Things Obama should stop saying

What we've seen in the last week or so is a barrage of substantive falsehoods from the McCain campaign and John McCain himself. However, any attempt by Obama to call out John McCain for his dishonesty will be undermined if Obama commits the same sins of misrepresentation and out-and-out lying.

Fortunately, I think Obama has for the most part conducted an honest campaign. However, he has not been above misrepresenting McCain on certain key issues.

The most egregious misrepresentation of McCain's views that Obama has consistently peddled is that McCain wants the US to continue the war in Iraq for 100 years. From what Obama says, it sounds as if McCain would favor continuing the Iraq War indefinitely, even if it took 100 years. But what McCain was actually saying was that he envisioned a US troop presence in post-war Iraq for decades to come, on the model of military bases in Europe and Korea, and explicitly stated that such a presence was predicated on there being no US casualties:



Now, the idea that there should be permanent military bases in Iraq isn't exactly noncontroversial, and there are a lot of reasonable people who contend that such bases would incite violence against US troops. But that does not justify misconstruing McCain's support for permanent military bases in Iraq as support for permanent war in Iraq. (I should add that it seems that Obama stopped making this claim some time ago--however, he never admitted that it was spurious or gave any kind of apology for it).

Another misrepresentation--and one that you hear a lot of lately--is that John McCain believes that the line that divides "middle class" and "rich" is an income of $5 million. If such a viewpoint seems absurd it is because McCain intended it to be: when he said this, he was joking. He even followed his answer with the words "but seriously" and worried aloud, "that comment will probably be distorted". Judge for yourself:


It is obvious to me that McCain was shirking the question by giving a joke answer. Obama can certainly criticize McCain for refusing to answer the question seriously, but this doesn't entitle him to pretend that McCain's joke non-answer was a serious answer. And yet, that is what Obama continues to do, on the stump and in his campaign ads:


These are the only two instances I can think of where there can be no doubt that Obama is distorting his opponent's record. Maybe there are more--I'll post them if I find them or if someone points me to some.

Only by impartially scrutinizing both candidates' honesty can you begin to meaningfully argue that one is more honest than the other. Clearly, both candidates have succumbed to the temptation of misrepresenting their opponent's view and eviscerating the resulting straw man. However, I think it should be clear to any objective observer that the McCain campaign's level of dishonesty is orders of magnitude greater than that of the Obama campaign and very far beyond the pale.

Nothing new under the bloggy sun

I was going to write a post called "Parity" in which I noted that according to the RCP meta-poll, 538, and Intrade, the race was about even--but then I saw that Paul Krugman has beaten me to it with a post called "Even Odds". Then I was going to write another post about how the McCain campaign is lying its pants off when it claims that Obama called Palin "a pig with lipstick", but half the internet has got that one covered.

For what it's worth, I think things are about to start turning around for Obama and the Democrats, and that this latest outrageously false claim from the McCain campaign is one outrageously false claim too far. Following Ezra Klein's insightful post the other day, the media renders the continuous onslaught of news data comprehensible to consumers by framing it within running narratives. I would add that--perhaps out of an obligation to "balance", or maybe just because of a bias towards closer and more interesting races--there is a somewhat pendular motion to press coverage, such that a week or two of positive coverage for a candidate tends to be balanced by a period of negative coverage.

I think the press is getting antsy with its rosy McCain-surging-from-convention-and-Palin-pick narrative, which is one that has emphasized Palin's star turn over the steady drumbeat of false claims eminating from the McCain campaign. However, in order for the shift to occur, there has to be something for the media to affix its narrative to. This pig/lipstick nonsense could be it. In the first place, it's a deception that is readily verifiable in print and on video, so mainstream outlets can comfortably show it without fear of seeming impartial: they can just run a clip of McCain people accusing Obama of making the insult, and then juxtapose it with footage of what Obama said in context, with no need for a reporter to connect any dots. Second, it plays into what has become a pattern of questionable or outright false statements from the McCain campaign, giving the story a direction to run in: does the McCain campaign have a truth problem?

Of course, these things don't happen entirely on their own. Obama is going to have to drive the narrative in speeches, through surrogates, and in campaign ads. He is going to have to actively call out McCain and Palin for campaigning on personal attacks, misrepresentations, and outright lies, and for their silence on issues like health care and the economy.

Biden is already sounding the notes (via Fallows):



And looking around the internet, some people have submitted some pretty good-sounding examples of "what Obama should say". From a Sullivan reader:

"Yesterday I talked to a group of voters about how the McCain campaign is trying to call their continuation of just about every single Bush-Cheney policy of the last eight years "change." In doing so, I used a common, hundred-year-old phrase that we all understand: You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Now the McCain campaign demands that I apologize for saying this. Everyone, it seems, wants to hear my answer. Here it is: NO.

