John McCain, maverick survivor
In 2009, if you had asked the Tea Party movement regulars who their most hated Republican was the answer would have been John McCain in a landslide. For years, McCain has been the man much of the Republican conservative base loved to hate, thanks to his 2000 presidential run and his apostasy on campaign finance and other issues. Movement conservatives discussed a primary campaign in 2004. McCain’s losing the presidential race to Obama didn’t help his popularity one bit.
And yet, in this anti-incumbent tidal wave, where Republican incumbents and party regular front-runners (such as in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado) were taken down in record number, John McCain survived. Why?
Maybe because he knew he would be a target, or perhaps because he is more attuned to the danger, McCain acted differently than the other officials. He tacked hard to the right, ignoring a torrent of criticisms from his what he use to call his “base” – the media. He immediately took the fight to his opponent, going very negative, very fast. He called in chits – including an endorsement from Sarah Palin. The result was a crushing victory over a very well-known conservative. What’s surprising is not that McCain succeeded, it’s that others like Murkowski and Castle didn’t take notes.
Joshua Spivak is a PR executive and senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College.
Clean up Washington: mission impossible?
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
Can any U.S. administration avoid the fate spelled out in the following 12 words? “We were elected to change Washington and we let Washington change us.”
Thus spoke John McCain when he formally accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president last September. He then listed a number of reasons why the party had lost the trust of the American people, including that “some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption”.
Those temptations cut across party lines and stem from the relentless rise of a system, over the past three decades, which has given special interest groups enormous influence over policy-making and led to what Robert G. Kaiser, author of a just-published book on lobbying, calls “a kind of ethical rot in the nation’s capital”.
Barack Obama promised to stop that rot in his long campaign for the U.S. presidency but there is reason to wonder whether his rhetoric on the stump is more likely to be translated into action than similar pledges made by every president in recent history.
A day after he took office, Obama issued an executive order to stop the rot. “As of today, lobbyists will be subject to stricter limits than under any other administration in history,” he said in signing the order. “If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I’m president.”
Except for the exceptions. Tom Daschle, for example, Obama’s nominee for the Health and Human Services portfolio, who was not a registered lobbyist but made more than $5 million advising a variety of clients, including some in health-related industries. (Daschle withdrew over a separate matter; $120,000 in unpaid taxes).
Comparing the news coverage of Clinton’s 1993 “strictest ever” ethics rule with Obama’s makes very depressing reading. In both cases, the media didn’t look hard enough at the loopholes and the language. The problem with Obama’s executive order is that it cannot be enforced unless there are changes to the system. One big step forward would be a requirement that there be a record that can be accessed by the public of every meeting between an administration official and a lobbyist. That record should cover both meetings inside the official’s (or lobbyist’s) office and after-hour meetings in restaurants, private homes etc.
Without more transparency (which Obama promised) his ethics rules are just words.
from For the Record:
After the warm glow, telling the cold, hard truths
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
The president was inaugurated in front of adoring crowds and positive reviews in the media. As the unpopular incumbent sat on the platform with him, the new Democratic chief executive took office as the nation faced a crippling economic crisis. The incoming president was a charismatic figure who had run a brilliant campaign and had handled the press with aplomb. The media were ready to give him a break.
That was 1933, and in Franklin Roosevelt’s case, the media gave him a break.
For Barack Obama, the honeymoon was shorter.
Less than 36 hours after Obama took the oath of office, the White House denied news photographers access to the new president’s do-over swearing in, instead releasing official White House photos of the event. Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse protested and refused to distribute the official photos (which nevertheless showed up on the websites of a number of large U.S. newspapers).
This is an important issue for news organisations, the public and for an administration that has promised a new era of transparency in doing the people’s business. How are people to know, for example, that the official photos haven’t been staged?
All U.S. administrations seek to manage the flow of information and the White House and the news media have a complex, interdependent relationship. Each needs the other. But it’s important that media organisations remember who’s most important.
Are you really making a comment on ‘transparency’ just due to the white house not letting the media in to the second swearing in of Obama?
Is there really nothing more important to talk about? Im angered that made that much of a hubbub about the first go around that the man felt that he had to do it again and waste more time appeasing and delaying his work as president.
Do people feel empowered when they point out the mistakes of others (be they mistakes or not) when they themselves don’t have to be in the line of fire, or have as heavy of responsibilities?
Come on now.
Real vs unreal Americans
By Bernd Debusmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – What is a real American? As opposed to an unreal American, a fake American, an un-American American or an anti-American American.
The answer is in the eye of the beholder and his or her political orientation. The question, and variations of it, has been asked in several periods of U.S. history and has bubbled up again, one of a number of odd sideshows, in the closing stages of the campaign for the presidential election on Nov. 4.
Robin Hayes, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, provided details on Americans who do not qualify as real. “Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God.” Both Palin and Hayes later “clarified” their remarks to say they had not actually meant to suggest the existence of pro- and anti-American parts of the country. Nevertheless, their words prompted a vivid debate in cyberspace and on talk radio.
What is a real American? I think that question was best answered back in 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Democracy in America.” It’s still accurate. Try reading that instead of listening to self-serving politicians.
from Tales from the Trail:
Is internal strife rippling through McCain-Palin campaign?
