October 6th 2008
The Candidates Plan Their Attacks
T
oday, the Obama campaign will roll out its most aggressive attack strategy against McCain - and it’s got a lot of potential and momentum behind it, so watch out.
According to Politico, the new “multimedia” effort - read TV, Internet and talking heads - will focus on events from long, long ago, the Keating Five S&L scandal from 1989-1991. The intent is to blame the current financial crisis on McCain and his S&L buddies, which is political dirty work at its dirtiest.
McCain was the least dirty of the five, which came very close to being called the Keating Four; last minute machinations alone lumped McCain with the others. His involvement in support of constituent Charles Keating was brief, shallow and ineffective. His repenting has gone on for the 17 years since, with his refusal to play the political games favored by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
But explaining all that will be difficult for McCain, whose messaging this far in the campaign has been about as effective as a three-legged thoroughbred. McCain does have a message strategy available to him that will work for him - comparing himself to Obama; something like:
I’ve been open about this and have said a thousand times that I regret that I signed my name to one letter for Charlie Keating. I regretted it when I did it and I still do today. It was the worst mistake of my career, but from that moment on, I turned against political favoritism and earmarking. Keating went to jail, and I’m glad he did.
I’m comfortable admitting all this because it changed me into a better man, a crusader against corruption. My opponent admits nothing about relationship with Tony Rezko, who took bribes and wielded influence, or about Bill Ayres, who says he wishes he had planted more bombs in his efforts to destroy America. My opponent took over $100,000 from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in just three years, and has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies like Lehman and Goldman Sachs.
Why won’t Obama talk about all that? Could it be because he hasn’t changed? That he’s just an old-school politician in a nice new suit?
Meanwhile, the McCain camp is stepping up its character messaging on Obama, with Palin’s comments over the weekend accusing him of “palling around with terrorists” like Bill Ayres. She told Bill Kristol:
Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand “who the real Barack Obama is.” Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who’s minimized his relationship with Ayers, “hasn’t been wholly truthful” about this.
I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?
She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”
That’s well and good, but it shouldn’t stop with Ayres and Wright. Rezko, the New Party and other radical and racist fellow travelers should all be brought up: A litany of what makes Obama “not like the rest of us.”
The GOP campaign has got to start putting its attacks in context, to disallow the racists at AP and elsewhere in the MSM from mischaracterizing legitimate challenges to Obama’s judgment and associations with racial attacks. Words are important; “palling around” does not accurately characterize the Obama/Ayres association, and it should be replaced with “long friendship” or even “birds of a feather.”
So the GOP needs to step up and improve its campaign about Obama’s radical associations by clearly making it about his character and judgment, and nothing to do with his race. But more important, they have to begin talking about Obama’s financial ties to corruption and greed on Wall Street, and his failure to do anything more than write one letter.
After all, all McCain did for Charlie Keating was write one letter, and that’s all Obama has done to call out the culture of destructive greed on Wall Street.
Posted in 2008, McCain, Messaging, Obama, Palin | 3 Comments » | 
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October 6th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Comments
October 6th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Listen up. I am a Democrat and know that no one in the military or civilian leadership would be given a clearance with this guy’s background. Ayers, Rezko, Wright, Rashid Khalid and Farrakhan. Need I say more folks. DO you really believe the Feds would allow an average citizen a clearance if they had this guy’s background. HELL NO! He is a radical. And if that doesn’t get you going what about the campaign manager who had a photo of Hugo Chavez in their campaign office last summer…. Start thinking… radical Obama!!!
October 6th, 2008 at 9:05 am
…..and no way do I love my party enough to vote for a radical left extremist like Obama… his connections to all these radical people and beliefs not to mention his ghost;y days at Columbia with the Pakistani roommate make me say — what are we thinking… this guy is the closest replica of a left radical marxist.. study the military and you will understand my manchurian is all about…