The OttO Show

When a candidate's biggest campaign assets are slogans, one would think that the candidate could only go up from there.  Then comes along Barack The Obama.  Who knew that 'Change We Can Believe In' translated into a plea to supporters to believe in the real-time changes themselves, whether those changes are on Iraq policy, the larger war against terrorists, campaign finance, gun rights or marriage.  Hillary Clinton, in one of her best lines of the campaign, went after The Obama's "change" slogan with the interpretation, "Change you can Xerox".

The McCain campaign has also effectively mocked the empty slogan of "hope" associated with The Obama with a line in a new ad:  "Don't hope for a better life. Vote for one."

The real abomination of this election season lies in the surrogate PR wing of Barack The Obama's campaign:  the mainstream media.  Yes, despite the occasional op-ed that shows up critical of The Obama on some level,  hard news reporting virtually ignores The Obama's mistatements, flip-flops and downright embarrassments.  

The NY Times featured an article this week that could have been written by the DNC themselves.  It was describing John McCain's economic stance as confused and self-contradictory.  Why?  Because the author clearly rejects the idea that tax cuts benefit the economy, injecting the opinion that there is something inherently wrong with McCain's desire to see tax cuts as well as spending cuts.  The author went so far as to subtly label tax cuts as "costly", even though tax cuts have been shown time and time again to actually increase tax revenues and it's unbounded spending that is in fact costly.

Regardless of what you or I may think about tax cuts, it's these kinds of articles that feed the idea that the mainstream press is in the bag for Democrats.  The author slyly set up a norm that happened to present the leftist view toward taxes.   When the NY Times endorsed McCain last winter, I seemed to be one of the lone dissenters against the notion that this meant that McCain had favor with the Times.  I argued at the time that once the general election got under way, the NY Times would have little to print that would suggest that McCain was ever their candidate of choice, that he would be thrown under the NY Times delivery truck as soon as the Democrats anointed their nominee.  

Both The Obama and McCain made appearances on The View.  I doubt most people noticed, but The Obama (who appeared first) was treated more like a Hollywood celebrity than a potential president.  Not only was he not challenged on his positions, one of the gals decided it was more informative to tell The Obama how sexy she thought he was.  Compare that to one week later when McCain entered the den.  Suddenly the girls of The View had to get to the bottom of the issues and treated him like Darth Vader rather than the Elvis treatment applied to The Obama.

Of course, this can be easily explained.  While there is actual substance to candidate McCain, The Obama is a juggling act, trying to minimize his inexperience while emphasizing meaningless rhetoric of "change" and "hope"; trying to balance leftist romanticism with mainstream pragmatism.  With The Obama's obfuscating on his Iraq policy (perhaps mirroring Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign rhetoric on Vietnam), one thing is becoming more and more "clear" - and it will be interesting to see how his passionate anti-war base receives this:  President The Obama is not going to end the war in Iraq in the manner that he once campaigned on.  His campaign is already indicating that there will remain at least 80,000 American troops in Iraq for at least the first part of his term - and perhaps indefinitely.  

Which leads to another abomination in this campaign:  the deliberate distortion of otherwise trivial things attributed to John McCain.  I'm sure The Obama's suggestion that tens of thousands of soldiers will remain in Iraq will not get the same treatment as McCain's realistic prediction that we will have a presence in Iraq for years to come, shamelessly translated by the weakest-minded of his opposition into meaning that he intends to have a hundred years of war in Iraq.  

It doesn't stop there.  The efforts to portray McCain as some vicious, crotchety old man have been in high gear.  We could start with the rumors (denied by both Mr. and Mrs. McCain) that he lashed out at Cindy McCain and publicly called her a "c–t".  Some fifteen years ago.

Another example, unsourced, was provided by a fellow writer, stating, "John McCain has a history of being inappropriate with reporters, aside from last week's "Kerry Question" incident. When a New Hampshire high-school student asked McCain if he thought he was too old to run for president, Mac fired back "Thanks for the question, you little jerk.""

What is quoted above hardly represents what really happened, as demonstrated by the video clip.  Here we see McCain having fun with the question, drawing laughs at his own expense, establishing that his age is not a hinder to his ability to preside and then jokingly thanking the "little jerk" for his question, drawing more laughs and laughing himself.  Though we can't see it, it seems safe to say that the "little jerk" was in on the laughs as well.

It says volumes about the case against McCain when these kinds of things are not only seized upon, but fabricated and distorted as well.  If we want to talk about inappropriateness, we could revisit the little covered line by The Obama, when his response (at a get-out-the-vote breakfast) to a reporter's very important question about a member of his own party designing his own foreign policy (by meeting with a terrorist organization) was summed up by the immortal words, "Can I just have my waffles?"

McCain may have an uphill battle, but the summit is approaching.  While The Obama is waffling on the McCain challenge of having ten town-hall style debates, ultimately the two candidates will have their positions go toe-to-toe.  As we are beginning to see, the more The Obama is forced to move away from slogans and bumper stickers and pressured to actually declare his positions, the more trouble it causes for him.  This is the result of having convictions dripping in pretty rhetoric and little else.  

Just as with the Bush/Kerry confrontation of 2004, we are facing a Republican candidate with principles and convictions vs. a Democratic candidate moving all over the place in order to please as many people as possible.  It's the difference between having a campaign that tries to win over voters vs. a campaign that wants to be won over by voters.  A candidate either sells ideas to convince voters or buys votes by pandering to them.

Which better describes The Obama? 

Tags: 2008, 2008-election, barack-obama, elections, john-mccain, mccain, obama, the-obama

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