Channeling John Edwards

by Don Wheeler

I, like many others, was puzzled by the Obama campaign's rejection of John McCain's challenge to a series of joint town hall appearances. Seems like if you have the facts on your side, you'd relish as many head to head shots as possible. And as Mr. Obama appears to be in a dead heat with a corpse, this looks like an unwise decision.

The only thing I can conclude is that his handlers worried about Mr. Obama's tendency to speak around and over issues - rather than head on.

As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times observed:

Somebody needs to tell Obama that if he wants the chance to calmly answer the phone at 3 a.m. in the White House, he is going to need to start slamming down some phones at 3 p.m. along the campaign trail. I like much of what he has to say, especially about energy, but I don’t think people are feeling it in their guts, and I am a big believer that voters don’t listen through their ears. They listen through their stomachs.

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details.

If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details. Obama early on, and particularly with young people, connected on a gut level like no other politician since Ronald Reagan.

full OpEd here


So, as an experiment, lets take a recent interview with Keith Olbermann and make the contrast with a channeled Edwards response.

Keith Olbermann: "This is more about campaign tactics to start with rather than issues. But it seems sometimes like tactics have replaced issues altogether. "He fights pork barrel spending," said this new McCain/Palin ad, "she stopped the 'Bridge to Nowhere.'"

I mean, it sounds a little like "Remington Steele," but I'm confused otherwise. As late as October of 2006, Mrs. Palin insisted to voters in Alaska that not only would she defend that infamous bridge, but she also said - and here's the quote - "She would not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." What are Senator McCain and Governor Palin doing in this new commercial, do you think?"

Senator Barack Obama: "They're not telling the truth. You know, I mean, it's - I think we've all gotten accustomed to being able to spin things in politics. But when you've got somebody who was for a project being presented as being against it, then that, you know, stretches the bounds of spin into new areas.

And you know, as far as John McCain is concerned, you know, I think that Senator McCain has, on occasion, broken with his party, but this notion that, as he said at his convention, that he would tell the lobbyists that they're not going to be running Washington anymore, who is he going to tell, his campaign chairman, Charlie Black, his campaign manager, Rick Davis, two of the largest corporate lobbyists in Washington with client lists that extend into every major industry?

You know, there is just a sense that they're making these assertions that ignore the facts of their campaigns and their past history. And I think people should be troubled by that."

SBO (with vitamin JE): (Eyes narrow) "They're lying! In fact, they are claiming the opposite of reality. And they are cynically calculating that - if they repeat this nonsense enough times - people will fall for it. It's pretty insulting to the American people."

Keith Olbermann: And Governor Palin hired a lobbyist to get earmarks to the tune of $27 million for a 6,000-person town which is - in its own scope, is kind of a neat trick, but it does seem to counterbalance the basic platform of the Republican Party.

You said that they're not telling the truth here, but when the stuff is a gross distortion, whether it's about their own positions or yours, or facts in your history or whatever, what can you do about it? And why do people hesitate to use the word "lie" about these things?

Senator Barack Obama: Well, look, we have been very clear about the fact that this argument John McCain and Sarah Palin are making, that they are agents of change, just won't fly. It defies their history and their background. And we saw it in the convention that they wouldn't talk about the basic issues that are really going to make a difference in the lives of middle class families.

So you know, I'm happy to have legitimate policy debates with them on where we want to take health care, what we want to do about energy, what we want to do about education, what are we going to do about the war in Iraq.

But you know, for them to run an ad that basically doesn't present an accurate record of their positions on issues I think should raise some questions about how they would approach an administration.

SBO (with vitamin JE): "You're right. And it's important not to dance around the fact that there are people who will use any tactic to get what they want. We've seen this before. They know gravity exists, but (if it suited their purpose) they are willing argue that it doesn't. And they will continue to make that argument with a straight face. They think it will work. But I think the American people are smarter than that.

Just me daydreaming....

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