2012 Presidential Election
GregD -- Wednesday, May 02, 2012 -- 02:56:50 PMBarack Hussein Obama vs. Willard Mitt Romney compete for the dubious prize of having half the country pissed at you for the next 4 years. God Bless America!
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Bush campaign advisor McKinnon on the Obama Osama ad: The GOP's response screwed up in the same way the Democrats did in 2004, when they did the same thing with their re-election launch in trumpeting the response to 9/11.
It's a genuine positive. Obama's right to bring it up, and well within the bounds of discourse to point to Romney's comments that it would be a waste of time/resources/manpower. Railing against talking about it only brings more attention to an issue that does nothing for Romney.
McKinnon is wildly wrong. His language shows it -- "So President Obama is launching his reelection campaign and happens to mention one of the greatest foreign-policy achievements of our time."
That's all you need to read, though I read the whole thing. Anyone who says that Obama merely "happened to mention" the killing of Osama is either retarded or being cute. The Obama team, rightly or wrongly, has gone forward with a strong push to highlight the achievement in ads and statements and ceremony, and they've gone the extra step of using the achievement as a club, to suggest Romney is not capable of the same gutsy call. This is not an issue of happenstance.
Second, calling the killing of Osama "one of the greatest foreign-policy achievements of our time" is retarded, unless McKinnon and his readers were born in January 2011.
"C'mon people, it would have been absurd not to mention it."
Again, just a mention.
Now, getting beyond McKinnon's "post" in The Daily Beast, there is the issue of propriety and tactics.
On the former, if the shoe were on the other foot, Obama's team would be going bats about the grotesque claim of the kill for political advantage. And then, if Obama's opponent suggested that Obama was too much of a pussy to have done the tough guy thing, Axelrod and company would be apoplectic. Indeed, they were, when Hillary suggested Obama was too much of a pussy to handle a 3 am phone call.
The ad itself is objectively awful, the kind of thing only an apparatchik can defend. In it, President Clinton actually says how tough it would have been on Obama had the mission failed. Not on the troops killed in the process, but on Obama. That's an error that will cost him.
I also don't see the tactical value. Why politicize such an objectively non-political thing? Why sully the one unequivocal accomplishment that unites us all? It reeks of insecurity.
It's turning on him already (never good when Arianna Huffington calls your ad "despicable") which is why you see the uptick in minions carrying Obama's water.
I think you won't be seeing that ad or anything like it for the rest of the campaign. Maybe I'm wrong and Obama's people see advantage here, but I think it'll be shelved.
Anyone who says that Obama merely "happened to mention" the killing of Osama is either retarded or being cute
...or being tongue-in-cheek to open the article.
if the shoe were on the other foot, Obama's team would be going bats about the grotesque claim of the kill for political advantage
If the shoe were on the other foot you wouldn't be able to watch television without seeing an equivalent, likely even more grandiose & rah-rah ad from the GOP. And so what? That's politics.
objectively awful
Given it's rampant success so far in trolling the right & getting hours of free media mentioning repeatedly that Obama got Osama? Hahaha.
Why politicize such an objectively non-political thing?
Because your candidate said it would be a waste of time & not worth focusing on when he ran last time, and McCain said that it would be mean to Pakistan & damaging to our oh-so-important relationship with those terrorist appeasers to do any such thing.
It's a political ad (THE HORROR) that draws a clear policy difference. Romney says NOW, after the fact, that anyone would have done it. But before the fact, when it matters, it's no big deal to try & get Bin Laden and something he wouldn't put resources into.
As to damage, it's great that Romney brings up Carter because Carter DID make a similar decision and came to regret it. It deep-sixed him completely on foreign policy. Had that raid gone to hell, or been a trap, the GOP would have destroyed him with it. Making the right decision regardless on foreign policy is political courage.
But Romney? He would have put resources elsewhere. He said so himself. So we probably wouldn't have seen the intel on where OBL might have been. He wouldn't have been in any position to make that decision, because he wouldn't have made it a policy priority.
"Given it's rampant success so far in trolling the right & getting hours of free media mentioning repeatedly that Obama got Osama? Hahaha."
Hmmmmmm. I hadn't thought of that angle. It got the opposition buzzing, shitting itself in a fury and it cemented the heretofore unknown fact that Obama ordered Osama killed.
If it is polled, would you like to make a bet as to how the angle is viewed by the public?
I don't mind Obama tactfully, but pointedly, reminding the American public of one of his few successes over the last four years, but the way he's been humping on this thing raises my suspicions that he will soon exhume bin Laden's body so he can do a slow jam with it.
Who thinks this is cool? Is this what 20-year-old voters swoon about?
Not even John Stewart thought it was cool, and to the president's credit, he even appeared to realize how uncool it was while he was doing it. Some acolyte got chewed out for this stunt.
As for the bin Laden killing, it's a sliding scale--
1) trumpet it - hell yes. It's an accomplishment
2) flog it as a primarily singular accompishment - er . . . the ick factor rises
3) use it aggressively, as in "I'm badass, and he ain't?" Wow.
4) Make it a historic decision of great anguish, like Hiroshima or Inchon or even the surge in Iraq. Blech.
5) Actually air an ad that focuses solely on the trials for and risk to . . . Obama. Again, the ad has Clinton saying "supposed they'd been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him." Hoo boy. This is where I think the issue boomerangs hard.
Of course, Greg and his ilk are impervious to this analysis, because by the mere fact I'm engaging it demonstrates the awesomeness of the ad and the line.
No. It was awkward and weird. Look at it again. Obama gets just how stupid it is. It sucks.
That said, Obama at the Press dinner this weekend killed.
Where I might agree with you is that I really don't think it's the POTUS's job to go amuse people on TV. But eh, politics is what it is and people like to see a little bit of relaxation in a candidate.
I think presidents can be funny, as Obama showed this weekend, but when Nixon said "Sock it to me!" he was running, like when Clinton was playing sax on Arsenio.
As Stewart rightly said about Obama and the strange Fallon visit, "You're the president!!!! You don't have to do this shit anymore!!!!"
By "this shit", Stewart was referring . . . Oh Jesus Christ. What am I doing?
I'm younger than Obama.
Sheridan is right. It was weird. The presidency is a performance, but it's not that kind of performance.
Curb,
Maybe you should write a letter to the White House and ask the president to put on a hoodie for his next performance. I hear all the kids are wearing them.
It's remarkable the degradation that takes place on the path from Hope and Change (2008) to Cool Jamming (2012).
Well, considering that he started as an empty suit, where exactly is downhill from that? I suppose we ahould be grateful he's only fallen as far as Fallon publicly. Of course there's fast and furious, Solyndra, and a million other ways he's degraded the presidency, but without media coverage to speak of.
Nobody gives a fuck about Jimmy Fallon and his shit show except brainless dumb-fucks who haven't a motherfucking clue as to just how wretched of a shit president 0bama has been.
Anyone who chooses to vote for the empty-suited idiot simply exposes his/her/its self as a grotesquely retarded imbecile.
Fucking assholes.