Monday, April 07, 2008 - Posts
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The Daily News reports that McCain plans to convene his doctors next month to discuss the candidate’s health—probably the first such group assembled since JFK to determine whether a presidential candidate would survive his presidency. What McCain should really be doing, though, is giving “the Age speech.” You know—to finally, once and for all, address that blight on our nation’s history, the divide between old people and young. Here’s where he could take it.
Start with a joke: [Tap tap tap] Is this thing on? Just kidding. No really, is it? I don’t hear things.
Compare yourself to other great old people: My friends, I am old. But you know who else was old? Ronald Reagan. He was 69 when he took his first oath of office. Come January 2009, I will be 72 years old. That means I’ll be even more Reagan-like than Reagan, if you think about it.
Claim good health: All of my 47 doctors agree that I am in excellent health. I have been cancer-free for five years. I did today’s crossword puzzle in less than an hour, and today is a Wednesday. And look at the upside—I have a personal stake in making health care better.
Confront your weaknesses: Some people say I am already beginning to lose my mental faculties. They claim that when I said al-Qaida is helping arm Shiite militia, that it was a sign of my deteriorating mind. I assure you it is not. I believe that shit, honest to God. They also say I am forgetful, and that I don’t remember things about our economy. Well, I assure you, my friends, there’s nothing to forget.
Cite your gene pool: If you need proof that age isn’t a problem, look at my mother, Roberta. [Audience applauds.] Roberta is 95 years old, and she can still beat me at the 50 yard dash. Shot put, too. She may say things I disagree with, but that’s not because of her age. She’s always been one battalion short of a surge.
Connect with young people: Don’t forget that even though I am old, I consider myself an ambassador to the youth. I know all about your Britney Spears and Fleetwood Mac. I may have been tied up during Woodstock, but I did attend a Kennedy Center concert last year with my wife, Cindy. Sorry, my wife, Meghan.
Close with a joke: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m older than Frankenstein, and I’ve got more scars than—wait. I’m dirtier than oldenstein, and more Frank than—dammit! Where’d the teleprompter go? Oh, there.
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New York has published a genius teleplay
by Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr., a former West Wing writer-producer, that imagines what a
brokered convention would look like. It’s got everything—back-room deals, prostitution, a last-minute
Al Gore bid. It’s also got a great idea for a case Hillary Clinton can—should!—be
making to superdelegates:
Hillary’s car is
pulling away from the hotel. She spots Oregon
senator Ron Wyden getting into his car. She has her car chase Wyden’s car. At a
traffic light, she jumps out with a gang of Secret Service agents and they
surround Wyden’s car. She climbs into Wyden’s car and rides with him, working
on him to vote for her. When Wyden finally says he thinks only Obama can beat
McCain, Hillary is ready for that. She tells Wyden that McCain’s winning the
White House is the best thing that can happen for Wyden’s reelection in 2010,
because the president’s party always loses seats in midterm elections. A
Democratic president is going to make Wyden’s reelection that much tougher.
CUT TO:
Ron Wyden press conference. Wyden announces his support for Hillary, citing all
the usual reasons—health care, experience, ready on day one …
Memo to Clinton: Use it!
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Hillary Clinton catches a lot of flak for fudging facts. Sometimes it’s well-deserved, especially when she doubles down on untruths like the Bosnia sniper incident. Other times, her misstatements are innocent, but they get twisted into major offenses because they fit the Clintons-don’t-tell-the-truth narrative that’s been unspooling since the '90s.
A few recent instances fall in different places along the spectrum of misinformation:
Being wrong: Sometimes it’s an innocent mistake. In speeches across the country, Clinton has told a story about a pregnant woman in Ohio dying after being denied care that would have cost her $100. But it turns out to be untrue. The woman was not, in fact, uninsured, and she wasn’t denied care, either. Clinton had heard the story from an Ohio sheriff’s deputy last year but didn’t check before working it into her speech. Then again, it’s not a story you can easily check. Then again again, you might call it “too good to check.”
