40 posts tagged “john mccain”

The weeks after the US presidential election have been interesting.
   First, certain Republicans wanted to make Gov. Sarah Palin the fall girl of their campaign. They failed. Bill O’Reilly tore in to her pretty quickly but faced a backlash from Republicans who saw the Governor as a heroine of their cause. Sen. John McCain took an entire week to respond, by which time it was “safe” for him to have done so, when the political meter had swung to Gov. Palin’s favour. We have Joe the Plumber now coming out and saying that he wasn’t that impressed with the Senator, but he was impressed by his running-mate.
   Then, we have a shrewd President-elect who has sought to distance himself from the radical elements, the corruption in the Illinois governor’s office, kept in touch with American people via YouTube, and attempted to go forth with a transparent transition process.
   I am not going to get into politics deeply here. My point is that the behaviour of the two candidates speaks volumes toward the way they brand themselves, their notions of leadership and their motives.
   I do not feel then-Sen. Obama’s campaign was the most transparent. There were questions to be answered, as I have stated on this blog. Vagueness is not a way to earn votes—but history has always shown that a campaign on change after years of one president in office works: Clinton 1992, Blair 1997 and Clark 1999 are good examples.
   I did feel Sen. McCain attempted to be more candid. I was unimpressed, however, by points he flip-flopped on—when first faced with the mortgage crisis, his first words were in fact about letting laissez-faire economics have their way. Within weeks he spoke of nationalizing mortgages.
   So much for the maverick who took a position.
   Now elected, President-elect Obama has done right by his YouTube addresses, understanding that he needs to set a vision as well as a strategy and getting people on the ground early. This is not a cynical exercise in PR. Any leader knows that the most effective way to get an organization moving—and in this case a country—is to get stake-holders in on the act early, rather than impose a strategy on to them. I have said the same in any branding job for our clients.
   Sen. McCain’s failure to defend his running-mate rates down there alongside Al Gore’s failure to endorse Sen. Joe Lieberman, as tradition might have suggested he should have done, going for Gov. Howard Dean instead. Gov. Palin was fine at defending herself ultimately, but not before more damage was done to the Republican Party.
   Whether one agrees with his Cabinet choices, Barack Obama’s moves in his transition have been pretty good, and among the most open I have witnessed since I began watching American presidential campaigns. He is using the playbook of modern communications to ensure that the office of the President will continue to deserve respect. While in some respects he has gone against the ‘Change’ cry of his campaign by rewarding Clinton-era loyalists for the Cabinet positions announced so far, it’s another shrewd move to ensure stability from his party. With enough in place, let’s hope that he can get on with the real serious issues.
   Am I going to give Barack Obama five out of five? No. I still hold some concerns over his ideas. But those who questioned his experience—as those who questioned Gov. Palin’s—might be revising their thoughts today. For the most part, these transitional weeks have been well played by Illinois’ rising star.

I am being fair and balanced here by airing one video that attempts to paint Republican supporters in a poor light after the previous video that did the same to Democrats. This was from al-Jazeera English and the network itself critiqued it on Listening Post after there were complaints and accusations of bias. Please note that the n word is used.

I’ve been having a think about the hatchet-job that Gov. Palin is getting, surprisingly, from the Murdoch Press, specifically its Fox News Channel arm. Considering that she was championed by this network after her selection by the party (over Sen. McCain’s own choice of Sen. Joe Lieberman, who even my Democratic friends felt would have been a better choice to win moderate voters), the about-face shows a level of deceit either now, or before, by the media company.
   While there may have been some gentlemen’s agreement over concealing this information till after the election, I don’t think I have seen the Murdoch Press go after a political figure in quite this fashion since Hard Copy did its exposés on Sen. Ted Kennedy in the 1980s.
   To be fair, even Newsweek, on the left, has kept mum about matters till now, and I imagine other media outlets have done the same in order to maintain their access to the candidates.
   We are hearing some things about the Democrats and we now know that Sen. Obama isn’t above swearing, but overall the post-mortem, even in the conservative press, has been relatively muted about the winning side.
   But not against Gov. Sarah Palin.
   It also shows a disloyalty within the Republican Party that is not becoming of it, if it wishes to be seen as a party that was unjustly cheated out of the election this week.
   In 2000, Democrats could point to the recount process in Florida and the alliance between the state’s Attorney-General Katherine Harris and the Republican Party as having taken the presidency from Al Gore.
   This time, the divide that has occurred might leave Republicans thinking that the disunity in the party cost them the election, and they were beaten by Democrats who hid their divisions better. They may fairly and rightly point to the media as being complicit in giving Sen. Obama a free ride, just as Conservatives in Britain could in 1997, but the reality may be that there was something rotten within the GOP.
   I can’t believe campaign aides and workers coming out and breaching a level of trust by revealing such details as Gov. Palin coming to greet them in a towel, and having this make the news pages.
   Even the supposed hatred by Sen. Clinton’s campaigners for Sen. Obama stayed relatively under the radar, either by a cooperative liberal media or by a sense of loyalty to the Democratic Party.
   We’re hearing news of the Governor’s tantrums and that the $150,000 shopping spree may have been more expensive than first thought.
   This is a personal attack on her that shows party workers who can’t maintain any sense of dignity and trust.
   Importantly, you do not see someone of the standing and decency of Sen. John McCain rubbish his running-mate.
   If this division has been inspired by higher-ups in the Republican Party, then Americans might be fortunate that this version of the GOP did not get into power on November 4.
   One may argue that it is our right to know, and maybe it is. But the pace of this so-called knowledge being disseminated points to a party that is acting out sour grapes and playing the blame game a little too soon, and I find it troubling.
   Every party says it will regroup after a loss. It is fair to note that the loss that the Republicans suffered was in fact very small, given how they were outspent by the Democrats to such a degree. At this stage, I do not think there will be much re-evaluation of where it will lead, because I am not sure if the Party itself realizes where it wishes to head. It may need to rebrand much later, but for now, it hasn’t been able to protect its own from this onslaught—and may well have caused it.

