Sometimes fortune shines on a candidate, and events conspire to allow them to run a campaign of their choosing, which has a generally upbeat tone and allows them to promulgate their message in a desired way (see Rossi, Dino).
Reality, however, often intrudes. Jonathan Martin on the McCain campaign:
The McCain campaign doesn't really defend their strategy, but this quote from fromer McCain aide Dan Schnur gets at what current McCain advisers have said and what McCain himself has hinted at: "He had a poverty tour and nobody covered it. He had a national service tour, and everybody made fun of it. He proposed these joint town halls" with Obama, "and nothing come of it. Through the spring and early summer, that approach didn't work. You can't blame him for taking a step back and reassessing."In short: We wanted to run a different kind of campaign, but the press was enthralled with Obama so we had to savage him to get any attention. It worked, so we're going to keep it up and hope there is more upside in the meta message than downside in the cynical means used to drive that message.
Political campaigns are all about cold, hard realism once you get past the sometimes fluffy exteriors. When assorted clutter and competing narratives - like the Messiah - are crowding out your campaign, you have to throw some elbows to rise above it.
It doesn't help that the media rarely pays attention to the candidate who runs an idealistic campaign with kid gloves - unless they screw-up (see McGavick, Mike). Idealism can make for a pleasant news story and a pat on the back from pundits, but it rarely leads to victory at the polls.
Posted by Eric Earling at September 13, 2008 09:56 AM | Email ThisI've never been more happy to be wrong!
Posted by: Kato on September 13, 2008 09:59 AMDuly noted.
Posted by: Ryan on September 13, 2008 10:24 AMSlavery Party National Slogan. See ACORN, Chicago/Daley, et al.
McCain's been quite gentle with the Obamassiah. When was the last time you saw a national ad pointing out Obama's CLOSE, 20 year ties to confessed-and-unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, for example?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on September 13, 2008 10:42 AMhttp://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/09/13/abc-news-edited-out-key-parts-sarah-palin-interview
Posted by: Silkworm on September 13, 2008 10:58 AMStill, no matter how much Obambi self-destructs, one has to remember the legions of worshippers in the MSM doing everything they can to avoid reporting negatively on Obambi and misquoting/mischaracterizing McCain. Lots of inertia to overcome there.
Posted by: iconoclast on September 13, 2008 01:15 PM
I stopped watching network programming years ago, including local channels and local programs. At the time of that decision I was fed up with vacuous programming that was family unfriendly at best and fringe agenda promoting at its worst.
I tuned in to Charlie Gibson because I was interested in hearing Governor Palin. I HAD believed Charlie Gibson to be more honest than most network news people. I now find out that the interview I watched was a lie: a lie of omission, a lie of editing, a lie with a clear and biased agenda.
The hubris of the networks, which trickles down to their local affiliates, is that you think your viewers are stupid. The hubris is that you forget - or simply ignore - the fact that we have many venues to get FACTS and opinions and that we know the difference. The hubris is that you think you can continue as the main source of information because once you were the only source. The hubris is that you don't realize your business model is obsolete and that rather than make yourselves better, you make yourselves more extreme: more noise to garner some/any attention.
The death knoll for the mainstream media has long been rumored. Now it has sounded. Shame on Gibson. Shame on you for allowing the piece to run without comment regarding the deceitful editing.
I am thoroughly disgusted. I have contacted every single person I have in my address book with the Newsbusters proof about this duplicitous, agenda driven hit piece. I will comment regarding this on the local and national blogs, where it is already picked up steam, and I will forward all those to everyone I know. Internet and blog savvy folks are angry now, but as you well know, for everyone of us there are dozens who don't delve deeply into the net, who don't know the truth that always lurks behind your stories. We will get the message out to them on an individual and personal level.
Gibson has discredited himself, his profession, his network and their affiliates. The lesson we all learn from it is that you folks simply can not be trusted.
What lies? Care to name one? And when you have tried to come up with anything, maybe you can define how your Obamassiah can maintain a straight face about saying he never really listened to Rev. Wright's sermons. Or didn't know William Ayers. Or didn't know Tony Rezko. Or never voted for post-birth "abortion". Or never voted to teach sex ed to kindergarteners.
Need I go on?
The Left is the Party of Lies. Starting with your absolute refusal to own up to your history of Slavery, and the modern Chains of Economic Enslavement you and your marxist, fascist comrades wish to place around every free person.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on September 13, 2008 03:25 PMWestello give it up. You are trying to make a slik purse out of a sows ear.
The "book banning" nonsense is just that and has been debunked ad infinitem here and everywhere else. As has just about everything you lefties threw out there to smear her. Today's lastest outrage is your drunken pal Randi Rhodes intimating that Governor Palin molests teen boys.
I'm amazed that with your virulent mouth you don't have the courage to simply say you just hate the woman; that she strikes fear in your heart because deep down you are not all that convinced of veracity your own beliefs... if you actually know what they are.
You might do well to read ...and understand... what another liberal woman has to say on Governor Palin and American women.
