This is the fourth installment of my weekly series on the 2008 Presidential campaign. The purpose of this column is to recap the week and provide some observations and suggestions for the Obama campaign to ensure victory in November.
Drama Queens and Trainwrecks – Some people think it’s fun to entertain.
This was perhaps the strangest week in the history of Presidential politics. The week began in relatively normal fashion. The press coverage and campaign schedules were initially focused on the upcoming debate at the end of the week. However, on Tuesday and Wednesday, most of the country’s focus was on the Congressional hearings on the bailout plan and sharp criticism of the typical ‘blank check’ demanded by Bush. Congressional Democrats and Barack Obama (who took breaks from debate preparations to browbeat Secretary Paulson into giving in on restricting payouts to CEOs, oversight, mortgage protection and taxpayer protection, including the opportunity to reap a profit from stock options/warrants in the depressed companies seeking government help).
On Wednesday, the White House appeared to be close to agreement with the Congressional Democrats (who had also received a lot of support from a number of Senate Republicans). Bush gave one of his typically dire national addresses about the need for the bailout, using similar language to stoke fear as he used to with respect to the Iraq war. The speech was forgettable, but Democrats saw some of the remarks towards their proposals as a step in the right direction.
Suddenly, McCain, who had spent the week doing rallies across Pennsylvania and Ohio attacking Obama and adopting a populist tone against the latest Bush blank check, announced he was suspending his campaign, canceling the Friday debate and going to Washington to ‘resolve’ the crisis regarding the bailout package. He claimed it was another example of his ‘country first’ philosophy.
The entire political world was thrown for a loop by McCain’s tactic. McCain, who had been faltering for 2 weeks suddenly seized the initiative. ‘What would Obama do?’, the MSM asked. Obama didn’t budge an inch. He and his campaign issued statements that they planned on going to the debate. Bush then intervened into the political process by inviting McCain to the White House for a ceremonial meeting and photo-op at which all parties expected that a bipartisan deal on the bailout would be reached. Bush also extended an invitation to Obama (not clear whether the Democratic Congressional leadership insisted on this). So Obama went to DC as well. In spite of McCain’s epiphany of the urgency of the crisis, McCain canceled an interview with David Letterman but stayed in New York to tape an interview with Katie Couric, meet with a fundraiser, stay in a hotel and speak at the Clinton Global Initiative before heading to DC the next day. Obama, by contrast, flew from Tampa (where he had done some rallies and debate preparation) directly to DC.
The next day (Thursday) at 1pm eastern the White House and Congress had announced a deal, before McCain had even arrived in DC. My wife and I were watching CNBC and we discussed whether it might be a good idea to buy a few shares of AIG, the government owned national insurance company, given that the price was dirt cheap and it might be a good investment given that the government owned 80% of the company. However, I turned to my wife and said, ‘this deal hasn’t been confirmed yet, and I think McCain is going to make some mischief to kill the deal and try to get an edge on Obama’. Within 2 hours, we learned that McCain had done exactly that. McCain had been on the phone with a number of House Republicans, who appeared somewhat disgruntled at the government bailout and wanted to introduce their own proposals. McCain gave tacit approval to them to conspire against the bailout. At the White House meeting, John Boehner (House Minority Leader) said that the House GOP would not support the bailout, and that they wanted their proposal considered (capital gains tax cuts, less regulation, government insurance rather than a cash insertion—cognitive dissonance strikes the GOP again!). The Democrats, sensing that McCain was trying to grandstand and that Bush was willing to let him do it, let Obama speak for them. Obama pushed the House GOP reps to state their objections and proposals, and after much prodding, they finally did. Obama then turned the issue to Secretary Paulson and asked his opinion. Paulson found the House GOP proposal so laughably bad that he dismissed it out of hand. Nancy Pelosi weighed in and told the GOP that she would not bring up the bailout for a vote unless the GOP could provide at least 100 votes from their side. The Senate Republicans supported the Democrats. McCain had sat silent for almost 45 minutes before Obama pressed him to state his viewpoint. McCain gave a non-committal answer, and left the door open for the House Republican proposal. With that, the meeting ended and disarray reigned.
While McCain thought he had scored a victory by defeating the bill, his glee was short-lived. The Democrats unleashed a fury of criticism at McCain, blaming him for the collapse. The Senate GOP and the White House seemed to agree and by the evening news organizations reported about Obama’s active role in the meeting attempting to bridge differences and arrive at a solution vs. McCain’s conspiratorial silence. The news organizations could not have done those stories without confirmation from the White House.
Meanwhile, there was the matter of the debate. David Letterman excoriated McCain for bailing out of the interview, and went further to suggest that McCain’s actions did not demonstrate good leadership qualities. By Friday morning, with the credit markets reacting badly to the scuttling of the deal, McCain and the House GOP faced growing criticism of their role in creating a mess. By Friday afternoon, McCain had reversed course and flew to Mississippi to attend the debate. McCain blinked. Obama stood firm. With McCain safely out of the way, Congressional negotiators and the White House reached agreement by Saturday evening. The measure will be voted upon on Monday and will likely pass.
