2008 Election Coverage

Clinton = Feminist

Clinton receives endorsement from NOW - Boston.com
Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Wednesday that if you look up the word “feminist” in a dictionary, you’ll find her. I can’t believe that that statement held up to focus group scrutiny. Much of America is still intimidated by feminism and feminist ideology.

3 comments March 29th, 2007

Great Post on Political Lying

At Seth Godin - Liar’s Blog he gives a great overview of politics as storytelling and teaches how to do it. I loved it.

I listened to a debate on the radio yesterday between David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way. It was about the upcoming US Senate vote about filibusters. Ostensibly, this was a thoughtful, public-radio exposition of the facts and thoughts behind each side of the debate. It was nothing of the sort.

BRILLIANT
That’s the only word to describe David’s approach. He told a story about fairness. He used phrases like, “up or down vote” and “nominees who have been held hostage for four years” and “what’s in the Constitution.” He spoke calmly and reasonably and never wavered from the story he wanted to tell. If you were inclined to believe his story, it was easy to believe. More important, it was easy to spread.

INCOMPETENT
Ralph Neas approached it like a Moot Court debater. He talked about how Robert Byrd’s previous motions (fifteen years ago) were fundamentally different. Who exactly cares about Robert Byrd? He talked about how the Republicans had filibustered forty (forty!) years ago with Abe Fortas. Ralph may very well have been right about the facts, but it doesn’t matter, does it?

[When marketers talk about politics (and when politicians talk about marketing) it almost always ends up as a degraded conversation because people get emotional over their points of view. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is the consistent bungling of the Democratic Party as they fail to tell stories that people want to hear.]

John Kerry lost to an unpopular incumbent seeking reelection for just one reason: he insisted on focusing on facts, on issues, on position papers and on nuance. He acted like an intellectual bully, refusing to worry about the story he told. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was absolutely masterful in the way he told a story that a portion of the electorate wanted to hear.

It may be, that like me, you wish that all issues were decided on facts and reliable data. They never are. We’re people, not machines, and we believe stories, not facts.

Ralph Neas doesn’t appear to understand this. If I had been him, I would have repeated the mantra, Antonin Scalia over and over again. I would have talked about what will happen if the court has three more Scalia’s on it. I’d tell that story calmly and carefully and repeatedly. Not everyone dislikes Scalia. That’s okay. You’re never going to persuade everyone of anything. What you can do, though, is persuade the persuadable, persuade the people who are choosing to listen and are open to believing the story you want to tell.

Add comment March 25th, 2007

Hilary Clinton as Big Sister on You Tube - A New Kind of Campaign

The riveting “Big Sister” YouTube ad, a take off of the ad that launched the Macintosh, attack Hillary Rodham Clinton — produced by an anonymous creator to benefit Barack Obama — launches a new chapter in presidential campaigning.  “This will be the political phenomena of 2008,” said Democratic consultant Steve Jarding.

The Hillary spot is a produced piece — a takeoff on George Orwell’s “Big Brother” 1984 theme used in an Apple ad — complete with zombies rescued by a woman running in a tank top with the Obama logo who smashes a screen where Hillary is droning on. The graphic at the end directs traffic to Obama’s presidential campaign Web address.

Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that “people generate all kinds of stuff” on the Internet. “In some ways, it’s the democratization of the campaign process, but it’s not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of, and that frankly, given what it looks like, we don’t have the technical capacity to create something like this.”

Add comment March 20th, 2007

McCain’s still got it: He Chatters On . . . And On

In a Wahington Post Blog it talks about McCain Chattering on, with the following:

So what does McCain talk about on the bus? Literally everything. After a day on the bus, we know the following: McCain supports the military’s don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy; he thinks Iraq is the “transcendent” issue of the election; he’s not worried about polls which show him trailing Rudy Giuliani; he’s never dressed in drag (but wouldn’t comment on Giuliani’s appearance on Saturday Night Live.); he’s puzzled by his friend, Sen. Chuck Hagel’s non-announcement this week; and he still thinks of himself as the maverick that people seemed to like seven years ago.

I like that he’s less guarded that the typical candidate.  Plus in my book.

