Newsweek has begun publishing a “secrets of the campaign” series, featuring stories they agreed to embargo until after the election. The highlights page is entertaining reading. Sarah Palin comes off badly; apparently McCain campaign insiders are bitter enough towards Palin to try and skewer her in the press. (There’s more info about the shopping spree, for example.) In contrast, the stories about McCain seem intended to absolve him of responsibility for the ugliness of his campaign, at the cost of painting him as out of touch and unable to control his campaign:
Palin launched her attack on Obama’s association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain’s advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.
McCain also was reluctant to use Obama’s incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a “celebrity” ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).
Good for McCain, of course, on the limits he was able to successfully put on his campaign.
More insider info painting McCain as out-of-touch: McCain’s people knew it was over — but didn’t share this with McCain.
On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain’s core group of advisers—Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons—met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had “a pulse.”
Republicans tended to dismiss concerns that the hate speech coming from the McCain campaign could cause real harm. But it easily could have:
The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.
Unfortunately, it seems likely right-wing radio shows and the like will spend the next four to eight years painting Obama as an anti-American illegitimate secret muslim terrorist. I’ve chosen to trust that the secret service is at least 200 times smarter than any attempted assassins who come along.
The leaks from the Obama campaign, unsurprisingly, aren’t as damaging. ((So far, anyway. But Obama’s campaign has clearly had much tighter control over leaks.)) Obama fretted over not selecting Clinton as his running mate, but having a VP married to Bill Clinton was deemed too damaging. And this about Obama’s attitude towards the debates:
When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
Which is, of course, the right answer. The debates are frankly designed to be stupid — but the candidates themselves resist more intelligent and probing formats, so they have only themselves to blame.
There are many more tidbits at the link.
“What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
I want the audiofile. And really, omit the f-bomb, and the rest of that answer would have played beautifully with the American public. And change “collective” to “we do together as a nation.” It sounds more patriotic and less, ya know, hippie.
I’m glad that Obama understands the expressiveness of the word “fucking” when used as an adverb. :-)
Maybe it isn’t any better than someone feeling like they could drink a beer with their candidate… but I’m pleased to know that Obama doesn’t use elegant high-brow national-speech-appropriate language all the time.
I want… I ache, I yearn for an audiofile of Obama dropping the F-bomb. That is just so awesome. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for a politician to break down and just say that this is just all so fucking stupid.
I think I’d use it for a start-up noise for my desktop. It seems tacky to use it for a ringtone.
The next four years are gonna suck, thanks to the damned economic mess… but at least they’ll be exciting.
Wow they’ve really decided to throw Palin under the bus. When she goes on her batshit 1012 campaign I wonder how brutal they’ll be?
Molly,
Yeah, I think the Slate ladies have a good point that there’s a lot of implausible smears coming from anonymous McCain sources, e.g. that Palin didn’t know that Africa was a continent rather than just one country. It is a bad idea for the media to keep pounding Palin right now, even if it’s McCain’s team that’s handing them the hammer.
PG,
If I hadn’t heard the Katie Couric interview, I’d agree with you that the smears on Palin are implausible. But after that interview, and hearing her talk in other off-the-cuff situations, there’s not much about Palin that I wouldn’t believe.
nojojo,
I think it’s quite plausible that Palin doesn’t have a news source she consistently reads, and that she had no familiarity with a host of subjects ranging from Supreme Court decisions to McCain’s record, but I don’t think she’s actually less informed on general facts than a 5th grader is. A college freshman, but not a 5th grader. I mean, even in Alaska there’s some level of being uninformed where people look at each other and say, “What did she just say?” But unlike GWB in Texas, Palin didn’t have a reputation within Alaska of being particularly uninformed, so I have to put some limit on what I will believe about her ignorance.
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I wish I could have told you more at the time but all of it was put off the record until after …
Country First.
Ha! A freudian typo. And a canditate for the early 11th century!
It is a bad idea for the media to keep pounding Palin right now
Why, because we want her to run and lose in four years? I know the media shouldn’t pay attention to an alleged offhand comment if they care about the truth, but that’s never stopped them before.
hf,
No, because it contributes to the image of the media’s picking on Palin unfairly while giving folks like Biden a pass on their gaffes. Remember that Biden referred to FDR’s giving a talk on TV after the 1929 stock market crash. I’m sure that if Biden had been asked, “Who was president in 1929?” and “What medium was FDR known for using?” he would have answered correctly, “Hoover, radio.” Similarly, if he’d been directly asked if Katie’s Restaurant in Wilmington actually is still open, he probably knew it’s not. He knows facts, he just gets over-excited when he speaks off the cuff.
To the extent that’s what Palin may have been doing in her discussions with these anonymous aides, she deserves the same grace given to Biden. We don’t (yet!) have tapes of these conversations, so we’re relying on the self-serving memories of McCain’s disappointed staff.
What worried me about Palin was that when she was asked point-blank questions like “What do you read?” she struggled to come up with an answer. We have all that fully documented on videotape, there’s nothing anonymous and there’s no way for Palin to deny it. That’s better grounds for criticism.
Could that be because FDR did give a talk on TV after the 1929 stock market crash.
Approximately anyhow.
The GE Octagon was released in 1928. and the western television in 1929. These where actually radios that could receive a silhouette, but they are still considered the first television when discussing history.
FDR, as Governor of New York, did appear on a gadget that received picture transmission and is considered the first TV or predecessor of the TV in 1929. Since it wasn’t electronic and didn’t have a cathode ray tube in it, you could technically consider it a radio.
see http://www.tvhistory.tv/pre-1935.htm
VK,
Your link says that Hoover, while secretary of commerce and before the stock market crash, appeared in a television demonstration in 1927. It doesn’t refer to FDR’s going on TV in 1929. Other sources say that FDR went on TV from the World’s Fair in 1939.