Tag Archives: mccain

END GAME ELEMENTS

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Since early in the primaries this blog has taken the
position that Obama’s strong element – the basis of his campaign – is Passion
(his ability rally people around a central motivating core concept) and that
McCain’s is the element we call the Antagonist (his ability to define the story as his struggle against whatever is between him and his goal).

No story element is better or worse than any other. You need
all five to tell a compelling story, and every storyteller has their own style and
preference. But it is fascinating that as we come into the home stretch that we have such a strong visual contrast between the two campaigns.

One the one hand you have Obama gathering enormous pep rally style crowds like the one he had in St. Louis where what he says is broad and inclusive. It is worth the click. This is “come on in the
water is fine” at its most public.

And on the other you have McCain and company saturating the
phone lines with highly targeted robocalls that define Obama as pretty much
whatever it is that the listener might find unappealing. Phone calls, even robotic ones, are by
nature private and personal.

Election day has both qualities. When you vote you get to feel that you are part of something much bigger than yourself – and you get to brag
about it by wearing you “I voted sticker.” And when you are actually casting your ballot you are totally alone with
your own deepest and most private thoughts and fears. It is a great story contrast – a suiting end to
a long and historic campaign.

KILLING WITH A KISS

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If you’ve followed this blog since the WGA strike –
boy, that seems a long time ago doesn’t it – you know the deep respect we have for Dave Letterman and the master storytellers behind the Late Show,

Here is Dave talking about John McCain. It is a prime
example of how a small personal story can make a larger political point
precisely by remaining small and personal. Done right, it can be devastating.

“I don’t know if I can trust him.” Have you ever seen a shiv
slipped between a politician’s ribs with more grace and style? And describing
Keith Olberman as “that kid with the really big head” gives it just the right
sense of good-natured balance. Masterful.

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

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I don’t usually comment on the debates. I don’t do
play-by-play and in story terms these debates have basically been yawners.

But one moment from the VP Debate has stuck with me. Palin
set it up early by conspicuously asking Biden, “Can I call you, Joe.” Then later
when he brought up McCain’s record she pulled the trigger with “Say it ain’t
so, Joe. There you go again, looking backwards.”

Biden’s reply when asked to respond by moderator Gwen Ifill,
“Gwen, as you know, past is prologue,” seemed awfully academic to me given
Palin’s down home diction. But now a video has come out that shows Biden may
have been doing a little setting things up of his own.

This video is long – 13 minute – so it is preaching to the
choir, but it seems to be designed to tell the Dem faithful what they need to
know to pivot character attacks on Obama back to their strong point, the
economy. Don’t have 13 minutes? The trailer is only 30 seconds.

In McCain’s defense at least initially he seemed to learn
his lesson from the Keating fiasco and he earned his reputation as driver of
the “Straight Talk Express” by being open and honest about his mistakes with
reporters. But now, in an analogous situation, he seems to be ducking even off
the record interviews. Am I the only one that finds that strange?

THE MAYOR FROM MAYBERRY

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Great stories always have an inherent symmetry. This is
particularly true of those stories written by history.

At the beginning of the Bush Administration in 2002 John
DiIulio, who had run President Bush’s Office of Faith Based
Initiatives resigned and called Karl Rove’s minions “Mayberry Machiavellis.” For many the name stuck.

But among Mr. Rove’s most useful political skills is his
ability to see the branding gems hidden inside many insults. Attack George W’s
grammar and miraculously his syntax will become even more tortured. Then Neocon
commentators will stress how “down home” and “mainstream” W’s wisdom really is,
as if most folks didn’t actually pass the seventh grade and most “ranches”
aren’t devoted to growing cattle but to producing an endless supply of scrub
brush that needs to be telegenically cut.

So it is to be expected that the Mayberry theme of this
White House might lead the Rovian Repubs to choose a down home Mayor from a
backwoods little town even smaller than the mythical Mayberry for the role of
VP.

