The next message

[jducoeur]

[Happy birthday to oakleaf_mirror!]

Hmm. Really, the message the Obama camp needs to play up next is "What are they afraid of?". McCain's left himself terrbly vulnerable, IMO: between refusing to let Palin do more than a tiny number of interviews and then finding a convenient excuse to postpone the debate, he's susceptible to a (quite possibly true) charge of political cowardice. It's uncomfortably Bushian: this sort of rigorous avoidance of anything that might not go perfectly according to message is a technique honed by the current Administration.

It's not Obama's style to say anything quite so overt in person: he prefers to stay polite. But I'll be surprised if they don't find a way to inject that meme into the political discussion. McCain's whole image is built around soldierly courage; this means that his weak spot is charges that he's mostly full of bluster. There's some real truth to that (ranging from his foreign policy to his campaign style, he has shown a love of showy risk but fairly poor calm resolve), and his current move is especially susceptible to it.

The other message, that needs to be hammered home today, is "A good President needs to be able to do multiple things at once". While it's admirable and correct to focus mostly on the business at hand, he really *should* be able to deal with one debate while that's going on. The world is not so simple as to allow you to put all but one crisis on the back burner. (Indeed, the tendency to ignore inconvenient messes is one of the Bush Administration's worse traits: they generally let many problems fester while they focus on one at a time...)

Comments

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Remember that Obama too is supposedly a master of image control - witness the rapid-response teams all over the place. It's what makes his rookie mistakes all the more glaring.

"A good President needs to be able to do multiple things at once".

[its-just-me.livejournal.com]

That's really the main message I was left with. Adding McCain's bow out under these pretenses plus the vapid nature of Palin, citing her 40 second interview after her first international meeting. The one question she was asked and didn't answer was, "What did you gain from this?"

The notion that people like Palin - my opinion is that yes they like her. She's fiesty, zesty, and full of energy. But people are going to see her, in the end she's not really swaying anyone. Heck even I'd like to get a photo with her!

The other thing that (now) strikes me as odd and unnecessary, is what are these two people going to do? They are still the same cogs, on the same rung that they were before. They aren't any more effective leaving the campaign scene and they hold no more sway or power. Obama handled the call well in that he couldn't exactly say no, that the notion was propostourous and at the same time he couldn't agree as it was very see through after the gesture died down. I understand David Letterman had a prize statement on the matter.

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

In addition to "A good President needs to be able to do multiple things at once," the message I was very pleased to hear in Obama's response was that making their cases to the American people is important.

In my view, McCain was trying to pull a maneuver that Republicans often manage successfully (Democrats less often), which is to fight like hell for as long as you're making progress, and then declare that we shouldn't let let "politics" sully what they're doing for the good of the country (and therefore everyone should now do what I want, or you're being a slimy politician.)

But I think he made a serious mistake. Instead of legislative wrangling, McCain tried to pull this maneuver on the presidential campaign, effectively declaring it to be that dirty "politics" stuff that we shouldn't allow to pollute our principled governance. Obama effectively and rightly smacked him down, saying that the presidential campaign is Democracy, especially the debates, which are probably the most honest and straightforward element of the campaigns. And unstated but implied was that if you think that should be set aside in a crisis, you're saying something very serious indeed.

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

Obama's insistence on continuing to hold the debate might play against him, though. Clinton already created a narrative that Obama puts his personal ambition ahead of legislative business -- skipping votes, and not voting even when present* -- and McCain's picked up on that.

If the Senate continues to wrangle over the weekend, this could mis-fire on Obama. Especially if McCain's campaign remembers that they'd suggested many more debates than Obama accepted -- canceling one of those would not have the same impact on the campaign.

Truthfully, I think this theater is all a wash -- Obama's winning votes right now because of the perception that Democrats are anti-lassez faire. (But if you've been reading my blog, you know my suspicions (http://meiczyslaw.livejournal.com/143801.html) on that.)

*I know that the second may not be a valid criticism -- in Illinois, "present" equals "no" -- but that doesn't mean that the perception of absenteeism isn't there.

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

Heh. Whose side is Bill Clinton on? Thursday, on Good Morning, America:

We know he didn't do it because he's afraid, because Sen. McCain wanted more debates. I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that.