No Message For You
Posted on October 6th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Schmidt’s hard-nosed determination to control the slightest detail is irksome to some members of McCain’s staff. One senior aide referred to Schmidt as “message Nazi.” ~The Los Angeles Times
That must make his job very difficult. Schmidt working for McCain must be what it would be like if the “soup Nazi” were not allowed to make soup. How can a “message Nazi” make people adhere to something that doesn’t exist?
Filed under: politics
IIRC, Schmidt ran the Bush/Cheney rapid response team back in 2004, and that background shows in the current campaign: the McCain camp has won more than their share of news cycles, but without a theme to the pudding those are pyrrhic victories.
I think that what’s very revealing here is that, for the McCain campaign (one could generalize this a bit, but I won’t), “message” has a very different meaning than it does for the rest of the world. As in “the sound bite deployed to win this news cycle” versus “an underlying theme or idea.”
In retrospect (well, we aren’t in retrospect just yet, I shouldn’t be counting chickens just yet I suppose) the combination of the financial/economic environment with a preexisting toxic environment for republicans may have made the race hopeless anyway, but with all of that, and an Obama team that has, in retrospect, run a very effective campaign, he’s still only 6-7 points back. So one wonders whether a more effective and consistent message might have made the difference. There ARE issues regarding which McCain could have made some appealing arguments. Education, certainly. His health care plan, while IMO problematic in some respects, has elements that could have been deployed in a politically effective manner. Perhaps more to the point, a more consistent day to day message would reinforced the “experienced, steady hand” frame.
As I said in another thread, maybe McCain is incapable of running that sort of campaign. But it is certainly true that lack of message discipline has been the biggest downfall of the McCain campaign.
‘ the combination of the financial/economic environment with a preexisting toxic environment for republicans may have made the race hopeless anyway’
The opponent is a black man with a foreign terroristic sounding middle name. This election is going to last longer than Bush/Gore.
If Obama wins we can look forward to the ‘One World Order’, “black helicopter’, ‘coded road signs’, militia and conspiracy movement from the 90’s to come back with a vengeance. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see Randy Weaver run for national office.
The message is, Obama is the Bogeyman! He’s your neo-Marxist Jason, the Manchurian Candidate who hates America and will finally kill her off.
“If Obama wins we can look forward to the ‘One World Order’, “black helicopter’, ‘coded road signs’, militia and conspiracy movement from the 90’s to come back with a vengeance.”
Add a collapsing economy, an unpleasant withdrawal (or at least drawdown) from Iraq, instability in countries that are heavily dependant on high oil prices (Iraq, Iran, Russia, Venezuela), stir, and serve bloody.
“The message is, Obama is the Bogeyman! He’s your neo-Marxist Jason, the Manchurian Candidate who hates America and will finally kill her off. ”
Don’t be silly. Everybody knows that McCain is the Manchurian candidate.
Everyone outside the echo chamber knows that he is the Manchurian Candidate, thanks to his recklessness and ineptitude.
The funny thing is that, while the truth isn’t usable (mostly because the relevant proof has been destroyed and/or is classified), the claim that McCain was a collaborator seems to be one of those “smears” that happen to be true. Mind you, he was a collaborator under torture, and only to save his skin, but collaborator he apparently was (in that he participated in North Vietnamese propaganda films).
I wonder to what extent his overly sensitive responses to any questions raised about his “honor” is rooted in secret guilt for his performance as a POW?
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