Fudging numbers: It’s official. Hillary Clinton is counting the votes in Florida and Michigan toward the popular vote tally. Everyone saw this coming; it’s a natural fit for her message that the two states’ primaries should count. But seeing as they don’t—and likely won’t in any significant way—it’s a stretch to factor those numbers into the popular-vote total, especially given that Obama wasn’t on the Michigan ballot. (The Clinton camp rebuts that Obama had ads up in Florida while she didn’t. In reality, Obama was airing a national ad on CNN that aired in Florida.) Either way, Obama’s popular-vote lead looks a lot different if you count Florida and Michigan (94,000) than if you don’t (717,000). Gov. Jon Corzine, who suggested he would vote for whomever wins the popular vote, wrote Sunday that he would include Florida and Michigan in the tally. Other instances of Clinton stat-juking include Bill Clinton claiming that Hillary can still win more primary delegates, as opposed to caucus delegates, as well as Evan Bayh pointing to her lead in Electoral College votes in the states each candidate has won.
Misleading: ABC’s Jake Tapper reports a fairly egregious new claim by Clinton that she opposed the Iraq war before Obama did starting in January 2005, when he became a senator. Not only is the metric preposterous—why not just start it one hour before some anti-war speech Hillary gave?—but Tapper also points out that even using that metric, Obama was first to criticize the war. (She made a statement on Jan. 26; Obama offered criticisms at a meeting on Jan. 18.) Parsing different statements on different days is an absurd exercise, but it only highlights the weirdness of Clinton’s claims in the first place.
Lying: Excuse me, politicians don’t lie—they misremember, fail to recall, or, in Clinton’s recent case, misspeak. But Clinton’s telling and retelling of the Bosnia sniper story qualifies as a good old-fashioned lie. Sure, the outrage that greeted the contradictions to her story was disproportionate to the offense. (And both sides have done their share of embellishing.) But Clinton’s decision to stick with her false account in the face of denials—albeit by Sinbad—sealed her fate. Now it looks like Bosnia hurt her more than Jeremiah Wright hurt Obama. (Still, she managed to joke about it on Leno last week.)
No doubt every candidate has wandered up and down the misinformation spectrum over the past year. Obama has “misspoken” about, among other things, his level of involvement in filling out a liberal survey as an Illinois state senator, his role in passing immigration legislation, the Kennedys’ role in helping his father come over from Kenya, and, most recently, his smoking habit. But those misrepresentations were spread out over many months. In the past few weeks, Clinton may have set a record.
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It might be tempting to cast Mark Penn's departure as the result of a dramatic internal struggle—the triumph of emotional, character-based messaging over Penn's numbers-based "strength and experience" mantra. But that's not what happened. He just screwed up one too many times.
Penn handed in his resignation as chief strategist early Sunday, after a Friday
Wall Street Journal article reported that Penn had met with the Colombian government to discuss a trade deal that Clinton herself opposed. (He was representing his PR firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide.) When news of the meeting first broke on Friday, Penn said he had made an "error in judgment." The Clintons were reportedly furious. Even the Colombian government
turned on Penn: His statement showed a "lack of respect" for the people of Colombia, they said before terminating his contract.
The list of Penn screw-ups is long but easily summarized: Many in the Clinton campaign blame him for Hillary's loss in Iowa; her decision not to compete in other caucus states, allowing Obama run up a string of victories in them; and her failure to match Obama's overarching message of inspiration with one of her own. (One of the few times Clinton
didn't stick with Penn's script—the famous Diner Sob—is widely credited for her stunning New Hampshire comeback.) Then there's the time
he told the L.A. Times that none of the problems in the Clinton camp were his fault, the time he repeated the word
cocaine on
Hardball while discussing Obama's youthful drug use, and the time he
told reporters that Obama "can't win" in a general election.
Given all this, it's a very good thing that Penn is out. Since joining the campaign, he and his firm billed more than $13 million. He sowed strife within the campaign's ranks. And whatever his brilliance, to critics watching CNN and MSNBC, he represented the breathless machinations of the Clinton camp. It was fitting that her man behind the curtain was this sweaty, haggard—most outlets use the word
rumpled—reedy-voiced man who seemed to believe everything and nothing all at once. If anything, Obama should be trying to get Penn to stay.
But Penn's biggest screw-up of all was not screwing up earlier. If the goal was to alienate working-class Pennsylvania voters who ferociously oppose free-trade deals and outsourcing, then his Colombia meeting could not have been better timed. Obama is narrowing the gap in the Keystone State.
Trade unions have already released statements slamming Penn—and Clinton, by association—for hypocrisy. The Obama camp may choose to slam her for it, too. But for now, they're sitting back and watching the show.
In a statement, Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams said that "Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign." As long as it doesn't involve talking, they should be fine.
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