McCain’s Campaign Manager Wishes He Worked for Obama

July 31, 2008

Is it Obama envy that is now driving the ‘Straight Talk’ Express?

In what has become an ongoing circus-like theme, McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis was criticizing Obama’s international celebrity status today in the LA Times when he stopped and wistfully added:

“I’d love to think that John McCain was a big international celebrity,” Davis said. “But he’s not.”

And isn’t this what all the complaining is about? McCain and his people would like for him to be more popular, but he’s not.

And that hurts.

It really, really hurts.

1 Comment | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

McCain Defending his Celebrity Ad

July 31, 2008

This is in regards to my previous post about the negative turn McCain has recently taken with his campaign and the silly ad they put out this week.

Apparently McCain is feeling the heat. In a town hall meeting in Wisconsin today, Senator McCain was forced to defend both his ad and his political attacks:

McCain defended the ad.  “All I can say is we’re proud of that commercial,” McCain said. “We think Americans need to know that I believe that we should base this campaign on what we can do for Americans at home and how we can make Americans safe and prosperous and that’s the theme of our campaign.”

What exactly is he proud of? Perhaps it is that he actually knew who Britney Spears was? The ad had nothing to do with what can be done for Americans at home. The ad was a smarmy little attack and nothing more. If he is proud of this contribution to the current political conversation then we are in for a long few months of dumbed down rhetoric. Furthermore, his real accomplishment was teeing up Obama for a quick retort:

Given the seriousness of the issues, you’d think we could have a serious debate. But so far, even the media has pointed out that Senator McCain has fallen back on predictable political attacks and demonstrably false statements. But here’s the problem. All of those negative ads that he’s running won’t do a thing to lower your gas prices or to lift up the debate in this country. The fact is, these Washington tactics do the American people a disservice by trying to distract us from the very real challenges that we face.

Senator Obama is correct that this kind of campaigning is a distraction. Let’s hope McCain gets the message.

Come on McCain – you’re better than that…aren’t you?

1 Comment | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

What McCain has Learned from Bush

July 31, 2008

Is the John McCain of 2008 the same we saw running for president in 2000? Many people are saying no. The McCain of 2000 lost his bid to be president to George W Bush, an ignominious defeat which he shares with Al Gore and later with John Kerry. McCain has had eight years of watching Bush flail about in the White House to ruminate over that loss and he now appears a changed man.

What exactly did McCain learn from Bush? He was handily defeated by the Governor of Texas in that primary battle. Bush was a relative neophyte in political terms, with far fewer accomplishments than even McCain’s current opponent. Bush had failed in every previous run for office until he was elected Governor of Texas, besting Ann Richards with strategy that included an early Rove smear campaign and a promise to push through a concealed hand gun law. Texas, however, has one of the weakest gubernatorial seats, with limited explicit powers compared to the vast majority of states. Even after two terms as governor, Bush’s most notable ‘accomplishment’ was signing more warrants of execution for prisoners on death row than any governor in Texas state history.

McCain must have wondered how he, a war hero and a long term senator, could have been beaten by a man new to politics with a questionable military record. What did he take from that experience?

One of the lessons McCain obviously learned was the power of a smear campaign. He was on the receiving end of one of Karl Rove’s smears during his 2000 run. The South Carolina smear was an effective means of ending the momentum McCain had built up after his New Hampshire win. Apparently he has taken this lesson to heart.

John McCain has already made it clear that questionable lines of attack will be a part of his arsenal. Forgoing the traditional route of allowing his henchmen to do the dirty work, McCain sees nothing wrong with making these attacks himself. His comment that Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” would not surprise me coming from a right-wing talk radio fanatic, but it is appalling coming from a fellow senator and candidate. He apparently doesn’t care about appearing presidential.

He also sees no problem with trying to stick a label like ‘socialist‘ on Obama:

The Star then asked McCain if he thought Obama was a socialist. “I don’t know,” he replied. “All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”

Does Senator McCain actually think that Senator Obama is a socialist? Perhaps he does. His judgment does seem a little questionable as of late, especially when one looks at the strange ads camp McCain are putting out.