No, I will not apologize for telling the American people the truth: That McCain and Palin represent a stunning, and disastrous, continuation of Bush and Cheney's policies. Policies of sacrificing the middle class to give huge tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. Policies that prevent Americans from getting the health care they need. Policies that would privatize Social Security and take away a woman's right to choose.

[...]

There's a word I've heard from the McCain campaign recently: "deference." No one is going to ask Sarah Palin a question, they say, unless they show her "deference." Joe Biden points out that they oppose all stem cell research, and they are offended he even mentioned it. I point out that their claim of bringing change is ridiculous, and they demand an apology. Apparently we are not showing them enough deference.

Let me explain something to Senator McCain and Governor Palin, as deferentially as I can: This is a democracy -- not a monarchy. You don't get to demand "deference" from the American people as if they were your royal subjects. You -- and I -- and everyone who seeks elected office must defer to the American people, and answer their questions, and fight for them even when it's politically inconvenient. That is what I promise to do. Thank You."

And from Nate Silver at 538:

My opponent's chief strategest just said, "this campaign isn't about the issues." Well, I've got news for you, America. The Republican Party is desperate. They are going to do anything to try and hold onto their power, because they know the damage they've done to our country, and they don't know how to fix it. They know that people are out of work, and they don't know how to help them. They know that people are dying because they don't have health insurance, and they don't know to save them. They know that families are struggling to put food on the table, and they know don't know how to provide for them.

So they're going to try and distract you, America, because that's the only thing they know how to do. They're going to try and scare you. They're going to try and tell you stories, instead of offering solutions. And yes, folks -- these are the same people that have been lying to you for the last eight years -- and they're going to lie to you again.

We'll see how it goes in the next couple of days. McCain has been in the driver's seat for the last week or so, but he's sold his soul to do it. If Obama can regain the momentum, he will be in a strong position heading into the final two months.

Dumb ad

For some reason Obama has decided to respond to McCain's dumb "he's a celebrity" attack ad with his own dumb "he's a celebrity" attack ad:



Do people really give a shit about this kind of thing? It's hard for me to believe they do.

Maverick in a jetwash

Republicans have got to be worried that it's less than 100 days to the general election, and the McCain campaign is all over the place. First they base his whole candidacy on the notion that McCain has Honor, Courage, and American Pride oozing out of every pore and orifice--which is just fine. But now they are undermining that theme by launching a spate of ridiculous attack ads against Obama, one in which they make the baseless accusation that Obama neglected to visit wounded troops at a hospital because the press would not be there, and another in which they dismiss Obama as a mere substanceless celebrity on a par with Britany Spears and Paris Hilton (again making inaccurate claims). This sort of thing hurts McCain, not just because it contradicts his claims to various capitalized classical virtues, but because these schoolyard-taunt-level jabs reinforce the negative image of John McCain as short-tempered, immature, and deserving of his old highschool nickname.

And it's not just McCain's campaign strategy that's in disarray--he is all over the place on the issues, too. At first he opposed the Bush tax cuts, but now he supports them. He has also reversed himself on immigration, landing himself in the awkward position of opposing his own immigration bill. And now there are murmurs that he may not be committed to a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions after all. The Maverick has been systematically de-Mavericking himself.

A lot of people are using all this to level criticism at McCain, which of course is fine, but I think the root cause of all this spasmodic behavior is the fact that Republicans have put McCain in a totally untenable position. Rather than gaining an advantage during the lengthy period of time in which he had the nomination rapped up while Obama and Clinton were still duking it out, McCain was forced to spend all of his energies pandering to and consolidating the Republican base. The Rush/Hannity/Romney wing of the Republican party was unwilling to go along with McCain's deviations from Republican orthodoxy, and so he has had to gradually and painfully reverse himself on the very issues which made him stand out in the first place.

The Rushes, Hannities, and Romnies might be satisfied with the transformation they've wrought, but they've also completely hamstrung their guy for the general election. Because McCain can no longer run on his sometimes-unorthodox-for-a-Republican but always-arch-conservative record, he is forced to ineffectually attack made-up character flaws of his opponent. And the Republican establishment is following suit, leading to some weird results: "terrorist fist-jabs", seven-house-owning-heiress-marrying McCain calling Obama an elitist, Karl Rove absurdly characterizing Obama as "that guy at the country club" who "makes snide comments about everyone who passes by".* The inexplicable comparison of Obama to Paris Hilton--in a campaign ad--is just the latest installment.

Unless there is a big change in the so-called "fundamentals", McCain is going to have a hell of a time winning this thing. The Independents have cooled to him because of his tacking towards the ideological right, and the ideological right still harbors the sneaking suspicion that this guy is some kind of Independent. And since there's no Hillary--and Republicans can't really remember what Republicans not being in power is like--there's little sense of urgency in getting McCain elected.

