STEVEN STARK

Hoover? Damn!

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:25:34 GMT

George W. Bush’s failures may have set off a tectonic shift in US presidential politics, commencing a Democratic Party reign
It doesn't matter how many negative ads are broadcast or how many moose are slain on the tundra, candidates and their actions don't transform our politics nearly as much as outside events and circumstances do.

It doesn’t matter how many negative ads are broadcast or how many moose are slain on the tundra, candidates and their actions don’t transform our politics nearly as much as outside events and circumstances do. Thus, if Barack Obama ends up winning a substantial victory next month, it may as much mark a revolutionary turning of the page in our politics as it would be a triumph for him. A decisive Obama win could have profound effects for at least a generation, ushering in a new political era marked by Democratic Party dominance (and triggered by the failures of George W. Bush).

Our presidential politics tend to be fairly consistent, divisible into eras clearly defined by national traumas that radically redraw party lines. The Civil War not only gave birth to the Republican Party, for instance. It also launched a long era during which the GOP’s supremacy on the presidential level was rarely challenged. Of 18 elections held from 1860 through 1928, the GOP won 14. The Republicans lost only when the Democrats nominated an extremely conservative candidate (Grover Cleveland — who won twice) or when the Republicans split themselves in half (1912, with the effects extending to the 1916 election).

But the Great Depression redefined the political landscape (with an assist from Herbert Hoover’s initial bumbling reaction to the crisis), giving the Democrats the upper hand in almost a mirror image of what had previously transpired. From 1932 through 1964, the Democrats won seven of nine elections. They ultimately lost power in that period after the GOP nominated Dwight Eisenhower, an apolitical national hero whose ideology was so amorphous that even the Democrats had sought him as a national candidate shortly before he began his political career as a Republican.

In 1968 the political map again dramatically changed, when the unrest caused by the Vietnam War — combined with conservative reaction to the civil-rights revolution — gave the Republicans another demographic and cultural advantage. Beginning in that year and continuing until our most recent election, the Republicans have won eight of 11 presidential contests. Modern Republican dominance has, in fact, been broken only when both the Democrats nominated a more conservative candidate from the GOP’s southern base (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) and when the GOP was either split in half (thanks to the candidacy of H. Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996) or the nation was facing the aftermath of the only presidential resignation in history (1976, following the bowing out of Richard Nixon two years before).

Captain chaos

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:33:57 GMT

Steering a suddenly lost GOP ship,
The past two weeks or so have seen at least one historic meltdown.

The past two weeks or so have seen at least one historic meltdown — the virtually unprecedented disintegration of the credit markets. The question that won’t be answered until November 4 is whether they’ve also witnessed a secondary collapse — the self-destruction of the John McCain candidacy.

If so, the two will have been obviously related. When the economic crisis hit, it was bad news for the country, but also a godsend for Barack Obama’s campaign — as long as voters are focusing on the economy, it benefits the Democrats. And, more important, the crisis and the bailout that could have dearly cost taxpayers reminded voters how much they dislike the incumbent, George W. Bush, who, incidentally, hasn’t covered himself in glory over the past fortnight. Anyone connected with him — and in case you needed reminding, he and John McCain are members of the same party — was bound to suffer as a result.

But so far McCain has taken a bad situation and made it worse. In a presidential campaign, voters evaluate the candidates to see how they will handle the rigors of the office. This situation offers an ideal test of coolness and vision in a crisis. So far, Obama has successfully navigated it; McCain has hit an iceberg.

Impulsive to a fault, in the past several weeks McCain has certainly been anything but steady at the helm. The economy is good — oops, no it isn’t. I’m for the Paulson plan — no, maybe I’m not. I won’t be going to the debates unless there’s a bailout deal — oh, I guess I’ll go. All along, McCain’s trump card had been that Obama was too inexperienced to offer voters the stability the nation requires. That argument looks a lot shakier today.

Against all odds, again
If it persists until Election Day, that impression of volatility will particularly hurt McCain among women. Commentators frequently misunderstand the gender gap. Women voters actually don’t tend to be that much more liberal than male voters, as is commonly thought, but rather, historically speaking, they tend to be more risk averse. That is why Richard Nixon actually carried the female vote against John Kennedy in 1960.

Since then, however, with their threats to partially dismantle the welfare state, Republican presidential candidates have usually come across as riskier and more bellicose, thus appealing less to women than men.

