The Competence Gap

The only mention of McCain's VP pick should only be to cast a bright shining light on how rash, reckless and desperate he is and how very far he has strayed from the center.  He is being held captive once again, as a P.O.W.  No wonder he is so obsessed with saying it.  He is now a Prisoner of W.  This pick makes tranparent the fact that he is no longer his own man.

The  far right wing radical faction of the GOP has completely hi-jacked his candidacy.  If  McCain were  in charge of his own campaign, Lieberman or Ridge would have been his VP not this Ann Coulter with kids whom McCain doesn't even know.  McCain is a complete puppet at this time and his puppet masters are the evangelical right.

McCain is now a tool of the evangelical right.  He is the front the evangelical right is using to fool reasonable centrist voters.  This is not a time to run a right wing candidate but they have clearly not  ceded power to the centrist candidate they have selected to trick the voting public.

As centrist as McCain might have been, he has no power to be who was.  He has become a tool and his (?) VP pick has made this fact absolutely transparent.   We must destroy their tool.  He IS the evangelical right now.  This is the real hiding of the ball.

He has licked the boots of Bush, Rove, Limbaugh all of whom attacked him relentlessly in 2000 and destroyed his candidacy.  No self respecting man would ever have anything to do with them.  This man has lost all self respect.  He is a broken man.  Bush and the far right have done what the Vietcong could not do.  The have broken John McCain.

John McCain is now a desperate and weak man.  He couldn't stand up for his own principles.  He couldn't stand up to the evil of Bush and Co.  He is weak!  How is he supposed to stand up to the terrorist of the world when he has bowed down to the likes of Bush and his legion, those most responsible for bringing America to it's current state of near collapse?!?!

Contrast that with Obama who was under all the pressure in the world from inside his own party, from the media every where to put Hillary ( and I do love her) on the ticket.  He didn't cave in.

Who do you think is in the shape to defend America against threats within it's borders and outside of them?  A shell of a man who couldn't stand up to the criminals in his own party and take control of his own vision and candidacy or a man who faced down threats and pressures from every side and did not fold?

Yes, the green background does no one any aesthetic favors, especially not-ready-for-matinee-idol McCain.

But the reason the green meme took hold was that McCain's speech in June was spectacularly bad, ferociously bad, election-ending bad.  He grimaced that rictus ineptly and it made people cringe.

Further, and most important, the June green speech was the same night as Obama's primary-winning speech, which was a cathartic stemwinding stunner.  It was compare/contrast night, and McCain showed badly.  The green screen just became guilty by association with the awfulness of the speaker.  I can't believe they let it happen again last night.  (And I'm glad McCain's team's Google image search didn't turn up Rex Reed.  Eeew...)

(Btw, it's not "beckon call"--though it has logic--it's "beck and call."  You're so good, Al, you might as well be perfect.)

Joy - I won't always approve "reposts" of comments from elsewhere, and it was a little much for you to post it on the previous thread and then post it again here. I've deleted it from the previous thread, and would ask that in the future commenters stick to conversing with original thoughts here rather than regurgitating product that already appears online.

As with when quoting from commercial media reports or other bloggers, when quoting ourselves, we should excerpt only part of it and simply link to the rest.

Also, for everybody's general information: in recent days some aspiring commenters have submitted comments that put the headline or too much of the text in ALL CAPS. Want to know why those posts haven't made the cut here? Because they have too many capitalized words, which make any website seem ugly and screeching. It doesn't matter what the content is: over-capitalization won't get past the goalie here!

(We can't complain about the lack of attention to visuals and quality elsewhere if we don't keep our own shop smart.)

is shocking in the incompetence it displays.

What the hell was a photo of the hospital going to do for McCain on TV, anyway?  Nothing but make him look ill.

As for the speech: right on, Al.  Good writing is done by one or two people.  As a communications guy, I can't tell you how many well-written pieces have become crap because ten people needed to get their hands on it.  I'm sure that happened to Grumpy last night.

Quite apart from everything else -- integrity, honesty, policies, readiness to govern -- Obama's camp is staffed by pros who know how to execute his vision for the campaign.

They may be the best we've ever seen.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccains_speech_b...

Apparently the same school was used as the backdrop in The West Wing for candidate Matt Santos, a character whose story many have noted bearing some similarity to that of Barack Obama's political rise.

If this, rather than a Google Image Search mistake, was the reason for the choice of background, in the hopes of somehow evoking that story for McCain, it remains clumsy and poorly thought out, but also betrays McCain's deep desire to be in Obama's position right now.

Al:

You are so hands on regarding your point of process comment.

Regarding the visuals, last night Cindy McCain was telling a joke or making a snarky comment during her speech and behind her on the screen was a a large field of corn.  All I could think of at the time was this was a subliminal message that her joke was "corny".

I wonder if anyone actually took the time to sync the photos with the contents of the speeches.  

Thank you, Al. Great post on the incredible incompetence of McCain and the Republican Party displayed for all to see.

Unintended consequences:

McPalin = http://tienle.unfiction.com/pobamatus.jpg

with the amazing ones from the DNC.
Obama's introductory video was done by the director of "the inconveint truth" Guggenhiem, Hillary's funny and moving tribute was done by the people who had done  "the man from Hope"
I was thinking last night that when I first saw the pictures of the RN and DNC stages, I thought to my self that the RNC  one looked classier, cleaner, and better.....of course I was wrong :), because on TV the DNC stage was more dynamic, the speakers had better lighting ( Rudy looked like he spoke from a place in hell).
I know these things are small, but as Al has said, the visuals really make an impression that can help or hender the message, and the Democrats aced their test brilliantly.

Thanks for the great work, Al.  Very glad you and the crew were in Denver. Never prouder than seeing Barack making that speech on Thursday, last. Working in Memphis to make sure we bring in the Dems this Nov. Will raise a glass to all the field hands when that day is ours!

At least the Obama campaign had the foresight to hold up all of Hillary's suits to see which one would look good on camera (that pic from last week).  So much for the Republicans being masters at stage craft.

