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Thursday, October 9, 2008
Obama swinging for the fences?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is fascinating — from the Live Feed (since confirmed by CBS):
Barack Obama has purchased a half-hour of airtime on CBS, sources confirm.
“The Obama campaign will air a half-hour primetime special on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m.
Sources say the Obama camp is also in talks with NBC and Fox. NBC is said to be very near a deal. With Fox, the matter is likely to remain uncertain as the time period could conflict with Game 6 of the World Series.
In the past 12 years, much of the billions of dollars in political advertising spent has gone to local TV stations in battleground states. While some money has gone to national cable channels, the thinking has always been that it would be more prudent to target battleground states’ voters instead of addressing the entire nation, including states that reliably vote for one party or another.”
I’m not sure how to interpret that move — campaign media buys are a mysterious art. However, it brings to mind two thoughts:
One, the Obama campaign has an awful lot of money.
And two, going national instead of concentrating on battleground states smacks of someone going for the Big Win and trying to create very large coattails. If so, it’s an act of confidence, some would say overconfidence.
I don’t know. Polls are still holding — Gallup had it at 11 points today, same as yesterday. I keep expecting that to tighten, but who knows?
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Another terrible, horrible, no good very bad day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Dow fell more than 650 points today. It is now down below 8600.
And the McCain camp wants to talk about William Ayers.
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Slouching toward Bethlehem
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbanks, a minister at a McCain rally in Bethlehem, Pa. offered this opening prayer:
“O God, we are in a battle that is raging for the soul of this nation. You, O God, have raised up Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for such a time as this … Help them, O God, to strengthen our economy, to keep our taxes and spending low … and grant them the privilege of being elected the next president and vice president.”
That’s a far cry from the wisdom of a previous Republican leader, Abraham Lincoln, who was perhaps the greatest American of us all. In his humility, Lincoln said he would not presume to know which side God had taken.
“My concern is not whether God is on our side,” he said. “My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”
We should all strive to be on the side of right, “as God gives us to see the right,” as Lincoln put it. But claiming God has raised up one side in a political race implies the opposite about the other side.
And claiming He cares about lower taxes? Well…
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Tribal politics, distilled to its essence
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the column/blog post below, I wrote about the GOP’s reliance on “tribal politics,” the notion that the party rallies its faithful by pointing out that “they” aren’t like “us.”
This morning I came across the perfect distillation of that approach. It’s a column by Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator, who I cited a few days ago for being honest about Sarah Palin’s inadequacy as a candidate for high office. In the piece, Hillyer lays out his prescription for saving the McCain candidacy:
“Without putting it as bluntly as this sentence does, McCain’s campaign must pound home the message, in a coherent way, that Obama is not ‘one of us’ — meaning that he is estranged from, not part of, middle America. And the way to make that message relevant is to say that when times are tough it is not any one economic theory that will get Americans through the crisis, but rather that it is our American-ness, our exceptionalism, our national character that guarantees that we shall overcome.”
Hillyer then goes on to cite alleged examples of Obama’s “otherness”, concluding that “every one of these issues is an indicator of culture. Every one of them is an indicator that Obama himself can’t possibly empathize with most of us as we struggle with an economic crisis, because he not only misunderstands how we feel and how we see the world but also has contempt for our very point of view.”
Tribal politics: The last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.
And then there’s this:
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Why the GOP stands at the abyss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican Party has held the White House for the last eight years, the House for 12 of the last 14 years and the Senate for most of that time as well. But if trends continue as they have, that run is about to come to an end.
With less than four weeks to Election Day, polls today suggest that Democrat Barack Obama will sit in the White House come January, enjoying enhanced majorities in both the House and Senate. And if that’s how things play out, John McCain is doomed to be cast as the scapegoat by his fellow Republicans, in part because they never really liked him much in the first place.
Sarah Palin, by contrast, will reign as the party’s crown princess.
You can already see the mythology beginning to take shape. Palin is being positioned by conservative media outlets as the stalwart defender of the faith, the true believer who is fighting the infidel with all her power but lacks a committed partner in McCain.
Palin’s the one making the arguments that conservatives most want to hear, such as accusing Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” When the McCain campaign decided to pull out of Michigan, it was Palin who repeatedly and publicly disagreed, insisting that the cause was not yet lost and that she could turn things around.
Palin’s star will shine even brighter in defeat than in victory, and that would not bode well for her party.
The GOP’s political problems have many causes, but distilled to its essence, it can be stated in one sentence: The Republican Party hasn’t taken seriously the responsibilities of governing.
In fact, if the Republicans could govern as expertly and as diligently as they campaign — if they simply cared as much about governing as campaigning — the country might today be reaping the benefits of great prosperity and global respect, and the Democrats would have gone the way of the Whigs.
But look around: That’s not exactly how things are.
The foundations of Republican success on the campaign trail have been appeals to tribal politics — “they” aren’t like “us” — and the easy answers of ideology. But once in power, tribal politics, fixed ideology and a disdain for the hard work of governance have proved disastrous.
Unfortunately, Palin epitomizes that mindset. Tribal politics, easy ideology and disdain for governance define her as a candidate.
In the wake of Tuesday’s debate, Joe Biden was making the rounds of the morning talk shows, chatting up his candidate’s performance, while Sarah Palin was nowhere to be found. Why? Because she is an icon incapable of conversing as an intelligent adult on the issues of the day. Yet the Republican base loves her anyway, as a symbol.
In response to such criticism, Palin’s defenders point out that Barack Obama is also short on experience. It’s a legitimate point —- it is certainly fair to question whether Obama has the experience to do well as president of the United States.
However, there is no question whatsoever that Obama has studied the issues and knows them backward and forward. He takes the job seriously. You may disagree with the conclusions he has reached, but as the campaign has demonstrated, he knows the issues and has thought them through.
Palin can’t even make a good pretense of that.
This country needs a more effective Republican Party. The Democrats need a more effective Republican Party to protect them from their own excesses. But to become effective again, the Republicans have to change, and they show no sign of doing so. Quite the contrary.
If the GOP loses seats in the House and Senate, those losses are likely to come in more moderate districts, distilling the GOP caucus even closer to its ultraconservative base. If McCain loses, conservatives will explain his loss by the fact that he tried to repudiate rather than celebrate party ideology.
And if Republicans designate Sarah Palin as the face of the party’s future, as they seem eager to do, they will confirm the belief that they just aren’t serious enough to trust with power.
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