42 posts tagged “presidential election”

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.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden still came out and commented on the US presidential elections. Anyone noticed this time, the dude has been absent?
   Possibilities include: (a) the SOB is dead; (b) the media just don’t want to carry his messages any more—time for a new look, just like the second season of Miami Vice; (c) he is too busy rehearsing for the next season of Dancing with the Stars. I am betting it’s (c).

I thought this was a good laugh, from Newsbusters. This was run at the time when the media were attacking Gov. Sarah Palin on her foreign policy experience. The writer, Tom Blumer, points out in 1992, The New York Times wrote, of then-Gov. Bill Clinton (his emphasis):

Under the pressure of a Presidential campaign, Gov. Bill Clinton has been trying to outline his own unique foreign policy, while at the same time fending off criticism from the Bush White House that he is a closet dove masquerading as a hawk and that his experience in world affairs is limited to breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. …
   As a man who has spent his entire career in state government in Arkansas, Mr. Clinton has no foreign policy record to run on or be judged against. Therefore, critics say, he has had the luxury of defining himself purely through a series of speeches. None of his ideas have had to meet the test of the real world.

   He did feel there was media bias at work. There was certainly sexism. I liked the IHOP reference more than anything else.

That was fast, right down to the speeches. Even Obama’s maternal grandmother’s passing was included in the latest South Park episode.

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.

[Excerpted from Lucire] Earlier this year, I held out great hope for Sen. Barack Obama amongst attacks from Sen. Hillary Clinton. I felt some of the attacks were racist. And in a multicultural United States, there was no room for that.
   The same motive saw me pointing out that there were elements about the free ride that the American mainstream media were giving Sen. Obama once he became the Democratic candidate for the presidency.
   I have always desired a fair fight, even if I have put my own name forward as a candidate for a political party with firm views.
   Now that Sen. John McCain has conceded, and that we can now refer to ‘President-elect Obama’ till Inauguration Day, one might wonder: what now?
   The president-elect has given some hints already in an excellent speech. He sees himself as a uniting figure.
   Just as Sen. McCain’s concession speech was classy and heartfelt, President-elect Obama attempted to reach out. He paid tribute, as did Sen. McCain, to the rival campaign.
   He hinted that the racial barrier had been shattered. He was more specific about his desire to end partisanship, and was specific about wishing to extend a hand in friendship to peace-loving nations.
   The internationalist speech of the president-elect included the ‘forgotten’ nations who were listening to his speech over the radio, a recognition that not every nation is as fortunate as the United States in its standard of living.
   In trade-mark fashion, President-elect Obama gave a hopeful speech. (Continued at Lucire: ‘Insider’.)

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.

Here is how I am calling the presidential election in the US today: Obama 297, McCain 205, remainder unclear.

Electoral map at 3.13 GMT