Odium at the podium

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:09:21 GMT

This year, with such a close contest, the debates could have an impact like never before. Here’s what to watch for.
In most presidential elections, the importance of the debates is over-rated.

In most presidential elections, the importance of the debates is over-rated. Most voters end up deciding that the winner of the debates is the candidate who they were already leaning toward. In fact, there have been only two campaigns — 1960 (Kennedy vs. Nixon) and 1980 (Carter vs. Reagan) — where the debates arguably changed enough minds to affect the outcome.

This year, however, the debates will likely have a profound impact on the election. Part of that is because this race is so close. But it’s mostly because — for the first time since 1928 — neither presidential candidate has any formal connection to an incumbent or a former administration. As a result, both Barack Obama and John McCain are still relatively unknown, and the impression they make in their three widely watched joint appearances will probably prove decisive.

Who will benefit the most from the debates? Apply these rules and you’ll know.

1) Debates are about memorable lines and key moments
What voters tend to recall are knockout lines and exchanges. This is especially true in that the media replays these moments again and again, reinforcing their importance.

In 1980, the headline replay was Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again,” and later, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” (which came in his closing summary, so voters could really remember it). In 1988, it was Lloyd Bentsen’s riposte to Dan Quayle, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” Note that, in each case, the comment was short (the better to be rebroadcast on the news) and that two of these three comments were directed at the other candidate (rather than the audience), thereby highlighting the drama.

2) Gaffes take center stage
The annals of presidential debates are filled with far more instances of candidates who hurt themselves with their performances than help themselves. This helps explain why these joint appearances seldom end up moving many voters: the candidates are so afraid of making a mistake that they don’t take many chances, either.

What defines a debate gaffe? They’re not really factual mistakes, but instances when candidates reinforce the public’s worst fears about them. Gerald Ford’s description of Poland as “free” in 1976 confirmed for many that he might not be intellectually up to the presidency, just as Michael Dukakis’s professorial defense of his opposition to the death penalty (in answer to a question of what he’d do if his wife were raped or murdered) indicated to many that he was a member of the elite and out-of-touch with the common voter.

Sarah, get your AK-47

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:00:50 GMT

The Alaska governor is dominating the election as we head into the fall — Why that is bad news for the Obama campaign
Ever since John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate, she has been the focus of the campaign.

Ever since John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate, she has been the focus of the campaign — whether it’s been igniting the GOP base or inviting parodies on Saturday Night Live (where Tina Fey, a real doppelgänger for the Alaska governor, kicked off the show’s season debut with a much-discussed impression this past weekend). Unfortunately, if you’re a Barack Obama partisan, this attention has played right into the Republicans’ hands, by taking focus off of both McCain and Obama.

By and large, voters will judge Palin to be qualified for the vice-presidency because historically they find almost anyone to be qualified for the vice-presidency. Like politicians, they don’t think much of the office. (James Nance Garner, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice-president from 1933 to 1941, once compared the post to a “pitcher of warm piss.”) And, apart from standards for the office, Palin’s persona is the type that appeals to a large number of Americans.

Palin may not have much of a résumé, but that only puts her into a long tradition of vice-presidential selections, many of them successful (at least in an electoral sense). There was Republican Spiro Agnew in 1968, himself a one-term governor, who began his acceptance speech by saying, “I stand here with a deep sense of the improbability of the moment.” Or Barry Goldwater’s 1964 choice, obscure New York congressman Bill Miller, whose claim to fame was that he later went on to appear in an American Express commercial. (“Do you know me?” he began. No one did.)

Going back even farther, there’s Thomas Wheeler, a New York congressman who was the convention choice in 1876 to share the GOP ticket with Rutherford B. Hayes. When informed of the selection, Hayes asked, “Who is Wheeler?” Or Democrat Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana in 1912, who provoked the head of the ticket, Woodrow Wilson, to complain, “But he is a very small-caliber man!”

Is competence an issue? When Henry Gassaway Davis was put on the Democratic ticket in 1904, he was 80 and labeled “the reminiscence from West Virginia.” He entered the history books for his immortal analysis of the problems with fiction. He never read novels, he once said, because “the people in the stories are not real.” And perhaps the vice-president most relevant to Palin watchers today is Chester A. Arthur, who got to run as James A. Garfield’s number two in 1880 (and later acceded to the presidency), despite having gotten canned two years earlier as customs collector of New York for loading up the office with his buddies.