The Polls
What motivated McCain’s drama outburst was the polls. Throughout the week, Obama appeared to gain ground in state polling in blue battlegrounds (NH, PA, WI, MI) and red battlegrounds (NC, MO, FL, VA, CO, IN). National polling also began to push towards Obama with ABC/WAPO showing a 9 point national lead. It is a reasonable assumption that McCain’s own internal polls were showing the same deterioration, causing McCain to look for a desperation strategy. By the end of the week, after McCain’s antics had rubbed many the wrong way, Obama’s lead in the 4 tracking polls seemed to converge at a 5-7 point lead. Though polls vary, one thing that remains consistent is that McCain has lost his double digit lead among seniors, and Obama has achieved a statistical tie (leading in some slightly, losing in some slightly). Without the senior vote, McCain has no demographic advantage (other than evangelicals) to counter Obama’s dominance among young voters and minorities. There is no way McCain can win the election based on those underlying trends. That is why McCain decided to do a Lauren Conrad impression this week.
Sarah Palin
In spite of the fact that she was not the focus of this week’s news, Sarah Palin carved out a place for herself with one of the worst interviews ever recorded in human history. Her interview with Katie Couric was a model of incoherence and she frankly made Bush look smart by comparison. She lacked knowledge, command of the English language, and continued to spew lies when backed into a corner (there have been no trade missions to Russia from Alaska during her term as governor). Sarah Palin also met with some foreign leaders at the UN in staged photo ops that the MSM considered meaningless. It is no longer an insult to say that Palin is unqualified or even dumb. She was that bad on Couric. Conservatives began to abandon her by the end of the week. John McCain attempted to cancel her debate by pushing the first debate to the date/venue of the scheduled VP debate. I still believe McCain will try to cancel the VP debate. 90 minutes of Palin would be an absolute disaster. I think it would be too painful for me to watch.
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton did several interviews during the week of the Clinton Global Initiative. He was criticized for appearing to damn Obama with faint praise and for overly warm comments towards McCain and even Sarah Palin. As a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton during the primaries, I am about as big a fan of Bill as it gets. I think he did an amazing job explaining the financial crisis to his audiences, and he made Obama’s job of selling the idea a lot easier. However, Clinton waded too much into the politics of the day and was insufficiently praiseworthy of Obama. He also incorrectly assessed the public’s view of both McCain and Palin. Clinton thinks both are popular with the undecided voters and wanted to do the ‘soft sell’ to those who don’t love Obama but would be better off under his policies, even if they are more culturally aligned and drawn to McCain/Palin. The truth is that the people dislike McCain and find Palin embarrassingly incompetent to be VP. McCain angered everyone with his antics this week. People have disliked his campaign, have grown to detest his choice of Palin as VP, and are frankly sick of the guy. Bill Clinton showed the tone deafness that he correctly criticized Gore of in 2000. He really needed to shut up by the end of the week. I am disappointed that he has behaved in this manner, as Hillary has been campaigning tirelessly for Obama. That said, Bill Clinton has become irrelevant to this campaign as the Obama machine is clicking on all cylinders.
Barack Obama
As for Obama, he held rallies in Green Bay, WI and Tampa, FL while doing a lot of debate preparation. As stated above, Obama returned to Washington to play a lead role in the negotiations and can credibly say that he had a lot to do with the changes to the original Bush/Paulson proposal.
As far as the bailout is concerned, though many Kossacks appear skeptical, I support it. It worked in Japan when they had a similar real estate initiated crisis in the 1990’s and the manner in which the Democrats have extracted concessions means that an Obama Administration will have the political authority to actively regulate Wall Street and throw laissez-faire economics into the ash heap of history, which is what we need in the long run. In the short run, the infusion of some capital will keep the economy afloat until Obama can get into office, so on balance, I think it is the best we can do in a bad situation.
As far as the rallies were concerned, the crowds were large and enthusiastic and Obama continued with the template speech he unveiled in New Hampshire a few weeks back. Obama’s focus on taxes has become central to the speech and he has gained confidence talking about it as the public seems far more receptive to him on the issue than his campaign had initially believed. Following the debate, Obama held massive rallies in Greensboro, NC, Frederricksberg, VA (in front of 27,000 in the rain) and Detroit, MI (in front of 35,000). Obama has the big mo’.
