Has anyone else noticed how brilliantly Obama is employing a rope-a-dope strategy?
This week, everyone is aflutter because he's down in the polls and not hitting back hard enough. McCain appears able to hit Obama again and again and again without any sustained blow-back. While McCain's numbers aren't rising (he's been stuck below 44% for 3 months now), Obama's numbers have "tanked" from 51 to 47. Everyone from every corner is, for lack of a more artful way to put it, freaking out.
Everyone, that is, except the Obama team.
In fact, they appear completely unfazed. The ship is still tight, the message is still clear, and the candidate is still smiling. McCain is literally wearing himself out (*cough*Ambien*couch*). His team is all fighting the same fight (brownie points for message control), but they are having to update their talking points literally every day. Today the buzzword is "testy." Yesterday it was "pro-life." Last week it was "celebrity." Tomorrow it will be, I don't know, how about "erudite."
Through all of this, McCain has built himself a treasure trove of blunders. More than a month ago, Max Bergmann wrote the article, "The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes." That week (which included Gramm's "whiny" comment and the Iraqis calling for timetables) is tame compared to broken mess that we've seen recently. You know it's bad when Paris Hilton calls you out and you run a political attack ad after Olympic history (seriously, how uncomfortable was that?).
And now we're seeing the first steps into what will become a political carpet bombing. Attack ads from Obama in small markets, below the radar. Tough talk at the VFW. Brilliantly dismissive comments like "is that all you've got?" And a nice, slow VP roll-out, which is keeping the 24-hour talking heads, well, talking (a priceless commodity in the political economy). By the time the Republican Convention is through (when the real race starts, let's be honest), everyone in America will be begging Obama to go hard on the attack, not just us loyalists. McCain's early attacks have made him look like the worst kind of Washington politician. When Obama goes on the attack, it will be met with a giant sigh of relief. Even (and perhaps especially) by those talking heads who seem to think that Obama is weak.
And Obama gets to start all of this after a 3 week world tour, a week vacation, a media break thanks to the Olympics, and the Democratic National Committee presentation in front of 70,000 fans on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. The last 60 days of this campaign will make The Rumble in the Jungle look like Foreman's best performance.
And just like Ali, Obama will be bouncing and smiling when the ref calls it.
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