Abcnews.com has an article summarizing Obama's interview on Letterman which will air tonight. Obama the comedian is out in full force. He described what the expression means in Illinois, and Letterman set up a question for Obama in which he essentially asks, 'Some of McCain's staff apparently got together and thought, 'hey, he's calling our VP a pig'. That seems unlikely doesn't it?'
Obama responds and says it is unlikely, and continues (paraphrasing) 'If I was talking about her, she would be the lipstick, not the pig. The pig would be John McCain's policies'. Folks in the audience laughed.
Obama went on to dismiss this as part of silly season in politics.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/...
If anyone gets the youtube, post it here (or I will when it becomes available).
On another note, there has been an awful lot of handwringing on this site today, which I find unwarranted. We can't worry about what the GOP says about us. We just need to stick it in their grills as Obama did today in Virginia. We have ads calling Palin a liar. We have surrogates that go on tv and call her out. We have forced the Media to admit that Palin is lying and they are doing pieces on the subject. I think every network has done something on it.
McCain will not budge from his strategy. His strategy is the lie. I think there is potentially a big advantage to us if Palin sticks to her script for the remainder of the campaign.
As long as we box her in and keep her honest by running ads on the lies, Obama and Biden can continue to talk about the issues. Every day that goes by where Palin doesn't seem to grow into the job she seeks, then people will have second thoughts about her and there will be a gradual bounce in Obama's favor in all of the key swing states. If all she can do is tell the same old lies, her story will grow old and stale quickly. I've never seen an election where one side has completely ceded the issues to the other side. But we are in such an environment today. We should take advantage of it.
Obama has some work to do in the following issue areas:
- Tax policy - Too many people think he is raising their taxes, when the opposite is true.
- Iraq - He needs to give more prepared remarks that put the surge in the proper perspective (a la Woodward) and push towards the future of withdrawal, redeployment to Afghanistan and turning the page on the Bush Administration.
- Economy - Obama need to talk about the economy in prepared remarks wearing a suit/tie behind a stump. He isn't as fluid or fluent in the town hall setting.
- Hope and Change - Obama needs to get back to the standard, inspirational stump speech that outlines the vision he set forth in Denver. Our vision is better than theirs. He should jettison the town hall format and do what he does best: speak in front of large, enthusiastic crowds and talk about hope, change and some tangible issues that reflect that vision.
- Press Conferences, not interviews - Obama does much better in press conferences than interviews. He sounds much more commanding in the former than the latter.
Those are my thoughts. I'd like to hear yours.