To top it all off, the GOP continues its disturbing morning ritual of playing Russian Roulette with its foot--giving us a consistent stream of Republican indictments, contempts-of-Congress, and balls-out law-breaking. For Democrats these days, it's like God is smiling down on us and nodding, "Yes", and then holding Karl Rove in contempt.

So, we'll see if McCain can figure out a way to bounce back. I just hope he keeps cranking out those entertaining commercials.


* The most awesome thing about this story was the fact that, in Karl Rove World, it makes sense to assume that your audience can relate to "that guy at the country club". You know, like that guy you always see at the Billionaire Yacht Faberge Egg Convention whose always making those snide remarks about your Faberge Egg that's on your yacht...I fucking hate those guys.

McCain's ad

The blogs are pretty critical about McCain's first general election ad, fretting that "McCain doesn't have a general election message strategy":



Personally I think the no-message concern is a little bit too insider and meta. Normal people (and even most political junkies) don't give a crap about what a candidate's "message" is, and one ad doesn't necessarily signify anything about the campaign in general. So I think the reactions are overblown.

That said, it is a bit curious for its lack of substance. I suppose it's a complement to McCain's so-called "biography tour", where he emphasizes his ultra-patriotic history of service to the country--which, I think, is fair enough.

However, I think he ought to be careful about how he presents his stint as a prisoner of war. It would be bad if he flaunted it and made too much of a political object out of it, like how John Kerry jumped the shark with his "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" schtick. At the end of the day, "vote for me because I was tortured" is not an argument that makes any real sense.

Evolving the campaign: update

In a previous post, I talked about how I liked Carlos' idea that the Obama campaign should start doing community service work to demonstrate that Obama's bottom-up theory of change is for real.

Well, Alex tells me in an email that the Obama campaign is already doing stuff like this. Which is great--but I think the campaign could benefit by advertising it a little more, or even mentioning it in a TV ad.

Hoooooooboy

This is making the rounds now. It's barely watchable, and I might not have even posted it, were it not for the fact that the older white lady's outfit gets partially greenscreened out in some of the shots:

A bit of a stretcher

Harvard professor Orlando Patterson, who has spent his "life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery", thinks he sees a racist subtext in Clinton's "3 a.m." or "red telephone" ad:

...[W]hen I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

Oh, come on. That this was an ad attacking Obama's alleged inexperience is beyond any reasonable doubt; you would have to be trying very, very hard to see any kind of racial component to it. His interpretation of the ad is, to begin with, tenuous at best: the generic images of canonically white, blonde children imply the threat of the dangerous black man, he says. But then he seriously undermines even this by pointing out that some of the children don't even look white at all--to him they "seem vaguely Latino". So it would appear that, for Patterson, any generic image of a non-black child whatsoever automatically implies the racist concept of the threatening black man.

Patterson sets the bar for racism so low that any serious accusation of racism on the part of Clinton becomes absurd. By so dramatically and loudly trumpeting such a baseless charge of racism, he cheapens the public discourse on race and does a disservice to those with legitimate protests against real racism.

Larry David weighs in

You can listen to an entertaining 2 minute snip of audio here.

This is the sound of a political ad backfiring

It turns out that the little sleeping girl in Clinton's now-infamous "3 a.m. ad" is today an 18-year-old precinct captain for the Obama campaign:

The file footage was originally shot for a railroad company advertisement. The Clinton campaign bought it from Getty Images.

Knowles, a senior at Bonney Lake High School who turns 18 next month, has been campaigning for Obama. She attended his rally at Seattle's KeyArena on Feb. 8. Her mother, Pam, told The News Tribune of Tacoma that Casey cried and trembled after shaking the candidate's hand.

The next day, she was a Democratic precinct captain for the state's caucuses. If she plays her cards right, she could go to the national convention.

Here's the CNN story (which, I might add, has an inscrutable--and awesome--graphic at the end that patriotically implores you to rate the video... presumably it is designed by "PatriotsMaxim" himself):

Clinton's New Ad

I like it:


It's an emotional appeal, sure, but a fair one. We are, after all, electing someone who needs to be able to function effectively in a security crisis (this is especially true for Democrats, who seem to be held to a higher standard when it comes to these sorts of things). If Hillary Clinton is perceived as stronger than Obama in this regard, then by all means she should be hitting on this point again and again.

Personally, though, I'm not convinced by the ad. Neither Clinton nor Obama have any executive crisis experience to speak of, and so I have to assume that how they will perform in a crisis will track with their general temperament and level of competence. Based on these personal attributes, my intuition is that they would both do just fine.