STEVEN STARK

Dawg days

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:58:44 GMT

The 2008 campaign is turning out to be our first-ever American Idol election
Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium.

Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium — the entertainment source that most often sets the trends for everything else in our culture. What proves popular on its airwaves more than likely will play in Peoria — and everywhere else.

Thus, given the popularity of reality shows, it is no surprise that, in 2008, the nation is being treated to an American Idol election. The search for undiscovered electoral talent has led the Democratic Party to nominate Barack Obama, its least-experienced candidate in memory. And this past week, the Republicans trumped that exponentially by elevating Sarah Palin from the relative depths of political obscurity to the nation’s center stage.

Though the show has well-known British origins, there’s something very American about the Idol concept, as anyone who has ever come across a Horatio Alger story or watched one of the 35 Rocky movies can tell you. But until now, the Idol blueprint had extended only to other TV programs — it hadn’t entered our more hallowed political realm. (Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken this long. Our politicians have always pretended to be more humble than they are, as anyone familiar with the career of corporate lawyer, a/k/a rail-splitter, Abe Lincoln knows.)

Today, politics are deemed above the pop-culture fray by the Sunday-morning talk-show set, but, for the rest of the country, they’ve been a branch of entertainment for years. Remember that, going back to the 1800s, politics was our national sport, with large cheering rallies, parades, and voting taking place in saloons.

Having television dictate our political trends is only an extension of that tradition, and it, too, is actually nothing new. The 1960 debates, right down to their format, were a direct rip-off of the quiz shows that had mesmerized the nation in the 1950s. It’s an odd concept that we should select a president based on an evaluation of who can stand behind a podium, in front of the cameras, and best answer questions. (That is, unless you’re so addicted to game shows that you can’t conceive of a better format.)

The only deviation we’ve really had in the configuration of those debates came courtesy of Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey, who popularized the idea in the ’80s that those in the studio audience, not the guests, were the real stars. So now in each election cycle we get one debate in which the audience gets to ask the questions and get some face time of their own.

Feeling Minnesota

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:58:07 GMT

If McCain wants to gain on Obama, he needs to achieve these four goals in St. Paul
The overall success of the event will largely come down to one question: how effective and memorable will Barack Obama’s acceptance speech prove to be?

Given that the Clintons often took center stage at this past week’s Democratic convention, the overall success of the event will largely come down to one question: how effective and memorable will Barack Obama’s acceptance speech prove to be? Of course, as analysis goes, anyone could have told you that.

Much more complex to figure is how to judge the success of John McCain’s convention. It will be a much different story for McCain next week in St. Paul. His convention will be more of a mini-series, with an ongoing plot line rather than a series of “special events.”

Overriding everything for McCain is the necessity to make his message in the upcoming week a far more positive one than it has been to this juncture. The temptation will be for the Republicans to keep lambasting Obama, because it has seemed to work until now. But without a compelling positive vision of change on domestic issues — which they have largely so far failed to provide — the Republicans can’t win.

With that in mind, McCain has to achieve these four goals during the upcoming convention to stay competitive with Obama. They are, in chronological order:

1) Pick the right vice-presidential nominee
McCain’s veep selection will kick off the week. If he makes a predictable choice — say, governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — he’ll be okay, but he certainly won’t reinvigorate his candidacy to the extent it may need to make voters think he offers a new, exciting direction. Who would do that for him? A bipartisan pick: if not Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, then perhaps Nebraska senator Ben Nelson — or even a dark horse.

Or, McCain could pick a woman, given Obama’s poll weaknesses with female voters. Former CEOs Carly Fiorina (of Hewlett-Packard) and Meg Whitman (of eBay) are probably out, because they undercut the GOP argument against Obama on inexperience. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — despite her ties to the Bush administration — might be worth the risk. If McCain doesn’t pick Lieberman, Rice, or someone who offers another exciting campaign “first,” his week will get off to a stumbling start.

By George, it's Barack!

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:15:58 GMT

To win over the working class, Obama should study the acceptance speech of George H. W. Bush
Right now, everyone is focused on Barack Obama’s vice-presidential choice. But historically, convention acceptance speeches matter even more.

Right now, everyone is focused on Barack Obama’s vice-presidential choice. But historically, convention acceptance speeches matter even more. When Obama gives his acceptance speech next Thursday night, it will offer him his best chance to recast his candidacy before November. Next to the debates, these speeches make for the campaign’s most decisive moments. They are the time when the voters first judge a candidate as a potential president. And, throughout the years, they have been the time when various nominees — from FDR to Ronald Reagan, and beyond — have set out the themes that have defined their candidacies, and even their presidencies.

In his speech, Obama really has one task: he has to make himself part of the great American story, so as to convince the average voter that he’s “one of us.”

So far, Obama has failed to construct much of a narrative to tie himself to the working-class voters who will decide the election. It’s not really a question of race, but of background and novelty. Here is this eloquent candidate who has seemingly appeared from nowhere with little experience. And, as the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan has pointed out, he has few traditional geographical or family roots. Obama has a different kind of name and little personal experience with institutions Americans know well, such as the military or sports. The jobs he brags about — like being a community organizer — are unfamiliar and even alienating to many Americans.

Yes, Obama has written a compelling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, which some have compared favorably to James Baldwin’s. But few are going to read it, and Baldwin could never have gotten elected president, to put it mildly.