While many do "mock the suggestion that because Obama is running a half-billion dollar campaign organization so efficiently that it's an indication of his executive skill", it does show that he knows how to surround himself with talented and competent folks, and knock off what was believed to be an unbeatable opponent.  The man meets every definition of a true leader, in contrast with his recent opponents and especially with the current occupant of the White House.

Hit out of the park again...

There is an excellent chance that it is this mental image -- the green screen closeup and the mansion/middle school long shot -- that people carry from this convention.  It just makes you shake your head, thinking how they could have gotten this far in the first place.

Al, I for one, am guilty of the "caps"...a holdover from my otherwise excellent public school education.

1) I learned to *type* in 5th grade on my grandfather's very old and very heavy manual typewriter, and of course there were no italics or bolds in those ancient days, so caps were used for emphasis.

2) It was also drilled into me to add two spaces after a period before starting a new sentence.  I have since learned that is not one-space- only "AP-style", and find myself editing everything I write professionally to take out that extra space.

Old habits die hard (just ask McShame), and I am trying to change my evil ways.

I'm still on a PC; trying to become a Mac...

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

I didn't see it on the previous thread so figured it didn't go through.  That is why I reposted it.

Keep up the good work and thanks for keeping us focused.

If I would pull off something like this doing some entertainment show I'd be fired immediately. But it's not just that picture and that obviously they never walked through the whole thing step by step as you normally would; the whole format of this night was wrong. They know McCain isn't a great speaker. These events are all about visuals, impression. So why place him in a position where he's visibly uncomfortable having to deliver a speech he doesn't like from an autocue he doesn't handle very well? These are too many blunders to be coincidental; this is what you do when you want somebody to fail. I think they screwed him over.

To follow up on a comment from PalGirl2008, I too thought the RNC stage looked better than the DNC one when photos were first released.  It is clear, however, one party planned with an awareness of TV, and one didn't.  Although the DNC stage struck me as busy in the still photos, on TV the backdrop to the speakers was fine, and not distracting.  With the RNC stage, TV viewers were either wondering what it was up there, why it was moving (the nausea-inducing flag), or why someone had chosen that image.   It was distracting, weird, and unintentionally humorous.

I also think role of speechwriters needs to be brought to the fore, especially after the plaudits for Palin's speech.  I may be wrong, but doesn't Obama write large portions of his major speeches? Comparing his remarks, both formal and informal, with The Audacity of Hope I am struck by how consistent the message is.  This strikes me as a good way of assessing what his reactions would be in office.  But if a politician is relying on speech-writers for what most Americans see, we don't have a true sense of what s/he knows or how s/he reacts.  This is perhaps a long way of saying that another competence gap is in performance in unscripted remarks — witness McCain's strange interview of last week, and Palin's avoidance of the press.

Stephen Colbert and his Colbertnation are gonna have a field day with this one!

And were worried about the Democrats screwing up this year?

While issues are nice, some people (maybe all people) react to the atmospherics and the totality of an event. Bad folks like Hitler knew it. Good people like Martin Luther King knew it. They knew that visuals and audio amplify a message, especially in settings where some folks may only experience the event second-hand by viewing pictures, newsreels, and sometimes listening to audio. I didn't listen to the speech, but just saw clips on tv and the Internet along with bits of prior tv coverage. It was bad-I remember a loud pink screen behind one speaker, and when I briefly saw the aftermath, the crowd itself looked gray, the posters flat, the whole atmosphere dragging. While I'm already an Obama Aunt, what does that do to people who respond to visual cues and are undecided?

The culture gap again: Maybe you can't get the kind of people who in their sleep put together those massive settings for rock tours because the two cultures can't even speak to each other, and the prejudice just seeps out when the fundi organizers talk to the hard-drinking, hard-toting pros. Maybe they are afraid that if they hoosh it up too much they will irritate the crackers that attend the convention, those who simply hate the cultural revolution of the 60's and would be freaked out at anything more colorful or daring than a Jetson's style backdrop. I mean, the average age there was at least 65-if there were more kids than Palin's there I didn't see them. The result of that is a drab, joyless extravaganza that simply didn't communicate to anyone younger than this 51 year old who remembers the lavish backdrops of the glam rock groups of the 1970's and the colorful psychedelic posters of the 60's.

Not only that, but I believe the Republicans are cheap-too cheap to hire people that can really pull it off. So they rely on the cheapest,most desperate talent they can find to do a quickie job. I remember watching tv last week and they were still building the set, and even then it looked plain and not very bold at all.

These people had months to do a much better design, to do a walk-through for the cameras, to have everything just so. Furthermore, since they were the later convention, they needed to be sure they could one-up the prior convention.

They did none of the above.

Haven't read through the comments - busy day! - but one thought about the Walter Reed google image theory: they were using a video screen, rather than a projection screen, I'm guessing (unless it was a rear projection...).  Thus, they'd require some *really* high resolution images to avoid grainy-ness.  That resolution is likely unavailable from google images.  (I couldn't find one on a cursory search.)

Just a thought.

Carry on with productive discourse and action.

Hey Al,

Walter Reed Army Medical Center is in NW DC (16th St. and Alaska Ave.), not Maryland.

http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=40

Barack Obama has given his answers to the sciencedebate. Of cource they give the impression of a competent campaign that gave thoughtful, realistic answers to all questions.

I especially liked this answer to the national security question

"Another critical role for R&D in national security is energy. Our petroleum dependence continually threatens our security, and my proposals for accelerating new alternative energy technologies will be an important part of my national security R&D agenda."

So, not only will Obama invest 150 Billion USD to research and deployment of renewables, efficiency, transmission, but will in addition use part of the military budget and its top-notch R&D scientists to the gain of alternative energy and make reducing oil use a matter of national security. I think this is the only way that such an issue can be addressed seriously and quickly in the US, by making it a matter of national security.

Cudos to Obama and his advisors, this is very good policy that will make the US a leader instead of a hinderance to solving global warming.

