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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Robert D. Novak talks in the washingtonpost about the void on the right among GOP primary candidates. He speaks of a push poll in which Jim Gilmore of Virginia would win the nomination. It was obviously a manipulated result, but it demonstrates how uneducated and wide open the GOP nomination is. Novak states:
The most commonly mentioned potential void-filler is not Gilmore but Newt Gingrich. A straw poll by the right-wing organization Citizens United of its political contributors showed Gingrich leading with 31 percent (followed by Giuliani at 25 percent, Romney at 10 percent and McCain at 8 percent). But based on his actions as speaker of the House, Gingrich’s conservative record is far from flawless.
Gingrich has really demonstrated some resilience over the past decade. He’s done really good work on the issue of health care and is such a persuasive orator. He is to the democrats, though, as Clinton is to the republicans. An object to be loathed, embodying the worst sterotypes of their party. I doubt he’s electable, but he’d do great in a debate.
UPDATE: 3/5/2007
Rather than a whole new post, I figured I’d add to this one as it’s the same topic. Ann Coulter was questioned about the best candidate for conservatives and had the following to say, per csc:
During a question-and-answer session, Coulter said she believed Romney “is probably our best candidate.”
She described Giuliani as “very, very liberal,” and said that despite doing good things in New York, he “has a list of negatives that makes [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi look like the rational middle.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, she said, like 1980s music, was not likely to come back into style.
Per the Boston Globe a leaked Romney memo tells us:
His hair is too perfect
He a John Kerry-like waffler
He dislikes France
He dislikes Hilary Clinton
This comes, not from an adversary, but from a 77-page internal PowerPoint presentation about Romney’s strategy obtained and published by the Boston Globe. Rudy Giuliani experienced a similar leak last month when his self-critical strategy briefing ended up in the hands of the New York Daily News. Guliani’s critique was a much greater leak, however, as there was new information as well as several zingers, such as his $100 million war chest goal and details about his lucrative consulting business.
I agree with a lot of what this guy is saying. I really like McCain. He’s been will to take principled stands, though it has cost him the support of the more extreme wing of his party. It has also cost him a presidential nomination. he’s decided that a little compromise is OK. But at what cost…
Forget the kick-a-guy-after-he’s-been-run-over-by-a-train aspect of McCain’s remarks. McCain is clearly trying to distance himself from the failings of this war. As David Gergen put it to me recently: “John McCain’s fortunes are tied Iraq; he’s the tail to that kite now, because the president has embraced the McCain formula of more troops, and the probability is that this kite’s not going to fly very well.”
…
So Rummy makes a convenient scapegoat. But what chafes my hide is that McCain, alone among sitting senators not named Warner, could have been instrumental in forcing the president to remove Rumsfeld earlier. Years earlier. And yet John McCain offered instead his silent consent to Rummy’s historically incompetent leadership.
This is no longer a man of principle. This is a man so rapt by the idea of becoming The Decider that there is no ideological jujitsu he’s unwilling to perform to gain that power.
extramarital affair, with his now-wife Callista Bisek, even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.