The Debate
After all the drama created by McCain, he showed up for the debate and the two went at it for 90+ minutes on the issues of the bailout, taxes, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Though both men were articulate and well spoken, Obama came out the winner in every post-debate poll, by a double digit margin. Obama also won every focus group held throughout the country (though I don’t much care for these things). Independent voters and seniors particularly liked Obama’s knowledge of the issues and his presentation style. In the post-debate spin, Joe Biden seemed to dominate the networks, adding more detail to Obama’s points, and hitting McCain harder in areas that Obama had taken a light approach. Palin’s absence from the spin room only magnified the fact that the Democrats had an edge in the spin game. The punditry was generally confused and leaned towards McCain somewhat until the polls came out. They picked up on Biden’s themes and focused on the fact that McCain did not look at Obama, looked angry and contemptuous of his opponent.
In my view, Obama won the debate handily, and I said so before the insta-polls came out. I disagree with those who said there wasn’t a knock out blow. For me, the knock out came in the discussion on Iraq when Obama looked at McCain and said ‘you were wrong’ at least 3 or 4 times. Independent voters sided with Obama on the issue of Iraq. Contrary to the media spin, foreign policy was never McCain’s strong suit because the public has always agreed with Obama on the war. That’s how he beat Hillary Clinton and that’s why he won the debate. The early focus on the economy also helped Obama. McCain had wanted to avoid the debate altogether because he knew that the economy would dominate and there wouldn’t be enough time to go after Obama on foreign policy. McCain was right about that. Even worse for McCain, he ceded the issue of taxes to Obama, the first time I can ever recall a Democrat decisively beating a Republican on the issue. McCain focused on earmarks and spending, but those are not the solutions or issues that America wanted to hear. Frequently, McCain tried to change the subject or speak anecdotally about his experiences when faced with a question he didn’t want to answer.
McCain tried to paint Obama as Sarah Palin with the words ‘Senator Obama doesn’t understand’. It failed miserably, because it was Obama who showed the better mastery and command of the issues. Obama also easily passed the commander in chief threshold. McCain helped Obama with his drama queen antics, as Obama showed consistency, steadiness of mind and judgment in handling the issue, whereas McCain was vacillating, weak and temperamental. During the debate, Obama helped himself with his ease of manner, command of detail, and his compelling arguments on the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan. The only issue area that I thought Obama lost was on ‘Iran’, where he could have done more to affirm his own theory of diplomacy while slamming Ahmadinejad, especially after that clown issued more anti-semetic garbage at the UN.
McCain also lost the debate because he never engaged Obama directly and did not try to drill down into the specifics of Obama’s policies to find areas to exploit. The reason McCain didn’t do so is because he isn’t sufficiently knowledgeable to take that approach. Hillary Clinton was very effective in several debates when she forced Obama into the weeds. McCain is no Hillary Clinton. McCain also did not prepare well for the debate because he spent too much time being a drama queen.
There are certainly areas that Obama could improve. He doesn’t have to be quite as agreeable with McCain and he could have pounded him harder on some issues. But I generally agreed with Obama’s approach to speak to the unconverted and to make a good first impression on the national stage.
Additional Analysis
As September comes to a close, Barack Obama is finishing the month strong, despite a rough beginning when Hurricane Palin hit the US mainland. Obama is now in the best position he has been electorally versus McCain. His electoral trajectory has gone up from the 270-280 EV range to the Bill Clinton range of 330-360 EVs. Ohio has now diminished in importance as Obama is grabbing a foothold in Colorado and Virginia, while continuing to improve in Florida, North Carolina, Indiana and expanding his leads in blue states.
This has caused panic and disarray in the McCain campaign, and that has resulted in stronger support among Democrats and independents to solidify behind Obama. McCain has had an awful two weeks and Obama has had a great two weeks and that is why Obama is ahead. Sarah Palin has become a fully ripened unmitigated disaster, and the VP debate is not likely to pose much of a challenge to Joe Biden.
The challenge for Obama as we enter October is to maintain the intensity as the financial crisis subsides in the headlines and McCain will have some opportunities to change the subject. Obama must continue to remain focused on the economy and demonstrate the leadership and energy that has characterized the campaign since September 12th.
There are three debates left. The trap debate for Obama is the second, town hall style, debate. It is being held in Nashville, and it is likely that there will be questions on social issues that could be problematic for Obama as we saw at the Rick Warren forum. Social issues are what tripped up Kerry’s momentum in Oct. 2004, and that could allow McCain a new angle. Obama also has to spend more time in the Midwest, visiting Ohio and Minnesota in particular. Obama is not out of the woods until he pushes Minnesota and New Hampshire into the solid blue column and pushes for an undisputed lead in Ohio. He will also need to capitalize in North Carolina and Florida as McCain is flailing and voting will begin in many of these battleground states soon (if not already).
That said, McCain’s chances of winning this election have dropped below 50% and may be less than 40%. McCain will probably push to find some wedge issues, social issues and dirty campaigning could be featured in ads and on the stump. However, Obama has control of the issues people care about and has a lot more money than McCain. Obama’s financial advantage will get stronger in October. Now is the time for Obama, the Democratic Party and the Congressional candidates to turn up the heat on the GOP.
(p.s., to the campaign: I am still waiting for a 30 second ad on Obama’s tax policy).