Peacock problem

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:35:06 GMT

MSNBC is in Barack's corner, which may cause an electoral backfire for the Democrats
A recent Rasmussen Report poll shows that about half the country thinks the press is out to get Sarah Palin, with a full quarter saying this makes it likelier they’ll vote Republican.

When Campaign 2008 began, few would have predicted that distrust of the mainstream media — especially NBC — might end up as one of the defining issues of the election. But it seems that the Peacock Network has unwisely painted itself into a corner, and that could actually hurt Barack Obama.

A recent Rasmussen Report poll shows that about half the country thinks the press is out to get Sarah Palin, with a full quarter saying this makes it likelier they’ll vote Republican. If that trend continues, it could have huge consequences.

Keith Olbermann and MSNBC are commonly recognized as the leaders of the pro–Barack Obama movement in the mainstream media (through no fault of Obama’s, by the way). It seems odd that a cable TV host, on a network with a relatively small audience, could help swing an election. And yes, NBC moved this week to rein him in, taking Olbermann and Chris Matthews off their hosting duties for live political events, including Election Night and the debates. And yes again, Olbermann’s self-declared enemy, Fox News, is often every bit as partisan as he is.

But in the age of YouTube and the Internet, even a cable host can have a large, instant impact, magnified by his critics. And what Olbermann and MSNBC are still doing may be helping the Republicans and many of the old supporters of Hillary Clinton unite in a common cause against an old target of populism: the press.

From its birth as an American political movement in the late 19th century, populism was loosely linked to the Democratic Party — the traditional home of the working classes — and party rhetoric and policy still assume that this state of affairs exists. But since the 1960s, the Democrats’ identification with the multiple rights revolutions — and with big government supported by high taxes — has allowed it to be increasingly portrayed as a defender of cultural elites, not the common man.

As populists drifted away from the Dems, distrust of the mainstream media became one of the movement’s strongest rallying cries, often overriding even distrust of government and large corporations. But while the Democratic Party was reliving its past glories, the Republicans heard this anti-media cry, and used it to their advantage.

Dawg days

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:58:44 GMT

The 2008 campaign is turning out to be our first-ever American Idol election
Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium.

Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium — the entertainment source that most often sets the trends for everything else in our culture. What proves popular on its airwaves more than likely will play in Peoria — and everywhere else.

Thus, given the popularity of reality shows, it is no surprise that, in 2008, the nation is being treated to an American Idol election. The search for undiscovered electoral talent has led the Democratic Party to nominate Barack Obama, its least-experienced candidate in memory. And this past week, the Republicans trumped that exponentially by elevating Sarah Palin from the relative depths of political obscurity to the nation’s center stage.

Though the show has well-known British origins, there’s something very American about the Idol concept, as anyone who has ever come across a Horatio Alger story or watched one of the 35 Rocky movies can tell you. But until now, the Idol blueprint had extended only to other TV programs — it hadn’t entered our more hallowed political realm. (Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken this long. Our politicians have always pretended to be more humble than they are, as anyone familiar with the career of corporate lawyer, a/k/a rail-splitter, Abe Lincoln knows.)

Today, politics are deemed above the pop-culture fray by the Sunday-morning talk-show set, but, for the rest of the country, they’ve been a branch of entertainment for years. Remember that, going back to the 1800s, politics was our national sport, with large cheering rallies, parades, and voting taking place in saloons.

Having television dictate our political trends is only an extension of that tradition, and it, too, is actually nothing new. The 1960 debates, right down to their format, were a direct rip-off of the quiz shows that had mesmerized the nation in the 1950s. It’s an odd concept that we should select a president based on an evaluation of who can stand behind a podium, in front of the cameras, and best answer questions. (That is, unless you’re so addicted to game shows that you can’t conceive of a better format.)

The only deviation we’ve really had in the configuration of those debates came courtesy of Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey, who popularized the idea in the ’80s that those in the studio audience, not the guests, were the real stars. So now in each election cycle we get one debate in which the audience gets to ask the questions and get some face time of their own.

Feeling Minnesota

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:58:07 GMT

If McCain wants to gain on Obama, he needs to achieve these four goals in St. Paul
The overall success of the event will largely come down to one question: how effective and memorable will Barack Obama’s acceptance speech prove to be?