Add comment March 16th, 2007

Moderate stances not hindering Giuliani

I was initially pretty sceptical of the high polling numbers given Guiliani (as seen in the 2008 presidential odds post).  I’m slowly coming to the opinion of this article, that moderate stances are not hindering Giuliani .  I won’t go so far as to say they’re helping him, but he’s at least holding to his guns (obviously not literally ;->).  McCain and Romney are making deals with the devil and reinventing themselves to woo disillusioned conservatives to their camps, but Guiliani has tried to find common ground without moving (much).  I would never have guessed that in a campaign against McCain, Guiliani would be the one treating the issues and his beliefs with the most integrity.

Add comment March 15th, 2007

Barack Obama and His Renegade Parking Lawlessness

Obama finally paid his late parking tickets two weeks before he launched his presidential campaign, thus ending parking ticket-gate before it even got started. He paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, more than a decade ago. Aparently, Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, according to the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department.
Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office’s director.

In January, about when the Boston Globe began asking local officials about Obama’s time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.  Obama then paid the $375 with a personal credit card.

No big deal.  Except that it demonstates an incredible arrogance to repeatedly park illegally and then only pay your fine when it becomes a campaign issue decades later.  I guess it isn’t a big deal… but it’s the type of thing someone who things they are better than everyone else would do. 

I determined in 1996 that I was going to vote from here on out based on the character of the candidate (as best I could determine it).  It’s hard to glean much from people in the public eye so I feel like I have to try to glean from character tid bits like this.  It’s a shame because I sure wouldn’t want someone judging me on this sort of basis, but it’s all I got.  McCain and Obama have been cast by the media as the “high character” candidates in either party.  We’ll see how they hold up to this continued scrutiny.

2 comments March 9th, 2007

Newt Tests the “Character Scrutiny” Waters

Per the AP: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair, with his now-wife Callista Bisek, even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

“The honest answer is yes,” Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”

When I first saw the headline, I figured Romney was starting a smear campaign to keep Gingrich on the sideline. I was surprised to see that Gingrich brought this on himself, likely to test the waters to see if he would endure the kind of scrutiny and ill-will accompanying Giuliani (also like Reagan with 2 divorces). We’ll see if it hurts im or not. He’s got as good a chance as anyone even though he isn’t running.

Add comment March 9th, 2007

You Pick the Caption

a) Bush Sober No More:  As if we didn’t already know that
b) When you’re the President, someone’s always watching
c) Vlad-i-mer says it works wonders for him
d) That which doesn’t kill me, can only make me stronger

Or suggest your own in the comments…

2 comments March 5th, 2007

Is John McCain too Old to be President?

John McCain, once a folk hero, bombs prime time is an entertaining look at some of the potential pitfalls facing McCain in his quest for the presidency.  I enjoyed the following:

The past two presidents have spoiled Americans with their boomer-era energy and (relative) youth. We expect to see our president’s out jogging or biking or clearing the endless quantities of photo-op-ready brush on their ranch. As JFK knew well enough four decades ago to hide his own infirmities, we like a president with vigor.

Complicating McCain’s quest, he’s facing competitors in both the primary and the general election that positively ooze health and youth. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama and John Edwards both qualify as eye candy. As for Republicans, Giuliani, while not exactly centerfold material, is still a reasonably youthful guy with a carefully cultivated tough-guy persona. And Mitt Romney? Dear god, if the man’s hair were any bigger or his teeth any more gleaming he’d be Tony Robbins.

The Romney bit goes right along with his own realization disclosed last week, that his hair might be too pretty for him to be elected.

Add comment March 2nd, 2007

Obama Gets Bold in Interview on NPR

I was reading this: NPR : Obama to Attend Selma March Anniversary and was struck by Obama’s willingness to answer questions rather than weasel his way out of them.  I’ve hightlighted some of the questions it seems that politicians usually avoid somehow:

Do you try to talk in the same way to a black audience as a white audience?

I think that the themes are consistent. It think that there’s a certain black idiom that it’s hard not to slip into when you’re talking to a black audience because of the audience response. It’s the classic call and response. Anybody who’s spent time in a black church knows what I mean. And so you get a little looser; it becomes a little more like jazz and a little less like a set score.

I don’t know what I would have said, but not that.  And could a white person even say that?  Also a question about him not being black enough:

There’s no doubt that in the history of African American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African American community. By virtue of my background, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.

Add comment March 1st, 2007