I continue to be impressed by Barack Obama’s ability to handle difficult situations and his willingness to speak directly to an audience that may be skeptical about his ability to lead.
Bill O’Reilly is not the easiest guy to sit down and have a conversation with but he controlled himself while asking questions from his and his audiences conservative viewpoint, Obama handled all of it with aplomb, and there is no question that he’s well briefed across a range of issues and topics and appears relaxed and comfortable in big and small occasions.
The background here is that this sit down was personally brokered by Rupert Murdoch in response to the Obama campaigns complaints about Fox News’ characterizations of him. This looks like a win for Obama.
In addition to appealing to a particular constituency, Obama’s appearance on O’Reilly does accomplish another important task; that is to contrast his willingness to meet with his most belligerent detractors with that of the McCain campaigns apparent unwillingness to allow Sarah Palin unfiltered access to a questioning media.
A senior McCain campaign official advises that, despite the gaggle of requests and pressure from the media, Gov. Sarah Palin won’t submit to a formal interview anytime soon. She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she’s ready — and until she’s comfortable — which might not be for a long while — the media will have to wait. The campaign believes it can effectively deal with the media’s complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: “Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters.”
But as conservative writer David Frum argues, this strategy is a loser for one important reason.
A question I am often asked when I give talks or lectures is: Why did the Bush communication effort end so badly? How did an administration that once commanded such public support end by losing all ability to make its case?
My answer is that the ultimate failure was encoded into the initial success. The president’s communication team – of which Nicole Wallace was an important part – shared the same disdain of “elites” that permeates so much of my pro-Palin correspondence. It was not just the media elite that they disregarded. (Who could blame them for that?) It was the policy elite too. When the president wished to advocate, eg a tax cut, he did not argue his case before the Detroit Economic Club or send a surrogate to Jackson Hole. He made a rally speech before cheering supporters. That made for effective soundbites and exciting images. But it abdicated any effort to make an argument that could convince people who were not predisposed to be convinced.
[Emphasis mine]
So what is the point of having picked a “game changing” VP candidate if that candidate is hidden away behind a wall of set piece scripted events that speak only to the converted?
The game here is to attract the fence sitters, independents and the apathetic. The McCain campaign has just a few weeks in which to prove to those fence sitters that Palin is something more than a gun toting pretty face used to galvanize an already rusted on constituency.
If she is as good as they say then they should let her speak for herself in the same way Obama does in pushing his case as a legitimate candidate.
Credit to O’Reilly for toning himself down just a tad. There still was that wonderfully efficient combination of ignorance and arrogance but he gave Obama space to answer the questions.
In the long term, Palin is not going to be that big of a help to the Republican cause. The glow will soon fade.
Except for his direct opponent who lobbied for it of course.
Agree with Shaun on Palin’s glow. Can we please get over the claimed stunning success of her address to the RNC? We all know that the speech was written by a team of Rove-wannabes and all she had to do was read it off the autocue and not say Osama instead of Obama. Or maybe …
As Phil asks, what’s the point of only letting her loose before select audiences of the conservative faithful if they’re hoping to swing undecided votes their way?
Having only previously been aware of Jackson’s Whole, not Jackson Hole, I have now learned that since 1978, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has sponsored an annual symposium in the latter. Adds a new texture to reading Bujold!
To the point: The election is in only eight weeks — be interesting to see how long it is until Palin’s “ready” to be interviewed.
It’s not just the name Palin that makes me think, when I read about McCain’s running mate, of Monty Python’s ‘Lumberjack Song’.
I cut down mayors,
I shoot my lunch,
I run Alaska State.
On Wednesdays I have babies
and be John’s running mate.
Craig yep the surge has worked – after a fashion, but it only goes to highlight how misguided Rumsfelds initial strategy of not putting enough boots on the ground in the first place was, that decision is what placed the illegal and misguided Iraq misadventure in strife right from the start, now it’s all catch up.
Obama is to be praised for recognising the reality of the surge, a marked difference to those on the pro war side of the ledger who at the onset decided to create their own realities about what was really happening on the ground, remember?
They were winning the war when in reality nothing of the sort was happening, they still haven’t won and probably never will, all that can be achieved is some sort of graceful exit bought with the time the surge has provided politically.
But hey, the Repubs own the war, they bought it and nothing will ever detract from that, it may be left to Obamas reality based approach to engineer a solution. He sounded up to it.
The Aussi neocon rump at Strange Times just loves Sara Palin. See at http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/
They have taken yet another opportunity to beat you guys over the head for your effete elitism. The fact that they are endorsing a lunatic Christian Fascist does not concern them at all. No doubt they agree with her line that the war in Iraq is part of “God’s plan” – whatever that means. If this four Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are the best that the US can produce we are all in really deep shit.