Without a familiar narrative, Obama risks coming across as diffident — even an outsider — and his proposals for change will be received as if delivered by a foreigner. (That’s why going to Europe this past month may have actually hurt his image.) The task facing Obama may appear to be easy to define, but it will be difficult to pull off, because the soaring rhetoric he’s used so far won’t work for this mission — and could even be counter-productive. Speaking in a stadium full of 75,000 screaming partisans won’t help him either, since he’s trying to reach the souls of those sitting quietly in living rooms across the country.

Breaking the press

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:50:41 GMT

Democrats need to look past the media's feel-good coverage of Obama and deal with the realities of the campaign
The narrative of this campaign was supposed to be how a triumphant Obama rode discontent against the Bush administration to an overwhelming victory.

Rob Zammarchi

With the polls continuing to show John McCain giving Barack Obama a run for his money, much of the press has seemed flummoxed by the turn of events. After all, the narrative of this campaign was supposed to be how a triumphant Obama rode discontent against the Bush administration to an overwhelming victory.

That still could happen. But if reporters seem surprised at the way things have gone so far, it may be because their account of what has already happened is flawed. As the poet once said, what’s past is prologue.

The dominant narratives of this race have been how Obama upset the odds (and the Clintons) through a brilliant campaign, and how McCain mostly stumbled his way to the nomination, staging a comeback in New Hampshire and riding the momentum to victory. But maybe that’s not what really happened. In truth, Obama always had a much better chance of emerging as the nominee than the press gave him credit for — which is why this column even made him the slight favorite over Hillary Clinton way back in March 2007.

Yes, Obama was new to the national political scene. But in the primaries, insurgency is often an advantage, especially if the novice is as brilliant an orator as Obama. More important, because of Obama’s race, he knew that if he could get a successful launch in Iowa or New Hampshire, he could count on solid support in the African-American community that would guarantee him more than a third of the delegates needed to nominate. That’s one heck of a benefit, and he took advantage of it.

Moreover, Clinton was never as strong as advertised — in part because she’s not an exceptional campaigner, but mostly because of Clinton fatigue. If she could be beaten early (and she was), it was axiomatic that much of the support she had garnered simply by being the front-runner would evaporate.

True, Obama ran a creditable campaign and proved himself a brilliant fundraiser. But he was no powerhouse. Outside of a few states, such as Wisconsin and Missouri, he was never really able to expand his base beyond his coalition of African-Americans, the young, and the well-educated.

Every time he had a chance to beat Clinton decisively enough to force her from the race — in New Hampshire or Texas or Pennsylvania or Indiana — he lost. In fact, had Clinton not committed a major strategic blunder by failing to get organized for the large caucus states, she could have beaten him.

The reign of Spain

STEVEN STARK — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:42:44 GMT

Never mind the Olympics — the Spanish are the big winners of 2008. Are Obama and McCain aware of this new European powerhouse?
The winner is (drum roll, please) . . . Spain.

Illustration by Chad Crowe.

For the next month, self-important columnists will station themselves in Beijing and argue over which country established itself as the world’s biggest sporting superpower this summer — the United States, China, or maybe even Russia.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

But — news flash — the contest is already over. The winner is (drum roll, please) . . . Spain. This surprise sporting development tells us something about the diminishing role of the Olympic Games in the modern sports world, the power shift going on in Europe, and even something about the state of the current presidential campaign.

True, Spain won’t win all that many medals at the upcoming Games — but that’s beside the point. Despite all the hype about to smother the planet like a Beijing smog cloud, the Olympics will soon be unmasked as the overrated spectacle it is — one that is also long past its modern heyday, which occurred in an era when there were few other international competitions.

Today, of course, is much different. In terms of the intensity of worldwide interest, the Olympics pale in comparison with such events as soccer’s World Cup, and even the world cups for cricket and rugby. In the US, the Olympics do draw decent ratings, but mostly from a non-traditional-sports-fan demographic (i.e., women), attracted to both the “up close and personal” network portraits of the athletes and the focus on events that seem less physical than conventional sports (i.e., gymnastics).

But this year, even the patience of traditional US Olympics fans will be tested. Because of the 12-hour time difference between Beijing and the East Coast, most of the winners will be known via the Internet long before the events themselves are actually telecast here. Meanwhile, the audiences for any network television event are diminishing by the year — thanks to competition from the Web, cable, and other outlets.

So, even if the Chinese emerge as the upstart athletic power they have been quietly boasting they are, or the US once again fends off all challengers, fewer are likely to care than ever before — outside of China, of course.

A new armada
On the other hand, the Spanish have already won this summer’s triple crown, a feat that hardly raised a flicker of interest in the States, but that in many other parts of the world counted for a lot more than a bushel-full of Olympic hardware.

It ain’t over yet

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:37:36 GMT

The press has already started inaugurating President Obama, but there are still quite a few hurdles left for the Democrat — including John McCain
In the wake of Barack Obama’s triumphant European tour, the political press continues, by and large, to declare the election all but over.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s triumphant European tour, the political press continues, by and large, to declare the election all but over. “Virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed . . . point [sic] to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November,” write political analysts Alan Abramowitz, Thomas E. Mann, and Larry Sabato on Sabato’s Crystal Ball Web site. Michael Grunwald of Time agrees, asking, “Is McCain a no-shot?” Grunwald concludes that he probably is.

