How do you like the Attention?

By BJ

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that the right-wing shills were pointing to the disparity in coverage between the Obama and McCain candidacies as proof that the media was biased and complaining that their candidate needed more coverage. It led McCain to time his VP announcement for the morning immediately following Obama’s acceptance speech, a speech that managed to overtop even the very high expectations of it, in an attempt to pre-empt any “bounce” or favourable coverage the DNC might have gave Obama.

And it worked!

Look at Memeorandum. McCain’s choice for Vice President of the United States has made it hard to find anybody talking about anything else. Circus or soap opera, it’s been all Palin, all the time. Try to find anybody covering Obama’s convention speech that had nearly everybody practically gushing on Thursday night.

Of course, all of that coverage hasn’t been exactly kind to McCain. The right is now learning first-hand that it isn’t the quantity of coverage that matters, but the type. More usually means more negative, and McCain has been moved into throwing tantrums as a result of reporters actually asking serious questions about his choice.

The whole shamble is likely to become a case study in how not to announce a VP candidate. First and foremost among its lessons, surprise announcements shouldn’t catch your own side just as off-balance and unguarded as your opponents are supposed to be.

A large part of the reason this choice has been turning into a slow-motion train wreck is because the surprise pick was also an unknown. As bad or entertaining as most of Palin’s abuses of power and other little scandals happen to be, objectively they aren’t that big of a deal compared to the dirty laundry of most of the other potential VP’s or even McCain himself. The difference between Palin and say Lieberman, is that Lieberman’s laundry has already had airing. The media knows where most of his skeletons are buried, so they don’t feel compelled to go digging for more.

When Obama picked Biden, the media didn’t have to go searching to figure out who Biden is or what his strengths and weaknesses are. As a result, the conversation immediately progressed to: Will X help Obama with voter sub-group A?, will Y hurt him with voter sub-group D? and so forth.

When McCain picked Palin, the question most everybody had was, who the f*ck is Sarah Palin? And so now everybody, including apparently the McCain campaign, is rushing off to dig and find out.

What’s worse, thanks in large part to the fact that Palin is rather clearly unprepared for the role she’s been thrust into, she’s been cloistered by the Republicans so she can be prepped for what would ordinarily be the VP candidates only two other big moments on the campaign, her speech tonight and the debate with Joe Biden. As a result, she’s not available to the press to answer all the questions people have and to shape people’s impression of her. So while I expect her speech to go quite well, it’s effect as her introduction to the country has been blunted by the media storm of the last five days.

The press has had a blank slate to fill up with their own impressions and numerous damaging discoveries, and the Republicans are reduced to sending out their flacks to look ridiculous in their attempts to defend someone they barely know anything about.

Ultimately, much like the “number of houses” gaffe, this is a McCain own goal. His attempt to steal Obama’s thunder has blown up in his face and left him playing a desperate defence, and the Obama campaign didn’t have to do a thing.

Pass the popcorn.

Comments

[zenpundit]

Palin is no great shakes but you guys have overdosed on the kool ade.

"As a result, she’s not available to the press to answer all the questions people have and to shape people’s impression of her"

No, Gov. Palin's not available for an overwhelmingly and rabidly pro-Obama press corps to have her image shaped for her by them prior to her speaking live and unfiltered. If she's a "Quayle" it can't be hidden regardless. If not, it will be too late tomorrow morning to redefine her as one

Tactically smart. The MSM press is no honest broker here.

When Biden was nominated the national reaction was underwhelming partly because he's a reliable, known, quantity and partly because the GOP does not see him as a factor in the race.

The manic intensity of the concerted "tear down" effort of Palin (a recent Obama HQ email tried to falsely tie her to "neo-nazi" Pat Buchanan) by the Obama campaign indicates anxiety because, if nothing else, she has messed up an electoral strategy predicated on running against two old white dudes and no one knows at this point how she will play on TV or in a debate.

[JWF]

Obviously you're too stupid to realize the difference in coverage. Whereas Obama gets nonstop fawning coverage from the leftwing media, in case you have noticed there's been a 24/7 assault on Sarah Palin and her family. Not exactly glowing coverage that Obama is used to.