Huggy
Must…resist…urge…to..speak…about…Palin:
Palin leaves campaign trail. Flees North.
Bugger.
Interesting.
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Obama takes on Rupert and wins. Rupert pulls his head in. Shocking!
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I cautiously support Obama. The cult of personality that’s grown up around him concerns me. Cynicism’s healthy in the right dose and people are forgetting their’s. But it’s understandable. Obama is a very impressive man. I just hope he’s halfway as impressive as president.
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Speaking of Rupert I wonder to what extent he’s micromanaging the news. The Herald-Sun reported on McCain’s nomination speech where he manifests the banal attributes of the Patriotic Right:
– http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24298022-663,00.html
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Rah!
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Funnily enough I read this same story in print yesterday and McCain characterizes Obama as a ‘hero’ with a ’save the world’ mentality. This is absent in the online version. And The Australian covers the event quoting McCain thus:
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Kumbayhah my Lord kumbayhah!
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McCain’s riff sounds a lot like Obama’s denial that there’s no ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ America just the United States of America. I wonder to what extent this is true. Polemicists and politicans in the US seem furiously mired in mutual loathing. Perhaps the pluralist and conciliatory tone of Obama’s rhetoric has struck a chord and the Republicans are nicking it.
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McCain has of course had go’s at his own party. Palin is an icon not just of the frontier American who goes walking with a bible and a gun but fiercely anti-corruption and willing to take on Big Oil. American politics allows a party to attempt to shed it dismal record. But if the Yanks vote McCain/Palin they’re blockheads.
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Leader of the free world? I say that should be an elected position. Vote 1: Iceland.
Huggybunny has it all wrong. Those of us who support the strangetimes.lastsuperpower site are not neo-cons but leftists who want to see the values of the left reasserted at a time when a vacuum on the left is being filled by something else (best described as a pseudo-left). Just as most of the strangetimes contributors supported the overthrow of the fascist regime the US installed in south Vietnam in the 1960s (thus we supported the Vietnamese people), so too did we support the overthrow of the fascist regime that the same ‘palaeo-cons’ in the US installed in Iraq (thus we supported the Iraqi people in their struggle for democracy). It’s true that a different section of the US administration – the neo-cons – did the overthrowing. But, from a left-wing point of view, who do you prefer: paleo-cons who prefer to maintain the old fascist regimes in power or neo-cons who overthrow them? People like huggybunny seem to stand with the true reactionary conservatives, the palaeo-cons. Had the big anti-war demonstrations succeeded in 2003, the Saddam regime would still be in power and the huggybunny’s and the old US guard who brought us Vietnam would be celebrating the ‘regional stability’. Huggybunny, please do some elementary research into the difference between the paleo’s and the neo’s. Neither are left-wing, or claim to be, but I know which I prefer. And I know which the Iraqi people prefer.
Personally, I don’t see anyone at LP as being “effete elite” but there is in some quarters an arrogant disdain for ‘the other’ as represented by Palin: the other being the American working class and its ‘crass’ tastes and practices. It will probably be that class that re-elects a Republican government so you may care to actually attempt some investigation and analysis of Palin rather than just toss about juvenile terms like “lunatic Christian Fascist”. Like Obama, she is Christian but I don’t think either can accurately be described as ‘lunatic’ or ‘fascist’.
Barry
No one votes for the VP, theres no point putting her out where she can make a gaffe. She’s done her bit now they’ll keep her away from harsh press, they’ll put her on easy soft-morning shows (like Kevin Rudd did) and limit her appearances to fundraisers and rallys. It’s a smart strategy, even if it drives the pundits crazy.
It’s true Stephen, but the campaign is a team thing and because of McCains age this VP choice becomes a different proposition.
Clearly they want to devise a strategy in which she speaks over the MSM’s head, the convention did that but can that be sustained for six more weeks? On the stump speeches might excite the base but only get a soundbite on the six o clock news, not enough for folks to get to know her.
Lastly, every day she avoids speaking to the MSM boffins is another day for them to fill in the blanks for her and that is happening right now with every bit of dirty smalltown Aslakan laundry getting an airing.
As Obama found out with the Fox News thing, you can only stay away for so long, they need to get in now and do so under agreed terms (as Obama did) or this pick will ultimately be framed in a way that utterly disables their campaign.
I think it’s part of the game plan as mapped out by Jay Rosen the other day. Keep her away from teh liberal meejah, let the said media work itself into a frenzy, and reinforce the whole outsider monstered by elite theme. Whether it works is another thing.
That Rosen think piece was excellent Kim, but then I started to think that I saw a lot more questioning by a media that had been beaten down over the past 10 years.
