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After the Future

The Horserace This Week

The Clinton campaign is going to go for anything it can to bring Obama down a notch or two, even to the point of its allying itself with McCain’s talking…

The Clinton campaign is going to go for anything it can to bring Obama down a notch or two, even to the point of its allying itself with McCain’s talking point that insists that Obama work within the public funding campaign restrictions. (See here for a parsing of what Obama actually committed to.) More damaging, I think, is the Clinton camp’s accusation that Obama plagiarized a Deval Patrick speech. It’s not an accusation that bothers me personally–he has in the past attributed things he’s said to Patrick, even if this time he did not. All writers borrow, and in this case the failure to attribute is a
venial sin, but it might play out in a way that hurts him: it
raises doubts, even if only temporarily, about his authenticity. As in sports, very often the winner is the one who makes the fewest mistakes, and this clearly was a mistake. We’ll see if it has any staying power.

But let’s be real: not every word the candidate speaks comes out of his own head; it’s a collaborative effort between the candidate, his speechwriters, and friends. Jon Stewart proved during the several weeks he had no writers that he is very capable of developing good material on his own; Obama has proved as much as well in the past.  No one questions his basic talent with language. But when you’re working under deadline, it’s so much easier if you have a team to support the effort. 

So if a candidate collaborates with his speechwriters–and  friends like Patrick–in trying to come up with a strategy on short notice to quickly counter, for instance, the accusation that "words don’t matter", why not use an effective strategy developed by an ally like  Patrick? Is the problem that he used Patrick’s words (all politicians use other people’s words) or that he didn’t give him credit for it (He did it with Patrick’s blessing)?  I don’t blame Clinton for trying to make some hay with this issue, but at the end of the day it’s a trivial "gotcha" issue that has no real substance. 

But that’s the way the game is played, so we’ll see if either of these issues has an effect on the race tomorrow in WI.  If Obama gets a solid win, then probably no blood drawn.  If he loses, then that would be a tremendous blow, a strong indicator that Obama’s momentum has been stopped. I doubt that will happen.

Texas is tightening, and I think Ohio will as well.  If Obama splits with Clinton on 3/4, that’s all he needs to do, and Texas is looking very winnable right now, even if Ohio is still a long shot.  But quite frankly the polls are only the grossest indicators, and they are hard for me to take too seriously one way or the other.

Comments

2 responses

  1. anon Avatar
    anon

    After watching Larry King and listening to the conservative thinker David Frum, the ‘words’ spoken weren’t so much the authentic words of Deval Patrick as it was the words of Patrick’s and Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod. Frum makes the point that Axelrod ran Patrick’s campaign in the same basic style that he has Obama running his: run on people’s hopes and inspirations and leave the policy at the door. Although Axelrod’s strategy worked to get Patrick elected, there have been many voices who have observed that once elected, he faced the difficulty of working in the trenches once he had to get off his high horse of hope.
    Frum also made the point that Obama’s gaffe might have more legs than initially thought. He tried to argue that given people’s dreams in Obama, relatively speaking, he has been an insignificant figure who has achieved very little, politically and otherwise. He hasn’t led any type of organization nor has he led on any issue on any significant level. His election as US Senator forced him to campaign against and beat the great political titan himself Alan Keyes. The only real positive he has going for him is that he’s a good orator. So if his oratory starts to come into question, and if people start to question whether he’s just an inauthentic re-packaging of Deval Patrick through the craftsmanship of Axelrod, then perhaps this gaffe may be more serious than once thought.

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  2. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    The Axelrod connection makes sense. I agree that this mistake might have a more serious impact than it should because it will be grist for the mill of those who want to make him appear to have less authenticity/integrity than he has.
    It was a serious mistake in a campaign that has had few of them so far. How damaging remains to be seen. But on the level of substance it’s not serious. It’s a mistake in the way the game is played–like throwing an interception in the endzone when you’re about to go up by two touchdowns. Even the best throw them. In this case it’s not likely to be a game loser, but it may make the game tighter than it ought to be. If she wins in Wisconsin, that means she’ll have run the interception back for a score.
    It won’t be a factor if Obama gets to the general. Mr. Straight Talk is living in a glass house and is not likely to throw stones. He has hardly a shred of his vaunted integrity/authenticity left.

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