Campaign Trail 2008

  • Closing Arguments

    October 27, 2008 @ 3:16 am | by Denis Staunton

    Obama in Denver

    As the campaign enters its final week, the candidates are preparing to make their closing arguments. Barack Obama has bought 30 minutes of prime time on all the major networks on Wednesday and in Canton, Ohio on Monday, he unveils a new speech.

    “In his speech, Senator Obama will tell voters that after twenty-one months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy,” according to his campaign.

    “Obama will ask Americans to help him change this country, and say that in just one week, they can choose an economy that rewards work and creates new jobs and fuels prosperity from the bottom-up, they can choose to invest in health care for our families and education for our kids and renewable energy for our future, and they can choose hope over fear, unity over division and the promise of change over the power of the status quo.”

    John McCain and Sarah Palin will spend much of this week in Pennsylvania, a state where Obama enjoys a double-digit lead but which the Republican thinks he can flip. Winning Pennsylvania would allow McCain to survive the loss of states such as Colorado or Virginia, which President George Bush won in 2004, as long as the Republican holds Ohio and Florida.

    In Denver on Sunday, Obama drew a crowd of more than 100,000, according to police estimates, just a week after a similarly mammoth audience turned out to hear him in St Louis.

  • Sarah Palin’s Dan Quayle moment?

    October 22, 2008 @ 2:37 am | by Denis Staunton

    Why don’t politicians just avoid children during campaigns? They can’t vote, they seldom make political donations and they can easily lead you into embarrassing situations. Just think of George Bush continuing to read The Pet Goat to a group of elementary school children after he heard about the 9/11 attacks. Or Dan Quayle’s correction of a boy’s spelling of the word potato.

    On Tuesday, Sarah Palin fell prey to the Curse of the Precocious Child when she answered a question from a third-grader about the role of the vice-president:

     

     

    Palin got it quite wrong, of course. The vice-president has no influence in the senate except to cast a vote in the case of a tie. Then again, if the polls are to be believed, she will not be required to put her constitutional theories to the test any time soon.

     

    Here, by the way, are a couple of Quayle’s greatest hits:

     

     

  • Rats, Ships and Neocons

    October 21, 2008 @ 4:22 am | by Denis Staunton

    Colin Powell’s declaration of support for Barack Obama prompted some commentators to note the irony of a candidate who owes his party’s nomination in great measure to his opposition to the invasion of Iraq receiving his most important endorsement from the man who made the fraudulent case for war to the United Nations Security Council.

      If Powell was a reluctant supporter of the Bush administration’s adventure in Iraq, the same can’t be said for Obama’s latest groupie from the right – Ken Adelman, a former sidekick of Donald Rumsfeld and one of the noisiest neo-conservative voices in support of the war.

      Along with many of the war’s early cheerleaders, Adelman jumped ship when things started to go wrong, telling Vanity Fair last year:

      “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

      Adelman sang a different tune in April 2003, crowing in the Washington Post that analysts who warned that thousands of US troops could be killed in a war in Iraq had been shown to be wrong.

      “Now is not an occasion for gloating,” he gloated.

      “But now is an occasion for pride, and for thanks to our fighting men and women and those leading them. My confidence 14 months ago sprang from having worked for Don Rumsfeld three times - knowing he would fashion a most creative and detailed war plan - and from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz well for many years.”

      Now Adelman is clambering aboard the Obama caravan, telling George Packer in the New Yorker that the Democrat has the right temperament to be president.

      “When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird,” Adelman wrote in an email to Packer.

     ”Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.”

      Adelman identified McCain’s pick of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate as the trigger for his decision to back a candidate who opposes everything the neo-conservative movement stood for:

      “That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office - I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign - Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.”

     

     

  • Keeping up the attack

    October 15, 2008 @ 3:27 am | by Denis Staunton

    John McCain and Sarah Palin have wound back their attacks on Barack Obama in the past few days and McCain has scolded supporters who overstepped the line in criticising his opponent. McCain won praise from across the political spectrum – and from Obama – when he corrected a woman at a town hall meeting who described Obama as an Arab.

    “No, he’s a decent family man,” McCain said – as if the two categories were mutually exclusive.

    Conservative talk radio hosts are still highlighting Obama’s association with former urban guerrilla William Ayers and Rush Limbaugh frequently treats his listeners to a loop of the Rev Jeremiah Wright’s greatest hits.

    A political action committee called Our Country Deserves Better has gone a step further with a new television ad linking Obama with every enemy of America you can think of.

    “Barack Obama seems to have different values from most Americans,” the ad begins.

    “His supporters put up Cuban flags with the murderous leftist Che Guevara in Obama’s campaign offices. Obama’s campaign received $33,000 in illegal donations from Palestinians living in the Middle East. A top official of the terrorist group Hamas endorsed Obama’s campaign.”

    MoveOn.org is taking a gentler approach in this ad running in North Carolina, which encourages young people to have a frank talk with their parents if they suspect them of supporting McCain:

  • Hank Williams Jr serenades Sarah Palin

    October 14, 2008 @ 1:51 am | by Denis Staunton

    At a Sarah Palin rally in Virginia on Monday, Hank Williams Jr performed a new song in honour of the Republican ticket. It’s called The McCain-Palin Tradition and the chorus goes like this:

    John N Sarah tell ya

    Just what they think

    And they’re not gonna blink

    And they’re gonna fix this country

    Cause they’re just like you N ole Hank

    Yes John is a maverick

    And Sarah fixed Alaska’s broken condition

    They’re gonna go just fine

    We’re headed for better times

    It’s a McCain - Palin tradition

  • Troopergate: Palin abused power

    October 11, 2008 @ 4:19 am | by Denis Staunton

    Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as Alaska governor by pushing for her former brother-in-law to be fired from the state police force, according to a report approved unanimously by a bipartisan group of Alaska legislators. The report found that Palin violated the Alaska’s executive branch ethics act, which says that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

    Investigator Steve Branchflower concluded that Palin’s family feud with her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten, wasn’t the only reason she sacked public safety commissioner Walter Monegan. But Branchflower said Palin acted unlawfully by failing to rein her husband’s efforts to use the governor’s office to contact state employees in his attempts to have Wooten fired.