Given that the Clintons often took center stage at this past week’s Democratic convention, the overall success of the event will largely come down to one question: how effective and memorable will Barack Obama’s acceptance speech prove to be? Of course, as analysis goes, anyone could have told you that.

Much more complex to figure is how to judge the success of John McCain’s convention. It will be a much different story for McCain next week in St. Paul. His convention will be more of a mini-series, with an ongoing plot line rather than a series of “special events.”

Overriding everything for McCain is the necessity to make his message in the upcoming week a far more positive one than it has been to this juncture. The temptation will be for the Republicans to keep lambasting Obama, because it has seemed to work until now. But without a compelling positive vision of change on domestic issues — which they have largely so far failed to provide — the Republicans can’t win.

With that in mind, McCain has to achieve these four goals during the upcoming convention to stay competitive with Obama. They are, in chronological order:

1) Pick the right vice-presidential nominee
McCain’s veep selection will kick off the week. If he makes a predictable choice — say, governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — he’ll be okay, but he certainly won’t reinvigorate his candidacy to the extent it may need to make voters think he offers a new, exciting direction. Who would do that for him? A bipartisan pick: if not Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, then perhaps Nebraska senator Ben Nelson — or even a dark horse.

Or, McCain could pick a woman, given Obama’s poll weaknesses with female voters. Former CEOs Carly Fiorina (of Hewlett-Packard) and Meg Whitman (of eBay) are probably out, because they undercut the GOP argument against Obama on inexperience. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — despite her ties to the Bush administration — might be worth the risk. If McCain doesn’t pick Lieberman, Rice, or someone who offers another exciting campaign “first,” his week will get off to a stumbling start.

By George, it's Barack!

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:15:58 GMT

To win over the working class, Obama should study the acceptance speech of George H. W. Bush
Right now, everyone is focused on Barack Obama’s vice-presidential choice. But historically, convention acceptance speeches matter even more.

Right now, everyone is focused on Barack Obama’s vice-presidential choice. But historically, convention acceptance speeches matter even more. When Obama gives his acceptance speech next Thursday night, it will offer him his best chance to recast his candidacy before November. Next to the debates, these speeches make for the campaign’s most decisive moments. They are the time when the voters first judge a candidate as a potential president. And, throughout the years, they have been the time when various nominees — from FDR to Ronald Reagan, and beyond — have set out the themes that have defined their candidacies, and even their presidencies.

In his speech, Obama really has one task: he has to make himself part of the great American story, so as to convince the average voter that he’s “one of us.”

So far, Obama has failed to construct much of a narrative to tie himself to the working-class voters who will decide the election. It’s not really a question of race, but of background and novelty. Here is this eloquent candidate who has seemingly appeared from nowhere with little experience. And, as the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan has pointed out, he has few traditional geographical or family roots. Obama has a different kind of name and little personal experience with institutions Americans know well, such as the military or sports. The jobs he brags about — like being a community organizer — are unfamiliar and even alienating to many Americans.

Yes, Obama has written a compelling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, which some have compared favorably to James Baldwin’s. But few are going to read it, and Baldwin could never have gotten elected president, to put it mildly.

Without a familiar narrative, Obama risks coming across as diffident — even an outsider — and his proposals for change will be received as if delivered by a foreigner. (That’s why going to Europe this past month may have actually hurt his image.) The task facing Obama may appear to be easy to define, but it will be difficult to pull off, because the soaring rhetoric he’s used so far won’t work for this mission — and could even be counter-productive. Speaking in a stadium full of 75,000 screaming partisans won’t help him either, since he’s trying to reach the souls of those sitting quietly in living rooms across the country.

Breaking the press

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:50:41 GMT

Democrats need to look past the media's feel-good coverage of Obama and deal with the realities of the campaign
The narrative of this campaign was supposed to be how a triumphant Obama rode discontent against the Bush administration to an overwhelming victory.

Rob Zammarchi

With the polls continuing to show John McCain giving Barack Obama a run for his money, much of the press has seemed flummoxed by the turn of events. After all, the narrative of this campaign was supposed to be how a triumphant Obama rode discontent against the Bush administration to an overwhelming victory.

That still could happen. But if reporters seem surprised at the way things have gone so far, it may be because their account of what has already happened is flawed. As the poet once said, what’s past is prologue.