Obama may indeed end up the comfortable winner in November. But right now, there are a number of factors that still make John McCain at least even money — and by my current calculations, slightly better — to emerge victorious on Election Day.

It’s true that Obama has a powerful tail wind, thanks to the nation’s desire for change, and he is the most eloquent nominee since Ronald Reagan, with star power to boot. He also will be able to outspend the GOP decisively. And so far, McCain has failed to gain much traction against his Democratic rival.

But Obama’s head winds are just as strong. To win, he will literally have to rewrite history. Some of the hurdles he’ll have to overcome, as I’ve observed previously, include:

• No Democrat who hails from north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected since 1960.

• No candidate in the modern primary era has ever been elected in November after failing to win more than one of the nation’s seven largest states in either its pre-convention primary or, if the state didn’t hold a primary, its caucuses.

• No candidate in modern times has ever been elected president with a voting record that could be identified as his party’s most liberal or conservative, yet in 2007 Obama was designated as the former (by the National Journal).

• No candidate arguably since Abraham Lincoln has been elected president with as little political experience as Obama.

None of this is to say that Obama can’t overcome these historical obstacles, and he has exceeded expectations before. But as any lawyer knows, try to defy too many precedents and the odds begin to run against you.

Moreover, McCain has some cards to play, even if he has not played them yet. The press seems to be under the assumption that, because it knows so much about McCain, the electorate does too. The hunch here is that, while the outlines may be familiar to voters, the details are not. Few voters are intimately familiar with the specifics of McCain’s war heroism; or the fact that he and his wife adopted a little girl from one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages, in Bangladesh; or the personal kindness he has displayed to colleagues like Democrat Morris Udall, who McCain visited regularly while Udall was dying. By November, they will.

Eyes on the (yawn) prize

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:14:23 GMT

The biggest story coming from the campaign trail lately seems to be: Which candidate is more lackluster?
A remarkable thing has happened: neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done virtually anything to bolster his candidacy.

In the roughly two months since we’ve known the identity of both major party’s presumed nominees, a remarkable thing has happened: neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done virtually anything to bolster his candidacy.

There is, in fact, a historical reason for this. Neither McCain nor Obama have much experience running a serious campaign against a member of the opposition party. And, wow, does it show.

Obama has little important, translatable electoral experience of any sort, running against Republicans included. In his one statewide Senate race in Illinois, his major GOP opponent had to drop out because of a scandal, only to be replaced by carpetbagger Alan Keyes, a man even Republicans can’t stand. Though it was a landslide victory, Obama arguably won by default.

McCain may be the candidate of experience in this election, but that know-how doesn’t extend to facing off against a Democrat. He first won election to the Senate in 1986 against a relative unknown (he might have gotten a tough race from Bruce Babbitt, but Babbitt declined to run), and he’s faced only token opposition ever since.

Having a general-election novice as a presidential nominee is a relatively rare occurrence. The last two nominees who had such similar inexperience were Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Though both had faced tough primaries before running for president, neither had ever faced a bruising competition with a typical Republican. That helps explain why both ran general-election campaigns in which they marched steadily backward — as McCain and Obama have appeared to do so far.

For his part, McCain can’t seem to get traction, as he wanders from town meeting to town meeting, trying to attract a crowd and media coverage. If age is indeed one of his major liabilities, the fact that he can’t even get on the national radar screen seems to make him more ancient by the day.

Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, has been so lackluster that he’s taken a page from the playbooks of unpopular presidents by going abroad so that he can receive acclaim. (That, at least, seems to be working, but it’s a short-term fix.) And in the past eight weeks, the candidate who once promised to change our politics has begun to cement the impression among voters that he will take any position to get elected. That’s a big step in the wrong direction.

Soccer punch

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:48:49 GMT

There are, believe it or not, more hated Yanks overseas than George W. Bush: the Americans who own European football teams
When Barack Obama arrives in England in a few weeks on his celebrated European tour, he’ll probably disembark assuming that George W. Bush is the most despised American in Britain. If so, he'll be wrong.

When Barack Obama arrives in England in a few weeks on his celebrated European tour, he’ll probably disembark assuming that George W. Bush is the most despised American in Britain.

If so, he’ll be wrong. Currently, sitting atop the most-hated Yank chart is Tom Hicks, co-owner of the Liverpool soccer club and a Texas businessman who ran with the same crowd as the incumbent president when Bush was governor of the Lone Star state.

Hicks is part of a growing wave of Americans who have purchased English soccer teams (including the owner of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Malcolm Glazer, who now also owns controlling interest in the world’s most recognizable soccer team, Manchester United), convinced that owning a leading franchise in the top league of the world’s most popular game is a sure path to riches. Maybe so, but in the process Hicks — and, to a lesser extent, other American millionaires — managed to infuriate the locals.

To be sure, it’s not just an American gold rush. The owner of the Chelsea club is a Russian businessman — one of the richest men in the world — named Roman Abramovich. And Manchester City’s squad was recently purchased by Thaksin Shinawatra, the disgraced former prime minister of Thailand.

But such purchases don’t tend to rile the Brits nearly as much because those men, extraordinarily wealthy as they are, have demonstrated a willingness to pour hundreds of millions into their new clubs. In contrast, some of the Americans have been accused of being too willing to use debt to fund their investment, making the team appear to be subject to the whims of the market — which, last anyone looked, isn’t doing so well.

