Entries Tagged 'political naifs' ↓

Rich Lowry salutes McCain’s virility. Wait. Did I say virility? Ewww. I meant McCain’s virality:

Who would have thought it? The McCain campaign is now running more effectively viral ads than the Obama campaign. The Landstuhl ad, which I didn’t like (because of the factual problem) stoked a week’s worth of debate that was harmful to Obama. The “Celeb” ad has dominated cable chat and had 1.2 million YouTube hits the last time I looked. Now, there’s this brilliant “The One” ad noted by Kathryn earlier which will, I’m sure, be a YouTube sensation because it’s so fun to watch.

And for those of you who think it’s just too tawdry to contemplace, and beneath McCain, and that he has somehow sullied himself—well, I hate to say it, but consider the curious case of John Edwards. Now, there’s someone someone who has (allegedly) sullied himself (not to mention his wife, his family, his friends, and his political supporters).

Meanwhile, here’s John McCain, whom you were mocking just recently because he doesn’t even know how to use the google…as if that matters.

Lowry concludes [e.a.]:

As everyone has said this week, this isn’t “worthy” of the old John McCain of 2000. Which is a good thing because: 1) it’s a new media and technology environment and he’s got to plug into it; 2) he’s running behind with fewer resources and less organization, so his campaign has to have a certain guerrilla element and viral video is a cheap way to drive the debate. Bravo…

Those of you who continue to think that a presidential campaign is serious business about the catastrophes facing our nation need to do some reading and to think again.

About the latest ad, Jennifer Rubin writes:

The interesting thing about these humor pieces is that there is really no response [from the Obama camp] other than: “Knock it off !”

What are they gonna say? That there’s nothing funny about their candidate? They tried that once.

And (funny thing!) it almost worked … for a couple of weeks.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m gonna sit back and enjoy the rest of this campaign. I’m pretty sure that both candidates will do an adequate job as president, and I am cold to both of them.

(I’m a registered Democrat. I have never yet in my life voted for a Republican for president … in case anyone is interested.)

Richard Byrne recently reread The Selling of the President (which I happen to have mentioned just the other day) and took away some lessons [e.a.]:

Forty years on, McGinniss and the prominent Nixon staffers of his generation are in their late 60s. But The Selling of the President 1968 holds valuable lessons for the present generation of presidential campaign staffers, who are already trying to define Barack Obama and John McCain.

The fact that these lessons continue to be so relevant also hints at an uncomfortable fact: There is little true innovation in American political discourse, and its purveyors recycle key language and concepts to a disturbing degree.

In a campaign where Obama’s mastery of political oratory has been applauded, it may be difficult to remember that words can clutter or bog down the total impact of a televised campaign message. Nixon’s 1968 campaign ads are notable for their willingness to set a simple and forthright proposition and then let music and images do the heavy lifting to evoke a host of conflicting moods. That tempest of sound and image is then resolved succinctly with a carefully modulated statement from the candidate — tough, but not mean.

For John McCain, a similar approach might be the most effective against Obama in the fall. In fact, his first TV ads are already doing it: Obama as celebrity. Obama as cheap politician using troops as campaign fodder. Particularly on Iraq, look for McCain to set forth simple propositions like “the surge worked” — and pluck heartstrings with patriotic pictures and music.

Don’t say you weren’t warned!

Today—as opposed to 18 months ago, when Obama was launched as the Messiah—pretty much everybody who matters agrees that Barack Obama is (as I’ve been saying for a while) the coolest Machiavellian dude in the presidential race.

David Brooks launched the debate by positing a “Fast Eddie” Obama (as a peer of “Slick Willie” Clinton).

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

Ann Althouse digs deep into Obama’s dissembling and sees a positive sign. Note her response to one of her readers:

mporcius said…”Ann likes that Obama has betrayed a pledge about or changed his mind about campaign financing because Ann doesn’t want to give up on the war effort in Iraq. Ann wants to believe that Obama will change his mind about Iraq (or that he has been lying the whole time) and when Obama pulls something like this, Ann is encouraged.”

[Althouse answers:]That’s basically the answer. In fact, I think Obama may be a better bet than McCain on Iraq.

My number 1 concern about Obama is that he won’t check the Democratic Congress. But I’m not confident that McCain will either.

Look, you can’t trust either man completely. You can’t trust anyone running for President. Remember when George Bush assured us that he opposed nation building?

Jonah Goldberg pokes the biggest hole in Brooks’s and Althouse’s “theory.” He points out that being a great in-fighter and ruthless politician does not make you adept at handling foreign policy:

But it’s worth noting that being cutthroat and savvy in electoral politics doesn’t necessarily translate into being cutthroat and savvy, never mind wise, in power. George W. Bush — we’ve been told — was ruthless in getting elected. When in power, he discovered Putin’s soul. (Bush’s dad, who did what it took to crush Dukakis, is a better example of Brooks’ fast-eddie thesis). Ted Kennedy is arguably the most ruthless politician in America, that hardly means he’d be a great foreign policy president. In fact, I would argue that despite Kennedy’s toughminded political cynicism, he’s still naive about foreign policy. If Brooks is right about Obama’s campaign smarts, my guess is that Obama would still be naive about foreign policy. All his throw-’em-under-the-truck maneuvering is likely rationalized by his desire to “do good” once elected. And that do-goodery is not (necessarily) any less naive simply because he’s doing whatever bad he deems necessary to do good.

