I have to admit the McCain negative ads last week did touch a nerve and left Obama on the defensive barely off the afterglow of his cocky, over-the-top assessment to Democrat House members of his gimmicky Messianic world tour. It was amusing watching Obama's surrogates concoct all sorts of tortuous explanations for what Obama meant by "[McCain's] going to say that [I don't] look like those guys on the dollar bills". [I was halfway expecting a conservative cartoonist to come out with some kid at Mount Rushmore pointing up at George Washington and asking his mom, "Say, isn't that John McCain? No, wait...there's John McCain wearing a beard!"] Some suggested that it was that Barack looked "younger" or "less of a Washington insider". I think a comedian threw in a bit about Obama's ears. It was clear Obama was talking about skin color. I even heard one Democrat complaining about the timing of the reaction, saying that Obama's been making similar allegations about the McCain campaign since June, and this was suspicious and unfair to complain about the smear weeks after its original use! John may or may not have known about the original smear and/or let it go, giving Obama the benefit of a doubt--but when Obama recently used the same line at 3 different events in the same day, enough was enough.
I am still wincing at each mention by Democrats of the appearance of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in the ad. Some suggestions (i.e., notably from a New York Times blog) that it was intended to exploit racial tension over intimate relationships between black men and white women are really over the top. I have a number of disagreements on positions of Obama; I think he's the least qualified major party nominee in my lifetime, and he has shown consistently bad judgment during the campaign (e.g., the gaffes with Canada, Pakistan, and Israel; his stubbornness in moving against Rev. Wright; his refusal to acknowledge the fact the surge has worked and his distancing himself from General Petraeus (but he will fritter away the prestige of the Presidency by unconditionally meeting with the leaders of rogue nations)). However, I don't believe that Obama is anything like a vacuous blonde; I respect the fact that Obama has a hard-earned Harvard Law degree, and he is articulate, charismatic, and a talented public speaker. He's just not qualified to be President.
If I had been the creative guy in charge of ads, I would have approached things differently. I don't see the logic in pointing out how popular Obama is in Europe. If anything, I may have said something like while Obama seemed to be running to be President of Europe and talking about being a citizen of the world, John McCain was talking to U.S. citizens about the problems they are experiencing in a tough economy. The message: John McCain isn't interested in being popular in other parts of the world. Those crowds aren't deciding the next President of the United States--you are. John McCain puts the interests of America first, here or abroad.
I think the McCain campaign also needs to take ownership of the change issue. I would like to see more spots with McCain talking and defining himself. For example, I would say something like, "Look I'm different from those elected President and other nominees over the past 20 years, such as my friend John Kerry and my opponent Barack Obama. All of them hold degrees from Harvard or Yale. I proudly come from a family with a long history of military leadership and national service. My grandfather was an admiral; my dad was an admiral. I learned from them lessons and values that have guided me my whole life: faith, honor, integrity, courage, leadership, and putting God, my family, and my country first. When I was prisoner of war, it was hard. There were no easy ways out, and when I was given a chance to be released early, I made it clear: either all of us go, or none of us. My friends, it would have been easier on me politically not to fight with members of my own party over earmarks, such as the Bridge to Nowhere. It would have been easier not to reach across the aisle and reach compromises on things like campaign reform and immigration. It would be easy to make political promises, like Barack Obama does, to spend money that I know we don't have. We have a tough economy right now. We're up against tough competition in the global marketplace. I've seen good economies and bad economies during my years in public service. I'm not a trained economist and neither is my opponent. But I do know that we have to spend and invest our nation's revenue just as carefully as we spend and invest our own family income.
"Right now my opponent and his party want to raise taxes on business, at the time we are taxing businesses higher than our competitors in the global economy. My friends, this is not the way to get companies to invest domestically and grow jobs. While other global players eagerly look for oil where they can find it, including offshore, we produce less than 30% of our own oil. We could expand oil shale development in Colorado and Utah, we could expand drilling off the coasts and Alaska--not only increasing our national economic security, but lowering our trade deficit, and supplying good-paying American jobs in the process. In addition, I want to invest in retraining American workers for growing parts of our economy in technology and health care.
"What my opponent is suggesting, increasing taxes on higher-income workers and small-business owners, windfall profits taxes for killing domestic energy exploration, taxing the interest and dividends for small investors and retirees counting on that income. Asking more sacrifice from the taxpayer instead of first demanding better stewardship of the people's paid taxes.
"My Presidency will be a change than the previous ones. With all due respect to President Bush, he never cast a veto against ever-increasing spending bills from a Republican-led Congress. We have new Republican leadership in Congress, and things will be different in a McCain presidency. But the last thing we need is a free-spending Congress and a Democrat President whom voted with the tax-and-spend policies of his colleagues over 90% of the time. My friends, if you think there's a possibility that the Democrats will win one or both Houses of Congress this fall, you'll need a sheriff in the Presidency whom knows how to compromise--but will stand up to the liberal spenders."
Finally, I did want to credit the recent ads for fueling tensions between Congressional Democrats and Obama. Obama realizes that domestic oil exploration is an increasingly powerful trump card that is helping McCain and the GOP, and he is hoping to coopt the issue by allowing scaled-down oil exploration. In the meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of a House already with abysmally low ratings, is desperately holding off any floor vote (knowing she'll lost the Blue Dog Democrats on a vote), arguing "I'm trying to save the planet!" Yup, she's been right up there as Europeans were drilling in the North Sea, Brazilians made a huge discovery off their coast, the Chinese off theirs, and the Russians trying to tap the North Pole before anyone else (never mind drilling taking place off the Cuban coast). Ms. Pelosi seems fine with us permanently paying good money for foreign sources of oil, made available courtesy of well-paid foreign workers.
A further comment on Obama's shift towards opening the door for SOME drilling as a carrot for another boondoggle to the alternative energy industry. Here we see some contradictions (John Kerry calls them "nuances") as almost systematic in Obama: Here's a Constitutional Law professor arguing that at one hand, he supported abolition of handguns for personal defense in Washington DC and after the recent Supreme Court decision, suggests he recognized a compelling individual right all along; he, the poster child of the pro-choice movement, also seems to have backed off certain justifications for abortion (i.e., mental health). He, of post-partisan fame, decides to recant an earlier pledge to abide by public financing constraints, mostly because he sees himself as a special case and it would be inconvenient to stand by his word. And we haven't even spoken of his embarrassing reversals in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. John McCain's change on drilling reflects a realistic response to materially changed energy cost circumstances (just like his compromises for bipartisan legislation did not mean he abandoned his conservative credentials). Barack's "nuances" are designed to do or say whatever it takes to get himself elected. John is willing to fight on principle, but puts the interests of his nation first, which is why he changed his mind on a drilling ban.