And Sarah Palin, who got here training in front of the
camera as a local sportscaster for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, is playing it for all
it is worth. And more power to her. Her unique speaking style, so easy to
imitate and so brilliantly parodied by Tina Fey, is a form of verbal branding that will make sure her 15 minutes of fame won’t
run out who ever wins this election.

That her verbal style is a conscious decision – and so
worthy of praise – can be seen if you listen to how she responded in debates
when she ran for Governor of Alaska. The winks, nods, “aw shucks” and “I’ll get
back to yas” just aren’t there.

To see how effective this type of verbal branding can be in
building a heroic persona, listen to the Master, Andy Griffith in his classic storytelling routine “What It Was, Was Football.” One problem for McCain: If Palin is playing wise and steady Sherrif Andy,
who is playing the socially awkward, nervously erratic and occasionally irrationally
angry role of Barney Fife?

OBAMA SHOULD SAY NO RIGHT NOW!

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If McCain should say “No” to the Bush/Paulson bailout plan
that goes double – or maybe triple -
for Obama. And he needs to say it quickly and clearly. He can’t play “Lets Make
a Deal.” Any deal the House Dems can craft will be a bad deal. Obama has to say
“No Deal!” His status as a hero – his core brand of change – depends on it. .

Obama’s best explanation of what he meant by change was, “If
you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result you are crazy.
That’s why we need to bring real change to Washington.” He was talking about Iraq, but he could have
been talking about the financial crisis.

The Fed, under both Clinton and Bush, has been bailing out
financial institutions, one after the other, for years. It hasn’t worked. It
just makes things worse. Now under intense time pressure, Paulson and Benrnanke ae telling Congress that
if they don’t authorize the mother of all bailouts the whole system will melt down. Maybe they
are right. I don’t know. But it sure smells like a classic con. It’s like a man
running up to you at the carnival and saying “A guy just got stabbed back
there. Hold this bloody knife and I’ll get someone to give him CPR. Oh, and be
sure to touch the handle, OK? ”

The only group of rubes that might be stupid enough to fall
for that (because they really are big-hearted bozos) is the current Dem House
Leadership. Not coincidentally, they are also the only group that actually has
lower approval ratings than the Bush White House.

Obama needs to stay absolutely clear of this legislative
train wreck. And to do so he needs to go with one of his best lines in the
convention speech, “Enough”. Something like this:

“Enough. Enough panic, enough lies,
enough accounting tricks. We will get to the bottom of this and we are going to
get through it, because we are all Americans and we are all in this together. But it isn’t going to be solved by pulling an all-nighter then jumping on a plane to go and campaign. The days of fast fixes and quick bucks are over. It is going to take hard work and hard facts. And to my Wall Street friends all
I can say is calm down, take a deep breath… and then take your hand out of my
pocket.”

MC CAIN SHOULD SAY NO

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As I said in the last post both candidates should take a
strong NO position on the suggested financial sector bail out for purely story
reasons. Lets start with McCain.

Remember, this election is about America choosing its
“hero-in-chief” We are looking for someone who can hold their ground in a
difficult and dangerous world. In marketing terms it is about having a strong
and sustainable brand.

The McCain campaign has been pushing two related brand
concepts; 1). McCain is a maverick and 2) McCain “will fight for you”. Saying yes to this bailout seriously erodes
both messages.

By definition a maverick does not run with the herd, and
that goes double in the middle of a stampede. It looks like that is what
Paulson is trying to get going. The Treasury Secretary probably sincerely
believes that this is best way to save the situation, or it may just be that
this is the way the Bush Whitehouse likes to market its proposals (it does seem
eerily similar to how we got into Iraq and passed the Patriot Act) but that is
the current administration’s story choice. For McCain to beat the bad rap that
he is “McSame” he needs to separate himself from those choices. He needs to stand strong against the biggest special interest in
Congress – the Financial Products Industry. If he doesn’t his maverick brand is toast.

