McCain Tries to Define Obama as Out of Touch

“What you’re going to see is a great debate. Which is what the American public deserves. None of this negative stuff, though. You won’t see it come out of our side at all.”– Cindy McCain, Today Show, May 8, 2008:

McCain has completely reneged on his promise to avoid negative campaigning and is launching a determined effort to portray Barack Obama as an arrogant celebrity who is unfit for office.

The "celebrity" tag has been applied in an attempt to make the huge crowds who attend Obama's rallies into a problem for him. Once again, a positive is being pedalled as a negative.

Obama's popularity must mean that he is not as "serious" as McCain is. Fewer people are interested in what McCain has to say... which must mean that Obama is pedalling froth, a sort of Hello magazine version of politics. The irony is that McCain makes this allegation by stating that Obama is against offshore drilling at a time when America is suffering from high oil prices... two separate items which only a person who reads Hello magazine could possibly think were related.

The RNC have launched a site called Audacity Watch, which they claim is "Exposing Barack Obama and the Radical Left". I love how the left are always radical in the RNC's minds, whilst there appears to be no right wing equivalent.

Here's a quote from Audacity Watch:

We already know that he harbors a god-like image of himself. He sees himself as a historical figure who will be discussed hundreds of years from now — someone like the great emperors of Rome or Asia or the pharaohs of Egypt (are his people already land-shopping for his own pyramid?).

I note that there is no proof whatsoever put forward to justify this ridiculous claim and actually feel that these attacks are so childish and silly that they will actually harm McCain's campaign rather than Obama's. How can any sentient adult possibly think that this counts as serious political discussion?

Mr. McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush’s television advertisements.

The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Mr. Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.

“I would say that it is beyond dispute that he has become the biggest celebrity in the world,” Mr. Schmidt said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “The question that we are posing to the American people is this: ‘Is he ready to lead yet?’ And the answer to the question that we will offer to the American people is: ‘No he is not.’ ”

I am sure that there are some Americans stupid enough to buy into this horseshit, but I can only hope that they are on the minority.

This campaign is not a referendum on whether or not Obama is ready to lead, it is a clear choice between change and another four years of Bush's disastrous policies.

McCain is now attempting to change what the election is actually about as, if he debates on policy, he will certainly lose.

But to turn to such infantile tactics, after promising and campaigning for civility in politics, has alienated even some of his own side:

The sentiment seeped onto television on Wednesday with Andrea Tantaros, a Republican strategist, saying on MSNBC that the use of Ms. Hilton in Mr. McCain’s commercial was “absurd and juvenile,” and that he should spend more time promoting his own agenda.

This is McCain's latest attempt to turn back the political tornado which Obama represents. Personally, I think it will be futile and ultimately hurt the image of John McCain more than it does the image of Barack Obama. McCain has always been thought of as an honourable man, but that can't be maintained as long as he runs such a dishonourable campaign.

He started this week pedalling lies and he appears to be finishing it off by pedalling fantasy. At the beginning of the campaign he was viewed as a man of substance, a war hero. As he avoids substantive discussion and engages in little more than name calling it is hard to think of him in the same way.

This is beneath the man who has frequently spoken about the need for civility in politics. It's his own reputation which will be shredded here.

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Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, US election 2008, negative campaigning, RNC, celebrity