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The Note: Obama, McCain See Brands Diminish
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ShareJuly 30, 2008 8:23 AM
ABC News' Rick Klein Reports in Wednesday's Note: If you look carefully through those tubes, you can see why Sen. Chuck Schumer is thinking about the big Six-Oh.
If you look carefully at the news cycle’s latest popular kid, you can determine how new Gov. Tim Kaine and his friends are at this veepstakes thing.
If you look not-so-carefully at what President Bill Clinton is up to, you might forgive him for missing the perks of the presidency.
If you look carefully at what Sen. John McCain is doing and saying, you can measure how much twisting straight talk can survive.
If you look carefully at what Sen. Barack Obama is doing and saying, you can watch his self-image swell to fill the mold being fitted for him. (And hey -- the inevitability thing worked SO well in the primaries . . . )
Some of the most interesting looking centers on Obama: Secret meetings, a bizarrely vague public schedule, sit-downs with the Fed chairman and the new Pakistani prime minister, all after a heralded foreign trip?
Read the rest of The Note -- and get all the latest on the 2008 election, Congress, the White House and the wide world of politics every day -- from Rick Klein by bookmarking this link.
You might say he's measuring the drapes -- but that assumes he hasn't ordered new windows.
The latest entry in the (bulging) Obama files: "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," he told House Democrats Tuesday night, per The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
(Read that sentence again, and try to imagine how it would look if it was said on camera.)
Obama may be right (and if he is, he wins) -- but the first personal singular is the most dangerous of tenses, particularly when the meme is being set. Toss in a jettisoned faux-presidential seal, a canceled visit with troops, maybe a sprinkling of broken promises, and you've got enough to weave an uncomfortable yet unforgettable suit.
With a public schedule that "would have made Dick Cheney envious," this is Obama going from presumptive to presumptuous, Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column.
"Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that 'the odds of us winning are very good' -- has become a president-in-waiting," Milbank writes. "But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions."
Continue reading today's Note by clicking HERE.
ABC News' John Santucci, Alexa Ainsworth and Amanda Temple contributed to this report.
July 30, 2008 in Hunter, Duncan, Kucinich, Dennis, Tancredo, Tom, Thompson, Fred | Permalink | User Comments (32)
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Obama has his arrogance and McCain has his potentially fatal turn to negative campaigning. There are big risks for each candidate.
Posted by: matthew | Jul 30, 2008 8:33:27 AM
and if Obama picks Kaine (anti-choice although again says roe should not be overturned as Bush did when he was running), anti gay rights (Kaine opposes even civil unions), anti science (opposed/opposes govt fuinding of embryonic stem cell research...
bno foreign experience , no judgement or experience with any national issue or platform...
ugh
Obama's brand will be destroyed....and gives cover for McCain to pick Ridge which will enhance McCain's maverick image...
oy.
sick I say sick to my stomach...
with Kaine...we gain a little in Virginia only to lose the VP debate, lose PA, lose Ohio, and probably NH if two vets are on the mccain ticket with not much back-up on Obama's ticket...
and we come closer...well a mccain ridge ticket in a heavily military state like virginia... all for the sake of picking a governor to try and win ...virginia?
oy stupid is as stupid does.
part of obama's platform is a smart guy on foreign policy who believes in a DEMOCRATIC platform...remember women's rights and social rights as maybe not the number one priiority but don't throw them to the gutter please...ugh.
Posted by: dl | Jul 30, 2008 8:48:20 AM
I agree unless Obama picks Kaine
and then McCain picks Ridge...
2 Harvard grads - classmates against
one who is anti many of the things that strengthen Obama's base (as I listed above)
2 independent vets.
Posted by: dl | Jul 30, 2008 8:51:14 AM
Somebody save us from both of these guys.
Posted by: rachel | Jul 30, 2008 8:53:42 AM
All that i know is Obama is a man that we need right now in Washington. i believe that government can not solve all our problems, but, yes, government can make the necessary changes that allow people to work closely to solve their problems. and i think Obama has got the qualities to make such changes. and folks please let us focus on the big issues not on ..........
