July 31, 2008
Barack’s Bunkum, or: Why I Love the Internets (Stuart Roy)
The last couple days have seen an uproar in the presidential contest as the campaign of the ever more cagey Sen. Barack Obama (D–Ill.) began laying out a scenario for racial politics. He accused Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Republicans in general of attacks that focused on the fact that Obama is black.
Here’s Obama’s exact quote from yesterday:
“They know that you’re not real happy with them and so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good, but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’ ” (Emphasis added.) > Read More
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What's This The Negative Campaign and John McCain (John Feehery)
In this day and age, why do presidential campaigns insist on going negative?
The short answer is simple: Because it works.
It works especially when the voters are in a lousy mood and worried about the future direction of the country.
I find it amusing when the media criticize John McCain for being “too negative.”
He ran a positive campaign pretty much all spring and for most of the summer. He did his biography tour. He laid out his plans on healthcare, on energy, on the economy, on national security. And the media pretty much ignored him. > Read More
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What's This Protesting Your Way to the White House (Armstrong Williams)
The standard advice from career counselors is that complaining about one’s salary is the wrong way for an employee to go about getting a promotion or a raise. While in the short run, management might seem to give in, hoping to quiet a squeaky wheel, in the long run the strategy usually backfires. The bosses merely wait for some opportune moment down the line to can the rabble-rouser. Candidates for president of the United States should heed this advice as well.
Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) supporters in the media have reacted pretty loudly to widespread criticism that he is acting arrogantly. Some have complained that the criticism stems from a racially motivated desire to put him in his place.
This is preposterous. Despite — some say because of — his race, Obama has a serious chance of winning the White House this fall. The last thing anyone with any degree of intelligence cares about at this point is race. The central question is: Which candidate can convince Americans that he will govern more responsibly? > Read More
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What's This McCain Now Playing Not to Lose (A.B. Stoddard)
A study is out today, no joke, that shows one-third of John McCain's advertisements are now negative ads attacking Barack Obama instead of focusing on his own qualifications for president.
I already addressed this topic this week but do so again because McCain has released another sorry ad likening Obama's celebrity to that of Britney Spears. Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) said today on MSNBC that if you had shown McCain such an ad, even a matter of months ago, he would have said no, that is beneath him — I couldn't agree more with Ford. This comes on the heels of McCain’s accusing Obama of skipping his visit with wounded soldiers because he wouldn't be allowed to bring the press, and so instead went to the gym. All untrue — and therefore so very beneath McCain. > Read More
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What's This Self-serving? Maybe. Right? Yep. (Ronald Goldfarb)
Dana Milbank's smarmy dig at Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for stating to Hill politicians that he is a symbol of the possibility of America returning to its best traditions is more "gotcha" than thoughtful, as Mibank's witty observations usually are.
Ron Christie's follow-up blogs also jumped on what might have been infelicitous wording, not an Obama characteristic, but also misses an important point, one better made by someone other than Sen. Obama, but nonetheless true. > Read More
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What's This Why Obama Should Pick Hillary (Lanny Davis)
The following piece appears in today’s Wall Street Journal. — Ed.
Picking a vice president is, obviously, Barack Obama's decision to make. He must be comfortable with whomever he picks. Comfort level between a president and vice president may be the most important factor of all.
So I can only offer my argument, based on some facts and subjective impressions, as to why I believe it would be in Sen. Obama's (D-Ill.) personal and political interest to select Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his vice presidential running mate. Not just to enhance his chances of winning — but, more importantly, to help him be a more effective president.
Let's start with one undisputable fact: Sen. Clinton is the only Democrat who gives Sen. Obama a statistically significant boost in any national poll results.
This is not a criticism of other candidates. This is simply a fact — a product of Sen. Clinton's nearly 18-month national campaign in all 50 states and the 18 million votes she won. The result was a dramatic increase in her favorable ratings across the spectrum, even among some of her most conservative critics. > Read More
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What's This July 30, 2008
President Obama’s Continued World Tour, Part II (Ron Christie)
I welcome the spirited reaction to my previous post today, in which I make reference to the quotation Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank attributes to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). If the expanded quote several of you provided is, in fact, the most accurate transcription of the senator’s words, I welcome the revision.
Revised or not, however, my underlying analysis remains the same: For Sen. Obama to equate himself to a symbol of change and enthusiasm is still a remarkably jarring comment that is equally disturbing. To suggest that they are cheering America and not him is disingenuous, in my view. The press in France, Britain and Germany hailed Obama, not America. For him to denote himself as a symbol of America that 200,000 Berliners are cheering is equally lacking in its modesty.
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What's This The New Racists? (Armstrong Williams)
Theorists who conjecture about racial relations in America posit that racism, an institutional practice, differs from prejudice, a personal flaw, in that racism requires power. It has therefore been argued that while both whites and blacks exhibit prejudice, only white people can be racists.
This conclusion is predicated upon the assumption that an elite class of white people have always possessed more institutional power than has any black person. In the past, this has been largely true — privileged whites controlled the electoral system before the Voting Rights Act was passed; they controlled hiring and promotions in the workplace before anti-discrimination laws were passed; and they controlled law enforcement in many places, using their authority to unfairly target and punish blacks.
But one wonders whether blacks, as they have gained more access to institutional power in recent times (they can now be found in greater ranks in government, business and the media), can also be practitioners of racism. > Read More
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What's This President Obama’s Continued World Tour (Ron Christie)
If you haven’t caught Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s column today, I encourage you to do so. Milbank, employing his dry sense of humor, parodies the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and his increasingly confident attitude. What isn’t as amusing is that it seems that Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) seems to believe and bask in his own press. Consider the following:
In remarks to Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday, Sen. Obama noted: "This is the moment … that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." Alas, where to begin? > Read More
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What's This The Ted Stevens Indictments — Time for a Deep Breath (Jim Mills)
Having once, in a public setting and in front of my peers, been called a "smartass" by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), I suppose I should feel a certain amount of satisfac — er … let's just say I should be feeling "not sad" right about now. But, the truth is, I am quite sad …
I can probably count on one hand the numbers of times in my life when I have been accused of being the "voice of reason,” or a "moderating influence,” so it is with some amount of hesitancy that I suggest we all slow down a little bit, do some deep breathing, and not get too far ahead of ourselves here.
Insert here any one of my public, personal tirades about this kind of "thing" over the years (or insert your own, which would, no doubt, be much better) and you will get a good sense of my anger at those "public servants" who sometimes, indictable or not, develop a terminal case of what I call "creeping entitlement" after years of service. > Read More
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