NY Times: McCain On Offense, Obama On Defense
Check out this headline on The New York Times's wrap-up of today's skirmishing between McCain and Obama over war service and patriotism...
Now Obama is "defending" his patriotism while McCain is forcefully hitting back at people trying to disparage his war record? Is that what happened today?
This headline could just as easily have been: "Obama Rebuffs Patriotism Critics; McCain Defends Relevance Of War Service."
But since the story always has to be that Republicans are on offense and Dems are on defense, it goes without saying that The Times had to write the headline the way it did.
Of course, in fairness, it should be noted that Obama's disavowal of Wes Clark's criticism of McCain doesn't make it easier to make the case that McCain was on defense today and to some degree plays into the preferred narrative line of The Times (and, no doubt, other media outlets).
June 30, 2008 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
no, the point here is that the msm wants to tell the story this way, and will always do this, but sometimes Dems help them do it.
June 30, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hate to agree with Greg but this isn't the first time you've heard Bill Burton say "Of course he denounces and rejects...."
He's like one of Pavlov's dogs, and it is obvious that the McCain campaign is on to this and to how to keep the Obama campaign "on the defensive"
They knew what Clark was going to say or at least I did. I heard it last week and didn't even bother to watch Face because I knew exactly what he'd say.
This is MickeyMouse
June 30, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given what happened to Charlie Black last week, I think there's plenty of evidence that this behavior is not uniquely 'Democratic' but common to all politicians who want to 'win general election campaigns.'
June 30, 2008 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love it. Any criticism or truth-telling, or, God forbid, reporting about stupid moves by Our Guy -- who has made more than his share of boneheaded moves lately -- is "Democratic self-abuse."
Just line up and shut up, like good Party members, eh?
Thanks, Comrade. Hope your papers are in order.
June 30, 2008 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
My, my, aren't we defensive today?
There's nothing at all wrong with criticizing the candidate you support. But you've got to be careful not to let yourself be consumed by cynicism and self-doubt, to the point where you implicitly accept any negative narrative that the opposition or the mainstream media puts forth - because that's how you'll end up with John McCain.
June 30, 2008 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
That shitbag Sulzberger's reflexively defeatist attitude is also responsible for the Times's earlier endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Not to mention Bill Kristol's hire. Incidentally.
June 30, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am convinced that Obama is playing "defense" in a pretty offensive manner. In a couple of weeks his handling of the Clark flap will be viewed has having been better than are now willing to admit. McCain's shrill outrage just reenforces The patriotism speech was pure heartland American gold.
As usual the New York Times has missed the damage today has done to John McCain.
June 30, 2008 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen.
June 30, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dead right, ron
June 30, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see no reason for Obama to make a "major address" on patriotism. Why do Americans need a politician to tell them how to feel about their country? Besides, if Obama's big speech was anything like the one he made in Philadelphia after the Wright debacle, he'll be renouncing it soon anyway. Stick to the issues, Barack. You talk too much.
June 30, 2008 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
The need was based on the GOP using the politics of fear to galvanize the electorate. Patriotism was a subterfuge for folks being wimps who did not go along with the 'war on terror'.
Obama is using the politics of hope to tell the country that we need not to succomb to the fears and that we need to stand up as patriots and not give in to fears. He is highlighting their fearmongering.
Like Bill Clinton said ..if one person is appealing to your fears and the other is appealing to your hopes and intellect...you best listen to the one appealing to your hopes.
That is what Obama is about...LEADERSHIP and HOPEmongering!!
June 30, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
He was doing that during the primary campaign.
Now he's caved on FISA and missed a great opportunity to tell us it's time to stop being afraid.
I think a lot of people are eager to hear someone trumpeting that message.
June 30, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama looks weak and McCain looks strong. There was nothing wrong with the Times assessment at all. It perfectly captured the capitulationist week that Obama has had, from folding on FISA and offering a terribly weak defense of that, to repudiating Gen. Clark and throwing him immediately under the bus, the minute the right-wing started to criticize him.
