So far, the McCain campaign has done two things I have found to be brilliant.
1. The Celebrity ad.
2. The Palin pick (risky, but necessary).
Add to that now a third. Is it a mess in the McCain campaign? I got this email:
Could McCain possibly do anything else to reduce his chance in November? Backing out of the first debate (or trying to) makes him look weak and unprepared, and I assume that you've heard about the fiasco with canceling Letterman (supposedly because he had to leave for the airport), being interviewed by Katie Couric when he should have been on Letterman, and Letterman broadcasting part of the Couric interview. David offered to "drive him to the airport" since apparently he must have been running late! What a mess.
The Letterman thing was a fiasco. But who watches Letterman? Young people, who will vote for Obama anyway. The Letterman thing was bad. It really made McCain seem like he's a faker.
And of course he is. This whole thing about "suspending his campaign" is a gimmick (like Palin). But the reason it's all brilliant is that McCain needs gimmicks. His poll numbers are sliding. The economy mess only helps Obama. He has to shake things up--he just has to.
He is doing so by, again, stealing Obama's message of "new politics." First he stole "change" at the convention. Now he's going after Obama's post-partisanship message. He has a claim to it with the maverick image, so he can pull it off.
The Letterman fiasco is a bad piece of scheduling perhaps. But McCain will be forgiven by voters. Letterman is a comedian. Going on a comedy show is not the first priority of the day in a crisis. Obama canceled SNL because of a hurricane (and it stunk as a result). At least Couric is a journalist.
People can understand that the rules change in a crisis. That's what gives this move of McCain's plausibility as something other than the gimmick that it is. Yes, shouldn't we abandon partisan politics and all work together in a crisis? McCain is seizing the initiative, which is exactly what he needed to do.
This move by McCain is another brilliant stroke by a campaign that understands that it cannot coast into the White House. It has to continue to shake things up, again and again, in order just to stay even with Obama, and have a chance to win in a squeaker.
The Letterman thing was a fiasco. But who watches Letterman? Young people, who will vote for Obama anyway. The Letterman thing was bad. It really made McCain seem like he's a faker.
And of course he is. This whole thing about "suspending his campaign" is a gimmick (like Palin). But the reason it's all brilliant is that McCain needs gimmicks. His poll numbers are sliding. The economy mess only helps Obama. He has to shake things up--he just has to.
He is doing so by, again, stealing Obama's message of "new politics." First he stole "change" at the convention. Now he's going after Obama's post-partisanship message. He has a claim to it with the maverick image, so he can pull it off.
The Letterman fiasco is a bad piece of scheduling perhaps. But McCain will be forgiven by voters. Letterman is a comedian. Going on a comedy show is not the first priority of the day in a crisis. Obama canceled SNL because of a hurricane (and it stunk as a result). At least Couric is a journalist.
People can understand that the rules change in a crisis. That's what gives this move of McCain's plausibility as something other than the gimmick that it is. Yes, shouldn't we abandon partisan politics and all work together in a crisis? McCain is seizing the initiative, which is exactly what he needed to do.
This move by McCain is another brilliant stroke by a campaign that understands that it cannot coast into the White House. It has to continue to shake things up, again and again, in order just to stay even with Obama, and have a chance to win in a squeaker.
2 comments:
4. And the fourth: Trying to postpone the first debate to come to a speedy end to the economic crisis because he knows that the only economic ideas he has to talk about in the debate are going to sound a lot like the bad ones that led to what we're "dealing with" now.
I'm not so much sure if McCain is brilliant as McCain's think-tank people are brilliant. Listening to the guy speak certainly seems to warrant the suspicion that all these tactical ideas aren't coming solely from him.
And in my own opinion, I think its more flakey than brilliant and annoys the piss out of me.
Following the polls, it looks like McCain needs Minnesota, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia... if he loses one of those states, he loses the election.
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