Archive for October 15, 2008

The 2008 campaign ad gap

October 15, 2008 at 2:10 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , ,

You’ve probably read that John McCain has literally just one positive general election campaign ad, “Original Mavericks.”  Is McCain just a cranky old curmudgeon?  Or, has his campaign been fatally been hamstrung by the decision to opt in to public financing, whereas Obama opted to raise his own cash?

For the two weeks that ended last Friday, Obama’s ads aired 66,169 times and McCain’s 32,027, said Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “Obama’s just turning up the volume to a level that’s never been seen before,” he said.

McCain’s most frequent 30-second spot — airing 8,490 times — accuses Obama of being “mum on the market crisis” and calls him “a risk your family can’t afford.” In second place, airing 7,904 times, is an ad that calls Obama “dishonorable” for saying that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” In fact, Obama said he wanted to avoid such occurrences, which have been confirmed by the Pentagon.

Both commercials were made in partnership with the Republican National Committee, which can underwrite a bigger rollout. But under federal rules, such hybrid ads must be based on issues and cannot feature a candidate asking for support.

“All you can do is basically run a negative campaign” in such hybrid ads, said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Sen. John F. Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, which faced a similar dilemma. “You have McCain, whose content is limited, versus Obama, who can say whatever he wants.”

So, add not-having-cash-on-hand for postive campaign ads to the growing list of reasons why John McCain appears to be losing this election.  For the rest of the list, former Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson has penned this pre-mortem.

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Virginia GOP to volunteers: link Barack to Osama Bin Laden

October 15, 2008 at 1:57 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

This week, I’m having a hard time motivating myself to blog about the election.  It just seems like every story just keeps repeating itself.  Obama’s still ahead, and by a little bit more every couple of days, in the national and battleground state polls.  John McCain still needs to turn his campaign around on a must-win debate performance, only this time it really is his last chance.  And, while McCain says “There have been statements made that I’ve had to repudiate by certain GOP operatives or apparatchiks,” in the heat of the campaign, the operatives and apparatchiks just keep throwing logs on the fire.

Nothing really surprises anymore.  John McCain continues to say one thing, and then do another. Take his steadfast repudiation of all divisive and unfair personal attacks.  

After a straight week of the smarmiest political rallies of this campaign season, when Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” and warm-up speakers referred to their opponent as “Barack Hussein Obama,”  the venerable civil rights icon John Lewis (a longtime congressman from Georgia), had had enough. 

“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights,” Lewis said. “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”

McCain quickly fired back with his own statement, defending his audiences and calling upon Barack Obama to repudiate Lewis: “I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.”

McCain was unwilling to let the issue go today, today calling Lewis’ comment,”the most outrageous and disgraceful thing that I’ve seen in American politics.”  Really?

So, when the head of the Virginia Republican party advised campaign volunteers to connect Obama to Osama Bin Laden when they knocked on doors, McCain naturally repudiated his words in the strongest of terms, right?  Wrong.  

QUESTION: The chair of the Republican Party in Virginia has said, quote, in Time magazine, “both Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden have friends that have bombed the Pentagon. That is scary.” Is that appropriate for a state party chair to be saying?

MCCAIN: “I have to look at the context of his remarks. I have always repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and bomber and unrepentant. I don’t care about that. But Senator Obama ought be the candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers in whose living room Senator Obama launched his campaign and Senator Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood.”

And then there is this backhanded non-repudiation:

“While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made.”

Is this campaign over yet?  Because watching John McCain stoop to the same new low is really getting old.

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