Time deconstructs Sen. Obama’s victory:

Over time, it’s become clear that these men view change very differently. McCain sees change as an ordeal, a test of his toughness; Obama sees it as an opportunity, a test of his versatility. McCain sees change as reforming the system; Obama talks about rebuilding it from the ground up. McCain does not e-mail. He became famous by riding a bus. And he brandished at every opportunity the values that never change with circumstances: duty, honor, country first. (See pictures of John McCain’s on the campaign trail.)

    Yet Obama, derided as so ethereal compared with the battle-tested McCain, was the clear-eyed realist in the room; he was a child of change—changed countries and cultures and careers, even his very name: Barry became Barack. You can’t stop change from coming, he argued; you can only usher it in and work out the terms. If you're smart and a little lucky, you can make it your friend.

   They are both right.
   No one can stop change, but an executive should be able to position one best to deal with it.
   However, (s)he should also fall back on time-tested traditions because duty, honour, country first never change as important guiding principles for a national leader.

And that was one of the best acceptance speeches I have heard. President-elect Obama covered all the bases: he acknowledged the breaking down of racial barriers, he paid tribute to Sen. McCain for his service and for his campaign (and the audience did not, in contrast to those in Arizona, boo), his desire to end partisanship, and his extension of friendship to peace-loving nations abroad.

Sen. John McCain’s concession was one of the classiest I have seen, more heartfelt than Sen. Kerry’s in 2004. While the audience booed at the mention of Sens. Obama’s and Biden’s names, the speech was conciliatory and asked Republicans to put nation before party affiliation. Gov. Palin stared blankly, buoyed only by calls of her name. In this speech I see the honour and pride that carried the former Lt Cmdr McCain through his years as a POW, and Capt McCain who represented the US Navy after his return home.

Overseas, I don’t think I have seen any TV news coverage on Sen. Obama’s illegal alien aunt living in Massachusetts, a matter which I understand has infuriated some Americans.
   It still makes me wonder about the bias in the media.
   The Republicans are ideologically dissimilar to my own politics generally, but one thing is important: I don’t like media bias one way or another.
   And running in a small, left-wing party myself, I know all about being the subject of media bias.
   How’s this for a statistic?

From Sept. 1 through Friday, the Republicans were the target of 475 jokes by Jay Leno and David Letterman alone. The Democratic team of Obama and Joe Biden were the victim 69 times, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has been tracking such data since 1988. That’s nearly a 7-to-1 ratio.
   In no other campaign over the last 20 years has one party's ticket been jabbed more than the other by even a 2-to-1 ratio, said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center.
   Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have a similar imbalance. The center doesn’t even consider Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson and others — including the season's breakout comedy star, Tina Fey imitating Sarah Palin.

   Or this, in the Fairfax Press?

Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Senator Obama in 65% of cases, compared with 31% of cases with regard to Senator McCain, according to the Centre for Media and Public Affairs.

Note: the Center receives, inter alia, funding from conservative sources. However, as I watch some late-night TV, the joke ratio is hard to argue with. The last Joe Biden joke I heard David Letterman make was after the vice-presidential debate. And Barack Obama has been spared late-night-host attacks. McCain–Palin jokes are nightly.
  If all this is to do with the tens of millions of dollars in advertising and this positive news coverage is “editorial support”, then I hope Americans will realize their democracy is not for sale.
   As I observe the election, the gap should not be that huge. A cynic might say that Sen. McCain is positive only 31 per cent of the time anyway. But I see both Sens. Obama and McCain as pretty similar in terms of how many positive versus negative messages they send out, though Sen. Obama is more humorous.
   The only excuse I think the media can pull is that during the primaries, I noticed some racist coverage against Sen. Obama, especially the attacks on him by his opponents, and maybe the gentleman deserves to have that redressed.
   We know Gov. Palin gets a lot of negative coverage and, surprisingly, sexist comments, but the newsmedia have only really missed Sen. McCain’s personal wealth as a topic—probably because that would force them to cover the fact that both Sens. Obama and Biden aren’t exactly poor. And in the past, Gov. Bush and Vice-President Gore’s personal wealth has not been much of a topic.
   But they seem to miss plenty about Sen. Obama—something that conservatives, in particular, are quick to point out.
   Americans need to vote on the policies and the records of Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain but I think they can write off their newsmedia as a reliable source on their presidential election.

