by Nick on August 22, 2008
Just a thought, but perhaps the Obama campaign overplayed their hand by letting the hype build so much on the Vice President pick? It seems that Bayh and Kaine are out (or so Andrea Mitchell claims), so Joe Biden looks like the probable guy. But after a week or two of the media talking about Biden nonstop, won’t it just be a major let down if it’s him?
OH MY GOD IT’S… oh, it’s the guy they said it was. That’s kind of boring… lame…
Which is why I’m going to go out on the line and say it’s not Biden (or Bayh or Kaine). It’s gotta be someone no one is expecting (Hillary!), or this big build-up was kind of dumb.
by Nick on July 26, 2008
Looks like Barack Obama is getting the expected bounce from his trip. Gallup’s Daily Tracking Poll now has the race at Obama 48% - McCain 41% and Rasmussen’s Tracking Poll has the race at Obama 46% - McCain 40% (or 49%-43% with leaners). Despite the McCain campaign’s best effort to ridicule Obama’s trip, the results are becoming clear: Obama looked like a President, and is reaping the benefits.
Howard Kurtz discussed the media coverage of the trip yesterday in his Washington Post column, and I think he hit the nail on the head. Though the actual coverage has been fairly mixed (Fox News has done it’s best to counter the trip, Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC has surely taken every opportunity to attack Obama over the past week) the images tell a different story.
In short, though Obamapalooza was not quite the lovefest that some expected, news outlets provided a spotlight so bright that their own people were left in the shadows.
“The pictures bring people into the story,” says Jerry Rafshoon, who was President Jimmy Carter’s media adviser. “In the television age, the more people who can see him in the role of commander in chief, the better it is for him.” By contrast, Rafshoon says, when John McCain was seen riding around Kennebunkport in a golf cart with former president George H. W. Bush, “you’re seeing him with his generation, the older generation. They looked like the past.”
A picture is worth a thousand words.