I think the green screen/Walter Reed thing is funny to those of us who follow this campaign close enough to instantly recall the lime-green backdrop from June. But to the low-info voter tuning in last night, I thought the repeated crowd shots over three nighs of the lily white GOP delegates interrupted by the cutaway to the same African-American vet in the black POW-MIA hat during the Palin speech for example, probably sent a subliminal message to all those hispanics, blacks, Asian, Arabs (in Michigan), and all the ethnic groups in America that the Republican party is not a place you can call home.  I  thought McCain might use his speech to make a play somebody but the flag-waving Caucasions.  If he did, I missed it. 

Which may be more dispositive (Al's favorite word) for this election is how they are sending Palin back to Alaska for 5 precious days (till Weds). At this point of a campaign, days on the road count. Obama knows it, Biden's a seasoned pro and knows it. They will be doing at least 2 interviews a day for 7 days a week. If there are off-days, they will be singular: just a day to catch up on a little rest or prepare for debates before hitting the trail again. They will be able to dominate press coverage everywhere McCain isn't because McCain will have no surrogate to get press time.

Worse, by going back to Alaska, the press will follow her-and get the opportunity to also interview all of those disgruntled people who apparently have a lot to say. She doesn't give interviews-the press will find people who will. She doesn't talk about what McCain wants to talk about-no chance to reinforce his message or reach out to people who simply don't know her well.

On the other hand, Biden's rollout was smooth as silk. He immediately joined the campaign and generated nothing but positive and joyous  press, reassured wavering voters, and is reaching out to undecided voters as well. He's added a friendly, witting, reassuring note of stability to Obama's change message.

So Obama wins the competence argument there too.

There were some amazingly bad images all week. Even during the vaunted Palin speech the backdrop was supposed to be of some mountain vista but the base of the picture looked for all the world like flames. The result, whether anyone consciously noticed it or not, was that when the networks pulled in for a tighter shot, Palin literally looked like the governor from hell.

Thank you for this.  The quiet competence of the Obama campaign is not often noted in the many discussions of his candidacy.  My admiration for the team he has built and their ability to accomplish their goals has increased enormously as his campaign as progressed.  More and more, Obama is demonstrating that he has the intelligence to develop a successful vision for the future, the judgement to select a capable team to execute his vision, and the charisma to inspire others to follow.

 I didn't watch Palin's speech, but that was funny. The Walter Reed middle school knew nothing about the use of the image and will be issuing a statement soon. I find it sad the McDraft people are so incompetent and still close in the polls. I get home in a few days, can not wait to get out there and do some good work for 'real change'.

Being colorblind I do not notice things like backgrounds. I think on content alone the Republicans have failed miserably.

Barack has a cadre of speechwriters -- at least three by a recent count. They are skilled in presenting things in the cadences and phrasing that reflect their candidate.

All told the professionalism and organization of the Obama effort as compared with that of McCain is as telling as it was in relation to the Clinton campaign.

When it works and works well, you don't notice it. Good tools, good user interfaces, good settings and backgrounds, good "optics" work when they don't put themselves forward.

Bad tools irritate, bad user interfaces frustrate (and enrage), and bad settings/backgrounds crep you out, make you cringe, or make you delirious w/ laughter).

It isn't easy to make it look easy. It takes hard work. So when things come out weird, like this GetOffMyGreenGreenGreenLawn, you know they weren't working hard enough.

Josh Marshall just posted that the School that ended up as McPOWs backdrop was also used by another candidate for president.  Matt Santos on the later seasons of the West Wing.  Hmmm

The message I got from this convention is that they don't have one.  They're going to try and bully people into ignoring their incompetence and corruption.

I just handed off some voter registration forms, buttons and bumper stickers to a volunteer who wanted them for a wedding where the bride said it would be fun to take advantage of all those people in attendance to do some voter registration at her reception.  During the course of my conversation with the volunteer, I mentioned to her that she could register the bride with her new name at the event, providing she planned to change her name.  Then I mentioned that the bride and/or the groom could change their address on the form, too, if they weren’t already living together.  We had to laugh because we both remembered a time when it was unheard of for a couple to live together before marriage.  Now it’s not only commonplace, it’s actually normal now.  I guess that’s one of the benefits of cultural revolution.

Who knew, however, back when we were experimenting with drugs and free love in Golden Gate Park and panhandling on Haight St., and going to jail to protest the Vietnam war that our little ‘revolution’ would still be causing problems forty years later?  I was just a naïve runaway back then and later, when I laid down in front of a government facility on May Day to protest the war, I couldn’t have had an inkling that people were being so deeply traumatized by what they saw as treasonous rejection of what America stood for.

I didn’t even know what the culture wars were until I read a piece on the topic by Andrew Sullivan.  Now I get that those same traumatized people are still suffering from it the same way John McCain is.  They are still parked in that moment in time and can’t move forward.  Perhaps it is because they realize, much as the sullen Confederates in the South have for over a century, that they lost that war and can’t forgive the victors.

America has moved on.  Men and women can live together before marriage; women can have credit in their own names; women can stay at work while pregnant; gays are so far out of the closet that there’s no turning back; contraceptives are now readily available; girls can look forward to a life in professional sports, a woman and a Black man can both run for President without it being a gimmick. (This is not to say that we don’t have a long, long way to go, especially where civil rights are concerned.)

I almost want to say to these people, “I’m sorry.  I had no idea this was going to be so difficult for you.”  I think about how important it was to us to reach out to Hillary supporters and to heal the Party.  Now I think there must be a way to reach across this huge divide to help heal a nation.

One of Palin's stinging lines against Obama during her Wednesday speech went something like this: "He never once uses the word 'victory' when discussing Iraq except as it relates to his own campaign." Nice one, right?

I happened to listen to a Fresh Air interview with Steve Coll, author of a New Yorker piece this week on the endgame in Iraq, in which he said (before the Palin speech) that David Petraeus NEVER uses the word 'victory' to describe the situation in Iraq because 1) it is too hard to define in the Iraq context and 2) the surge's gains are so fragile, and easily reversible. 

