McCain eclipsed as TV anchors follow Obama's foreign trip
It was only last Saturday that I was saying that I didn't believe a Guardian story which implied that McCain was raising more finance than Obama. I simply didn't understand how that could be the case as even the Republicans aren't that keen on McCain and the campaign that he is conducting is funereal.
Well, today, the same newspaper which printed those extraordinary claims, print this:Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, announced in an email yesterday that the Democratic candidate who broke all fundraising records in his primary campaign registered one of his best such months ever in June, taking $52m (£26m). That is more than double the $22m raised by McCain in June.
So, I was right. The claims that McCain is raising much more than Obama are simply false.
However, that nugget is buried inside another story regarding how TV anchors want to travel with Obama as he makes his way through the Middle East and Europe next week, and comparing this with the lack of interest in McCain's foreign trips.
This has produced anger within the McCain camp and sniping regarding what Obama is actually up to:His aides made a similar point even more sharply. "Let's drop the pretence that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is: the first of its kind campaign rally overseas," Jill Hazelbaker told reporters yesterday.
No doubt McCain's camp and people on the right will detect a whiff of "liberal media bias" in all of this, but the truth is actually far more simple. They want to photograph the crowds. Obama will attract them and McCain will not.
John McCain came to London and the city was largely unaware of his presence. If Obama arrives and holds any kind of public event people will rush to see him. McCain is very unlucky in that he is up against a political phenomenon, what McCain would no doubt dismiss as a political pop star.
But, after nearly eight years of George Bush, Obama offers a genuine break with vastly unpopular Bush policies and McCain offers a continuation of those same policies which are loathed worldwide. So it's not hard to see why Obama generates great excitement when he travels abroad and McCain does not. And it is for those reasons, rather than the existence of any so-called liberal media, that TV anchors are keen to travel with Obama whilst treating McCain's foreign travel as one huge yawn.
Clinton faced a similar problem when she was up against Obama and was forced to issue statements claiming that the crowds Obama was attracting didn't impress her. But TV loved the big crowds as they made great pictures.
McCain, like Clinton, simply doesn't provide the pictures; and TV likes pictures. It's that fact, rather than any "liberal media bias", which accounts for TV anchors wanting to travel abroad with Obama.
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2 comments:
I have to warn you though Kell that I do think Obama is in trouble with his fundraising. He apparently needs to spend a lot of money (got it from my husband who does his own browsing around for info) on his staff and that he already has spent $42 mil of the 52 he raised. I told him it was ironic because all this talk about how 'anyone' can become President is just plain not true when you see how it ultimately always boils down to the millions and millions of dollars you spent on a campaign..
anyway..good and scary news re. condi. She probably feels liberated to do more what she wants to do since the Bush regime is coming to an end..
Ingrid
Oh God, that is a worry then isn't it? I was concerned that his flight to "the middle" might put some people off.
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