What’s even worse from the locals’ perspective is that men like Hicks — who also owns MLB’s Texas Rangers and the NHL’s Dallas Stars — don’t seem to appreciate the traditions of a club like Liverpool, which has a place in the city and the nation’s heart is similar to that of the Boston Red Sox . . . times a hundred. That’s why Liverpudlians are practically begging for a group from Dubai to buy out Hicks and Co., and there has even been talk of Liverpool’s fans trying to pool their money and make a bid of their own.

Is this thing on?

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:12:35 GMT

Rather than get a bounce from his convention, Obama might actually be hurt by the Democratic nominating event
In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama.

In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama, which means the Democratic Convention even has the potential to derail his chances for victory in November.

The press has been slow to notice the potential trouble ahead, but the Obama camp has not. In the past week, the media has rather dutifully reported that the key final night of the Democratic convention (Thursday, August 28) — the night Obama will give his all-important acceptance speech — will be moved out of the convention hall and into a stadium.

The story being spun is that the Obama team wanted to share its Thursday-night magic moment with the masses, and take a page from the playbook of John F. Kennedy, who pulled a similar move when he accepted his nomination in 1960 in an outdoor venue. In truth, the Kennedy homage likely had little to do with the decision.

Before the change, Obama was scheduled to give his speech in a hall half full of hardcore Hillary Clinton supporters who don’t particularly like him. So odds are that Obama was looking for a larger venue in which Clinton’s supporters would be only a small portion of the crowd. If things had gone ahead as scheduled, Obama might well have given a stirring address, only to have it met with indifference on the floor — and that would be too big a story for the media to downplay.

Already, even under the best of circumstances, the first three days of the Democratic National Convention aren’t going to give Obama the boost he’d like. He undoubtedly has to give Clinton a chance to deliver a prime-time speech and, no matter how nice she is to Obama, she (and not he) will be the focus of that evening’s broadcast. Bill Clinton, as is the custom for a former president — especially a popular one — will have to be given a choice speaking assignment, as well.

On top of that, Obama will likely have to share the stage — and further reduce his leading-man stature — by carving out time to honor the ailing Ted Kennedy (if not a speech by the Massachusetts senator, then some sort of program to celebrate him). Sure, all these speakers will praise Obama to the hilt, but his candidacy will still be playing a supporting role at his own convention.

Radical tweak

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:02:35 GMT

Conservatives are missing the mark on Obama’s vulnerability
Every candidate has vulnerable blind spots, especially one new to the national scene, so there are ways to run against Obama. But the current approach has a particularly fatal flaw: it’s untrue.

So far, Fox’s Sean Hannity and many of Barack Obama’s conservative critics have gone after the presumptive Democratic nominee for his “judgment” in surrounding himself throughout his career with such “radicals” as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former Weatherman Bill Ayres, and even Obama’s own wife, Michelle.

They’re on a fool’s errand. And, if the company he keeps continues to be the GOP’s principal criticism through to November, it will ensure Obama’s election.

Every candidate has vulnerable blind spots, especially one new to the national scene, so there are ways to run against Obama. But the current approach has a particularly fatal flaw: it’s untrue.

Say what you want about Obama, he’s no radical. Yes, he has an unusual name, but once upon a time, all of our names — whether Irish, Italian, or Hungarian — were considered uncommon. Despite his unfamiliar persona, his is a charming and conventional American success story — he grew up in a broken home, was raised by a relative, became chief editor of the Harvard Law Review (hardly the house organ for a bastion of bomb-throwers), and then spent most of his political career in the bowels of that well-known cauldron of Marxism: the Illinois state legislature.

Along the way, Obama clearly made the acquaintances of all kinds of folk — including Ayres and Wright, the latter of whom became one of his many spiritual mentors and has already damaged Obama’s candidacy all that he’s going to. But the pattern throughout his career indicates that Obama apparently cultivated these gentlemen — and undoubtedly many others — more for what they could do for him and his political career than for what he could do for them. And he has already disassociated himself from both Wright and Ayres, albeit clumsily.

Does that make him very ambitious? Yup. But if that were a disqualification, we could eliminate virtually every presidential hopeful in history, including John McCain.

Follow the flip-flop
So how could the GOP make an effective case against Obama? The same way almost every successful campaign has built a case against a relative neophyte in the past. The more experienced opponents of Barry Goldwater (in 1964), George McGovern (in 1972), and Walter Mondale (in 1984) each ran the same kind of ad, accusing their opponents of flip-flopping on issues. Those specific assaults, of course, embodied a much larger critique.

O's got a TV eye on you

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:49:07 GMT

The era of TV advertising in presidential general elections is over
With his decision to forgo public funding, Barack Obama can raise as much as he wants, giving him a huge financial advantage in the fall campaign.

With his decision to forgo public funding, Barack Obama can raise as much as he wants, giving him a huge financial advantage in the fall campaign. If he spends that cash on organization, registration, and get-out-the-vote efforts, he will absolutely get his money’s worth. But if he spends a major portion of it on television advertising, he will only be doing John McCain a favor.

That’s because the era of TV advertising in presidential general elections is over.

It expired without anyone’s really realizing it, a victim of a new media age — and terrible implementation. In truth, TV ads have never been that important in presidential general elections (as opposed to the primary process). They’re rarely very good, and voters have always had many other competing, and more credible, sources of information out there. After all, if there’s one thing Americans know how to do, it’s how to watch TV ads with a jaundiced eye.