Since Bush and McCain often invoke Petraeus to bolster their own positions, I say that Obama might use Petraeus's non use of the word 'victory' to caution us against the delusions of John McCain who once cheered on the Mission Accomplished mantra of GWB in 2003 and now wants us to believe again that victory is at hand.

Well it looks like McCain got 38.9 million viewers due to the football game.

Hey, All, and Al,

I had that same reaction, that they must have screwed up and not seen the camera angle that would make a nice solid green background.  Now this is my area of expertise, so here's the deal.  You can't see it too well in the photo above, but in the wide shots you'll notice that the area behind McCain (the lower center of the grassy area) is artificially out of focus - it's photoshopped.  They did that to the projected photo so that in the tight shot of McCain, the background would be a controlled, soft background, not a mottled grassy texture.  So they actually did this on purpose, but idiotically unaware of the big fat one lobbed over the "Green Screen Challenge" plate.

And of course later after the background changed, it became a nice solid BLUE background which works just as well (actually given McCain's skin color you'd get better separation with the blue, because when setting up a screen like this for compositing what you want is a clear distinction between what you want to keep and what you want to replace).

So yeah.  Stupid?  You bet.  But accidental?  Nope.

38.8 million Americans (Nielsen ratings) watched the incompetence of McCain's speech....

McCain's numbers should be tanking by the middle of next week....

You can see the out of focus background (prepped for McCain's tight shots) here.

I just turned on the TV to watch MSNBC during my late lunch. They were showing a clip of Joe Biden at a town hall meeting in PA. Honest to god, what he said gave me chills. Seriously. I have Tivo so I was able to play it back so I could get it right.  I hope someone caught this on video!

Biden:  "Rick Davis said this election is not about the issues.  And everything I saw at the convention demonstrated that... It was about how well-placed, and boy she is good, how a left jab can be stuck prettty good.  It's about how Barack Obama is such a bad guy.  It's about how, in fact, they got great quips.. Man, they were like the kids.. you know when you went to school and you were very proud of the new belt you had or the shoes you had and there was always one kid in the class who'd say, 'oh is that your brother's?'  Remember that kid?  That's what this reminded me of.  'Oh I love your dress, is that your mother's?'  You know what I'm talkin' about."

<Here it comes>

"What do you talk about when you have nothin' to say? What do you talk about when you cannot explain the last 8 years of failure?  <standing ovation from the crowd>

"What do you talk about?  What do you talk about?  You talk about the other guy.  Look, I don't have to... Remember what Harry Truman said?  No, I wasn't around when Harry Truman was around.  <missed a couple words> someone said "give 'em hell Harry" and he said 'I'm not gonna give 'em hell; I'm gonna tell 'em the truth and they're gonna think it's hell'."

At least according to Rasmussen. They wanted to get across this image of the tough talking gal, neither afraid of mooses nor masses, and that part of the plan worked.

They DID contnue mocking the "Greek columns", as I recall in both Guiliani's and Palin's speeches, referring to the "styrofoam columns"...

McCain and company keep saying Obama will raise folks' taxes -- in ads and speeches. They are lying and Obama has replied in speeches, but I'm not sure that gets through to people.

I'm hoping that Obama is waiting, waiting until the debates to pounce on McCain and, in a dramatic fashion, say, you have been lying about my plan for a long time even when corrected.  How, then, can the American people trust anything you say?

Al, I felt so uneasy about McCain’s speech. I could not put my finger on why it made me feel sad – I had to sleep on it. Today it hit me, it gave me the feeling of a eulogy in a funeral. They dwelled so much on his past that it felt like they were celebrating his life. I don’t know why they went with that. Also, the images of 9/11, the slide show showing solders, the Vietnam memorial were jarring.

Since I am a naïve-tree hugging-peace loving young woman, I called my 73 year old grandmother, who is undecided (was until Palin) and she more of less felt the same. She also told me that Palen was a risky choice "a risk a 73 yearl old should have known better than to make." She also found her to be mean and devoid of substance. It remains to be seen what her impact will be on the larger voters but she seems to be rallying the base.

Once we get past the Anniversary Day the GOP has expropriated as their own (commemorating the day the warning memos Bush ignored came shockingly true), it'll be nice to settle in, blog about John and Barack - because that's who voters vote for - and leave the mention of the one-hit Alaskan wonder to the white male redneck bloggers her selection was really designed to appeal to.

I don't buy the concept of 'don't underestimate her.' I do, however, know that sex sells in advertising, so the guys who'd choose Bush because he 'seems like a guy I'd like to have a beer with' can be expected to follow the similarly shallow rationale of voting for the Palin-McCain ticket because they'd like to 'do her'.

So I'll blog about the ticket toppers. For the Mayor of Mooseberry RFD, I'll only mention indictments and investigations and ignore the personal side. I'm not gonna get drawn back into discussions of the side the GOP wants the focus on - the personal - for obvious reasons.

Besides, after unleashing the cheesiest sophomoric amateur snark I could muster (while high on Twinkies), there's just no way to top it, (or out-cheesy it) with actual facts:

http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/09/03/sarah-does-the-rnc-pt...

Just saw that clip on the MSRNC site (not sure how to link to those), and had similar reaction.  Biden was absolutely perfect in his words and delivery.  Really feeling confident in this ticket to handle all the spin.  For those who haven't seen it, be on the lookout for this clip on YouTube...it's worth the wait!

Although, there was a clip of Obama talking as well, and note to his campaign - Don't make jokes about terrorists bombing America, whether it's Wyoming or NYC.  Barack starts laughing when saying something like, "What are they gonna do, blow up a bunch of grass in WY?"  Uhhh...love ya man, but damn this is pretty basic.

Why is this concept so hard...Less is More.  Answer the question clearly and ask for the next question.  Obama had answered a question and just kept stammering on and on and then said the above.  Less is more. Rinse and repeat.

Allan Brauer in the last thread linked to a great article by Frank Schaeffer in the Huffington Post describing a type of Republican facism - on evident display over the couple of days of the convention, and exemplefied in the pick of Palin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/sarah-palin-americas-lips_...