[anderson]

JWF,

Obviously, you are too stupid to remember what much of the "coverage" regarding Obama was really about: endless prattle about Jeremiah Wright, Michelle Obama's proud-of-her-country moment, Obama's bad bowling display, Obama's possible "musliim" faith, endless, feckless nonsense. Much of it, no doubt, gobbled up by the likes of you only to be regurgitated and/or shat out on right wing sites hither and yon. Now that the none-too-gracious spotlight is on McCain, suddenly the coverage of Obama was "fawning."

My, how soon its all forgotten when things start to go tits up from what is entirely a self-inflicted wound delivered by ill consideration. McCain and supporters like yourself ought to consider the Palin coverage a blessing and be happy that no one in the media bothers to examine and discuss the vast litany of policy flip-flops McCain has managed since his right wing base pandering began. But I'm sure you don't know anything about that.

[anderson]

Oh, and let's not ignore one salient fact within the regime of political coverage: Obama doesn't screw up the way McCain does. The man is a font of gaffes, more of which are just waiting to happen while ridicule is licking its chops. You guys think this is liberal bias (I always love hearing how major corporations with ties to defense contractors have a liberal bias -- endlessly amusing), but what it really shows is that the media are cutthroat ratings grabbers, willing to nail anyone who give them an opening.

Sure, a few talking heads may swoon for Obama. After eights years of listening to George Bush, anyone remotely capable of delivering a good speech is a long sought relief from the bumbler in chief and his all-too-dismal would be successor. If you can honestly say you like hearing McCain speak, well, you'd be the first one I've ever heard of.

[BJ Bjornson]

Zen, I know you’re smart enough not to be so deliberately obtuse. Whether you believe in the MSM as an honest broker or not, (and I certainly don’t), what I said is that they are shaping her image without any pushback from her. A prepared speech may boost her a bit, but she still needs to face the press at some point or they’re just going to keep ripping her image to shreds. (Read Libby’s post above, she says it better than I did.)
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/09/my-predictions.html

If it was tactically smart, and I seriously wonder how you come to that conclusion, it is looking to be strategically stupid. Unless she pulls off an oration at the level of Obama’s best, where people across the ideological spectrum are going, “Damn, that was good!”, it will take them weeks they don’t have to repair the damage all the newly turned-up questions have done. (As Libby predicts, I think she’ll rile up the base, but it remains to be seen if she can go beyond that.)

And as you say with Biden, he’s a known quantity; same goes for Lieberman, Ridge, Hutchinson, Rice, and so forth that many expected McCain to go for. Do you think the “rabidly pro-Obama press corps” would have torn into any of those choices like they have with Palin? Of course not, they know all those folks. There would have been questions, but they would mostly have been of the horse-race variety, same as Biden. For any of them a couple of canned speeches and the debate would have been sufficient. For Palin it won’t. Not anymore, anyway.

And if she’s mucked up the Obama campaign’s strategy, she’s done the same or worse to McCain’s. The entire attack line of “experience”, “Is he ready to lead?” “Can we trust the young pup?” all just got thrown out the window. His choice of VP makes everything they’ve been saying for months look like a pack of lies they never really believed in, and their attempts to boost her experience just looks totally ridiculous, particularly to hicks like me living in small communities who know just how far from prepared our part-time mayors are to run the most powerful nation on the planet. As I said above, surprise picks shouldn’t throw your own people off just as much if not more than the opponents.

[zenpundit]

Hi BJ,

We have a short time frame here.

McCain is rolling the dice. If Palin's speech is a disaster then it is an unrecoverable disaster. It's over, barring an unexpected event. If Palin hits a homerun, then there will be no shortage of media options to put into play and not pushing back for a day on the feeding frenzy won't matter. The Mcain campaign will be able to use Palin's ratings leverage for short term message control, venue control and "bounce" extension.

Getting Palin nickel-and-dimed to death with every small-time TV reporter trying to get in the smart-aleck zinger momemnt is not a good use of the limited time up to her speech. No advantage accrues. However, you are right that the campaign is failing in not having surrogates for Palin out there and hitting back in the interim. Where are elected GOP women acting as a "message squad" ?

( OTOH, the Obama campaign could really have used Hillary to aggressively swat down Palin as a "women's vote" figure - and she pretty much did the opposite)