It’s revealing that the few creative political ads the past generation remembers actually came in contests where the outcome was pre-ordained and consultants felt free to experiment. The 1984 Reagan “Bear” ad was a classic, for instance, but would Reagan have received any fewer votes had it never aired? Ditto for Nixon’s 1972 “Turnaround” ad against McGovern. The most infamous ad of them all — Johnson’s so-called daisy ad against Goldwater (created by the brilliant Tony Schwartz, who died this past week) — not only came before LBJ’s landslide 1964 victory, it only ran once. So much for its effect on voters.

To the extent that TV ads have ever had an impact in a general election, that influence has been sharply diminished by the Internet and TiVo Ages. Viewers now receive their information in ways that minimize their contact with commercials. Sure, advertisers still flock to television. But effective product commercials these days run far more often and strategically than do political ads, and production-value-wise, they are light years ahead of anything the candidates ever put out.

The proof is in the pudding. Remember those great ads from the Bush-Kerry race only four years ago? How about Clinton-Dole or Bush-Gore? Of course you don’t. Not even political junkies can recall ads from those campaigns, though they can remember the debates, a convention speech or two, and the general themes of the campaigns.

The Obama two-step

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:18:41 GMT

Now that we know for sure Obama is going to the dance, who’s he gonna bring as his partner?
Barack Obama lost his best vice-president option when Ohio governor Ted Strickland removed himself from consideration for the number-two spot.

Inundated with stories in the past few weeks about the end of the Clinton campaign and the rise of Obama-mania, the press missed the development that is likely to have the strongest impact on the election: Barack Obama lost his best vice-president option when Ohio governor TED STRICKLAND removed himself from consideration for the number-two spot.

The importance of vice-president selections is always overrated. But in Obama’s case, it will have more importance than usual, since voters will use this first “presidential” decision to size up his approach to governing. And in a close election, the selection could prove critical.

There’s talk among Democrats that Obama needs to pick someone as new and fresh as he is to preserve the “brand,” but the truth is that there’s more than enough glitz at the top of the ticket. What Obama needs is a reassuring figure who won’t get him in trouble, and who hopefully can bring him a key state.

That’s why Strickland made the most sense. There are no perfect choices, but Strickland, 67, came close. The GOP has never won the presidency without carrying the Buckeye State, and as the popular governor of Ohio, Strickland could have gone a long way toward putting it in the Democratic column. He was originally a Hillary Clinton supporter, so choosing him would have helped unify the party. His relative age and experience (he’s also served a number of terms in Congress) would have provided a nice complement to Obama’s youth, and Strickland’s appeal to working-class whites (he has a strong rating from the NRA, for example) might have helped Obama with a group he has so far had trouble reaching.

With Strickland gone, Obama’s best choice is probably Pennsylvania governor ED RENDELL, 64, another Clinton supporter, as well as a former Philadelphia mayor and general chairman of the DNC. Pennsylvania doesn’t have quite the swing-state importance of Ohio, but Obama can’t afford to lose it, and Rendell might help in neighboring New Jersey, too, as well as among his fellow Jews. (Would some voters balk at a ticket of an African-American and a Jew? Maybe a few, but they wouldn’t be voting Democratic anyway.)

And then there was one
In truth, all the other possibilities being mentioned in the press have major problems. The Virginia duo of current governor TIM KAINE and former secretary of the Navy turned first-term senator JIM WEBB might put the state in play, but Webb is too interesting (yes, that’s a downside for a veep) and outspoken to put on the national scene in a short nine-week campaign, when any diversion could be costly. As for Kaine, he’s as new as Obama is — hardly an asset.

Going Dutch

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:38:47 GMT

If Obama is to win the general election, he’ll have to crib from the playbook of . . . Ronald Reagan
One odd thing is already clear about the fall campaign: in it, one of the two major candidates, John McCain, is going to play only a minor role.

One odd thing is already clear about the fall campaign: in it, one of the two major candidates, John McCain, is going to play only a minor role.

Sure, he’ll occasionally get the spotlight, and there are things he can do to improve his chances marginally. But in the end, this election is about Barack Obama. The country wants a significant change in direction and Obama and the Democrats are the only ones who can credibly promise to deliver it. Thus, the results in November are going to come down to one question: can a significant portion of the electorate abide Barack Obama as its next president?

Right now, it’s an open question. And for Obama to get the answer he wants, he’s going to have to be another Ronald Reagan or another Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

There is always a threshold over which nominees must pass when the electorate decides whether a candidate can be trusted with the most powerful job in the world. For some, like General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, doing so is a cakewalk. For upstarts and more ideological purists, it’s harder. Obama, of course, is the upstart of upstarts.

The good news for Obama is that most nominees do, in fact, successfully make the transition, especially when there is an overriding desire for change. John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992 all faced an initially skeptical electorate and, through favorable debate performances and constant exposure in the general-election campaign, gradually reassured the public that it had less to fear from the unknown than from the known.

Upon closer examination, however, the Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton comparisons may not offer much of a precedent for Obama. After all, each of the three was a centrist who ran at his challenger from the right as well as the left. Clinton and Carter came from the Southern GOP base and founded their appeal, in part, on their willingness to deviate sharply from party orthodoxy. JFK, too, was a hawk on military policy, running against Nixon from the right on the basis of a purported missile gap.