No, it wasn't funny, my morning with the hockey and the soccer moms, the homeschooling moms and the book club moms, the joyful moms who brought their children to see history in the making and spun them on the lawn, dancing, when music played. It was sobering. It was serious. It was an education. "Palin Power" isn't just about making hockey moms feel important. It's not just about giving abortion rights opponents their due. It's also, in obscure ways, about making yearnings come true -- deep, inchoate desires about respect and service, hierarchy and family that have somehow been successfully projected onto the figure of this unlikely woman and have stuck.Read the rest, then come back after you throw up over the knowledge that how very wrong you are is being exposed from one end of this country to the other.
Furthermore, before you use the word LIES in the same sentence as bHo. you might consider HIS concerning the economy as it is now, as it relates to how (badly) he'll affect it and especially in regards to how he manages (fails to manage) HIS personally.
That you would continue to spread that crap about book banning shows that OhDrama doesn't NEED to lie when he's got simple morons like you around to do it for him.
Posted by: Hinton on September 13, 2008 04:09 PMReally, keep up the great posts. You do us all a service by giving us the facts to buffet the hurricane of hate from the lefty liars.
"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." -Charles Peguy
Thx! Rags
Posted by: Silkworm on September 13, 2008 05:14 PMBarack Hussein Obama must withdraw from the Presidential race and forfeit the election because of his ongoing conspiracies and attempts to overthrow, and counseling, aiding and abetting others to overthrow, the government of United States of America by acts of subversion, infiltration, and insurgency in or about Chicago, Illinois, while acting as a covert Marxist propagandist, agitator and indoctrinator, under the cover of community organizer. His acts are "high crimes and misdemeanors," within their Constitutional meaning, and disqualify him from the office of President. His acts, and those of his co-conspirators, are also actionable under criminal law.
Obama = Jesus
Palin = Pontius Pilate
Right!!
Posted by: Bill H on September 14, 2008 10:15 AMAgain... the sad fact is that Republicans are never afraid to lie to win. McCain is simply a coward, and we'll have to pay the price for his cowardice for years to come.
@20: On the order of "juvenile" talking points, I'd place that well above "drill baby drill" or the "Obamessiah".
I dread even the notion that Republicans could gain power again. They truly are pathetic creatures that care nothing except for themselves, and will not stop until the entire world is a blasted cesspool.
Posted by: demo kid on September 14, 2008 11:57 AMI've never been more happy to be wrong!
Exactly right. I've been afraid by this since the day it became clear that Giuliani wasn't going anywhere, and Romney was going to lose too (and would have been a disaster anyway). I liked McCain, but I didn't know if he had the guts to win the campaign in the face of what was obviously going to be a duplicitous "New Politics" backed up by underhanded attacks by Obama. I worried that McCain would play by Obama's rules (i.e. you can't talk about my inexperience, past voting history, associations, or lack of accomplishments without me going ballistic and screaming "Racism" and "Smear Campaign," and thus lose.
Ends up I was wrong.
Frankly, it makes me even more enthusiastic about him as President. He's obviously not going to be fooled when double standards like this are set up by his opponents.
Posted by: Cliff on September 14, 2008 05:41 PMI know! That's what makes it fun!
Posted by: Cliff on September 14, 2008 05:43 PMWe all know that life sucks just now for fringe-left whack jobs like you... and the evening of Nov. 4, we expect your head to explode along with every other Kos whacker.
Maybe next time you morons pick someone to run for president, you'll get someone worth a popcorn fart instead of that anti-American racist bigot you're so enamored of.
Posted by: hinton on September 14, 2008 09:52 PMAnd if you go all 'evidence, please,' I say open any newspaper to page one for the next, oh, ten years. If you can afford one.
Posted by: Bill Chav on September 14, 2008 11:57 PMObama = Jesus
Palin = Pontius Pilate
that I haven't seen brought up yet, is that Pontius Pilate had Jesus crucified.
Does the left really want to continue making that comparison?
Posted by: Ken on September 15, 2008 08:29 AMBut the point is that this Jesus/Pontius Pilate reference that the Dems are making PLAYS RIGHT INTO the Obamessiah reference. If you want to get out of a hole, stop digging. This talking point just strengthens the claim on the right that the Dems view Obama as the Messiah. Not very smart...
Posted by: Bill H on September 15, 2008 09:37 AMFannie and Freddie knew who their protectors were--the top 5 recipients of their contributions were all Democrats (according to CNN). Dodd has gotten the most $$ over the last 20 years, followed by John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The top five were rounded off by Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-PA).
That odor you smell, is your own BO blowing back in your face...
Posted by: Bill H on September 15, 2008 09:50 AMIf Obama thought he was going to get kid treatment from McCain, he was wrong. He should've been taking notes from the master campaigner.
Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on September 15, 2008 01:28 PMObama = Jesus
Palin = Pontius Pilate
that I haven't seen brought up yet, is that Pontius Pilate had Jesus crucified.
Does the left really want to continue making that comparison?
I've been wondering for a long time what they'll say if he loses. That America crucified it's savior?
Under normal circumstances, I'd expect an article like that...from The Onion. But we might get a serious one at this rate.
Posted by: Cliff on September 16, 2008 11:47 PM