The latest ad, equating Obama’s popularity with that of Britney Spears, has even those within the GOP ranks labeling it as childish. Former McCain adviser John Weaver was especially critical of the recent ads:

“John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down,” Weaver said. “Whatever that means. And I recall Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush going overseas and all those waving American flags.”

Weaver is spot on about McCain’s celebrity status. Their campaign has not been shy about floating around the famous pictures of a young McCain recovering in bed after his ordeals in Vietnam. McCain owes much of his career, and even his second wife, to the celebrity status he received as a war hero. Weaver goes on to say:

“There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn’t at Obama’s. For McCain’s sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop.”

I do not believe McCain will stop though. He is in a reactive mode, whining about feeling left out as the press followed Obama overseas and talking more about what’s wrong with Obama than what is right with McCain. His campaign reeks of petty jealousy, complaining that Obama has received too much attention and press. Once again, McCain does not look very presidential.

Another Republican strategist had this to say about McCain’s recent negative trend:

“Their increasing bitterness reflects a campaign that is more about some sort of therapeutic frustration venting for the staff than any coherent strategy to elect McCain. It’s unprofessional to the core.”

Again, it is up to McCain and his staffers to get out his message. Instead, they are standing on the sideline, hands on their hips, and, through heavy sighs, complaining about the world’s fascination with Obama. When they do take action, it comes only in the form of attacks on Obama. They prefer to attempt to bring down their opponent instead of lifting their candidate up. Perhaps it is the best they can do but even those within their party ranks have tired of it.

It is somewhat sad to see the man behaving as he is. There was a time when I would have strongly considered voting for him. The McCain of 2000 was a formidable politician, but the McCain of 2008 is barely a shadow of that man and each of his below the belt attacks lessens him further.

Obviously, there is plenty of time for McCain to ‘find his voice,’ but for now he seems to be a candidate without direction, and when a candidate loses their direction the only way to go is down.

Leave a Comment » | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

Who Are We?

July 29, 2008

I came home tonight after my first really good earthquake since moving to LA over six years ago. I have felt some minor tremors before today, the most significant of which coincided with a hangover and so I was confused at the time as to what could be attributed to the quake and what could be attributed to the Harps from the night before. Today though, I was in my office, eight floors up, and felt the world swaying to and fro for a few seconds. The odd feeling of my having been at sea for a few hours haunted me until I left work this evening. Perhaps it was the aftershocks, but then again perhaps it was just a lingering sense of something akin to vertigo.

Regardless, I decided to come home and relax this evening – perhaps do a little reading. I knew I wanted to get a head start on tomorrow’s blog and had been kicking around some ideas when I decided to research a couple of things for a post I had started formulating on patriotism. I wanted to begin with a broad scope of the part the US plays in world affairs and so I thought I would gather some material about Senator Obama’s recent trip overseas and go from there.

The first article I read was about Obama’s speech in Berlin. All the article really said was that Obama’s Berlin speech echoed the one he gave on June 3, when he announced his victory in the Democratic Primary and urged America that ‘this is the moment.’ His Berlin speech did the same for the people of Europe, emphasizing the need for a united world against the forces of terrorism and the need for a united effort to stabilize places such as Afghanistan. I would have considered the article mostly vanilla eye fodder if I had not continued on to read the comments section.

I should preface things by saying I often wonder as to how genuine these remarks truly are. There are often rabid exchanges of rhetoric and platform semantics, full of sound and fury but little else. Many times people go on at length to describe in detail why it is they feel a certain way, generally these long-winded types feel betrayed, and then end with the irrevocable decision that must be made as a result. Admittedly, I seldom find the comments thought provoking but am more amused by the heated barbs tossed about.

Tonight was a head scratcher…one of those moments that are disturbing, perplexing and ludicrous all at once.

The first comment left me wondering whether they were at all serious:

Despite the fact that millions of people showed up in Berlin to hear a speach, it is not widely reported the manner in which the Obama campaign advertised in order to get the word out about the rally. Some attendees seemed terse, expecting a day-time hip-hop concert while others claimed that they were only there for the free lunch:

http://www.socoolaz.com/article.cfm?arti cleID=30229

- Posted by Grayheck

First off, I would hope that Grayheck is merely playing off the link he or she provided. It is obvious satire and I would like to give Grayheck credit for realizing that. Moreover, I would at least like to credit Grayheck with having read the article before commenting on it because the article mentions 200,000 people, not the millions of which Grayheck speaks. That being said, I am somewhat wont to give Grayheck such credit since the misspelling of ‘speech‘ comes earlier in his or her comment, but then again many bright people are not great spellers.