Here's a compelling quote from the article:

The Fascist tactic that destroyed the democracies of old Europe was simple: mock and belittle your opponents, nibble at the edges of the rule of law, promote violence, and grasp at a weird religion of "destiny" (their version of American exceptionalism) with an "us" against "them" mentality, blame others, including the intellectual classes and the media, pit the working people against the perceived elite (Jews in Europe and today's university-educated Democratic Party leaders in America), take power based on grievance and fear and then set aside the constitution altogether based on claimed threats by outsiders.

I remember early in the primary season NPR did a radio debate between all seven of the democratic candidates. I wasn't very familiar with Obama back then, but I was impressed with his answer to the last question of the debate. The interviewer asked, when you leave office, what would you like to leave as a legacy of your doctrine, what would the <insert candidate name here> doctrine be? I think Obama went last, and he said something to the effect of "I hope there would be no Obama doctrine. This is what is so troubling over the last 8 years, our president is an ideologue, our administration is ideological, and everything is subservient to that ideology."

This is what worries me when I hear such nastiness and vitriole coming from the Republicans over the last 2 days. We don't want another president in office who sees everything in black and white and right and wrong and is willing to trash every procedure and law to serve the "right."

KD

After Palin's sneering crack about Obama's styrofoam columns, it seems somehow appropriate that McCain's backdrop would smack of gross incompetence...and with such an intriguing symbolic twist: wrong on Walter Reed/wounded soldiers.

PS. About that image - wonder if the flag was actually hanging on the middle school doorway or if they photo-shopped it in. Ah, the patriotism!

One of the appeals of the little strange guy from Texas, Ross Perot, was that he knew how to convert somewhat complex talking points to reality with his charts and graphs.  While I know SNL mocked it later, I thought it portrayed him as open and sharing his thoughts and ideas in an adult format and he ended up getting a HUGE percent of votes considering he was a third party candidate and previously not that well known.  So on the issue of the Repugs distorting Obama's tax plan, I wonder if the Obama team is considering something similar for the next 60 days - to convert his ideas of change to a charts and graphs presentation.  Thoughts?

p.s. maybe with a picture of 7 houses of different values representing 7 different tax incomes.  hee hee

Is Karma.

Just stick with me with me here a minute I know many might not appreciate my take here, but it just is so John Lennon Instant like...

You get back what you put out there. McCain throws out the unfounded incompetence and inexperience acusations at Obama all week long.

Look what he gets in return incompetence and inexperience in his own campaign multiplied and sent out on the day he should be riding high, for all the world to see.

Karma, an equal opportunity kick in the ass.

OT: Can we at least conclude that the McSame campaign is continuing in the hallowed tradition of Bush/Cheney putting the kabosh on any investigation of Palin's legal challenges? It's a seamless continuation of a heinous practice.  Are we inured?

that Gov. Palin apparently repeated the community organizer jib at an event today? Guess she hasn't learned that whilst the immediate crowd you talk to think it's hilarious, plenty of people in the wider audience are not impressed and all she does is fire them up.

If so here's hoping it has the same impact on Obama's fundraising and the volunteers!

Catherine - I think that's a great idea.  I was thinking along similar lines - like a list of important numbers any Obama supporter should know (see this diary on Kos, regarding the lie that is propagated right now by the Repubs re Obama's legislative record

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/5/04916/71376/372/587456)

If we could put the important numbers (95% will receive tax cut, 10 billion a month in Iraq, McCain votes 90% of the time with Bush, etc) in an easily recalled format (either visual, or maybe even mnemonic - anyone any good at writing limericks out there?), it could be pretty cool.  Remember - we are the campaign war room (as Al said)!

I'll try to gather what I can myself over the weekend.

KD

Al, I think you bring up an important point about theoretical "presidential text messages" that I hadn't thought about before and really reinforces the community organizer idea and movement of the campaign. There is no reason to assume that the day after the election the communication to all of the campaign supporters would end. Instead, as the team transitions to governance, the messages will reinforce the ideas and initiatives of the new administration! A nationwide coordination of motivated supporters and organizers is something I wouldn't have believed possible before.

Kevin Hayden wrote:

I don't buy the concept of 'don't underestimate her.' I do, however, know that sex sells in advertising, so the guys who'd choose Bush because he 'seems like a guy I'd like to have a beer with' can be expected to follow the similarly shallow rationale of voting for the Palin-McCain ticket because they'd like to 'do her'.

I think it has to be taken a bit more seriously than that. I linked to a story about a Rasmussen poll earlier, which reports that Palin is now more popular than Obama and McCain:

A week ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following a Vice Presidential acceptance speech viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% hold an unfavorable view of the self-described hockey mom.

It's not just sex, but her whole image of the moose and bear hunter, one of the boys, bush planes and salmon fishing, the great outdoors, lone ranger who takes on the bad guys while moving around oil pipelines and takin' no shit from nobody - Americans love that stuff. Some of the biggest brands of the country are built on it. She is the female Marlboro man, and many will understand or just don't care if she cut a few corners as mayor or governor or got some asshole trooper fired or whatever. Got $27 million in earmarks for Whateverville? Good for you, the federal government would have wasted it anyway. Palin could launch an outdoors clothing line or her own brand of fishing gear tomorrow and it would be an instant hit. So her speech was not really a speech and her ethics suck. So does WalMart, but it's still the biggest retailer of the country. And Marlboro gives you cancer.

Obama can't compete with that "brand image" because he is perceived as "urban" and too refined to be carrying dead reindeer around. Biden is probably doing well just pointing out the facts while being above it all, but the only person I see on the Dem side who can really hurt "Palin Power" is Hillary, because she has a similar roughness about her but with actual brains.

Update: There we go.

...it will be the funniest convention flub since the G.O.P. fiasco of 1992, the Buchanan/Robertson "Culture War" gathering where the closing get-all-the-candidates-posing-on-stage-together was accompanied by the orchestra playing a Broadway show tune...from La Cage aux Folles.