Posted by: david | Jul 30, 2008 8:54:16 AM
The Democratic presidential candidate told the group that the positive response he received in Germany and the rest of Europe was “not about him,” -----------------
Right! It was the German rock band they cheered!!!
Posted by: HP Boston | Jul 30, 2008 9:02:19 AM
How can Obama return us to our traditions??? Every tradition we stand for he is against and proudly displays his contempt and attempt to change everything, even the Presidential Seal...Hey! Maybe he will put his face right on it! Get rid of that pesky bird!
He is not what the people are waiting for..unless we have been waiting on a ruse! The Obamites would distract the people, saying things like focus on the big things. But my friends, the little things make up the big things. The core of this man is empty except for his own self serving ego. He has over the last months been caught in some very unseemly statements in addition to his company. He is not a man of change, he is some very old politics in a Hollywood suit.
Posted by: Cheryll | Jul 30, 2008 9:36:50 AM
He has to pick Joe Biden! Although he's been in Washington for quite some time, I believe that he would be a great assest to Obama.
Posted by: Jennifer | Jul 30, 2008 10:31:45 AM
Issues We care About!
The neoconservatives and the Bush administration should be held accountable not only for the cost of the Iraq War but the 492 billion dollar deficit.
- Part of the cost are the 30,000 USA Troops wounded.
-Start laying the groundwork to move the the US away from oil dependency.
As soon as the 2008 election is over The Republicans will start running for the next elections in 2010 and 2012. This is the reason gridlock doesn't help this country.
The Republicans as a group should "pay a price" for the Gridlock.
Those that work together with the Democrats to end the mess that the neoconservatives created should be courted.
Vote Democrat '08
Posted by: Bobby | Jul 30, 2008 10:44:29 AM
I don't like Obama or McCain. Why are we left with these two choices? It's time for a third party.
Posted by: Maria | Jul 30, 2008 11:23:32 AM
Republicans can't govern and Democrats can't get elected. We need a New American Revolution. Will it take another Great Depression to clean house? If that happens, heaven help us. I see no FDR on the horizon.
Posted by: Schenectady the GE Wind Turbine City | Jul 30, 2008 11:33:44 AM
Posted by: Third party | Jul 30, 2008 11:34:29 AM
McCain is arrogant and old, he sees our world through a narrow prism. Whereas, Obama is an internationalist and a problem solver.
Posted by: Teddy | Jul 30, 2008 11:34:50 AM
I could care less about either candidate's brand or image. My concern is the economy and getting out of Iraq. So far only one candidate is saying what i want to hear and the other wants to continue the Bush pattern.
Posted by: Eli | Jul 30, 2008 11:38:43 AM
Federal Prosecutors were chosen for the allegiance to Republican party, CIA agent Valerie Plame was outed to discredit her and her husband, Justice Department lawyers rewrite law/policy to serve what Cheaney/Bush want to do to prisoners, warrantless wiretapping, etc... and McCain says little, if nothing, about the Executive branch of Government overstepping the bounds of the Constitution. There is no way this man should be President. He sold his sole to the Republican party when he quit becoming the Maverick that he was in 2000.
Posted by: JSK | Jul 30, 2008 11:40:35 AM
OBAMA.
Posted by: DenisR | Jul 30, 2008 11:44:05 AM
Since when is "first person singular" a tense? I would hope journalists learned grammar in school.
Posted by: Louis Bell | Jul 30, 2008 11:45:50 AM
the first person singular is not a tense.
Posted by: nka | Jul 30, 2008 11:49:39 AM
Thanks for taking Obama's comments out of context. Nice twisted use of hearsay.
Don't suppose you'll ever mention little facts like good ol' "Support-the-Troops McCain" voted - repeatedly - AGAINST a new G.I. bill? The ones Obama voted FOR? And if McCain objected to them, why didn't he ever draft one of his own?
Care to explore that one? No? Didn't think so.
Posted by: Kate L | Jul 30, 2008 12:19:17 PM
McCain quit the navy because it didn't look like he would make admiral, like his father and grandfather. He thinks he is entitled to be president because he comes from an elite family and it just makes him mad that anyone dare challenge him. McCain is so arrogant and spoiled.
Posted by: Laura | Jul 30, 2008 12:24:08 PM
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