McCain also needs to say no to protect his only really effective brand slogan
“I’ll fight for you.” You can’t go into a fight by giving up before it
starts. And you won’t have much leverage to “hold the bad guys
accountable” and “make them famous” if you give them a blank check and promise
not to ask any hard questions for the next two years, and that is what this
bailout does.

So McCain should just say “Thanks but no thanks” to the
Treasury Secretary’s proposed 700 Billion dollar “bridge loan to nowhere.” His
political survival depends on it.

If you don’t think a tsunami of populist anger is heading
our way check out this ad I found on that bastion of socialist skullduggery –
Market Watch. BTW last Friday was the 13th Annual “Speak Like a Pirate Day” so in
the spirit of better late than never – ARGHH!

MONEY TALKS

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Not all stories are words. Some are told visually, some
numerically. The right spreadsheet at the right time can speak volumes.

A headline like the one I woke up to in this Sundays L A
Times:

“Bailout to reach
$700,000,000,000”

(with every zero in there for emphasis) makes it crystal
clear that the Market Meltdown will be sucking up all the story oxygen for a
many news cycles to come.

So how can the McCain and Obama campaigns get ahead of the
story and roll it into their candidate’s vision of the future? I’m not talking about political spin or
partisan posturing. Any hint of that will probably prove fatal. I’m talking
about how the candidates can use their points of view – the empathic connection
they have been developing for months with the voters – to help us all get
a handle on this problem. That’s what heroes do – they bring us together for
the common good by giving us a common framework to solve our problems.

How should Obama and McCain do it? Interestingly enough both
campaigns should follow the example of Nancy Reagan and “JUST SAY NO!”

The reasons why they should say no are different for each
candidate because each candidates story is different but the fact that they
should both end up saying the same thing – NO – gives me bipartisan hope.

In the next day or two I’ll go into details on the story implications for each
candidates. But to get an overview of the situation I suggest you check out
this interview Bill Moyers just did with Kevin Philips.
Philips first major work – The Emerging Republican Majority – was done
while he was working in the Nixon White house and laid out what became known as
the Southern Strategy. Since then his analysis has crisscrossed back and forth
over party lines. His book “Wealth and Democracy” is as good a macro analysis
of the problems America now faces as I have ever read. In this interview Phillips makes it clear that
current financial crisis is a bipartisan problem long in the making, with more
than enough mud to go around if we want to start slinging. Hopefully we
won’t.

To stay up on breaking
news you might want to try out ‘The Big Picture” blogsite if you don’t use it
already.

KATRINA WITH CASH

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There is a real symmetry between what is happening right
now on Wall Street and what happened in the 9th Ward of New Orleans
when Katrina struck. Both that hurricane and the financial down turn we are now in were acts of nature. Hurricane seasons brings nasty storms, and stocks go down as well as up. 

The job of a government agency – FEMA or the SEC – is to
make sure that as few people as possible are hurt by the laws of physics. But if you are a committed Neocon and believe that if you can’t have less government you can at least make
sure the government you do have will work less well, then the
crooks and cronies you have manning the levies and policing the street when the shit inevitably hits the fan will be predictably
incompetent. This isn’t a mistake. It is the result of doctrine.

According to Andrew Leonard at “How the World Works” John McCain is trying to get ahead of this story by calling for the firing of
SEC head Christopher Cox. Aside from the slight “lets eat our own young” aspect
to this, it is a good story move by McCain. A bad move would have been to say
Cox was “doing a heck of a job.”

But Cox alone isn’t the real culprit. Over at “The Big
Picture” Barry Ritholtz makes it clear that the real decisions that put us in
this mess happened in 2004. So it now seems there might actually be a smoking gun here. Unfortunately for
McCain if his suggestion to have a 9/11-style
investigation of this mess were to actually take it looks like there would be plenty of GOP
fingerprints on the pistol. 

