Friday, October 10, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN, BARACK OBAMA

In The End, The Candidate Has To Make The Argument

It seems safe to say there has been more detailed discussion of who William Ayers is, and how he connects to Barack Obama, in the MSM in the past week than there has been in the preceding three months or so.

The lesson? The candidate has to make the argument. Stanley Kurtz and NRO (and The Campaign Spot!) can write about it, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity can talk about it, Fox News can report it, but until it comes from the candidate himself (or herself), most media entities will ignore it. Once it's part of the stump speech, the relationship starts getting several paragraphs. For example, today's Columbus Dispatch:

McCain told supporters that Obama had not been truthful in describing his relationship with Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground, a Vietnam protest group that bombed government buildings 40 years ago.

Obama has noted that he was a child at the time and first met Ayers and his wife, ex-radical Bernadine Dohrn, a quarter-century later.

"Look, we don't care about an old, washed-up terrorist and his wife," McCain said. "We need to know the full extent of the relationship." Later, McCain told ABC News: "It's a factor about Sen. Obama's candor and truthfulness with the American people."

The Associated Press and other news organizations have reported that Obama and Ayers, now a college professor who lives in Obama's Chicago neighborhood, are not close but worked together on two nonprofit organizations from the mid-1990s to 2002. In addition, Ayers hosted a small meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995 as he first ran for the state Senate.

Obama made his "I assumed he had been rehabilitated" comment in his interview with Philly area radio host, Michael Smerconish. Voters in swing states are getting more exposure to Obama's ties to Ayers than at any time, when all

Having said that, a tie to an unimaginable figure like Ayers (or Rezko, or Pfleger, or Wright, or...) may not be at the foremost of voters minds at a time when the comment, "Hey, the Dow is only down 350" is an expression of good cheer.

In the end, we may conclude that for a Republican candidate to overcome this tough campaigning environment, he or she has to be A) extremely comfortable talking about complicated problems in the credit markets and how to fix them, in ways that will resonate with Americans who don't follow the markets and B) simultaneously comfortable making criticisms of his opponent that the MSM will scream are completely out of bounds. We've seen some movements in this direction, but it is not yet clear that John McCain has this in him.

10/10 01:47 PMShare