the need to make clumsy assertions that Palin is his “partner and soulmate” really drives home how inorganic that political union really is.
Hey, remember the 2004 election, when Rush Limbaugh called John Kerry a gigolo because he married into money?
Hey, remember how John McCain, like John Kerry, married a rich heiress–but only after leaving his first wive following her disfigurement in a horrific car accident?
Hey, remember how both McCain and Kerry are Vietnam war heroes?
So why the heck doesn’t McCain’s personal life get the same bad rap as Kerry’s did in ‘04?
About a week ago, Glenn Greenwald dug into the issue a bit further to highlight the ridiculous double standard that brands Kerry a whore but leaves McCain unmolested. It’s worth checking out, if only to get a sense of (a) how brutally Kery was smeared throughout the 2004 campaign and (b) to observe yet another example that contrasts how Republicans fight dirty and Democrats pull their punches (Consider the ubiquitous Democrat refrian of “I have the greatest respect for John McCain…” We certainly didn’t hear similar praise from Republicans in 2004 toward Kerry, who received two Purple Hearts and a friggin’ Silver Star in ‘Nam!).
From Alan S. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, via NYT:
The stark contrast between the whiz-bang Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.
That 1.14-point difference, if maintained for eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax cut.
Question: if the order of the conventions had been reversed–i.e. if the Republicans had preceded the Democrats–would we be seeing Sarah Palin on McCain’s ticket?
We all know that Palin was something of an impulsive choice. The Politico story I link to in my previous post notes that “McCain only spoke with Palin about the vice presidency for the first time on Sunday…and was seriously considering Lieberman until days ago.” And according to many reports, McCain had spoken to Palin all of two times–ever–before making her his VP pick. It’s also important to consider the timing of McCain’s VP announcement: after Obama’s DNC speech which pulled in an historic 40 million viewers. The point here was, of course, to steal Obama’s thunder and produce headlines like this one, claiming that “Obama loses spotlight.”
Outside of Palin’s supeficial demographic appeal as a socially conservative female, it really seems that there’s an element of conscious shock value to McCain’s pick. Though it would take well-connected Beltway insiders to really confirm or refute this, I would guess that the McCain campaign saw momentum building throughout the DNC and said “oh crap, we need to make a splash in order to steal the show” (excuse the mixed metaphor). Enter Palin. But if the GOP had held their shindig before the Democrats, there wouldn’t be such pressure to match Democratic interia.
(1) He took on McCain: “It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care. It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.”
He also started talking about disposition, which is fine with me after weeks of the “celebrity” meme:
If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.
And he called bullshit on McCain’s tough-guy posturing:
John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell — but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.
Is this fair? On Larry King, McCain’s spokesman said that this quote was an outrage because it painted McCain as a coward. But McCain has made it clear that he prioritizes Iraq over tackling the Taliban in Afghanistan and he doesn’t think that Pakistan should be pressured in order to nail terrorists. Oh, and uh, one more thing: Osama Bin Laden was last spotted in Pakistan.
In other words, Obama’s comment has a substantive policy backing behind it: McCain is not interested in chasing Bin Laden. Yeah, he said it with edge–but that’s politics, right?
(2) He took on conservatism. Not just Republicans, but conservatism as an ideology:
For over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is — you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps — even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.
Yes. The problem isn’t Republican candidates (though that’s part of it), and the problem isn’t bad policy (though that’s part of it). The problem is the way conservatism conceives of–and subsequently institutionalizes–the relationship between government and citizens.
(3) Policy, baby! A wonk like me loves hearing about policy–and, more importantly, the more talk there is about specifics, the less the “he’s too fluffy” attacks can stick to Obama.
Obama to GOP: You wanna get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts.
The Christian Science Monitor asks a question I’ve been mulling over for a bit now: would a VP Romney open the door for the Dems to create ads similar to the McCain campaign spots highlighting how Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden expressed doubts about Obama during the Democratic primary?
Probably. CSM points out some of the juicy criticisms that the Romney leveled against McCain, but it misses the one that, in my mind, is the most harsh:
“If you ask people, ‘Look at the three things Senator McCain has done as a senator,’ [campaign finance, immigration, energy] if you want that kind of a liberal Democratic course as president, then you can vote for him. But those three pieces of legislation, those aren’t conservative, those aren’t Republican, those are not the kind of leadership that we need as we go forward.”
That’s Romney on McCain, January 2008. Clearly, there’s something to work with here. But here’s a strategy that would be more effective than just aping the McCain ads: playing up the fact that the McCain-Romney animosity goes both ways.
Even the Canadians are noting that Biden bungled some key parts of his DNC speech last night:
But nervous, perhaps, he stumbled several times, misreading the teleprompter as he addressed a pumped audience still high on Bill Clinton’s exhortations to unite behind Obama.
He dropped “McCain” in his critique of the “Bush-McCain” foreign policy. He said 150 more parents have health care in Illinois because of Obama’s work, instead of 150,000; he said McCain proposes $200 million instead of “$200 billion” more in new corporate tax breaks and he said America needed a leader “who can change,” instead of “deliver change.”
Yeah, Biden garbled his words a little bit, and of course it’s hard to say that an imperfectly delivered speech has the same impact it would have had if the orator had nailed the presentation. But I don’t agree with commentators like Chuck Todd (MSNBC) and Jeff Toobin (CNN) who think the speech was a flop. Read more »
Hey, remember John Kerry? Y’know, 2004 Democratic nominee for the presidency of these United States of America?
Well, the cable news networks don’t.
I was watching last night’s convention on MSNBC, and the vast majority of Kerry’s speech was ignored in favor of talking head chatter. Turns out this happened on all the cable news networks, which gave Kerry a mere half-hearted nod. Daily Kos, not my favorite blog in the world, is right about how this is really lamentable–not because John Kerry is such a giant amongst the Democratic Party, but because his speech was a real humdinger.
Why? Because Kerry did what Democrats seem to be deathly afraid of doing: acknowledging the fact that Presidential Candidate John McCain is playing dirty pool. Read more »
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