{"id":5373,"date":"2008-11-06T11:16:14","date_gmt":"2008-11-06T18:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5373"},"modified":"2008-11-06T11:16:14","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T18:36:02","slug":"post-election-tidbits-from-newsweek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5373","title":{"rendered":"Post-election tidbits from Newsweek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newsweek has begun publishing a “secrets of the campaign” series, featuring stories they agreed to embargo until after the election. The highlights page<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good for McCain, of course, on the limits he was able to successfully put on his campaign.<\/p>\n

More insider info painting McCain as out-of-touch: McCain’s people knew it was over — but didn’t share this with McCain.<\/p>\n

On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain’s core group of advisers\u2014Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons\u2014met 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Republicans tended to dismiss concerns that the hate speech coming from the McCain campaign could cause real harm. But it easily could have:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

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 \u2026 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’.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There are many more tidbits at the link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}