I was at a friend's birthday party last night, and another financial/political journalist and I were marvelling at the way that Obama has been able to get away with complaining about deregulation while sharing a ticket with The Man from MBNA. Why haven't journalists pointed this out? I asked. He shrugged, and then said it's really McCain's fault--it's his job to make that case, and he hasn't.
Which makes me wonder: why hasn't he? Sheer incompetence wouldn't exactly shock me from that campaign, but is there a more strategic explanation?
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
In terms of exposing contradictions and digging up information, how much of that responsibility lies with journalists and how much of it lies with the opposing campaigns?
Really I'm asking?
Why haven't journalists pointed this out? I asked. He shrugged, and then said it's really McCain's fault
Heaven forfend a journalist actually do his job. Of course, when it comes to the Messiah, what little ethics remain to journos goes out the window.
As for McCain's failure to bring this up, I'll go along with you that incompetence is as good an explanation as any,
The problem is framing the debate. The attacks against Obama (until the latest socialist thing) have been on foreign policy/terrorism stuff. The Ayers stuff is even a nod in that direction (cause they get to use the word terrorism). The McCain people are trying to get the debate off economic turf, where they lose, and onto security turf where they can win. Also, the Senator from MBNA thing doesn't mesh with the socialist message, so not too surprising that they wouldn't try to mix them.
Also, there was a bit of trial-ballooning going on from the right about it when Biden was announced, but since the big link was a really nasty attempt at familial mudslinging, it backfired with some negative stories and the McCain people probably decided not to push there.
Right now, it's too late to try it. There isn't enough time to set up and exploit a narrative.
Doing a campaign narrative is a three step dance. First you have to elucidate an issue as a key point of debate. Doing this usually requires some national media time, and often can be done in a debate or convention speech, or failing that by waiting for something to happen. The issue has to be one that was cared about before you launched your attack (or it will backfire like the Ayers thing has). Once the issue is set up, you have two steps to do at once. First is to paint your opponent as being on the wrong side of things. This is done by standard talking heads/speeches/ads. Then you need to run a blitz of ads on the issue (not always attack ads, but ads which keep your winning issue as the background noise of the election.
Bush did this with terrorism in 2004. 1: used speeches and the power of the Oval Office to set and keep terrorism as a publicly important issue. 2: Painted Kerry as on the wrong side of national security stuff (with the swift boating), and 3: Rand a mix of positive and negative ads which kept the background noise on national security.
Of course it's the media's job to do that. But it's been clear for a long time that the media isn't doing its job in this campaign. So McCain has to pick up the media's slack. But in this and many other areas, he hasn't.
With the media, it's maliciousness. With McCain, I'm leaning towards incompetance.
For starters, credit cards aren't at the epicenter of this crisis (yet).
But more importantly, they've already decided to paint Obama as some kind of socialist terrorist. They'd probably compromise that message if they tried to simultaneously make him an ally of big business and draw attention to his elderly, white, very average running mate from a blue collar background.
I think incompetence/doesn't go well with the socialist charge both have something to do with it. But really, the main thing Biden has done for the credit card companies is the bankruptcy bill, and McCain voted for that too...is there something else easily understandable that he pandered to them on recently that I'm missing?
A populist, Huckabee-type campaign could've tied Obama and Biden to the special interests and made this part of the charge, but it's too late for McCain to do that.
Media bias. Didn't you see the latest report from the Pew Research Center showing how slanted the media has been against McCain?
but is there a more strategic explanation?
Duh! How about: the financial corporations own the leading politicians of both parties? The US Treasury has been functioning as a Goldman Sachs subsidiary for over a month now. Haven't you noticed?
Not to mention the fact that, in the second debate (I believe), Obama called out Delaware as an example of a state with lax regulation on credit careds. Since the topic at hand in the debate was health care, my guess is that this was a considered decision of the Obama campaign to get him on the record as critical of the MBNAs of the world as a pre-emptive strike.
Were someone to raise it now, the Obama response would be, "Yeah, been there, done that."
Might Biden's connections with credit card companies explain why Obama's campaign has been able to get away with fraudulent credit card donations? This is interesting:
Media bias. Didn't you see the latest report from the Pew Research Center showing how slanted the media has been against McCain?
Because, no matter what the campaigns, or candidates are doing every candidate should have the same amount of air time devoted to positive, negative and neutral stories.
Don't piss of the media:
Banning reporters from the campaign plane, refusing to have Sarah Palin do press conferences, and then blaming the media elite when the interviews go south. That, my friends, is how you piss off reporters and get them to skew for the other guy.
So if you're a reporter and have a choice to write the following:
a) a positive piece about him
b) a negative piece about him
you are going to pick (b) every time.