The dominant narratives of this race have been how Obama upset the odds (and the Clintons) through a brilliant campaign, and how McCain mostly stumbled his way to the nomination, staging a comeback in New Hampshire and riding the momentum to victory. But maybe that’s not what really happened. In truth, Obama always had a much better chance of emerging as the nominee than the press gave him credit for — which is why this column even made him the slight favorite over Hillary Clinton way back in March 2007.

Yes, Obama was new to the national political scene. But in the primaries, insurgency is often an advantage, especially if the novice is as brilliant an orator as Obama. More important, because of Obama’s race, he knew that if he could get a successful launch in Iowa or New Hampshire, he could count on solid support in the African-American community that would guarantee him more than a third of the delegates needed to nominate. That’s one heck of a benefit, and he took advantage of it.

Moreover, Clinton was never as strong as advertised — in part because she’s not an exceptional campaigner, but mostly because of Clinton fatigue. If she could be beaten early (and she was), it was axiomatic that much of the support she had garnered simply by being the front-runner would evaporate.

True, Obama ran a creditable campaign and proved himself a brilliant fundraiser. But he was no powerhouse. Outside of a few states, such as Wisconsin and Missouri, he was never really able to expand his base beyond his coalition of African-Americans, the young, and the well-educated.

Every time he had a chance to beat Clinton decisively enough to force her from the race — in New Hampshire or Texas or Pennsylvania or Indiana — he lost. In fact, had Clinton not committed a major strategic blunder by failing to get organized for the large caucus states, she could have beaten him.

The reign of Spain

STEVEN STARK — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:42:44 GMT

Never mind the Olympics — the Spanish are the big winners of 2008. Are Obama and McCain aware of this new European powerhouse?
The winner is (drum roll, please) . . . Spain.

Illustration by Chad Crowe.

For the next month, self-important columnists will station themselves in Beijing and argue over which country established itself as the world’s biggest sporting superpower this summer — the United States, China, or maybe even Russia.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

But — news flash — the contest is already over. The winner is (drum roll, please) . . . Spain. This surprise sporting development tells us something about the diminishing role of the Olympic Games in the modern sports world, the power shift going on in Europe, and even something about the state of the current presidential campaign.

True, Spain won’t win all that many medals at the upcoming Games — but that’s beside the point. Despite all the hype about to smother the planet like a Beijing smog cloud, the Olympics will soon be unmasked as the overrated spectacle it is — one that is also long past its modern heyday, which occurred in an era when there were few other international competitions.

Today, of course, is much different. In terms of the intensity of worldwide interest, the Olympics pale in comparison with such events as soccer’s World Cup, and even the world cups for cricket and rugby. In the US, the Olympics do draw decent ratings, but mostly from a non-traditional-sports-fan demographic (i.e., women), attracted to both the “up close and personal” network portraits of the athletes and the focus on events that seem less physical than conventional sports (i.e., gymnastics).

But this year, even the patience of traditional US Olympics fans will be tested. Because of the 12-hour time difference between Beijing and the East Coast, most of the winners will be known via the Internet long before the events themselves are actually telecast here. Meanwhile, the audiences for any network television event are diminishing by the year — thanks to competition from the Web, cable, and other outlets.

So, even if the Chinese emerge as the upstart athletic power they have been quietly boasting they are, or the US once again fends off all challengers, fewer are likely to care than ever before — outside of China, of course.

A new armada
On the other hand, the Spanish have already won this summer’s triple crown, a feat that hardly raised a flicker of interest in the States, but that in many other parts of the world counted for a lot more than a bushel-full of Olympic hardware.

It ain’t over yet

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:37:36 GMT

The press has already started inaugurating President Obama, but there are still quite a few hurdles left for the Democrat — including John McCain
In the wake of Barack Obama’s triumphant European tour, the political press continues, by and large, to declare the election all but over.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s triumphant European tour, the political press continues, by and large, to declare the election all but over. “Virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed . . . point [sic] to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November,” write political analysts Alan Abramowitz, Thomas E. Mann, and Larry Sabato on Sabato’s Crystal Ball Web site. Michael Grunwald of Time agrees, asking, “Is McCain a no-shot?” Grunwald concludes that he probably is.

Obama may indeed end up the comfortable winner in November. But right now, there are a number of factors that still make John McCain at least even money — and by my current calculations, slightly better — to emerge victorious on Election Day.

