Is there something significant about that time? Is that Presidential crunch time? Do political problems become more difficult in the wee hours of the morning? Do we expect the President to get any sleep?
Ask Hillary Clinton:
Ask John McCain:
In one of the stranger moments of the election season, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have created competing 3:00 AM television ads - about the economy.
This 30-second television commercial for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, began running statewide in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Within hours, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, released a similar advertisement as a rebuttal.
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SCORECARD The Clinton commercial is a sequel to one last month directed at Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, challenging his readiness to serve as commander in chief. The repetition of the "3 a.m." theme suggests that the Clinton campaign sees the advertisement as successfully planting doubts about her opponents and presenting her as presidential. But the shift in focus to the Republican nominee before the Democratic nomination is resolved is unusual. Campaign aides said that they wanted to cement the idea that Mrs. Clinton was ready to serve as a steward of the economy and that the contrast with Mr. McCain was more striking than it was with her fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama. The move suggests that the Clinton campaign believes it can get more mileage out of attacking Mr. McCain on an urgent economic issue than attacking Mr. Obama, whose economic views are similar to Mrs. Clinton’s.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