I recall in the 2000 election that reporters loved GWB. He used to go to the back of the plane and joke and laugh with them. Gore was apparently a cold fish with the press.
I gather Obama isn't great with the press either, but he isn't McCain who is being downright mean to them. So you get an unbalance in negative press because who wants to be nice to a guy who is mean to them?
1) What does credit card regulation have to do with the current financial crisis, which is centered on the housing market?
2) It's my understanding that the state of Delaware runs 95% of its economy via three revenue streams: credit card companies, tolls on the DE turnpike, and tax-free retail shopping. Wouldn't it be more scandalous for Biden - in the course of representing DE in the Senate - had sided against MBNA, and thus killed his constituents' golden goose.
3) If the Obama credit card stuff is true, a) thanks for all the donations! b) the gifts are effectively anonymous -- there is no tracing mechanism -- so big whoop. By the campaign's own design, they don't know who the money's coming from, so they don't know who they owe favors to.
He's poor. Obama can outspend him like a wildcat.
He has to really pick and choose what he says because he can't afford to say much.
(have to keep it short today, free time is almost up)
Quantum Mechanic:
That's a complaint of the left as well. Reporters are afraid of doing their f--kin' jobs!!! The problem with McCain bringing it up is that he has even more skeletons in his closet than Biden does.
I think there are two things (besides generaly incompetence which certainly plays a part in all McCain cmap deciscions)
1) as others have noted while fleeting fromt heme to theme the one constant for the McCain team has been tryign to paint Obama as a radical anti business socialist, this counters that.
2) when it comes to ties to business and doing their bidding anything that applies to Biden certainly applies to McCain even more so, the last thing they want is reporters digging into that stuff. McCain's supposedly mavericky reform crusades fall apart pretty quickly when you dig into them and find that pretty much whenever he was supposedly figthing corruption he was really just heleping out his backers at the expense of someone else.
Reporters just refuse to do their jobs. Chris Dodds was on Meet the PRess when this thing first broke and no one asked him one question about his ties to Countrywide. Barney Frank has appeared on any number of news shows and no one has asked him anything about his boyfriend making millions off of fannie and freddie. There were certainly Republicans on the take to. It slants a bit Democrat but not all Democrat.
But, to tell the truth, you would have to tell a story of bad government regulation and political grandees on the take. That doesn't jive with the media meme that the whole thing is the result of capitalism run amoke. The media isn't as much biased as it is stupid and lazy. They decide what the narative is up front and then only report the facts that fit the narative. In the case of the financial crisis, the narative is derregulation and capitalism run amuck caused everything. Any facts that don't agree with that don't get reported.
The best statement on the media made this decade related to the Dan Rather memo debacle and stated "the narative was right but the facts were wrong". It is all about the narative the facts are secondary.
Let me get this straight......if the Democrat has a flaw, it's the Republican's responsibility to try to make hay out of it, but if there's a case to be made regarding the Republican, the Media will put on their full-court press, even it means they have to make shit up?
Have I missed anything?
Yes JWH you missed one thing. When a Democrat has a flaw and makes hay out of it, the criticism is partisian and cyncical. When a Republican has a flaw, the media goes into full court press with the "truth". Got it?
why hasn't he? Sheer incompetence wouldn't exactly shock me from that campaign, but is there a more strategic explanation?
Who? John "fundamentally a deregulator" McCain?
... were marvelling at the way that Obama has been able to get away with complaining about deregulation while sharing a ticket with The Man from MBNA..
What would the attack line be? Too many minorties were issued issued credit cards they couldn't afford courtesy Biden and so the Wall Street titans went under?
It would be a waste of McCain's time to try to interest the press in the story and a waste of firepower for McCain to focus on it. McCain is trying to defeat Obama so that is where he is focusing his firepower.
While I find Biden's past as "Dem. - MBNA" interesting, I'm more interested in exactly what he was getting at with the second bit of his "Obama will be tested" gaffe.
Paraphrased, he said "Obama will do something that seems wrong, but it will be right, and we will need your support and influence to back him up."
Now, does that mean "Obama will wimp out in this foreign crisis, and most of the country will be mad"? Or does it mean "Obama will use military force in this foreign crisis, and many of his supporters will be mad"?
I think it would be worthwhile to ask Biden this.
Isn't Sen. Obama taking a few days off? I would think that you wouldn't want Biden out making the news. That's not his job.
I'm sorry, but in an avalanche of gaffes by all the candidates, that doesn't seem like the reason. Otherwise, they all would have stopped talking by now.
The MBNA connection a) is too esoteric, b) is hypocritical (given the Keating thing), and c) takes the focus off Obama.
