Another View of Barack

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:01 AM

Imagine that the polls were reversed and Barack Obama was seen as a long shot to win next Tuesday.

While pillorying David Axelrod for his idiotic strategy, what would the press be saying were Obama's biggest mistakes? Let's stroll into this hypothetical land for a moment:

-- Going bitter. A turning point, we would say, was the San Francisco fundraiser remarks about bitter small-town residents clinging to guns and religion.

-- Wrong about Wright. While Obama's big race speech won kudos from the chattering classes, he screwed up by not disavowing Jeremiah Wright--which he had to do weeks later anyway.

-- Aimless on Ayers. Why didn't he come out and admit it had been a mistake to have fraternized with an unrepentant terrorist, rather than try to pass off the onetime bomber as a "guy in my neighborhood?

-- Hubris. Who, exactly, thought it was a good idea for Obama to give a presumptuous speech to a massive throng in Berlin? Or to give his convention speech at a football stadium, complete with Greek columns, cementing the impression that he was a mile higher than everyone else?

-- Bush derangement syndrome. Morphing McCain into Bush was always going to be a tough sell. Most voters were never going to buy that portrait of a Republican maverick.

-- The Biden blunder. What was Obama thinking? Joe Biden was a boring choice, and the only excitement he brought to the ticket was when he kept making gaffes such as declaring that his running mate would be challenged by a foreign policy crisis. If Obama had picked Hillary, he'd have this thing wrapped up.

-- Passing on Palin. Obama thought he was being so gentlemanly by never taking so much as a swipe at McCain's running mate. His oh-so-delicate approach never made her mistakes, or McCain's judgment in picking such a rookie, a central campaign issue.

-- Rope-a-dope. Obama missed a golden opportunity to hammer McCain at the debates, instead of projecting calm and even agreeing with his rival 11 times in their first faceoff. Americans want a fighter in the Oval Office.

-- Plumbergate. Obama botched his accidental encounter with Joe Werzelbacher, uttering the dreaded phrase "spread the wealth" that convinced swing voters he was a socialist.

My point isn't that these were all terrible mistakes, although some of them may have been. It's that these strategic moves would look very different if Obama was on the verge of losing, while McCain would be garnering praise for, say, throwing himself into the bailout negotiations and rolling the dice with Palin. When a candidate is winning, the media treat his tactical decisions as sheer brilliance. When a candidate is faltering, not so much.

A candid assessment by the top guys at Politico, John Harris and Jim VandeHei, of why McCain is getting such bad press:

"Okay, let's just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico . . .

"There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site--when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring--has made us cringe . . . Our researcher Alex Burns pulled out his highlighter pen and did his own study of Politico's October stories last week. 110 stories advanced a narrative that was more favorable to Obama than McCain. Sixty-nine did the opposite . . .

"Responsible editors would be foolish not to ask themselves the bias question, especially in the closing days of an election. But, having asked it, our sincere answer is that of the factors driving coverage of this election -- and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama -- ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil . . .

"Reporters obsess about personalities and process, about whose staff are jerks or whether they seem like decent folks, about who has a great stump speech or is funnier in person than they come off in public, about whether Michigan is in play or off the table. This is the flip side of the fact of how much we care about the horse race -- we don't care that much about our own opinions of which candidate would do more for world peace or tax cuts . . .

"McCain's decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout."

At Townhall, Matt Lewis isn't quite buying:

"That's fine, but it also seems to me that many -- if not most -- of the truly damaging stories about McCain have come from Politico. For example, I think they asked McCain how many houses he owns -- and also broke the story about Palin's clothes (which appears to be not exactly correct, anyway, since some of the clothes were returned, etc.). I've long wondered why the McCain campaign continues to grant them such access -- and even to help promote them. So I guess you could argue that -- by continuing to grant exclusive to Politico -- McCain DOES deserve negative press."

Why exactly is it unfair to report that the Republican Party, in its own finance reports, detailed $150K in clothing and makeup expenses?

As long as we're in personal confession mode, two L.A. Times scribes reflect on their time covering the nominees. Here's Peter Nicholas on Obama:

"Discipline is essential for candidates who want to drive home a consistent message, or avoid the self-sabotage that comes with a careless answer. A steely perseverance helps explain why Obama at this point stands a better than even chance of becoming the 44th president. But when you're exposed to the guy 18 hours a day, it's a bit maddening. You want him to loosen up.

"I've watched Obama demonstrate a soccer kick to his daughter in Chicago; devour a cheesesteak in Philly; navigate a roller rink in Indiana; drive a bumper car; and catapult 125 feet in the air on an amusement-park ride called 'Big Ben.' He's done it all with dogged professionalism, but with little show of spontaneity. After all this time with him, I still can't say with certainty who he is."

Of course, the press penalizes spontaneity. Remember when Obama bowled 37 and we spun it into how he was out of touch with working Americans?

And Maeve Reston says she helped torpedo the Straight Talk Express by asking McCain on the bus about the now-disappeared Carly Fiorina's complaint that insurance companies covered Viagra but not birth control:

"In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain's aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all? [Mark] Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.

"McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate's usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: 'Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?' "

Why exactly is it unfair to ask the candidate about something said by one of McCain's top surrogates?

