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MCCAIN'S PROBLEM IS WHAT HE'S SAYING, NOT HOW HE SAYS IT.
I attended a panel today on political speeches at The New America Foundation moderated by Steve Coll with Michael A. Cohen, James Pinkerton, and Jeremy Rosner. Rosner had probably the best point of the day. He said that the problem with McCain's speeches is that he hasn't figured out a political strategy yet:
"I think John McCain faces a deeper problem than staff shakeups which is that he hasn't figured out a political strategy. ... A lot of people have noted he's just very incoherently between the right and the center, between offshore drilling and $300 million prizes for new electric batteries. ... He just hasn't figured out a strategy for being a presidential candidate. My advice is that he needs to sort of place a clear bet on whether he's trying to do another Karl Rove base consolidation strategy or whether he's truly trying to gun for the middle and change the Republican party -- he just hasn't figured that out. Until he does that he's not going to solve the sense of inauthenticity that he's suddenly stumbled into, he's not going to solve the staff shakeups and everything else."
Cohen agreed:
"If I were to ask all of you here 'What is Barack Obama's key message for his campaign?' most of you could probably could answer pretty quickly, I'm assuming you would say change. If I asked you all the same question about John McCain's campaign message I'm seeing a lot of blank faces. It's a much harder question to answer and I think that's a key problem. I don't think he has a clear message of why he wants to be president or what he wants his presidency to entail."
And if all those faces were blank at a think tank, imagine how many more there would be at any political rally. Obama, for all his much-vaunted speaking ability, is really successful for a much simpler reason than most people realize: He actually has something to say.
--Daniel Strauss
COMMENTS (6)
And he is still barely winning.
Posted by: MNPundit | July 9, 2008 6:38 PM
OH,MY GOD,REALLY?
Posted by: michael_W | July 9, 2008 8:46 PM
I would say that McCain's central message is, 'I was a POW', with a sub-rosa campaign of 'ZOMG Obama is teh n****r!!1!'. It's a strategy.
Posted by: NBarnes | July 9, 2008 9:14 PM
Cohen's wrong. McCain has, in my mind, a very clear message on why he wants to be President.
He deserves it. It's his gold watch.
That comes through loud and clear with every utterance of "My friends...".
Posted by: howie | July 10, 2008 6:30 AM
In southern Ohio, we had a McCain visit yesterday that resulted in a lot of radio air time for a badly delivered speech. As I listened to it again and again, what struck me was not just that McCain was giving an awful delivery, but that the audience was manifestly unwilling to bail him out. We've all seen bad presentations where a supportive audience helps a speaker through (and we've all done our fair share of supportive chuckling and clapping). To my ear, JMac just didn't have the room.
Posted by: dr. john | July 10, 2008 7:59 AM
The differences between where McCain and Obama are right now, with respect to policy stances, reflect the different nature of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Republicans, as a group, want to defend the status quo in many ways. They have a short list of litmus tests for their candidates - tax cuts, social spending cuts, military action preferred to diplomacy, deregulate industry, and against reproductive rights. But Republicans - the big donors, the primary voters, the activists - rigidly enforce that list. You cannot become the presidential candidate and stray from that orthodoxy. So even where McCain wants to be flexible, he cannot.
The Democrats, as a group, have so many more policies they want to change, but the only policy they enforce on their presidential candidates is support for reproductive rights. Obama's ideology is not well defined, partly because the Democratic Party nominating process does not force a definition.
If the Democrats were a more effective party, they would produce candidates that clearly support universal health care, worker rights, a green economy, and a smarter, more realistic internationalism.
And if America wants to solve its problems and live in a better world, it needs Democrats and others to commit more effectively to those goals.
Posted by: Michael A. Shea | July 10, 2008 9:56 AM