It's just outrageous that Obama is caving in like this. He deserves all the bad press he's getting because he's just letting McCain walk all over him with this stuff!
He should have escalated Clark's attack and supported him, not renounced him giving McCain a needless victory that will prove very troubling the rest of the campaign.
McCain was a lieutenant commander in the Navy, got shot down and was a POW. That does not make him an expert on foreign policy and there's nothing wrong with saying it. It's just a LIE that Clark was attacking McCain's patriotism, but Obama backing down like this gives McCain WEEKS more publicity on this.
He'll be demanding an apology, insisting that Obama's apology isn't good enough, attacking Obama for "smearing" his record, etc. There is NO way to "defuse" this. The only thing to do is to ATTACK and that just seems to be the one thing Obama can't manage to do!
It's just pathetic weakness on his part and if he keeps this up he's going to lose the election!
June 30, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
WRONG.
The American people will realize that being a POW and commander of a navy vessel no more makes you a patriot than an ordinary citizen who dissents from his government not upholding what America stands for.
People have been cowed into thinking if they do not support the GOP's national security fearmongering that they are not fulfilling their duty as American citizens.
Obama told them otherwise, he is offering support and telling people to STAND UP and take back their government and not listen to these crazy saber rattling folks like McCain who want us to remain in Iraq another 100 years, simply because he is a war veteran.
He may have sacrificed for his country but his patriotism is no greater than the voices of dissent clamoring to be heard about the most serious foreign policy disaster in the history of this country.
There is more than one way to be a patriot. Leadership and public service are just as important as a military background when it comes to patriotism.
No American loses their status as a patriot because they did not committ to military service nor is their POW history make them a greater patriot!
June 30, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm starting to think, for the first time, Obama may well loose the election. It's not the media. MSM always seem willing to cater to McCain. Obama and his camp are sending too many delayed,mixed and inconsistent messages. They're playing defense all the time, almost on all issues and at all times.
Center? Left? Rigjt?
It seems, McCain is in control of the narrative. It was another wierd incoherent day. Denounce Wesley Clarke, Criticize Movon, Comment on the 60s Anti-War movment, and in return struggle to defend your own patriotism while get criticize for defending and not defending McCain's patriotism.
Obama camp better wake up and get ready.
June 30, 2008 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
What!? Kash?! I can't believe you just said that.
June 30, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you sense Obama slow on the tracks off late? It's valid critiscm? A concerned observation about someone I support.
June 30, 2008 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. I agree he's been a bit 'off' for my liking, but this doom and gloom? From you?
Ye, have little faith! :-P
June 30, 2008 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is not slow. He is building his case and taking it to the people. There was a lull like this in the primaries as well.
Do not lose faith. The American people have to first see leadership demonstrated on the issues and have the issues shared with them and they then come around.
obama is doing the right thing...he knows he needs the American people with him to govern and that is what he is about right now.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Obama is not waffling, stuttering stammering or hesitating...he is walking softly with a big stick.
It has been so long since the America public has seen this type of leadership that it has to be nurtured. The American people have to be reminded that this is THEIR government, that they are the ones with the power and the voice to change what is happening.
But first they must understand what it means to STAND UP and truly BE a PATRIOT.
Patriotism is not warmongering...that is the overall message.
So, hold your horses...the American people are simply being led to the water...and if you have faith in our power as a people to do what is right, Obama will win in a landslide.
It is time to TAKE back AMERICA...Obama is only telling them how that it is down and why it is the highest form of patriotism to do so.
June 30, 2008 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone else get how McCain is defending himself?
McCain Uses Swift Boat Vet Bud Day To Rebut Wesley Clark
Was TPM on the call today?
June 30, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anybody here read Al Giordano's blog, The Field? He'd really have a good laugh reading all the shit coming from you Chicken Littles.