It’s true that Obama has a powerful tail wind, thanks to the nation’s desire for change, and he is the most eloquent nominee since Ronald Reagan, with star power to boot. He also will be able to outspend the GOP decisively. And so far, McCain has failed to gain much traction against his Democratic rival.

But Obama’s head winds are just as strong. To win, he will literally have to rewrite history. Some of the hurdles he’ll have to overcome, as I’ve observed previously, include:

• No Democrat who hails from north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected since 1960.

• No candidate in the modern primary era has ever been elected in November after failing to win more than one of the nation’s seven largest states in either its pre-convention primary or, if the state didn’t hold a primary, its caucuses.

• No candidate in modern times has ever been elected president with a voting record that could be identified as his party’s most liberal or conservative, yet in 2007 Obama was designated as the former (by the National Journal).

• No candidate arguably since Abraham Lincoln has been elected president with as little political experience as Obama.

None of this is to say that Obama can’t overcome these historical obstacles, and he has exceeded expectations before. But as any lawyer knows, try to defy too many precedents and the odds begin to run against you.

Moreover, McCain has some cards to play, even if he has not played them yet. The press seems to be under the assumption that, because it knows so much about McCain, the electorate does too. The hunch here is that, while the outlines may be familiar to voters, the details are not. Few voters are intimately familiar with the specifics of McCain’s war heroism; or the fact that he and his wife adopted a little girl from one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages, in Bangladesh; or the personal kindness he has displayed to colleagues like Democrat Morris Udall, who McCain visited regularly while Udall was dying. By November, they will.

Eyes on the (yawn) prize

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:14:23 GMT

The biggest story coming from the campaign trail lately seems to be: Which candidate is more lackluster?
A remarkable thing has happened: neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done virtually anything to bolster his candidacy.

In the roughly two months since we’ve known the identity of both major party’s presumed nominees, a remarkable thing has happened: neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done virtually anything to bolster his candidacy.

There is, in fact, a historical reason for this. Neither McCain nor Obama have much experience running a serious campaign against a member of the opposition party. And, wow, does it show.

Obama has little important, translatable electoral experience of any sort, running against Republicans included. In his one statewide Senate race in Illinois, his major GOP opponent had to drop out because of a scandal, only to be replaced by carpetbagger Alan Keyes, a man even Republicans can’t stand. Though it was a landslide victory, Obama arguably won by default.

McCain may be the candidate of experience in this election, but that know-how doesn’t extend to facing off against a Democrat. He first won election to the Senate in 1986 against a relative unknown (he might have gotten a tough race from Bruce Babbitt, but Babbitt declined to run), and he’s faced only token opposition ever since.

Having a general-election novice as a presidential nominee is a relatively rare occurrence. The last two nominees who had such similar inexperience were Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Though both had faced tough primaries before running for president, neither had ever faced a bruising competition with a typical Republican. That helps explain why both ran general-election campaigns in which they marched steadily backward — as McCain and Obama have appeared to do so far.

For his part, McCain can’t seem to get traction, as he wanders from town meeting to town meeting, trying to attract a crowd and media coverage. If age is indeed one of his major liabilities, the fact that he can’t even get on the national radar screen seems to make him more ancient by the day.

Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, has been so lackluster that he’s taken a page from the playbooks of unpopular presidents by going abroad so that he can receive acclaim. (That, at least, seems to be working, but it’s a short-term fix.) And in the past eight weeks, the candidate who once promised to change our politics has begun to cement the impression among voters that he will take any position to get elected. That’s a big step in the wrong direction.

Soccer punch

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:48:49 GMT

There are, believe it or not, more hated Yanks overseas than George W. Bush: the Americans who own European football teams
When Barack Obama arrives in England in a few weeks on his celebrated European tour, he’ll probably disembark assuming that George W. Bush is the most despised American in Britain. If so, he'll be wrong.

When Barack Obama arrives in England in a few weeks on his celebrated European tour, he’ll probably disembark assuming that George W. Bush is the most despised American in Britain.

If so, he’ll be wrong. Currently, sitting atop the most-hated Yank chart is Tom Hicks, co-owner of the Liverpool soccer club and a Texas businessman who ran with the same crowd as the incumbent president when Bush was governor of the Lone Star state.