Grayheck describes the crowd as ‘terse’ when the link provided describes them as ‘tense.’ Granted, many Germans could be described as terse but I feel this may be another mistake. Also troubling, are the questions of whether Grayheck really believes that people showed up mistakenly expecting a hip-hop concert or that the only reason over 200,000 people made their way to Tiergarten Park was for Germany’s answer to In-n-Out?

I want to laugh. I want to cry. This is better than Cats.

If Grayhecks antics are not amusing enough for you, rest assured it gets slightly worse but then much, much better.

The next comment comes from Karl:

You’ve got to be kidding me!!! How generic can a politician get?? Obama has no clue as what it takes to be on the world stage. His biggest international decision was to give a speech in Germany. What’s next a vacation on the Turkish riviera…all Germans love that!!

- Posted by Karl Wilhelm

Karl seems to have a bit more going for him than did Grayheck. There are the beginnings of might one day become sarcasm if he continues to work on it and then he ends with what appears to be a joke, but in the middle he struggles a bit. First, and yes I perhaps am being a tad snarky this evening, someone should talk to Karl about his punctuation. Within his first two sentences we have three exclamation points and two question marks. That would normally be enough for five sentences unless you were in the middle of a natural disaster and had to say:

Holy Shit!!! Was that an earthquake??

But in a couple of comments about Obama such a reckless rendering of punctuation comes off as a bit dramatic. Moving on, even Obama’s fiercest critics would tell Karl that Obama’s biggest international decision thus far was to give a speech in opposition to invading Iraq. This speech was his entire platform at one point. Perhaps Karl somehow missed that? Lastly, I don’t know anything about the Turkish Riviera and if I were searching for something Germans love I would have gone first with beer, but then I know nothing about Germans either. That being said, with a name like Karl Wilhelm I am thinking he probably knows more about the Germans than I do – so he gets a pass here.

His comments weren’t really all that funny and definitely not better than Cats.

The next worthy comment comes from someone calling themselves East Coast:

The Junior Senator Barack Hussein Obama scrapped plans to visit wounded members of the armed forces in Germany as part of his overseas trip, a decision his spokesman said was made because the Democratic presidential candidate thought it would be inappropriate on a CAMPAIGN-FUNDED journey.

HE’LL SPEND MILLIONS TO TALK TO EUROPEANS — BUT HE WON’T LET US ASK HIM QUESTIONS IN AN “AMERICAN” TOWN HALL MEETING???

- Posted by EAST COAST

I chopped out the middle of their comment because they went on a bit of a rant but I saved the beginning and the end because they so clearly demonstrate some of the more predictable tactics of the Young Republican’s First Reader: GOP Attacks for Dummies.

Are we not yet at a point in which it is laughable to trot out the Barrack Hussein Obama tactic? I have to admit that this approach immediately identifies you as a small-minded hate monger in my book. This is the best you have, Hussein? Really? Isn’t this the kind of thing we used to do in grade school when we were eleven? I believe it is. We would take someone’s name and make idiotic jokes about it.

Hmm, now I feel bad. What if East Coast really is eleven? I hope they are not offended. Since I have now determined that East Coast is a child, I will forgo another verbal slap about the overuse of question marks and the obnoxious use of all caps. WHAT IS IT WITH THESE PEOPLE????

Our next contestant, Stephanie, was our Crazy Republican of the Day winner, until I scrolled down a little further. It is close, you may have to be the judge:

I heard a remark on MSNBC earlier today that stated that “Obama would not only be the next president of the United States of America, but the President of the World.” those were not the exact words, but sums it up. I don’t know how many of you read your Bibles, but you might want to pick a Bible up and read Revelations!! What is it that makes Obama so mesmerizing to people? Why do we have Germans holding up American flags and giving a ROCK-STAR invitation to a person running for OUR President?