Remember a couple of years ago when Rosen also said the the Republican strategy was to drive down the medias positives and drive up their negatives?
McCain is trying that again, but I think that broadly (outside the usual mouthpieces)the MSM is wise to that now and appear to be challenging the narratives where once they just wrote ‘em down and regurgitated them.
The game now for McCain’s machine is to “Rovise” Palin so that she can be heard in public even though there is no autocue in sight.
ATM Palin is an attractive package who may one day carry an adequate payload of GOP talking points. At present she is a dangerous loose cannon.
Therefore, she must be banished to Alaska to ensure that she never channels Spiro T. Agnew.
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The Surge = (1) the “defeat” of AQ that didn’t exist in Iraq until the US invaded the country.
The Surge = (2) the victory of Shiite, pro-Iran theocrats without ever being compelled to mount their own “Tet Offensive” to underwrite their victory over their Sunni enemies.
And now Bush has surrendered by agreeing to a timetable of troop withdrawal.
Some success.
Seeing Sarah Palin is retiring to her home state is the Republican theme song “North to Alaska”?
Er, Barry York: You have disappeared up your own vacuous inner-Melbourne fundament.
I would have thought that Shiite theocrats were soulmates to Republican born-again fundamentalists.
There is a win-win there.
Phil, yep, I agree. One other thing working against the bait and switch this time is McCain’s age. It really ups the stakes in the Veep contest.
Re: the surge (#2, 6, 18) – interestingly, Bob Woodward’s new book apparently claims that espionage and targeted assassinations has been more important than the increase in troop numbers in bringing down violence.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bush-spies-monitored-iraqi-allies-woodward-book-says-920602.html
Barry Yorke: I dont think the overthrowing of Saddam was the problem for the protesters you talked about, I think it was more the possibility of mass suffering in the civilian population.
The ‘coalition of the willing’ werent willing to send enough troops to stabilise the place and stuffed up majorly. Because of this the Iraqi population has probably suffered more than they would have under Saddam. It’s got nothing to do with Neo/Paleo-Cons but more to do with gross incompetence.
Bill O’Reilly really is a complete tool. Iran would give Hezb’allah the bomb, “Why not?” he says to Obama. What a total arse, like most of the American right-wing, he doesn’t understand the most basic level as to how the game of nations works. Well, maybe at the highest level they (e.g. Cheney, Condi Rice, etc) deploy this sort of rhetoric in support of their nefarious purposes but down there in the scream machine of ignorant media O’Reilly just has no clue.
Iran wants the bomb because for it to possess the bomb makes it a regional hegemon. They get to push Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan etc around a bit. If it gives Hezb’allah the bomb, a host of negative consequences arise for it — maybe the Syrians end up with the technology; Hezb’allah might even turn it around and act against Iran’s interests in using it. In the modern context atom bombs are much more credible threats if you don’t actually have to use them except as a demonstration in some remote desert or Pacific Island. The test is the use. Additionally, deploying a large and sophisticated – and easily detected – device like a bomb to a target requires sophisticated delivery mechanisms and likely, Hezb’allah isn’t it. Hezb’allah might be a threat with a “dirty bomb” but that threat if it is real (i.e. Hezb’allah both wants and can carry out such an attack), is real right now, this very minute, and the fact of Iran’s atomic weapon status isn’t really a factor (it’s nuclear production industry, though, might be).
Obama handled O’Reilly pretty well … but really I am tiring of the general media’s (let alone the Fox news echo chamber) complete mis-understanding of these sorts of issues. What those tools apparently fail to see is that the Iranian’s bomb program is really about Iraq and the USA is giving Iran some concessions there and in response, Iran is controlling the factions that it controls and the situation is stabilising. That’s why Obama sees that negotiations with Iran are imperative – to continue, as they have been underway for at least a year now. Fucking duh to both McCain and O’Reilly.
“Seeing Sarah Palin is retiring to her home state is the Republican theme song “North to Alaska”?”
A goody, but reckon she is anchored down near Anchorage.
Thanks Stuart (comment 21), for actually putting forward an argument about why we at
Strange Times are so very wrong.
The other comments with regard to us were entirely devoid of real content.
You argue that the real world outcome for the Iraqi people has probably caused them to suffer more than they would have under Saddam.
Undoubtedly there has been horrific suffering in Iraq and some of it could have been avoided with better management and more US troops. The problem there was of course that the US had enormous trouble winning support to send even the number of troops that they did. That was a complex strategic issue which I won’t go into here.
On the question of has the suffering been worth the outcome (what looks to me like an immature, but developing democracy), you need to engage in a bit of counter factual historical reasoning.
If Saddam’s fascist regime had been left alone (with or without the continuation of sanctions? And with or without the continuation of the US/British no-fly zone?) it would have eventually imploded, possibly upon Saddam’s death. Until that point, the Iraqis would have continued to live under a fascist state.