As I recall it, the Republicans didn't do too well that November, either.

Here's that clip of Biden.  How to talk to Repubs and answer the Noize Machine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEfwX6WWsKY

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=09&year=2008&...

KD

Contrary to Kaus' speculation, it's been reported that Palin's speech, other than the biographical elements, was written for a generic VP candidate well before she was chosen, and then "softened" a little for a female speaker (not that anyone could tell.) But considering the reports of round-the-clock coaching of Palin, it may well be that the McCain team was too busy making sure she didn't bomb and forgot to make sure <em>he</em> didn't.

From the Okkie link at 5:57:

"Mrs. Clinton always faces high expectations; Ms. Palin faced low expectations this week, and benefited from them. Mrs. Clinton can seem harsh when she goes on the attack; Ms. Palin has shown a knack for attacking without seeming nasty. "

Whoa there... without seeming nasty?  Now that's a stretch.

Here's one from the Washington Post comparing the candidates' tax plans.  Pretty good at-a-glance graphic.

Based on the poll numbers we have seen since Palin's speech I find it very dubious that Palin is having that significant of an impact.  Perhaps the McCain ticket will see more of a bounce going into next week, that remains to be seen.

She may have gotten high favorables, but I think it is a stretch to claim that she is more "popular" based on that poll question.

A more accurate assesment could be obtained if they had asked the question does Palin being on the McCain ticket make you more or less likely to vote for Obama.  Just because she has high favorables doesn't mean folks are more like to vote for her.  Plus if the media ever gets to actually question her on the issues I'm 110% certain those favorables will drop, and if the media is kept from questioning her on the issues I have a strong feeling her negatives will be driven sky high.  This avoiding the media will backfire eventually.

Considering the fact that the press was attacked by the right and now is being stonewalled in being given access, it is astounding the amount of spin and happy talk surrounding McCain and Palin in the media today.  Take for instance the headline at Yahoo a couple of hours ago: 4 Out of 10 View Palin Favorably!!  Um... that's not really that great, now is it?  What is with the cheerleading?

She's only spent a week getting beat up, compared to the many months of the other two.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/5/153224/4904/749/588112

This is too funny, they did not even take their own pictures, but used stock footage for the backdrops! Talk about cheap..couldn't they have hired a photographer to get original content that they could have used instead. For what they have spent on the convention they could have easily hired someone to create original content that would go with their theme.

Stock photos are great if you are doing something office-oriented and generic like announcements or birthday cards which will have to be done on a small budget and repeated.

At this point somebody would bring up the fact that Kos used stock footage for his blog. That's true in the beginning, but as soon as he could afford it, he bought the rights of that graphic so he could use it on merchandise. If Kos could do it, the Republican Party certainly could do that at least, or even better, create their own stuff.

I hope I'm not duplicating a post above, but this afternoon representatives of the school have something to say. The school board member for this district doesn't think McCain has the right to showcase the school based on his policies.

Over at TPM: http://tinyurl.com/5s9nfe

It's the stupidity, stupid!

(Apologies if someone has already coined the phrase.)

What is with the cheerleading?

The "cheerleading" has been the centerpiece of the BigMoney plan for decades.  After the social upheaval of the 50s and 60s, BigMoney, the mega-mega-rich developed a plan to put the lid back on the Liberal can.  There are all kinds of memos from various "think tanks" detailing this from the late 60s and early 70s.  Controlling the message was at the top of the list.

So the plan called for consolidating as much of "the media" as possible and eliminating any government involvement in the process.  They succeeded in these plans fairly rapidly and have been controlling the public discourse for a couple of decades now.  This is why people keep voting in politicians who constantly sell out those voters' best interests.  The hypocrisy and lies of the Booshes, McInsanes and Repubs in general would be exposed often with simple reporting in it's purest sense.  People like Shrub would never be elected if "the press" did their job even the smallest amount.

I actually think we've been able to influence the messaging more this year than I can ever remember.  The rise of the New Media, and the organizing we've been able to do for pushback has helped.  We've got Olbermann, Maddow, The Daily Show (how sad is that!), and so on gaining larger and larger audiences.  It's getting better, but we still need to grow the New Media  audience 10 to 20 times bigger than it is now in order to really combat these fools IMO.

So, spread the word everyday about places like The Field.  We all have options now.

From Chris Matthews

McCain as Repug maverick is like Robin Williams dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire.

I expect Jed will have the video up soon.

The thing that really gets me are the lies. If all reporters would do is fact-check whatever people say that would be fine with me. How hard is it to say: "That is a lie." But they fudge around, say that someone has given a great political speech, etc., even though it is full of lies. Al, you're the journalism guy here, and I don't know if there is a journalist's code (like the doctor's do no harm), but surely that must be the primary thing a journalist is charged with doing - seeking truth.

But I think (maybe) the American people too may be just getting a bit sick of the lying. Since Clinton's lie, we have been treated to hundreds of lies from the Bush Administration (I think there was some study that came out recently that documented just over 900 hundred lies about the Iraq war), and now McCain is doing the same outright lying - i.e., Obama will increase your taxes, and they are not calling him on it.

KD

Last night's speech was awful in terms of both delivery and imagery, but what was striking to me is the fact that John McCain completely destroyed what little was left of the experience argument. In fact, he reminds me a lot of Hillary Clinton during the primaries - when she was comfortable it was all about her experience and inevitability, but once the shock of Iowa and the dismal internal polling showed up on the radar, she tried to co-opt Obama's change message, with disastrous results. When given the choice between real change and change-lite, the people will mostly go for the real thing. Interestingly, Hillary switched back to experience after February, but her lack of an overriding message hurt her.

I see the same thing in John McCain - he can't decide what line of attack to use. Today, it's that ad with the grating narrator that sounds like my angry grandmother. Tomorrow, it will be experience. I'm not worried about the right-wing this time around - they were fully mobilized in 2004, and at the height of their ascendency, still only managed to beat Kerry by 3% and 100,000 questionable votes in Ohio. This time, our base is energized, we're working on the Independents, and the competence gap, as Al brilliantly puts it, is the largest I've seen since Clinton-Dole. Perhaps it will start to approach Nixon-McGovern levels soon.