- Posted by Stephanie

Since I was raised in both Texas and a Southern Baptist church, I will cut to the chase of what Stephanie is trying to say. Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. I am a little fuzzy on the details, but at some point I believe he must copulate with the beast and come riding into town eating grapes while being carried by a group of whores. Again, it is has been a few years and the metaphors are a little dense, or derse as Grayheck might say, but that is the general gist.

Apparently the Germans were in charge of finding the anti-Christ, but I am no expert. You may want to take Stephanie’s advice and pick up a bible and read Revelations or you might settle for beating your head against a wall. Six of one, half a dozen of another as far as I’m concerned.

Finally we have what I feel is a real winner. Without any lengthy introduction, I give you vietvet:

There seems to be a whole lot-a waffling going on between these two. One question keeps coming up is the issue of Obama being an African-American ( or not ). Has this ever been established and does it have any weight in the election of an American president.?

- Posted by vietvet

Speechless.

I mean, really, what could I possibly say?

1 Comment | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

McCain Sold to Big Oil

July 29, 2008

Leave a Comment » | John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lee Kane

McCain Flip-Flops and Endorses Obama?

July 29, 2008

There are a couple of thoughts that have been lingering with me since yesterday’s post, and one of them has to do with the era of sound-bites in which we have increasingly found ourselves over the last few election cycles.

Actually, even as I typed that last sentence, it occurred to me that the world has long been driven by sound-bites, but we were neither as aware nor as inundated with them as we are now. Little phrases which seemingly provide a quick synopsis of a greater body of ideas have long dictated the course of the oversimplifications of public opinion. In recent history they have ranged from the senior Bush’s ‘Read my lips…,‘ which many attribute as the phrase that delivered the White House to Bush, to Johnnie Cochran’s ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit‘ which effectively summarized the chaos and absurdity of the OJ Simpson trial.

I did not come here though to lament the proliferation of sound-bites. I sat down thinking about Obama’s plan for pulling troops out of Iraq. I began to ponder the various ways that plan is being shaped and reshaped by pundits and politicians all putting a different interpretation to it and then feeding that interpretation to the masses in tiny morsels.

Obama’s 16-month timetable for Iraqi troop withdrawal: Within the past couple of weeks I have seen it dismissed as another instance of Democratic flip-flopping and then vilified as a capricious deadline set forth by a naive politician in hopes of winning votes. It is being used as a platform by both parties and it seems that everyone involved, including Obama himself, has tweaked the details to further their own cause.

According to both Barack’s website and the op-ed piece he recently wrote in The New York Times:

We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected.

This is in line with his earlier statements, that he would work to have our forces withdrawn from Iraq within sixteen months of taking office. However, Republicans have been swift to pounce on these statements as a revision, a flip-flop if you will, from what was once described as a hard-nosed deadline:

“There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience,” spokesman Alex Conant said. “Obama’s Iraq problem undermines the central premise of his candidacy and shows him to be a typical politician.”

I found the GOP flip-flopping accusations silly during our last national election. The idea that a thinking person would be at fault for reconsidering a previous position or statement seemed ludicrous to me. Moreover, I felt that it spoke volumes that Bush was the antithesis of careful reflection and critical thought. But the people bought it. Bush was strong for never wavering, even in the face of a reality entirely removed from the proposed reality he advocated, whereas Kerry was demonized as an elite weakling for pausing to reassess a situation.

Marching along to the mantra that ‘Thinking is bad‘ the current Republican administration has set the standard for minions such as McCain to follow. They relish the idea of dipping into that same can of flip-flopper they used on Kerry and painting Obama as another liberal without a backbone.

The main problem with the current flip-flop accusation is that it is, in a word, wrong. This is being forced on the public despite the fact that all along Obama has stated he would consult with military leaders and ground forces to help shape his plan to end the war. Is there really any reasonable person who thought that Obama was saying, come hell or high water we are out of Iraq within 16 months? Really? Am I giving us all too much credit? After the Bush debacle, could we really put any faith in a leader who would craft a plan with zero contingency planning and no back-up strategy? I have personal goals for myself that include contingencies. Shouldn’t a war necessitate at least as much strategy as my plan for buying a house?