WASHINGTON - As the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign enters its final week, reports are bubbling up about internal strife within the Republican ticket that suggest vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is trying to distance herself from the top of the ticket, John McCain.
Palin over the last few weeks has publicly expressed her differences with McCain on issues such as a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the campaign's decision to no longer contest Democrats in Michigan and her distaste for automated calls that have drawn scrutiny.
Politico.com reported this weekend that Palin has also cast aside advice from former George W. Bush aides assigned to help her on the campaign trail, citing their handling of her debut. She was roundly criticized for her poor performance in her initial national media interviews.
The report said:
Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.
After that story emerged, CNN reported that aides from the McCain side of the house were fighting back, including quoting one unnamed aide who described Palin as a "diva" and that she was looking out for her own political future in case they do not win the White House next week.
I think the McCain campaign chose Palin as a running mate for the wrong reasons; most notably, because they thought it would cleave a large segment of female and independent voters from Obama’s base.
It seems that her history and socio-political views have trumped her personality and gender in the minds of independents, and that wasn’t what McCain was hoping for.
In U.S. elections, fear of Muslims
(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In the summer of 2006, a Gallup poll of more than 1,000 Americans found that one out of four favoured forcing Muslims in the United States, including U.S. citizens, to carry special identification. About a third said Muslims living in the U.S. sympathized with al Qaeda.
Almost a quarter said they wouldn’t want a Muslim as a neighbour. Republicans, the poll said, saw Muslims in a more negative light than Democrats and independents, and were more opposed to having Muslim neighbours. Fewer than half those polled thought U.S. Muslims were loyal to the United States.
A few months after the poll, callers to a Washington area radio talk show suggested branding Muslims with crescent-shaped tattoos and special stamps in their identity papers, the better to spot potential terrorists.
Polls are snapshots of attitudes, and attitudes can change. But incidents during the U.S. presidential election campaign, now in its final sprint towards November 4, show that fear and suspicion of Muslims persist undiminished and are being used as a political weapon.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell became the most prominent member of the U.S. establishment to highlight the problem when he broke with John McCain, the Republican candidate and a personal friend of decades, to endorse Barack Obama, target of a prolonged campaign by activists who portray him as a Muslim.
One of his reasons: “I’m troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the (Republican) party say,” he told a television interviewer this week. “And it is permitted to be said such things as ‘well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.
Am I the only one who can mentally replace the word ‘Muslims’ in the first three paragraphs with the word ‘Jews’ and see that we’ve got 1930′s Germany happening here in ‘Good ol America’??? Powell is probably the only person associated with the Bush Administration who is worthy of respect — Listen up!
from Tales from the Trail:
McCain says he wants people to ‘get wealthy’
GREEN, Ohio - John McCain wants Americans to get rich.
That was the message from the Republican presidential hopeful Wednesday as he focused again on the differences in his tax proposals and those of Democratic rival Barack Obama.
The Arizona senator has hammered Obama in recent days for a philosophy of spreading Americans' wealth around, articulated by the Illinois senator in a now famous exchange with an Ohio man dubbed Joe the Plumber.
McCain promised at an outdoor rally with an enthusiatic crowd he and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, would not make people or businesses send more money to the federal government.
"Sarah Palin and I will not raise your taxes, my friends," he said. "We want you to get wealthy."
Palin weighed in on the theme, too, calling Obama "Barack-the-wealth-spreader" and warning the crowd: "You have to really listen to our opponent's words because he's hiding his real agenda of redestributing your hard-earned money."
The Obama camp was unmoved. At a press conference, the Illinois senator brushed off the charges as just another attack strategy by his rivals. "They have been trying to throw whatever they can up against the wall to see what sticks, and this is their latest version," Obama said.
But … how … ?
Not raising taxes was what this President did, and we’re in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
from MediaFile:
Presidential candidates: Love ‘em and Lehman
Media coverage of the U.S. presidential race has not so much cast Democratic candidate Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed Republican opponent John McCain in a negative one.
That' s the verbatim conclusion of a new report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that analyzes the way the press has covered the campaign.
The report shows that negative stories about Arizona Sen. McCain has been decidedly unfavorable and has worsened over time, with negative stories about him outnumbering favorable Obama stories by more than three to one.
That and many more interesting details are available in the 35-page report, but what caught our attention, being a business-oriented news service, was a graph charting the tone of press coverage devoted to both candidates and how it changed after the bankruptcy filing of investment bank Lehman Brothers.
When Lehman collapsed, the percentage of negative stories about Obama plunged from 30 percent that week in September to just under 10 percent a week later. It scooted back up to 45 percent by early October and has been down again since then. Negative stories about McCain eased to 50 percent from... well, just a bit over 50 percent. Since then it's surged to nearly 70 percent.
After Lehman collapsed, the reported noted that McCain tried to seize the initiative on the economic crisis.
According to the report:
While there is no doubt that media bias is a real factor out there, it really is also possible that negative stories rise about candidates who have more negative attributes, run a more negative campaign, and have generally made more mistakes or pursued bad policies.
Sometimes if it looks like a duck….
How does he do it? Uh, have you seen the types of policies Arizona enacts? Have you seen the type of politicians they elect?
It’s not surprising at all.