Sen. Joe Biden and the Obama campaign have cancelled all interviews with this Florida TV station after getting fired a few tough questions that Sen. Barack Obama would have dealt with very easily. He dealt with them sufficiently but cancelling further interviews with the channel?
   I never understood, and still do not understand, why this man is Sen. Obama’s running-mate. I have always had my doubts about Sen. Biden, long before his nomination, and the pettiness of the Obama campaign staffers that I have written about has shown itself once again.
   Come on, even Gov. Sarah Palin isn’t above returning to unfriendly networks and channels for the McCain campaign.

   I’ll say again that an Obama–Clinton ticket was the obvious one for the Democrats, and we wouldn’t even be looking at the polls if that had happened.

One of my team, who hails from Washington state, thinks I remind her of Gov. Sarah Palin when I say, ‘You betcha,’ which I have actually said as part of my regular speech for around 20 years. A lot of my family is American but it’s not from that, but from a line uttered by Andy Griffith somewhere in his long career. I liked the folksy nature of it—heck, anything Andy Griffith said came across as folksy, even when he played a villain in Spy Hard.
   So I am not specifically marketing the Republican campaign when I mention the blog of Meghan McCain, daughter of the senator.
   McCain Blogette is not Miss McCain’s alone—she shares it with two other contributors who are on the Straight Talk Express—but I would love to know if the Democrats have a similar insiders’ blog.
   It shows behind-the-scenes images not just of her and various Americans who support her father, but some from before the most recent debate. Her parents are in some, her paternal grandmother, and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman.
   And it does what neither Sen. McCain, Gov. Palin, nor conservative media can do: humanize the campaign.

   While one of the Blogette crew is probably of east Asian descent, it was interesting to note the relative absence of Americans of African descent. I originally spotted a picture of one, only to discover later that he was the bus driver, and it took a fair bit of surfing to find others.
   Of course there are Americans of all colours supporting Sen. John McCain, just as there are for Sen. Barack Obama. I do know of the huge support Sen. Barack Obama has from the black community, most recently from Gen Colin Powell.
   On another blog here on Vox, some Americans have remarked how the Republicans have attracted a white, “redneck” vote.
   And I have no idea how other groups are swinging.
   In one of the conversations I had yesterday with our customers, one noted that we—as people—liked to put people into discrete little boxes. Sen. Obama is half-white, as is Halle Berry. Few mention Halle Berry’s Mancunian roots. Some label Sen. Obama ‘black’ when he has seldom made his race part of his message.
   It worries me a little that the support might be divided this way, in much the same way as how the O. J. Simpson murder trial verdict’s support was split between blacks and whites. One side could not see the other’s points of view and the creation of little racial boxes has clouded matters.
   As the world evolves and more and more people come from multiple heritages, these considerations will disappear and, I hope, we will go back to the issues and the merits of the candidates.
   I realize I have grouped voters into boxes, too—so maybe it’s the way the mind works. We place things into the constructs that we have grown up with, and the ones that do not suit how we see the world going forward really need to be cast aside. And constructs based around race in 2008 are irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst.
   And maybe by blogging about this point, for whatever it’s worth, Americans will place their votes on November 4 for the person who will best serve them. Both Sens. McCain’s and Obama’s records are there for all who wish to examine them, aside from the party rhetoric and various media cheerleaders.

Our TV networks here have run items about Sen. Obama’s grandmother and what a nice guy he is for suspending campaigning for a couple of days to see her in Hawai’i.
   I have had chats with folks here over the last few days and one noted: ‘We don’t hear much of McCain. There’s one soundbite, and then the rest of the item is on Obama.’ And this is in a country that leans liberal.
   That’s fairly true, based on my perception, but I was surprised that Sen. Obama’s grandmother would make our news this week. And when Sen. McCain said that the economy was more important than campaigning, he was ridiculed.
   I can see why some Americans, especially on the right, feel there is an MSM bias.
   Here, the main parties are well represented in our November 8 General Election—but our minor parties, which really should be permitted the same level of coverage as the two major ones, since we have a proportional system and any one of them could play “kingmaker”, are not.
   I’m not just saying this on behalf of the Alliance, but also on behalf of the others.
   I dare say we matter, too, especially those of us who are trying to create a real distinction between the major parties’ technocratic tendencies and our more social humanist principles. Watching a debate between Labour and National is really like reading two large corporations’ annual reports and noting how the projected figures differ plus or minus 10 per cent.