Andrew Sullivan, who for months on end tore down the Clinton’s for their “Rovian” tactics, is now a fan of these underhanded tactics when they’re carried out by his American idol Obama, and especially when Obama bests the Clintons by doing them.

As for me: I admire Obama’s political skills—and indeed I’ve advocated for Democrats to get just as tough and ruthless as the Republicans are wont to be. But I just don’t trust him, because I don’t know one thing that he stands for and stands firm on. And I’ve been saying the same thing, like a broken record, ever since I started writing about Obama—and his “narrator.”

Why does a candidate for president of the United States need a “narrator” unless he is spinning tales? Some months ago, I wrote:

[The novelist Richard] Russo gets at the issue: the media’s storytelling reduces everything and everyone to a binary choice—Spitzer is either All Evil or All Saint, take your pick.

A similar dynamic is at play in the Reverend Wright scandal. Obama’s problem is that there isn’t a simple story line that can explain his 20-year affiliation with Wright and allow Obama at the same time to hold on to his own pacific, post-racial Magic Negro Healer image.

In order to keep believing that Obama is the Magic Negro, you’ve got to write off Wright as an inconvenient uncle. If you can’t bring yourself to believe that the bile-spewer is a harmless old fool, then you are left doubting the sincerity of the Magic Negro. He begins to look like just another cynical politician who makes alliances that will advance his career.

Either way, Obama loses (and we voters lose our illusions). And the blame can be laid directly at the feet of his “narrator,” David Axelrod, who manufactured a PRopagandaTM image of Saint Barack Obama that no human being can live up to and thus put him inside a box from which he cannot escape.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask a presidential candidate who is an unknown quantity to the American people (because he has no track record) to be clear about what, specifically, he stands for. Do you?

He’s completely unlike the old Obama.

WaPo:

BARACK OBAMA isn’t abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it’s in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn’t about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he’d get if he stuck to his promise — and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama’s earlier pledge to “aggressively pursue” an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. “It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,” Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters

 Jake Tapper:

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, told the pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would be a strong ally of the Jewish state. As such, he repeated one of the talking points AIPAC likes to hear, that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” …

In an interview [later] with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Obama said of Jerusalem, “obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.” …

Of his feelings about dividing Jerusalem, Obama said: “As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to — to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.”

Some in the media portrayed this as something of a flip-flop. “Facing Criticism, Obama Modifies Jerusalem Stance,” said Reuters. “Obama amended his support for Israel’s stance on Jerusalem on Thursday…”

David Brooks:

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

Speak for yourself, Brooks. I have not failed to appreciate his ambition. Indeed I have noted it repeatedly (but I’m too lazy to provide the links right now).

ABC reports on a new initiative by MoveOn that offers Obama-lovers an opportunity to become famous for 15 seconds:

MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Barack Obama for president, is encouraging citizens to develop 30-second pro-Obama television ads which will be judged by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and others.

The ad contest, which organizers are calling “Obama in 30 Seconds,” provides the opportunity for Obama supporters to creatively show what inspires them about the Senator’s candidacy. Contestants will be allowed to submit their ads between March 27th and April 1st.

That’s the part that appeals to contestants self-interest. Here’s the part that solidifies the interests of the sponsors [e.a.]:

“After eight years of President Bush campaigning on fear and war, people are feeling hopeful again. They’re eager to talk about what inspires them about our country — and Senator Obama leading it,” said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.

Yes indeed. All ambitious young people will soon be very eager to prove their loyalty to the Liberal Guilt party.

In case you’re wondering, contest winners will be announced at a most convenient moment:

The winning ad, and ad-maker, will be announced on April 17th–just before Pennsylvania’s April 22nd primary.

MoveOn will then spend an undisclosed amount of money to air the ad on “national television.”

Everyone wants to get in on the action in the new arena of Political Entertainment.

Tom Hayden visits Vietnam and is disappointed to find consumerism trumping the virtues of what was supposed to be a worker’s paradise.

 The fancy Diamond department store next to Independence Palace was filled with shoppers, gawkers and Santas wandering the aisles of Lego, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, Nike, Converse, Estée Lauder, Ferragamo and Bally. The nearby Saigon Centre bore a billboard proclaiming, More Shops, More Life.

Far be it from me to question the desire of Vietnamese to share our globalized consumer culture like everyone else, or to reject their aspiration to be the next Asian Tiger, or freeze them in memory as icons of selfless revolutionaries.

Far be it from him to question, but question Haydeb does. Or, rather, he sniffs:

Gentrification and consumerism, after all, have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. It seems the way of the world. As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place. Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country’s still-undefeated Communist Party?

I suppose it never occurred to Mr. Hayden that a consumer wonderland is what the people of Vietnam aspire to…shame on them. One question does nag at him, though [e.a.]

 is it possible that Marxism and nationalism won the war but capitalism and nationalism have won the peace?

Oh horrors!

What ever will happen next? Will someone be coming forward to denounce Fidel Castro? Mr. Hayden will be deeply disappointed, I’m sure.