Upon the collapse of Saddam’s regime, what would have happened? A likely possibility is that another Sunni Baathist dictator would have taken his place. It’s also possible that there would have been another Shia uprising and another bloody defeat, followed by more long years of fascism.
What if there had been a Shia uprising which was victorious? As far as I can see that would have unleashed even worse sectarian violence than what we have seen following the US overthrow of the regime. And not only that, I can’t see the neighbouring regimes having been prepared to stay out of it. The most likely outcome would have been a full regional war.
These are the things that need to be considered in assessing what actually happened.
And Katz: Why do you say that Bush agreeing to a troop withdrawal is a defeat? As far as I can see he’s agreed to move toward withdrawal because Iraq is becoming steadily more stable and the sovereign Iraqi government quite correctly wants the occupation to end as soon as possible. The US always said that it would leave when the Iraqis could manage on their own. Opponents of the war said that this would never happen because Iraq had descended into hopeless civil war and that the US would either hang on for years, mired down in an “unwinnable war” or have to leave in defeat. The current situation is that the goal of the Iraqis managing on their own was not unachievable after all, and the US is doing exactly what it said it was. How is that a defeat?
Too easy!
Nonsense. The US sunk billions into building “enduring bases” in Iraq. Bush has had to dump that pipedream.
Nonsense. See above. Might I suggest that you retrieve some of your double plus inconvenient unthink from your memory tubes.
Some may have predicted this. I didn’t. I always predicted that the US would withdraw when US domestic priorities dictated. 2008 is a presidential election year. Do you want to debate with me or a straw man of your own creation?
Because one part of the Iraqi people have ethnically cleansed another part of the Iraqi people with the help of the US. How could you possibly have missed the fact that the Sunni population of Iraq is now less than 50% of the size that it was when the US invaded? Is this what the US intended?
And al Maliki is Teheran’s man. Is this what the US intended?
Your fact-free “arguments” are risible.
Can we get back on topic here? this post is about a specific media play by the respective parties, next comment that does not follow this relevance gets spiked, that is all.
I have yet to see all these signs that the surge has been so successful apart from through Ruppy media.
That link to Vanity Fair is just so interesting. Imagine no more Fox.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/10/wolff200810?currentPage=2
It isn’t hard to do.
The GOP’s protection of Palin against press interviews doesn’t bode well for the “smashing the glass ceiling” aspect of her vice-presidency, and kinda shows it up for the pantomime that it is. The Republicans don’t really understand the concept of female autonomy, after all. They tend to conflate relating to women in a “good” way with that deeply misunderstood and misused concept, chivalry. This has the effect of publicly infantilising Palin.
Obama doesn’t want a dog in the fight over Iraq.
Iraq has already polarised and those polarities are frozen. Very few people will change their vote over perceptions of “improvement” in Iraq unless Obama chooses to make it an issue. Intelligently, he is declining to do that.
Even more than in 1992, “it’s the economy, stupid”. Unless McCain can yank the Bush albatross from his neck, the economy will sink him.
It seems that McCain isn’t a “Republican” any more. He’s a “Maverick” according to his propaganda.
Pity about McCain’s voting record but. It shows that this “Maverick” is a 90% Bushie.
“And I know which the Iraqi people prefer.”
So you’ve asked them eh Baz?
“The problem there was of course that the US had enormous trouble winning support to send even the number of troops that they did.”
Care to offer any reasons why Kezza? No, well I can help you, there was no credible evidence that the Iraqis (you know them they’re the ones whose “horrific suffering” could have been avoided with “better management and more US troops”, man that’s a chilling statement) posed any substantial threat to anyone, particularly the US. To try and argue for the war on moral grounds is to subscribe to a debased morality. I suggest you watch the PBS doco “Bush’s War”, that ought to give you pause for reflection.
The most horrible thing about the position taken by these kind of people is their sickening smugness, they don’t give a stuff about the Iraqis, they will do anything to try and justify their on the record support for this disastrous war. Failure to them is so unpalatable as to force them into supporting the worst political decision makers we have seen in 40 years, worse even than those who persisted fighting a war that Barry says he opposed. Complete and utter bollocks is what they are about.
This is OT but everyone else is so…
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There’s a book Dirty Diplomacy by Britain’s ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan. This charts the UK/USA’s support of the Karimov tyranny against Muslim dissidents in the name of securing oil rights in central Asia.
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The money quote comes from an internal diplomatic memo during the Blair govt’s coercion of the UK diplomatic corp to cook the facts viz Saddam’s WMDs. It’s not about democracy says the memo it’s about oil and hegemony.
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http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/10/dirty_diplomacy.html