Obama has been clear all along that his plan for an Iraqi withdrawal would remain flexible. He has, though, shifted the focus of his rhetoric from the withdrawal part of the equation to the flexible part as of late. This is a slight softening in his stance, but it is a matter of which part of the plan he is choosing to emphasize. The goal is the same, a withdrawal as speedy as can be safely implemented, but the acknowledgment that flexibility may play a bigger part is what the Repubs are hoping we will see as a change of direction.

A change of direction it is not. A change in nuance it certainly is. Am I waxing too Clintonian here by playing with the semantics? No. All along Obama has planned for a withdrawal of forces within 16 months but acknowledging that tactical adjustments are a necessary part of the equation.

A flip-flop would have been for McCain to advocate a possible 100 years in Iraq, saying that:

“…to set a date for withdrawal — that means chaos, that means genocide, that means undoing all the success we’ve achieved and al Qaeda tells the world they defeated the United States of America…”

And then, later on with time to reflect, McCain deciding that a timetable could work. Here is McCain today in the LA Times:

John McCain, quoted as saying last week that Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq is “a pretty good timetable,” suggested tonight that a crucial part of the rest of his comment had been overlooked — that any timetable must be “based on conditions.”

“I love these days of the sound-bite,” McCain said in an interview tonight on CNN’s Larry King Live. “I said it has to be based on conditions on the ground. Sen. Obama said it’s a hard and firm date.”

John feels that Obama’s goal is “a pretty good timetable,” which is a far cry from when McCain formerly characterized Obama’s strategy as a form of “surrender.” McCain’s flip-flop seems all the more glaring in the way it follows quickly on the heels of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki endorsing Obama’s plan for a 16-month timetable. Now that McCain has reconsidered things and is entertaining Obama’s idea, is he no longer concerned with the chaos and the genocide he predicted? Did a moment of serious reflection cause McCain to adjust his own approach to dealing with Iraq?

This is where it gets entertaining. McCain goes on in an attempt to distinguish his comment from Obama’s goal by saying his is open to a recalculation based on conditions. He further asserts that Obama’s is “a hard and firm date.”

McCain’s claim that Obama is pushing for a hard and firm date is simply factually wrong. Obama has set a goal of 16 months and allowed himself a reasonable caveat that tactical adjustments are “inevitable.” Now the GOP would like to have it both ways, that Obama has a hard-nosed date for withdrawal, thus making his plan different from McCain’s, and that Obama has flip-flopped and is now adding caveats to his plan. The obvious conundrum is that both of these lines of attack cannot be simultaneously true. Either he has a firm date, making him the naive and overly political candidate, or he has flip-flopped from his hard deadline, making him an indecisive wuss.

Which will it be McCain?

The answer is neither. Flexibility has been a part of the plan all along. McCain is just a little annoyed that he is being forced to admit that it looks like Obama’s plan will work.

This fact will not be enough to keep McCain and the GOP attack dogs from slinging out sound bites calling Obama both a flip-flopper and a typical politician. Sound-bites can resonate, even when they are untrue and, apparently for McCain, the straight talk can be bent if it helps him win.

Hmm, maybe that’s my sound-bite for today: The Straight Talk Express is going in circles.

Add to FacebookAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to Ma.gnoliaAdd to TechnoratiAdd to FurlAdd to Newsvine

3 Comments | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

John McCain’s Big Fight

July 28, 2008

It is becoming increasingly apparent that John McCain’s biggest opponent is himself. The deck was not exactly stacked in his favor from the beginning but he has not been doing much to help himself.

Regardless of who McCain was running against, he would appear old. He is about to turn 72. If elected, he will be the oldest incoming President in our history. We have all heard the jokes about McCain’s age and he has taken to telling these jokes himself in preemptive attempt of mitigating concerns and silencing whispers. However, there is a reason we hear the jokes and whispers – he is old and for some voters this is a concern.