Karen:  I agree about the lies.  It drives me absolutely crazy.  My poor sister keeps calling me half hysterical about it.  I have sent her a link to Al's blog.  It helps my sanity and I figure it might hers.

Ugh.  I do have a piece of trivia tonight.  It just so happens that our weekly alternative newspaper ran a piece on a very special ad man.  This ad man is named Fred Davis.  Yes, the one that Rick Davis blamed for the infamous Walter Reed Middle School photo.  He happens to be the nephew of our own "infamous" James Inhofe and an okie.  You know, I love my town and I have made a good life for myself in Oklahoma but dammit!!!  I hate living in a red state.  Although, taking a cue from Al, I figure I am better off being here doing what I do then moving to where most my family lives, which is in California and Indiana....

How can change happen if you don't sit in the reddest of states and push the boundaries?

Anyway, I was starting to rant.  Here is a truncated article on the guy.  He was the "genius" behind the celeb ads too.  I think he is living in a different decade before teh internets.  Here is the link.

Fred Davis 

One of my specialties is making visually engaging slide sets, usually in Keynote, which is miles ahead of PowerPoint.  I'd be happy to help put something together if you need help, but I won't have any time to gather data any time soon.  

There are lots of cool ways to present data so that people get it.  This would be a fun challenge.

celandry45[at]comcast[dot]net

That sounds great. I'm going to look at the numbers in the economic plans this weekend - if anyone else wants to do any others?

KD

Bonkers, you provided a cogent analysis of what we are facing.

"Truth'" is what you fight for and establish as being manifest, reality--it unfolds, and is in a different level of logic than 2 + 2 = 4. Truth is a different animal, it is dynamic and ecstatic.

The population is under the thrall of massive, incessant corporate propaganda. They manipulate perceptions and attitudes.

The lack of substance from McLame and Palin is a perfect example of how the plutocracy controls the game.

There exists a vast web of symbology and ideology that undergirds the US collective conciousness. Huge swaths of alienated, exploited citizens DON'T vote. We have to try to change that in a relatively short amount of time. The US public is a bewildered herd that is subject to incredible brainwashing, and this is tied to business and major economic players.

Instead of being lost in the fun-house we have to organize our way out.

Obama is trying, but we have to buckel-down in these last two months. Focus on the issues, and don't become distracted by extraneous bull shit.

On the policy/ideas front, we win. On the level of knee-jerk ideology and fear, they win.

McLame is McSame as Bush. Why would you reward a political party and ideology that sells out America.

In my view O-man needs to ramp-up the economic populism going into the homestretch.

Don't panick--our instincts and ideas are better than the folks we oppose. Let's drive that home.

Okke--wow, I love what you say here. You're onto it! Let's look for those openings that the plutocrats and their robots have left undefended.

Chris Landry, please email me at ecocentricsolutions@earthlink.net.

Julie, can you link your group's most excellent song--"Spaceman".

I love that song.

Your offer sounds really interesting.  Besides pointing out the tax cut difference to individuals, it seems some of the arguments (lies?) are about how small businesses would be taxed under an Obama administration.  I think that's a huge fear.  This weekend I will try and pull together some numbers to give to you to chart.

Also, the other economic issue is cap and trade. Quite frankly, I think Obama doesn't do a good job of explaining this.  I don't get it anyway.  I don't know, beyond the obvious simplistic definition, what it really means economically to the average voter.  How does it indirectly or directly affect their pocketbook?  To me it's a throwaway line when he's talking about global warming.  Again, some graphs that tie the economic to the global warming aspect of it would make it much more meaningful. Right now, I wouldn't doubt the average voter is thinking, "hmm, so maybe that means he is against free trade, huh?"

Here's another Biden clip from today.  Just as good as the other.  Damn, he could become another cure for chicken-littleism:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/obamaroadblog/gG5cnG

Fired up!

Hey Al and All,

I have heard that one of the first rules in picking a VP is that they do not overshadow the candidate. Well clearly McCain is in danger in this area. So I am wondering why that is such a no, no. Besides the sort of obvious things.

Just read that Biden is going to do the full hour of "Meet the Press" and Obama is going to do ABC This Week. Good. If McCain is spurning the press, let our guys take up the media time.

McCain thinks he can win this election with talk radio and People Magazine. We are all going to find out if he's right.

Via Hillzoy, Edge of the West has some numbers on new voter registrations. No wonder the Republicans now see community organizers as a new enemy! This is amazing - when you see it in one place and think "one at a time, one at a time" the small drops in the bucket are making a new powerful wave - well done, all!

See his original post for more info.

The Washington Post graph that Allan links to is deceptive, if unintentionally so. It provides an "average cut" for each candidate's tax plan, but in this case the "average" is significantly distorted by outliers. Fewer than 3% of U.S. households have incomes in excess of $200,000. If you take an average across the other 97% of U.S. households, Obama's tax plan provides greater average savings. It's not until you factor in households with incomes greater than $600,000 (less than 1% of the population) that McCain's plan appears to provide greater "average" savings.

Put differently, Obama's plan provides greater average savings for 99% of the population. The Post ought to have called this out.

I'd be glad to share my spreadsheet on this.

Catherine/Karen/Chris - you could embed the calculator that someone had linked to the other day.  Who was that?  Remember, you enter your income and it would show your Obama tax cut.  I would like to see the McCain numbers side by side.  How can be so friggin' difficult to get the word out that taxes on those making less than $250 go down??  And there's another ad out today saying, "Obama will raise your taxes."

I sure hope you're right about the average Joe being able to (eventually) detect the competence gap.  It seems to me we are in some pretty uncharted territory here.  This election is starting to become American Idol Meets the White House.  I just hope folks treat it more seriously than that.  I like George Clooney but that doesn't mean I want him to run the country.  But what about the population at large?