If it is all seems too much
of a bummer to bare believe me I understand, and so does Jon Stewart.  He’ll put it in perspective. 

IT’S THE NEOCON ECONOMY, STUPID

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If you find yourself fighting someone you can’t lay of glove
on (say a legitimate war hero or a cute, plucky, hokey Mom) you could get down
in the mud and scuff up their heroic image, but you’ll end smelling like dirt.
What you should do is attack not the people, but their point of view. That is what makes them Heroes in the first
place.

This means that Dems shouldn’t run against McCain (or Palin)
– but should run against the Repub
point of view- aka Neocon dogma. And at least at first they should stick to the number one issue
on voter minds – the economy.

McCain’s statement that “the economy is fundamentally sound”
could be the gift that keeps on giving. But it isn’t enough to show McCain is
out of touch – no duh, right? That would be attacking the man. Attack the ideas
behind him.

Dems need to get voters to ask, “What caused the market to
crash?”

Experts agree it was the lack of adequate market oversight.
And most of the oversight protections put in place by the New Deal Dems after the Great
Depression in 1932 were scaled back after the Neocon Revolution swept through Congress after 1992. Who was leading
the charge to turn your money and mine over to “the invisible hand” of the
hedge fund hustlers? Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.

Gramm is no longer a Senator (he is too busy as a lobbyist)
but until he was caught on tape calling American investors “whinners” he was
McCain’s main financial adviser! Off the record it seems he still is. He,
and the ideas he champions, are the Dem sweet spot. If you are looking for a place to put a stake in the heart of the neocon market
monster – Phil Gramm’s chest is ground zero.

So Dems should drive one simple point home – "Markets go up under Dems
and down under Repubs". That is a fact. Has been for the last 75 years. If you are a
Dem, say it loud, say it proud, say it often.If you are a Repub – do you best to change the subject.

The best thing about Dems running against the neocon economic
brand rather than against a person is that Obama and Biden can stay out of a negative
tit or tat game of gottcha. Instead of coming across slightly rabid they can
come across as having a calm hand on the tiller. That is going to be key.
Because when the seas get rough I don’t want a guy at the wheel who “will fight
for me,” (McCain’s favorite phrase) I want a guy who knows how to find a safe
harbor and keep things calm on deck until we get there.

HOME COURT ADVANTAGE

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Central to our analysis of this election is the idea that
the campaign itself is a story and moves through the story elements in
sequence. The primaries are about who can fire up the party base and get them
Passionate about politics. At the convention each party nominates its Hero. In
the months after Labor Day each candidate works to define the Antagonist –
showing that the other party’s candidate is what stands between the voters and
a better tomorrow. This is when candidates and surrogates go at in hammer and
tongs. In the final three days before the election Awareness dawns and voters
make their real decision of who to vote for. The result is a Transformation -
for better or worse.

As we have said before each candidate has story strength.
Obama’s is his ability to inspire Passion, particularly among the young.
McCain’s is his skill as an Antagonist (that is he defines himself by what he stands against  – corruption, lobbyist influence, whatever). McCain’s maverick persona
is the natural outgrowth of this – he is even opposes his own party at times. This doesn’t mean he can’t be the Repub Hero. In fact, it gives the Repubs the current home court advantage because we
are in the Antagonist phase of the campaign. This is when “fighting words” are
key. And here the Repubs shine.

Two new attack ads came out today
that make this point. “Still” is the new Dem ad.  It is clearly true, but so what? Is it really news?
“Disrespectful” is the new Repub ad.. It might better be called “Uppity”. FactCheck says it is
demonstrably false – click here to see why -
but it generates lots of adrenalin. Which candidates name is more likely to
stick in your memory?

It is starting to look like Obama
brought a knife to a gun fight after all. He does have two prime surrogates –
the Clintons – he has yet to unleash fully, but if Obama doesn’t decide that
winning is more important than looking good he – and the Dems – are going to be
in for a world of hurt.