    “Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda … to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” Branchflower’s report says.

    “Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional. It is an individual responsibility imposed by law, and any effort to benefit a personal interest through official action is a violation of that trust. … The term ‘benefit’ is very broadly defined, and includes anything that is to the person’s advantage or personal self-interest.”

    The McCain campaign claimed that the report showed that Palin was within her rights in firing Monegan but added that the investigation was politically motivated:

    “The report also illustrates what we’ve known all along: this was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behaviour. Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact. The Governor is looking forward to cooperating with the Personnel Board and continuing her conversation with the American people regarding the important issues facing the country.”

    You can read the full report here

  • Ayers and Graceless

    October 10, 2008 @ 4:24 am | by Denis Staunton

    As Barack Obama talks about jobs during a swing through Ohio, John McCain and Sarah Palin are still plugging away at Obama’s association with former urban guerrilla William Ayers. Conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh are also pushing the Ayers connection, convinced that voters remain uncertain that Obama is the right man for the White House.

    McCain insists that questions about Ayers are legitimate because there are doubts about Obama’s account of the history and extent of the relationship. A new ad from the Republican National Committee goes further, suggesting that Ayers is one of a number of disreputable Chicago characters who shaped Obama’s political identity:

  • Obama complains about “cheap political points”

    October 9, 2008 @ 3:39 am | by Denis Staunton

    Barack Obama complains in an interview with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson that John McCain is trying to score “cheap political points” by highlighting the Democrat’s relationship with former urban guerrilla William Ayers. He says he’s surprised McCain didn’t raise the issue to his face during their debate in Nashville on Tuesday. Obama also contrasts the two candidates’ responses to the current financial crisis.

    Here’s the whole interview:

    McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin returned to Obama’s links to Ayers in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Wednesday night:

  • The joys of going negative

    October 7, 2008 @ 3:16 am | by Denis Staunton

    Most American commentators think John McCain is making a terrible mistake – or at least wasting his time – in trying to shift the focus of the presidential campaign from the economy onto Barack Obama’s character.

    I’m not so sure.

    When Sarah Palin suggested at the weekend that Obama had been “palling around with terrorists” – in the person of former Weather Underground guerrilla William Ayers – most pundits agreed that voters weren’t interested in her charge. Whatever about the public, the media talked of little else on Monday – even as the Dow Jones fell below 10,000 points for the first time in four years and the global financial system appeared to be giving up the ghost.

    The Obama campaign spent much of the weekend warning that McCain’s decision to highlight Obama’s past associations would backfire and threatened (for the umpteenth time) that the Democrat was finally about to “take the gloves off”. On Monday, Obama’s team launched a co-ordinated TV and Internet campaign to remind voters of McCain’s links to Charles Keating, a banker who was jailed for fraud in the early 1990’s.

    Both stories have been around for a long time but I think the attacks on Obama are likely to be more effective, not least because they reinforce doubts that are already present in voters’ minds.

    “Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign,” McCain said yesterday.

    “My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.”

    McCain’s criticism of Obama may be unfair – and it’s certainly unkind – but it is also shared by millions of Americans, among them many Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania who backed Hillary Clinton even after her campaign appeared to be doomed.

    Nobody, on the other hand, thinks McCain is a crook and most Americans are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt over the Keating affair. Some of Obama’s negative campaigning has been more effective, notably his description of McCain as “erratic” and “out of touch” – which chimed with some voters’ suspicions that the Republican is not only old but possibly a little crazy.

    After three weeks during which the campaign appeared to slip from his grip, McCain has taken control of the news agenda by going negative on Obama. It’s not especially pretty and it probably won’t last but the Republican’s burst of aggression has cheered up his demoralised supporters and changed the topic of conversation in the campaign – at least for now.

  • Palin and Biden mix it up in St Louis

    October 3, 2008 @ 7:33 am | by Denis Staunton

    The most striking aspect of last night’s vice-presidential debate in St Louis was the sharply contrasting personal styles of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. For the first half of the debate, Biden was every inch the sixty year-old, smiling public man, full of insider Washington expertise as he talked about deregulation and legislative oversight.

    Palin was the opposite, direct and folksy, winking at the camera as she prefaced sentences with “you betcha”, “doggone it” and “darn right”.

    Watch her winking at her dad and giving a shout out to the kids her brother teaches:

    Here she is on who’s to blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, followed by Biden’s response:

    Palin is deeply conservative on social issues and she made no bones about her opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians, although she claimed she is personally tolerant. (I’ve heard that before…)

    Biden fumbled his answer to the question and they ended up on the same page:

    Palin’s 19 year-old son Track is serving as an infantry soldier in Iraq and Biden’s son will go there soon as a military lawyer but the candidates disagreed about how to end the war:

    When Biden was 29, his wife and baby daughter died in a car crash that seriously injured his two young sons and he became emotional when he spoke about it towards the end of this clip:

    Polls taken by CBS and CNN suggested that Biden won last night’s debate but in the spin room in St Louis, the McCain-Palin campaign seemed buoyant while the Obama-Biden team were strangely muted.

    What do you think?

Search Campaign Trail 2008

 
Close
E-mail It