McCain Once Again Tries to Shift Focus

McCain Palin are losing. They have no plan except for lower taxes and "reform," whatever that means, and no pork, even though McCain just voted for the bailout bill with $100 billion or so in extras. Now that's what I call porky.

WaPo: With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

I'd argue it's not the economy that favors Obama it's Obama's solutions to the economy that Americans are favoring. 

Want War: Vote McCain

Poster by Dustin Parker

Here are a few things to keep in mind about McCain as he speaks about his "vision." 
* When McCain talks about tax hikes, it's only individuals making more than $200 million and families, making $250 million who will get a tax hike under Obama. Obama will not continue the Bush tax cuts. Middle class families WILL see their taxes go down.  

* McCain may know about war and hate war but he's not reluctant to use war. If you want another war, elect McCain. He is no diplomat. Republicans don't seem to mind war. They think about it as patriotic, a necessary evil. 

* McCain, like Bush, will continue to use fear tactics to wield military power. 

* McCain has a short temper and is crabby.

* As a republican, McCain is a believer in bootstraps. He doesn't believe government has any obligation to help the poorest of the poor.

* McCain's own website says he will overturn Roe V. Wade: 

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.

* McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time. 

* In the 26 years he's been in politics, he's never supported renewable energy. 

* McCain is known to lack structure and organizational skills. 

* McCain is weak on economics. 

* McCain is learning the Internet.

* McCain's judgement is questionable. 

* Oil will continue to be dominant theme in a McCain administration.

* McCain's next in line, Ms. Mooseburger, delivers a Rovian speech really well but her qualifications are questionable. Prolife and motherhood won't help salve Russian relations. 

* War hero does not equal leader and is not a qualification for the presidency. Sorry. It just isn't and I'm tired of hearing it.

* Republicans had 8 years and they blew it big time. 

Where's McCain's Big Ideas?

Oh, that's right. He's a war hero and war heroes don't lie. They don't cheat. They're just heroes. They don't need any ideas. I'm running on a theme today. I think McCain's shallowness and war hero crutch is catching up with him. Frankly, I never knew of a hero who boasted so much. I thought one of the qualities of heroism was humility. We're seeing the empty suit and it's not Obama who's wearing it. His suit is full of big ideas and the judgement, skill and talents to carry them through. 

Packaging John McCain

John McCain has a little wind in his sails since God agreed that he should be president. But don't let it fool you. McCain is being wrapped up and packaged with pretty bows by Karl Rove's protege. There's nothing there except a war hero who likes wars and stuff. 

Who the Heck is John McCain?

Frank Rich at the NYT brings us back to reality.

What do we really know about John McCain except that he was a war hero and was tortured.

He even used it as a crutch last night at Saddleback to answer questions on religion. I'm sick of hearing that he's a war hero.

I want to hear something concrete about McCain, other than his war-centric views. As far as I can see, he is a duplicate of Bush, except for the fact that he believes that global warming is real. Relative to Obama, he hasn't considered the economy.

I've broken Rich's story into the main points but you can read it all here.

The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he’s not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he’s not. He’s been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.

Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and “close the deal” with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the “foreign, exotic place” of Hawaii.

Wait for it

It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

Here it is:

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

McCain was in Vietnam. Yeah, we know that.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain is a bully.

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

McCain's Karl Rove's Third Term

Paul Krugman at the NYT points out that Karl Rove is back!

Many in the media have cowed to McCain, suggesting that it's wrong to question how McCain's "experience" as a war hero qualifies him to be president.

Krugman says that what we're getting is Karl Rove's push for persona over policy. It's all about manipulation and phony scandals. Will Americans be manipulated again? Some will.

But I think we've reached the tipping point, where most of us know better. Remember, Rove brought us George Bush.

McCain has no policies, especially on economics. We need to question his experience, not just take it for granted that military service makes you a good president. I'd still like to hear McCain's strategy on "winning" the war. Why haven't the media pressed him on his plan? What does "winning" mean?

NYT: What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.

Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.

It was predictable that the McCain campaign would go wild over the Clark remarks. Mr. McCain’s run for the White House has always been based on persona rather than policy: he doesn’t have ideas that voters agree with, but he does have an inspiring life story — which, contrary to the myth of the modest maverick, he talks about all the time. The suggestion that this life story isn’t relevant to his quest for office was bound to provoke a violent reaction.