In contrast, as his Senate voting record and positions demonstrate, Obama is as liberal as they come, without any public record of straying from his party’s left-leaning causes and constituencies. That means to win, he’ll have to replicate the Reagan experience and basically lead an ideological revolution that will redraw the electoral map.

‘Sorry’ state

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:59:03 GMT

How to eliminate a bad decision or policy misstep and win back voters
A leading theme among Democrats this year is how they won’t allow Barack Obama to be “Swift-boated,” as John Kerry was in 2004.

A leading theme among Democrats this year is how they won’t allow Barack Obama to be “Swift-boated,” as John Kerry was in 2004, or “Hortoned,” as Michael Dukakis was in 1988 when the Willie Horton issue trailed him all the way to the election.

When asked recently about his failed Swift-boat-response strategy, Kerry noted that he lost the presidential election not because he didn’t respond with the truth. “We did,” he said. “We just didn’t do it enough.”

Dukakis, meanwhile, attributes his loss to Bush the Elder as both a matter of principle and a lack of readiness — a readiness, he notes, which Obama possesses. “It’s quite obvious that he and the people around him know what’s about to happen and they’re ready for it,” he said, referring to the Obama campaign. “I wasn’t. I made, as you know, a deliberate decision . . . that I would not respond to the Bush attack campaign. Clearly, we [the Democrats] cannot do that. [Obama’s] not going to do that.”

But to build on Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s famous remark, those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat it. If Obama follows the advice of Kerry, Dukakis, and all the other Democrats who think the way to deal with attacks is just to keep answering and attacking back, he will end up in the same unfortunate position as those two nominees.

Though they’re often grouped together, the assaults on Kerry and Dukakis were much different. Those that were focused on Kerry’s war record — alleging his actions were not as “heroic” as portrayed — were largely false. And, unlike Dukakis, Kerry answered back at his accusers.

Kerry’s real mistake — and what allowed the charges to fester — was that he made his three-decade-old war experience a key part of his campaign, even beginning his acceptance speech with the words, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.”

Once he did that, his Vietnam record became a central issue and fair game for critics. And once one gives that much amplitude to a series of personal events that happened 30 years earlier, and that others experienced too, one is inevitably going to be subject to conflicting accounts and faulty memories.

So it went for Kerry. Yes, the GOP poured fuel on the fire. But he lit the match himself — a mistake John McCain is unlikely to make this time by making his war heroism a rhetorical centerpiece of his campaign.

Going both ways

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:24:03 GMT

Here’s a strategy sheet for McCain on how to defeat Obama.
Right now John McCain is doing better than he and the Republicans deserve.

Right now John McCain is doing better than he and the Republicans deserve. He’s essentially even with Barack Obama in the polls, despite belonging to the same party as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history and leading a dispirited and somewhat divided GOP. And he’s no spring chicken, so he’s facing an uphill battle leading a race based on “change.”

To win in November, he will have to run one of the best campaigns in modern history. How can he do it? In the immortal words of former California governor Jerry Brown, by running “left and right at the same time.”

1) Running Left
If McCain runs as a traditional conservative — just repeating a mantra of no new taxes, support for the conservative social agenda, and a continued presence in Iraq — he’s toast. Instead, as political analyst Dick Morris has suggested, he needs to run counter to some Republican principles and become a rampaging populist on certain issues — attacking outrageous executive pay, corporate greed, and high credit-card fees, for instance.

The way for McCain to dramatize his empathy for the “average American” is to ditch his coat and tie and get back on the “Straight Talk Express” bus, making a number of daily stops at small rallies and town-hall meetings. McCain is at his best when he’s in his leather jacket, surrounded by like-minded folks, as he was in New Hampshire. Campaigning by bus — the mode of transportation for the powerless — and hitting the small towns is an enormously powerful symbol, especially in contrast with what is sure to be the Democrats’ more corporate, big-scale approach.

2) Running Right
How does McCain run right at the same time? By taking positions on the various initiative campaigns that will get hot in the fall. California is sure to have a measure on its ballot attempting to overturn the recent state supreme court’s decision that legalized gay marriage. McCain should endorse that initiative and challenge Obama to do the same. Initiatives banning affirmative action are also scheduled to be on the ballot in five states, including the key swing states of Colorado and Missouri. Again, McCain should express his support and ask Obama where he stands.

Finally, on immigration, McCain has to walk a tightrope between isolating Obama and alienating millions of Hispanic voters who might vote for him. He should study closely state ballot initiatives denying public funding for illegal immigrants, to see if he can back them. And he can always return to the debate question that first derailed the Hillary Clinton candidacy by stressing his opposition to driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants — a position Obama doesn’t share.

Issues, shmissues

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:33:44 GMT

Never mind the complaints about how the media are not focusing on the issues. Historically, they never have.
During the past few weeks, we’ve heard yet more media laments from our self-appointed guardians of political civility, warning us that this campaign is about to go over a cliff.

During the past few weeks, we’ve heard yet more media laments from our self-appointed guardians of political civility, warning us that this campaign is about to go over a cliff. The usually sensible James Fallows of the Atlantic reiterated his complaint about “the way press coverage seems biased not against any particular candidate but against the entire process of politics, in the sense that politics includes the public effort to resolve difficult issues.” The often astute Joe Klein of Time warned that the election was becoming so trivialized — with discussions of flag pins and the like — that we would lose our chance to have “a big election this year.” The frequently insightful E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post concurred, arguing that what once looked like a big election, focused on the big issues, “has given every sign in recent weeks of becoming a small one.”