Rather than just dumping on the press, National Review's Rich Lowry takes the novel step of . . . blaming the candidate:

"This is the McCain paradox: No other Republican candidate had a character and background -- as a courageously independent spirit -- better suited to making the presidential campaign competitive this year. But perhaps no Republican candidate was so poorly suited to the task of running a presidential race. McCain earned his chops as the media's favorite Republican senator by being a maverick, or in a less exalted formulation, a gadfly. He pursued pet causes inimical to his party, such as campaign-finance reform, and made it his role to tell fellow Republicans what he considered hard truths . . .

"McCain's rapport with the media depended on snarky banter about his own party and about himself. That couldn't continue in the general election, so McCain's campaign cut him off. His lifeline to his former admirers denied to him, McCain became a demonstrably unhappy warrior . . .

"Gadflies are loners because they spend so much time offending their own side. In his initial primary campaign prior to the 2007 meltdown, McCain staffed up with Bush loyalists -- because there were so few McCain loyalists -- who didn't understand his appeal. Now, his general-election campaign is rife with former Bush staffers leaking to the press to save their post-McCain campaign reputations. Ah, the agony of the gadfly."

Maybe we've all glossed over the real secret of Obama's appeal. Tina Brown, riffing on this photo, gets physical:

"For the millionth time the picture served to show how mesmerizingly crisp Obama always looks.

"I can't say if those hand-pressed looking shirts are made of the finest Egyptian cotton or not--maybe they're from Costco--but the point is they suggest it. The simplicity of Obama's lean, monochrome suits and solid blue ties makes every other pol appear porky and plebeian, old school glad-handers in oversize watches. It's not just the clothes, of course. It's the wearer--his carriage, the loping grace of his walk to the stage."

As for McCain's running mate: "Sarah Palin is now almost as large a celebrity as Obama but her appeal is as tactile as Obama's is abstract, as Dionysian as his is Apollonian. She is genuinely gorgeous, with that thick, cascading soap opera hair, generous mouth, and beauty pageant legs . . .

"No woman who has worn a $2,500 dollar silk Valentino jacket is ever going to return to wearing bargains from Out of the Closet, or desert the glossy standards of the new hairdresser who travels on the campaign plane for the Beehive in Wasilla . . . She is more likely to trade in Todd than give up her new A-list look for long."

Mark her words.

The Palin-versus-McCain spitting match continues, with reporters all too happy to grant anonymity to the snipers. The latest from Mike Allen: "A top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless 'diva' description, calling her 'a whack job.' "

Prompting this response from Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "It's McCain who ends up holding the bag. It's not complicated: if Sarah Palin is 'a whack job,' why did McCain pick her to be one 72-year-old heartbeat from the presidency?"

Is all this too much, even for some liberals? Salon's Joan Walsh says she's "appalled by the McCain camp's recent effort to make Sarah Palin the scapegoat for his horrific candidacy . . .

"What classless jerks. I am no Sarah Palin fan, but I think it was obvious, before McCain picked her, that Palin lacked 'fundamental understanding' on key issues. They chose her anyway; her charm, charisma and appeal to the Christian right base outweighed her drawbacks back in August. Now they're trashing Palin for their own failure to adequately vet her, or to anticipate the way her 'lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues' might actually scare voters."

Andrew Sullivan sees poetic justice:

"My view is that after the McCain peeps had made that crazy decision and realized after the fact what they had on their hands, they put their best face on it. They knew that the normal rules for a veep - a press conference, full media accessibility, airing of all the biographical details - would have required the candidate to quit before November. So they tried to shield her from actual democracy - a dangerous decision for the rest of us, but a rational, cynical decision for a campaign running a delusional liar as the potential next president of the US. Palin of course, lives in her own little, somewhat nutty, world and now believes her manifest destiny has been thwarted."

But nobody can disembowel a target like Christopher Hitchens:

"This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity."

In the wake of Ted Stevens's conviction, the award for Best Scenario goes to Time's Karen Tumulty:

"Here's a tantalyzing possibility: If Stevens were somehow to squeak through this election, and then be forced to resign after exhausting his appeals, might Sarah Palin decide to appoint . . . Sarah Palin?"

Joe the Foreign Policy Plumber agrees with a voter at a campaign event that "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." Prompting Fox anchor Shepard Smith to say: "I just want to make this 100 percent perfectly clear -- Barack Obama has said repeatedly and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States, no matter what happens once he becomes president of the United States." Which is why we don't have plumbers at the State Department.

I wrote during the conventions about journalists hanging out at Twitter, but Ad Age's Simon Dumenco is decidedly lukewarm:

"The truth is I think Twitter is pretty cool. It can be a great way for certain people and companies with something (hopefully) interesting to say to stay 'top of mind' with their audiences. I've Twittered myself (among friends), and there are definitely Twitter feeds from a handful of individual media operations and media people I know that I can actually count on to be genuinely meaningful and insightful.

"On the other hand, I'm seeing a lot of really smart writers and thinkers devoting way too much time to Twittering -- and to me it's akin to convincing yourself that constant gum chewing is as good as preparing, or consuming, a gourmet meal. Either way, though, I continue to maintain that Twitter is, for the most part, an unnecessary distraction in an already information-overloaded age."

Hmm . . . Does that mean I should cool it with my updates?

One such Twitterer, Ana Marie Cox, has lost her job with the folding of Radar magazine. She asked her fans to help finance her last week on the campaign trail--and quickly raised $7,000. The Internets can be mighty handy.