Here’s a new ad out from Team Obama, responding to McCain’s “zinger” about not actually being President Bush. Very nicely done — especially the end, where McCain himself praises his 90% vote-with-W record. An effective response to McCain’s only memorable line of the night.
Please share widely!
The response is impressive and it’s a well-crafted ad. However, for the first time last night, I thought McCain’s criticism of the Bush-meme stuck; that Obama turned to the McCain = Bush line of argument once too often.
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p>One other question for everybody: my friends and I disagreed over whether Obama should have laid out the whole Ayers story or ignored McCain’s call to do so. I felt that he had been backed into a corner and it was necessary to describe Ayers’ past and his relationship with Ayers in detail. My fellow-debate watchers disagreed. Anyone else’s thoughts?
Delving into details doesn’t do Obama any good. The fundamental error that McCain/Palin have made on Ayers is that the issue is entirely backward-looking. It’s about events that took place 40 years ago, about a guy with whom Obama serve on a charitable foundation board 10 years ago, and with whom Obama has no significant contact now or going forward. McCain/Palin have tried to turn that into an issue about Obama’s judgment, but it’s too weak a connection to bear that heavy a load.
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p>What people in America want to hear about is the future. They want to know what the next president is going to do to stabilize the economy, to fix the health care mess, and to deal with other critical issues. That’s why Obama’s answer was so clever — he turned it into a way to talk about his plans going forward. And so, once again, he gets to talk about his vision for the future, while McCain is stuck looking backward.
And agree with David.
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p>As to Bush, I don’t think Obama can make that point too much: McCain = Bush. That’s why this ad is effective. Bush is one of the most unpopular Presidents in history, and the Crash of 2008 has sealed his dismal reputation. True, McCain’s rejoinder last night was peppy, but it didn’t help him escape the basic point, as this ad reminds everyone.
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p>As to Ayers, I agree with David. The details don’t help Obama make his case, which is that Ayers is a distraction, and the discussion should be about the future. I think he let McCain bait him there. He could have accomplished the same end in half the time, and spent the rest of the time talking about how to fix the mess we are in. But it doesn’t much matter either way, I don’t think: the GOP has failed to make that line stick.
Color me convinced — maybe Obama had to answer the Ayers question but he could have done it in half the time. And I don’t disagree about the ad and the general message of McCain = Bush, I was just weary of it as a debate tactic. But that part of the campaign is over.
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p>Thanks for your thoughts!
weaker on the acorn one, though.
Obama’s main message on McCain is, in my paraphrase, “a continuation of the Bush policies of the past”. He can repeat that, in various forms, as often as there’s opportunity to do so, and it won’t ever be too much. It can only be “too much” if he appears to be using it as a nonsequitur, in responses to questions where it makes no sense, but that’s not exactly the same thing. If it makes sense every time he’s asked a question, then he can say it every time.
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p>One of McCain’s main messages on Obama, in the past few weeks, is “can you trust him?”. McCain subtly works that into a bunch of things. Thinking through what I saw last night, I came to the conclusion that one way Obama is neutralizing that message is by giving a strong consistent impression that a) he knows what he’s talking about, in detail, and b) he’ll tell you all about it, clearly and transparently. He kept giving specific, detailed, clear answers on just about every subject that came up, making McCain’s vagueness evident in contrast. In doing so, I think he projected an overall sense of yes, Obama is what he seems to be, we do know all about him and what he proposes and what he thinks and so on. McCain kept trying to project a sense that we don’t know enough about Obama, both his person and his plans, and Obama kept neutralizing it by going overboard in the other direction.
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p>I think Obama succeeded. I think his answer to the Ayers question was part of that success.
It may have been a memorable line, but McCain did himself no favors with that line. I said to my friends who I watched the debate with, right after it ended, that I thought McCain hurt himself with that comment: Obama did less direct Bush-McCain linking in this debate than he’d done in the past, but he did some of it, and McCain himself highlighted it. He reinforced the association of Bush and McCain, and he brought more focus on the linkage and ensured that it would get more coverage. He’d have done better to let it lie.