Until Obama has an epiphany and realizes that all the world's solutions are over here among the readers of TPM, maybe we can figure out a more productive way to turn the shit sandwiches we've had to eat this past week into something positive.
I'd put my money on continued bitching, however.
June 30, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al Giordano new address in case anybody is confused:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/
June 30, 2008 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
And no, Al is not putting down his readers.
Al's got a new sweatshirt and he's doing fine.
June 30, 2008 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just sent this email to General Clark:
Dear General Clark:
Nothing you said about Senator McCain denigrated his military service in any way.
Senator McCain and his campaign are lying when they say you did so.
These people are harming your reputation, including your military reputation, with these outright lies.
Fight back by demanding an immediate apology from Senator McCain.
June 30, 2008 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
VoteVets has a petition
http://ga3.org/campaign/petitionclark
June 30, 2008 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
'riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification for running President'
zing check mate. Wesley Clark just owned McCain and now the Republican are whining.
:D
Just heard it on the Abrahms Report
June 30, 2008 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
See you guy's problem is that you're watching the elections too close, give yourself a break, we have a long way to November.
June 30, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant Special Comment by Keith O. tonight, a well-reasoned argument for Obama to forsake FISA, and the ways he could do it withtout continuing to dis his base. Unlike any SC I've seen before, this was not your huff-n-puffery, it was a critical analysis of a political position over what is clearly a judicial matter. He included a brief submitted to him by John Dean.
Turns out the bill exempts civil suits, not criminal proceedings.
To sum up Keith, the GOP is going to call you out and cry a river no matter what you do. It's time to give them something to cry about.
June 30, 2008 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
A lot of talking heads have been playing up the fact that the FISA-amendment bill does not grant criminal immunity.
So what? Those guys need to buy a clue. Dubya has the power of pardon and can use it to shield the telecoms from criminial liability. It's civil liability that he has no authority over.
June 30, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The MSM is going to be brutal to Obama until November unless McCain manages to catch him in the polls and even then it will probably continue to some extent. A) Horseraces are good for ratings and ratings =$ B) Obama is more interesting than McCain C) GE, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc etc are all big republican enterprises. They want to keep the races close until the very end and then have McCain win in a dramatic fashion. I am not a big conspiracy theorist but this I believe is absolutely true.
On the subject of Clark, I think if he hadn't said the 'getting shot down' comment, this might be a different conversation today. However, that said - I watched the interview and didn't see anything wrong with it, in fact I was very excited to see if the MSM would actually pick it up because he makes some very valid points that cut against CW and McC's supposed strength.
I am a little disappointed in Obama for the 2nd week in a row but he has enough problems with his own comments, much less defending Clarks and from what I can tell, Clark is doing just fine on his own.
June 30, 2008 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does anyone else find it ironic that Greg is complaining about a misleading headline which was obviously meant to put one candidate in a worse light than the other?
Hmmm.
June 30, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's June. He'll know when to really come out swinging.
The NYT story is just more proof of the truism "nature abhors a vacuum." Substitute the media for nature, and it works just as well. If there is no real story, such a story will be fabricated, in the form of "analysis." The day that news outlets focused less on reporting facts and placed more and more emphasis on "analysis" was a sad day for journalism
June 30, 2008 10:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is getting swift-boated in the hinterlands, by a whispering campaign. They all talk about how he is a closet muslim, won't salute the flag, linked to terror, was born in Africa. Then they say, "how could this be false when everybody is repeating it?"
Obama has given them easy openings, too, with Wright, insipid flag pin behavior, not briefing his wife that she'd better not say that she was never previously proud to be an American, etc. Bush's apparat defame McCain in 2000, Kerry in 2004, and now it is being repeated.
Bush's ignoramous base responds to this. Bush may not have been perfect, but would you really want a traitor in the White House? Ain't that a little risky? The same coalition is re-assembling: Veteran Swift-Boater Demagogues for UnTruth. It is going to take strength and agility to fight this.
July 1, 2008 3:11 AM | Reply | Permalink