We are accustomed to seeing our President’s annual physical make the nightly news and now we are facing the prospect of a President who is advanced in age and who has suffered numerous injuries in addition to bouts of skin cancer. It is striking to see how eight years in office can physically age a President, ala Bill Clinton, and one can only imagine the withering effects on a man of McCain’s age. So, while his actual opponent goes over seas and is filmed shooting baskets with the troops McCain looks like a man in need of a good game of shuffleboard.

The problem is not really his age though. I don’t think these kinds of worries would be sufficient to eliminate him as viable candidate in most people’s minds. Honestly, there is really nothing he can do, directly. Time and tide wait for no man. However, he could try to appear a little less…well, old.

By this I am not referring to the thinning hair or a shift into the ‘lean and slipper’d pantaloon.‘ McCain’s portrayal of himself often times seems anachronistic.

He peppers many of his speeches with the phrase ‘my friends.’ This was also a favorite phrase of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt who used it liberally in his inaugural address. Public speaking is not McCain’s forte and he has come to use the phrase as somewhat of a crutch, but it so often seems a stilted and forced reminder of man not entirely at ease with the medium of television.

So the guy is not good at giving speeches or appearing on television. What does that mean? Admittedly, this is superficial but we do live in a culture driven by sound bytes. For example, he is also on record saying, “I don’t e-mail. I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail.” That comment has generated guffaws and rebuffs everywhere from Fox to Wired Magazine. In that same article, he talks about learning how to get online by himself.

Alright, let’s stop for a moment. We are now considering a leader who is uncomfortable communicating through television, refuses to communicate via email and is, for all practical consideration, computer illiterate. Moreover, he does nothing to try and cover the later two. I can’t help but wonder how relevant he is and if he understands that he is out of step with the way much of our world operates. We live in a world of information and he publicly shuns the technology of that age preferring, perhaps, the Pony Express. How can one go about leading a nation that one does not understand?

How big of a deal is it that he does not understand technology? Although I find it absurd, it is not necessarily a deal-breaker. How disturbing is that he feels comfortable talking about being flummoxed by things such as getting online? Pretty disturbing. This, more than his actual ignorance, is troublesome in that it reflects he does not understand the value of public perception. This is more indicative of his being out of step than his confusion with email. What else does he not understand?

Apparently McCain also doesn’t understand economics. What makes me think this? Mostly because McCain said he, “doesn’t really understand economics.” He is actually on public record saying this twice. I am not an expert on economics myself but I do understand that if I were running for President in a year in which the economy is on everyone’s mind, I would not go around telling people I did not understand economics. Furthermore, I would find people who are experts on the economy and surround myself with them. McCain tried this with long-time crony Phil Gramm. This is the same Phil Gramm who called the American public a “nation of whiners,” for the way we are upset over our troubled economy. Granted, he has since distanced himself slightly from Gramm, but if he doesn’t understand economics and also cannot be trusted picking economic advisers, what choice do we have but to think of him at odds with running the economy of a nation?

In addition to that, McCain is once again out of step with his disclosure of his lack of understanding of the economy. His choice in an adviser is equally at a loss when he paints those suffering through economic hard times as victims of their own mental state, deluded into thinking the economy is not doing well.

In a race in which McCain has the obvious physical disadvantage of age working against him in many ways, he needs to do more to appear to be in in step with America and the technologies that run our businesses and facilitate much of the communication in our lives. He should be doing more to lessen the perception of his being a somewhat clueless old man. It’s not really the years that are proving a detriment to him – it’s the way he has succumbed to those years and allowed himself to be enveloped in a fog of yesterdays past.

I am not sure what his solution is and I would not be prone to helping him find one if I did, but I can tell you that his problem is that he looks and sounds a lot older than he really is, which is a somewhat surprising feat nevertheless.

Leave a Comment » | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson

Day One – let’s not get too ambitious

July 24, 2008

There certainly is a lot to talk about: McCain’s credentials, Obama’s trip overseas, the VP selections, the price of gas, the housing market, alternative energies…these are just the things that I came up with on the fly. We all know there is so much more.

For now, it was enough to get the site up and running. We are excited to be launching a new blog and excited about having the forum to address a whole new batch of issues.

For all the naked hillary readers – thanks for coming with us!

For anyone who is new – welcome to the show!

This one’s going to be fun.

-jw

Leave a Comment » | Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Race | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jackson