The eloquent Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker went even further. He described a recent debate moderated and televised by ABC, in which the questioners asked Barack Obama about Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s patriotism and other assorted personal issues, as “akin to a federal crime . . . [featuring] new benchmarks of degradation.”

Boys, get used to it. After all, it’s rather un-American to have an election that focuses on the “big issues.”

It helps to remember that this is the nation that chose in 1884 between the competing slogans of “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?” (attacking Grover Cleveland for fathering an illegitimate child) and “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine.” (When Cleveland won, his supporters sang, “Hurray for Maria! Hurray for the kid! I voted for Cleveland and I’m damned glad I did.”)

What was an issue in the campaign of 1860 — one that should have focused on the “big issues” like no other? It was how ugly Abraham Lincoln was, with one paper describing him as “a horrid looking wretch . . . a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man.”

As to elections that have focused on other trivialities, Paul F. Boller’s Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush and a number of similar works have recounted how political enemies went after Andrew Jackson’s wife, FDR’s dog, Martin Van Buren’s clothes, and James Fremont’s drinking habits. Thomas Jefferson’s failure to fight in the Revolution was a big issue in 1800, and one Connecticut paper warned that, if he was elected, “murder, robbery and rape, adultery and incest will all be openly taught and practiced.”

Dead heat

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:45:16 GMT

If the general election took place tomorrow, we’d have an unprecedented situation on our hands.
With a bit less than six months to go until Election Day, both parties now know their nominees with certainty.

With a bit less than six months to go until Election Day, both parties now know their nominees with certainty. And, projecting ahead on the basis of both current polls and historical voting patterns, the “Tote Board” estimates that, as of today, both John McCain and Barack Obama look likely to win a combination of states that will give each 269 electoral votes.

That’s right: as unbelievable as it may sound, if the balloting were held this week, our call is that it would end up in a tie. And that means the election would have to be resolved in the House of Representatives, with each state getting one vote. (Since this would be a virtually unprecedented event, the manner in which each state’s delegation would choose whom to vote for is not yet certain.)

Mind you, this is not a prediction. There’s a long campaign ahead — including conventions, the selections of the vice-presidential candidates, and four debates. By the time that exhaustive process is finished, one candidate is almost certain to forge a lead, and perhaps a significant one.

But making a projection today allows us to see, regionally speaking, where each candidate is strong and weak, and which states each must defend or pick off. Strategically, it can also help us to see how the candidates might plot their vice-presidential choices or an unusual strategy in order to put together a successful electoral coalition.

So, to the states:

NEW ENGLAND
CURRENT READING: Obama will take 30 of New England’s electoral votes, McCain will take 4

If Obama loses anything more than New Hampshire in this region (though he very well could win that state), his campaign is in real trouble. McCain will concentrate on the Granite State, which he has carried twice in primaries, and will hope to pick off a few electoral votes in one of Maine’s congressional districts. (Maine is one of two states nationally that doesn’t award its electoral votes winner-take-all.) Could he pick off Connecticut with Joe Lieberman on the ticket? It’s doubtful.

Connecticut 7, to Obama
Maine 4, to Obama
Massachusetts 12, to Obama
New Hampshire 4, to McCain
Rhode Island 4, to Obama
Vermont 3, to Obama

MID-ATLANTIC
CURRENT READING: Obama 83; McCain 5

Obama needs to virtually sweep this region, but to do so he’ll have to do better among white, working-class voters in Pennsylvania and New Jersey than he’s done in the primaries. Pennsylvania will be a prime McCain pick-off target, which is why there’s talk of Obama putting Keystone State governor Ed Rendell on the ticket.

Genie in a bottle

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:31:29 GMT

Obama can only hope his Reverend Wright problem ends up like the Clinton Gennifer Flowers scandal
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have split the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, sending the race stumbling along to West Virginia (where Clinton should win decisively) this Tuesday, and then beyond.

So, as expected, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have split the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, sending the race stumbling along to West Virginia (where Clinton should win decisively) this Tuesday, and then beyond. But the big story in the campaign continues to be the whole Reverend Wright affair, which has undoubtedly damaged the Obama effort, despite his impressive showing Tuesday night.

The crucial question is whether the damage is temporary or permanent. And one helpful precedent for Obama comes from an incident 16 years ago that you won’t hear the Clinton campaign mentioning at all: the Gennifer Flowers episode.

For those with short memories, Flowers was the Wright of the ‘92 campaign. She burst on the scene in the period before the New Hampshire primary, holding a press conference and asserting that she had had a long-running affair with then-governor Bill Clinton in Little Rock. Most pundits concluded that the damage to the Clinton campaign was close to terminal. (Disclosure: I was one of them.)

The fallout from the “affair” was enough to send Clinton tumbling out of first place in the run-up to New Hampshire, and Paul Tsongas won the Granite State primary. But in the months ahead, though Flowers resurfaced occasionally, the story faded and Clinton went on to win the Oval Office (and, not coincidentally, face future Flowers-like controversies during his presidency).

Obviously, there are huge differences between a sex scandal and one involving what your preacher happens to say in church. And there are enormous distinctions that can be made between 2008 and 1992. In ’92, a three-way race enabled Clinton to become president while winning only 43 percent of the vote. Furthermore, there’s now a huge cable and Internet universe that relentlessly fans the flames of every controversy. Still, the key for Obama is whether the Wright episode will follow the same course as the Flowers one did in the run-up to November.