Also, has there ever been a VP candidate that overshadows the Pres??  How does that play?

Those 30 offices in Va are making a difference:  8 out of 9 eligible voters are now registered.  Kaine has vowed a clean election with no lines for hours and many, many officials dedicated to monitoring machines and poll locations.

That is very encouraging.

@Amy,

Thanks for posting this as -wow - I didn't realize there was this type of disparity in the numbers of Democrats to Republican new registrations!! How exciting!  I just sent it to all my friends who need to get out and do some work on the weekend for that Obama guy.

It would be great to see the breakdown by party in some of the other swing states but I guess that will remain a wish only if the state doesn't report it. 

I'm going to Georgia to register voters even though CV is that it won't go blue this year . I'm going to do my part to prove them wrong!

@Riley - yeah, I noticed the same thing about the average - it's really a meaningless number the way it's shown.

@Tara - don't those stupid ads drive you nuts! And people totally believe it.  Most of these guys I work with in Chicago (who like to fancy themselves upper income but don't want to admit that we all know they make less than $250,000 a year) all talk about how Obama is going to put them in the poor house.  I swear they were all brainwashed about Democrats = high taxes before they were potty trained.

Two, he appeared to be standing on its lawn (as in "get off my lawn you kids," and I had wondered for a moment if the Alaskan Independence Army had kidnapped the top of the ticket and replaced him with Mike Gravel).

I had no inclination to vote for Gravel, but I have to say that nobody willing to go along with the ObamaGirl act fits the "get off my lawn you kids" profile. Gravel at least has a sense of humor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI6PA4v6dZg

McCain on the other hand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7YTf08xjpE

Tom.

Stephen Hunt:

Did I promise a song last night?  No wonder I had a headache at work today.  ;-)

:-)  I love this song though.  Music. Natalie Merchant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrlZ1w7XHfw

T'ai and Moondancer, the coincidences are just too amazing.  First confuse the hospital for the middle school, but not just any middle school, but one used in a TV show.  I bet Al is right.  Sabotage!

I've been crunching some numbers for a different project, but I ran an excel calculation for this comment, because I think it is rather telling in light of Al's blog entry. (Though given the hour, I'm quite convinced I'm pissing numbers into the wind here -- which seems to be par for the course anyway -- but what the hey.)

For what it's worth, Federal Election Commission records show that for the entire 2007/2008 presidential election cycle through July 31, McCain's official campaign committee (John McCain 2008 Inc.) spent $1,664,225.77 on "staging; staging/equipment installation; staging/equipment rental; staging/equipment purchase."

Obama's campaign committee (Obama for America), by contrast, has expended $56,611,609.75 on "staging, sound, lighting" over the same period.

Now this a rough calculation based on how each campaign has classified expenditures, so I might be missing some variables, but I think it's a pretty good landscape snapshot.

And granted, much of Obama's spending in that area is due to his heated primary race. On the Republican side, the primary was far less of a show, so required far less effort in this area.

And finally, it's clear the Obama campaign has been far more of a rock 'n roll theater (and I personally like rock 'n roll) than any campaign in either party across the board.

But given these numbers, could it be that the contrast is particularly stark not so much because McCain's convention act was bad (though it was), but rather because Obama's crew (and the stage crews they work with) are just so far above the norm by sheer experience in the field that by comparison we noticed even more all the grade-school talent show wrinkles of McCain's stragecraft the other night?

Something to consider.

The Obama campaign is opening an office here in Southern South Carolina this weekend (Sunday), so I don't know if that's a symbolic gesture saying that they believe they can fight in the South or that they're going to use us to fight in Georgia, but either way, I am stoked!

For those who don't know, I'm a Chicagoan turned Michigander turned Arizonian turned South Carolinian (my grand tour of our country). I'll be attending our opening here on Hilton Head (yes, it has its rich areas but other parts of the county are very very poor, and I believe that there's plenty of untapped voters to be found here in the rural areas).

Going along with the good news out of Virginia, let's take back the South!!

Absolute Must Read:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/09/i-wasnt-in-st-p.html

GOP P.O.W.

2. Thanks so much for those Voter Registration Numbers

Obama's got more experience in staging? Surely everybody knows that Obama's done nothing. Zip. nada. Rudy said so. He's had to spend that money because he's just a raise funds and spend kind of candidate.

;)

(ok, ok, I take it back. Excellent point. It shows he's... experienced. heh.)

Susan, glad to see you're still tuned in. You know I always worry when that when I lay out a fact, people will somehow see it as an opinion. But the reality is that -- yeah, I have opinions, but no one in reality generally gives a shit about those -- facts are what we all base our opinions on if we are rational beings.

So I'm not certain what to make of the huge discrepancy in spending in that particular area in terms of rational science. But if you want my opinion, well, I'd say simply that campaigns are shows; you have a limited budget; and you choose where to invest it. 

Obama has put a good share, not all by any stretch, into what I consider the "art" of politics, the live show -- check out the Lincoln/Douglas debates (well, I guess we can't, but I bet it all started there, or maybe even earlier, if we stretch, back in Rome, or maybe Greece -- or Northern Africa, Egypt, so we don't forget our history).

Liberals are so, well, like money is evil, but most liberal have money. It is so disconcerting. Money is nothing more than fungible influence. The fact that Obama can raise as much money as he can, and the fact that he chooses, in the context of the biggest show on earth, a presidential US campaign, to invest it in stage presence, is to me not a negative.

Most of the folks that set up those stages earn union wages; and they understand the art of the human experience. So it's money well spent.

But at the end of the day, all the money in the world, as fungible as it may be, as influenctial as it may be for the weak, conservative and liberal alike, won't make up for what I deem rock 'n roll, what others might call soul. 

So you miss my point if you look only at the money; but you can't ignore the fact that money well spent can be a good thing, even for a liberal with money.

If I'm wrong, and I mean this as no insult, because I've actually tried it (both for real and because of my stupidity -- sleep behind a bush in winter and find a newspaper; and yea