Though McCain may be incompetent, I don't doubt that his campaign handlers know every single piece of dirt about both Obama and Biden - they just have to figure out which ones they want to emphasize.
The idea that McCain should be doing it is disingenuous. The way this kind of information gets out is via sharing your oppo research with friendly media, who, when publishing or airing it, will give the patina of independence to its presentation. That door is wide open for Obama in all media except right-wing Internet sources. Those sources are the only doors open to McCain's oppo work.
In short, they give Obama for free what they make McCain pay for. And McCain has a lot less cash right now. Strategically, with limited resources, the only point of talking about Biden is when he says (or said in the past) something harmful about Obama, such as the prediction of Obama being "tested."
Re: Now, does that mean "Obama will wimp out in this foreign crisis, and most of the country will be mad"? Or does it mean "Obama will use military force in this foreign crisis, and many of his supporters will be mad"?
I think it would be worthwhile to ask Biden this.
Given his audience, the second meaning almost certainly.
"Why haven't journalists pointed this out? I asked. He shrugged, and then said it's really McCain's fault"
They had a previous dumpster-diving engagement in Alaska?
How about Obama as the Senator from ADM? Talk about a stooge of big business - with corn ethanol starving Mexicans and all that - but it doesn't fit very well with the Obama as socialist message. Of course, since the early 1990s, the Dems have perfected the tricky art of being big-business corporatists while still tacking left on most other issues. It works ok as long as you remember to screw the small businessman.
It's probably because there's no strong case to be made for Biden being absolutely beholden to the financial industry, at least no more than any senator is beholden to any sort of home state industry. Maybe there is, but aside from his vote for the bankruptcy bill--a big deal, to be sure, but not the same as years and years worth of votes--there doesn't look to be much that earned him the name Senator MBNA.
Because--as Sarah Silverman will tell you--Obama is Magic!
"there is no tracing mechanism -- so big whoop." - Matt B | October 23, 2008 3:03 PM
Really? You don't think that the credit card company doesn't know the true owner of the card? The only thing that was "true" was credit card numbers and expiration dates.
If you think that any kind of transaction in this country is untracable you have no idea how little privacy you actually have.
"Banning reporters from the campaign plane, refusing to have Sarah Palin do press conferences, and then blaming the media elite when the interviews go south. That, my friends, is how you piss off reporters and get them to skew for the other guy."
Yeah, because the press was so Republican until that moment.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Palin is much more available than Obama.
"Meanwhile, back on Earth, Palin is much more available than Obama."
I'm glad someone made that point. She's taking questions from her traveling press pretty frequently now. Biden hasn't done so in weeks. Like five or six weeks. Nearly a month for Obama. In fairness, it's been about that long since McCain has done so as well, but Kate's original point was about Palin, and it was obviously mistaken.
MBNA?
because there is NO story
you blithering idiot!
If it's not the reporters' job to do this, then they are NOT the 4th estate. They do not need a shield law. And stop funding any form of public broadcasting... (If you can't get your artsy fartsy show on commercial radio....that's your OWN fault.)
Biden has gotten away with serial gaffes and outright fabrications in this campaign with narry a sniff of interest from the media. Why would anyone expect tying him to MBNA would have any more effect than those? For that matter, Obama has much closer direct ties to ACORN and the Fannie/Freddie axis, and that made no inroads either.
Also, he is the vice presidential candidate. Nothing this candidate says has negative value I guess. The other VP candidate can refuse to answer questions about personal reading habits and gets pilloried. Biden regales us with the magnificent phantom victory he and the lepperchauns perpetrated on Hezbollah in Lebanon and is regarded as a foreign policy expert.
We could go on and on, but what would be the point? As my father said, it is all law and no justice. The real solution in that case is to stop electing lawyers.
There is a reason the Republicans are losing. It's not because everyone thinks Obama is so great. It's because Republicans are not focusing on the issues people care about, while the Democrats are. It doesn't matter if the Dems are wrong, because at least they're talking about it, while the Republicans are focusing on personal attacks. These attacks may capture the attention of some, but won't sway most voters because most people view politicians in general as corrupt anyway. People are voting for someone who may have different views than them because they feel like he at least empathizes with them and understands their problems. That can go a long way.
Huh? Here we have the biggest financial debacle in two generations, and that isn't a big enough, serious enough story for the media to investigate on its own merits? McCain has to do it for them? Please, give me a break! Obama's outspending McCain 10-to-1 and the media has completely ignored his destruction of the post-Watergate campaign finance system. Why should they worry about a non-story like a financial "meltdown?" And for the record, AG, McCain was completed exonerated in the Keating business. Sorry to break the news to you, but there's no there there.