I was reading an article in the The New York Sun titled "McCain- Palin Ticket Is Surging In The Polls" when a a remark by the article's author, Russel Berman caught my attention:
"The party conventions also crystallized the strategies upon which each campaign is focused. Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Biden, are intent on tying Mr. McCain to the unpopular bush administration, while Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin are branding themselves as mavericks who will bring reform to washington."
The next paragraph begins by showing how these directions played themselves out in television commercials. Campaigning has always involved showing your opponents downfalls to some degree, but was it always to the extent that a party's convention is remembered for it afterwords? Why wasn't Obama's main focus on showing his intentions once elected?
As we discussed in class, polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but they seem to suggest that people responded more favorably towards McCain's method than Obama's. Peut-etre??
8 comments:
Did you watch both McCain + Obama's speeches? I don't think there was as huge a variance in their speeches as the NY Sun would lead you to believe. If anything, Obama's speech was more specific about his policies.
I think this is a good example of a columnist just saying whatever comes to mind. Whether there is any evidence to it or not.
Possibly, but do you think that if there's anything to gather from this it's the fact that candidates and their campaigns are also getting sloppy and worthless in their campaigning as well as the mass media covering them?
I don't see any evidence for that. But I'm willing to be swayed. Do you have any evidence?
At the moment I can only offer what the columnist said, which was that it was essentially a McCain + Palin bashing convention. But this just brings us right back to where we started. Using your own insight, do you think the campaigning today is good quality?
Well, I can only offer my own insights. The recent campaigning I've watched personally have been the Obama-O'Reilly interviews, which I felt were very substantive and pretty brilliant (and you can watch them on the O'Reilly website right now).
I've also seen most of the recent commercials, and while both sides have been hammering the other, they tend to be hitting on the issues. Take a look at the recent "Education" spot from Obama. Is he attacking McCain and trying to link him to Bush? Yes. But there is also policy being debated here. (Well, debated as much as a 30 second spot can be debated.)
I also watched the "lipstick on a pig" and "fish wrapped in newspaper" remarks from the stump today. I didn't think they were as offensive as the media (and Palin's campaign manager) made them out to be. I also find it interesting that out of an entire speech, they focused on the one slightly risque comment.
Anyway, I can't recommend the O'Reilly interview enough. It's very short, but also a great example for how a polarized interview can be handled intelligently. (Also, I'm sorry if I came off as overly-aggressive earlier. The truth is, I've written for the NY Sun before and I'm still in reservation about their politics. Some of their articles/op-eds are very well-written and argued and some seem like the NY Post in dolled up language.)
Just to add quickly; I read a lot of op-eds (in National Review, the Atlantic, NY Post, NY Times, Washington Post, and others) and I'm very careful not to believe any arguments that are made. Transcripts of most speeches (if not video footage) is available online, and I've seen too many times where an op-ed said one thing and reality indicated another. And this is even with op-eds that I feel don't have an axe to grind. Read National Review for a day, though, and you'll see that when an op-ed writer has an axe to grind, their comments have an incidental relationship to reality. (To wit: After McCain's convention speech, Kathryn Jean Lopez exclaimed that he seemed energized and excited. Now, his speech might have been wonderful in many ways, but neither I nor the 5 people I was watching it with - both Republican, Democrat and Independents - thought it was energized.)
First of all Seth, can you edit the post with a link to the article? Second, I must say I agree with Mordy that without evidence to support that "candidates and their campaigns are also getting sloppy and worthless in their campaigning as well as the mass media covering them?" we can not and should not make this assumption. Additionally, I think it is hard to say that candidates are becoming "sloppy and worthless" seeing as we know that they are spending more money and resources in campaigning then ever before.
Cher Daniel, since when does money and resource translate into quality? The mass media is also spending more than ever before and we know where that's getting them. Here's the link to the article:
http://www.nysun.com/national/mccain-palin-surging-in-the-polls/85458/
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