Under the Bus, Part 1

So Vice Presidential vetter Jim Johnson was the first to be thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign as it pivots toward the general election. Johnson, the consummate Washington insider, quit his volunteer role after non stop slagging by Republicans over sweetheart mortgage deals he got from the very toxic lender Countrywide Financial. He quit the day after Obama himself tried to downplay the controversy.

All of this should come as no surprise. Countrywide has, rightly or wrongly, been intimately associated with the current mortgage mess. And average Americans wish they could get a sweetheart mortgage just like Jim Johnson did. He should have stepped down, and he did. The incident, however, is instructive for other reasons.

For one, the Republicans found an opening, and wouldn't let go of it. Never mind that Dick Cheney was part of Bush's vetting process back in 2000, and found the best person for the VP job was....(trumpets please) himself! We all know how that turned out. Yet Obama stuck with Johnson for precisely one news cycle. When his campaign realized the story wasn't going away, Johnson did. The speed with which all this happened is an acknowledgment of a new political landscape in America.

No appointment will go without scrutiny. No opportunity to skewer the other side will be missed. And, most importantly, no one will be allowed to become a distraction from the goal of winning the White House.

That goes for Obama and McCain. We'll see who's next to get thrown under the bus. 

Big Brown Letdown

Being out of town this past steamy weekend, and with little else to do before going out to dinner, the wife and I decided to watch the Belmont Stakes on tv. My wife isn't much of a racing fan, what with questions about the treatment of the horses and all. However, it wasn't long before we realized that television had turned at least two hours prior to the race into an infomercial for the favorite, Big Brown. He was, we were told, on the cusp of making history. After all, no horse had won the Triple Crown in 30 years.  

We were then treated to story after story about the horse, his jockey, his jockey's son, his trainer, his trainer's daughter (I'm not making this up), all in the name of building up to this historic mile and a half race. The other horses in the race? Mere fodder for Big Brown's ambition. They were given cursory introductions, and not much more. At one point, I looked at my wife and we both wondered what would happen to this overdriven hype machine if Big Brown lost the race. Then what would they cover?

We got our answer. Big Brown, seemingly positioned in third to overtake the leader Da' Tara, simply ran out of gas in the stretch. The horse finished dead last, the first Derby and Preakness winner to do so. Okay, so what does the media do after a 38-1 shot wins the race from start to finish? Do they focus on the extraordinary upset of Da' Tara? Nope. They spend virtually the entire post race coverage on what went wrong with Big Brown. In fact, it seemed an eternity before they actually had a single shot of Da' Tara in the Winner's Circle.

All this is to say what people saw in the coverage of the Belmont Stakes is all that's wrong with media in the early 21st century. A pre-written script with an unscripted ending turned out to be no script at all.

Worst of all, there will be no lessons learned.

Game On!

John McCain may not be the greatest orator presidential politics has seen, but he sure knows how to take advantage of an opportunity. He didn't wait for the dust to settle after Barack Obama's history making claim on the Democratic presidential nomination to ask for a series of town hall meetings across the country.

For McCain, the timing couldn't have been better. Obama was (and still is) dealing with the fallout from Hillary Clinton's long, drawn out exit from the race. So McCain sends a letter proposing 10 such meetings, with both candidates criss-crossing America together, as John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater agreed to do back in 1963.

The proposal was also structured to play to McCain's strong suits, and away from Obama's. McCain thrives in unscripted, unstructured environments while Obama does best giving speeches. The Arizona senator's camp also realizes that Obama will have trouble claiming to be the candidate of change if he backs away from this challenge. Ten such meetings before election day, an average of two per month, constricts Obama's schedule, making him tethered to McCain not just for the meetings, but the time it takes to get to them.

No doubt about it, this is an interesting gambit, one that you have to admire, even as it appears certain Obama won't bite. For him, a smart move would be a counterproposal that cuts down on the number of town hall meetings McCain wants, and sets a schedule the Illinois senator can live with.

Nice try, though.