Sliced two ways
The election is a mere six months from now, but six months in politics constitutes the proverbial eternity — which is good news for Obama. Plus, the “Feiler faster” thesis, popularized by Slate columnist Mickey Kaus, holds that stories burn themselves out far faster in the Internet age.

But there are two worrisome aspects of this episode that have the potential to continue to spell trouble for Obama. The first, of course, is Wright himself. There may be more tapes of incendiary sermons; he may make more appearances. In his Detroit speech, Wright mentioned that he’s working on a book that, in his words, “will be out later this year.” If it’s before the election (and if he wants to sell any copies, it will be — most likely in October), he will go on a book tour. And the whole controversy will begin again.

Emasculation proclamation

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:23:58 GMT

Is Barack Obama in danger of being outmanned?
Though the press and Barack Obama supporters often maintain the opposite, by the rough-and-tumble standards of American politics, Hillary Clinton really hasn’t run that tough a campaign against the Illinois senator.

Though the press and Barack Obama supporters often maintain the opposite, by the rough-and-tumble standards of American politics, Hillary Clinton really hasn’t run that tough a campaign against the Illinois senator. She’s broadcast very few negative ads. Her critiques, until recently, have focused primarily on Obama’s electability. Her husband’s attacks on her opponent have mostly backfired, generating far more negative reaction than positive. In fact, most of Obama’s problems on the campaign trail have come from stories emanating from the press — the Jeremiah Wright controversy and his own remarks before supporters in San Francisco being two examples. And, of course, Obama keeps losing key primaries, which isn’t doing him any favors.

But there is one Clinton line of attack that does have the potential to seriously undermine the Obama effort. She has begun to try to emasculate Obama — portraying him, in so many words, as a wimp.

Look at the recent poses Clinton has adopted: she downs drinks at a bar, wields baseball bats at rallies, and constantly uses the combative metaphors of sports. She demands more debates, while Obama ducks them. Her most successful negative ad (the “3 am” commercial) accuses Obama of not being able to keep us safe, which is, after all, the traditional male role.

In contrast, while Clinton wants to keep fighting, Obama speaks of a politics of peace — both literally in Iraq and at home with an end to partisanship. He’s never had any relationship with the military and, when it comes to sports, er, even though he’s claimed he could dunk in high school, and he did work out with the University of North Carolina men’s hoops team this week, he bowled that disastrous, gutter-ball-plagued 37.

Given the history of American politics, this is not a helpful trend for Obama, especially since, in his autumn effort to become our next commander in chief, he’ll be going up against a war hero.

Boys’ club
Like it or not, there’s always been a strong macho element to American politics. It began, naturally, in the days when women couldn’t vote, voting often took place in saloons, and participatory politics bore more than a passing resemblance to spectator sports. Thus, as early as 1824, partisans of Andrew Jackson were criticizing the supposed effeminacy of John Quincy Adams, a line of attack that continued in another form against Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, in 1840, where he was portrayed as “Little Van — the used up man.” (His sin was that he enjoyed fancy clothes and taking baths — indicating, if nothing else, that Americans have always enjoyed focusing on a kind of personal politics that the present Democratic front-runner seems to find distasteful.)

Gore fest

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:55:09 GMT

The democratic race is getting messy, which can only mean one thing: it’s time to recruit Al Gore
In the wake of Barack Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the Democrats have a huge problem.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the Democrats have a huge problem. On the one hand, they have a front-runner who hasn’t won a single one of the major primary states other than his own, who’s a neophyte on the national scene, and who has enormous difficulties attracting the white, non–college educated voters he needs to win. On the other, there’s Hillary Clinton — a candidate who has greatly diminished her stature on the campaign trail, who faces huge liabilities of her own (in part because of her gender and in part because of Clinton fatigue), and whose chances of winning in November would require her to thread an Electoral College needle.

Furthermore, the long, bitter campaign has produced an untenable result: a large portion of each camp’s supporters now say they are unlikely to support the intra-party rival should their candidate not win the nomination.

Therefore, if the Democrats want to have their best chance to win an election in November that six months ago it looked like they couldn’t lose, they may have only one option at this point: they can turn to Al Gore.

In truth, Gore would be a stronger candidate in November than the two front-runners. He knows what it’s like to run in a tough presidential campaign, which, as we’re finding out with Obama, is a huge advantage. He is, after all, a Nobel Prize winner; he has the advantage of now running from outside Washington even though he’s as experienced as John McCain; and he might be able to pick off a Southern state or two. He’s already won once — with an asterisk. And he could put the electoral focus back on the economy and the Republican record of the past eight years — which it will rarely be as long as Clinton or Obama is the nominee.

Sure, Gore’s entry would obviously not be greeted with waves of enthusiasm by Obama supporters. Still, he is quite popular with one of the Illinois senator’s principal constituencies: the young.

Against all odds
It’s true that drafting a new candidate at this point would be unprecedented. But the virtually deadlocked race between the two remaining candidates makes it at least possible.

Several things would have to occur — and quickly. First, some senior Democrats — with the help, perhaps, of a former presidential candidate, such as John Edwards — would have to publicly urge Gore to make a run. It would help matters enormously if this group included former supporters of Clinton and Obama.