Hicks is part of a growing wave of Americans who have purchased English soccer teams (including the owner of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Malcolm Glazer, who now also owns controlling interest in the world’s most recognizable soccer team, Manchester United), convinced that owning a leading franchise in the top league of the world’s most popular game is a sure path to riches. Maybe so, but in the process Hicks — and, to a lesser extent, other American millionaires — managed to infuriate the locals.

To be sure, it’s not just an American gold rush. The owner of the Chelsea club is a Russian businessman — one of the richest men in the world — named Roman Abramovich. And Manchester City’s squad was recently purchased by Thaksin Shinawatra, the disgraced former prime minister of Thailand.

But such purchases don’t tend to rile the Brits nearly as much because those men, extraordinarily wealthy as they are, have demonstrated a willingness to pour hundreds of millions into their new clubs. In contrast, some of the Americans have been accused of being too willing to use debt to fund their investment, making the team appear to be subject to the whims of the market — which, last anyone looked, isn’t doing so well.

What’s even worse from the locals’ perspective is that men like Hicks — who also owns MLB’s Texas Rangers and the NHL’s Dallas Stars — don’t seem to appreciate the traditions of a club like Liverpool, which has a place in the city and the nation’s heart is similar to that of the Boston Red Sox . . . times a hundred. That’s why Liverpudlians are practically begging for a group from Dubai to buy out Hicks and Co., and there has even been talk of Liverpool’s fans trying to pool their money and make a bid of their own.

Is this thing on?

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:12:35 GMT

Rather than get a bounce from his convention, Obama might actually be hurt by the Democratic nominating event
In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama.

In the modern age, America’s major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama, which means the Democratic Convention even has the potential to derail his chances for victory in November.

The press has been slow to notice the potential trouble ahead, but the Obama camp has not. In the past week, the media has rather dutifully reported that the key final night of the Democratic convention (Thursday, August 28) — the night Obama will give his all-important acceptance speech — will be moved out of the convention hall and into a stadium.

The story being spun is that the Obama team wanted to share its Thursday-night magic moment with the masses, and take a page from the playbook of John F. Kennedy, who pulled a similar move when he accepted his nomination in 1960 in an outdoor venue. In truth, the Kennedy homage likely had little to do with the decision.

Before the change, Obama was scheduled to give his speech in a hall half full of hardcore Hillary Clinton supporters who don’t particularly like him. So odds are that Obama was looking for a larger venue in which Clinton’s supporters would be only a small portion of the crowd. If things had gone ahead as scheduled, Obama might well have given a stirring address, only to have it met with indifference on the floor — and that would be too big a story for the media to downplay.

Already, even under the best of circumstances, the first three days of the Democratic National Convention aren’t going to give Obama the boost he’d like. He undoubtedly has to give Clinton a chance to deliver a prime-time speech and, no matter how nice she is to Obama, she (and not he) will be the focus of that evening’s broadcast. Bill Clinton, as is the custom for a former president — especially a popular one — will have to be given a choice speaking assignment, as well.

On top of that, Obama will likely have to share the stage — and further reduce his leading-man stature — by carving out time to honor the ailing Ted Kennedy (if not a speech by the Massachusetts senator, then some sort of program to celebrate him). Sure, all these speakers will praise Obama to the hilt, but his candidacy will still be playing a supporting role at his own convention.

Radical tweak

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:02:35 GMT

Conservatives are missing the mark on Obama’s vulnerability
Every candidate has vulnerable blind spots, especially one new to the national scene, so there are ways to run against Obama. But the current approach has a particularly fatal flaw: it’s untrue.

So far, Fox’s Sean Hannity and many of Barack Obama’s conservative critics have gone after the presumptive Democratic nominee for his “judgment” in surrounding himself throughout his career with such “radicals” as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former Weatherman Bill Ayres, and even Obama’s own wife, Michelle.

They’re on a fool’s errand. And, if the company he keeps continues to be the GOP’s principal criticism through to November, it will ensure Obama’s election.

Every candidate has vulnerable blind spots, especially one new to the national scene, so there are ways to run against Obama. But the current approach has a particularly fatal flaw: it’s untrue.

Say what you want about Obama, he’s no radical. Yes, he has an unusual name, but once upon a time, all of our names — whether Irish, Italian, or Hungarian — were considered uncommon. Despite his unfamiliar persona, his is a charming and conventional American success story — he grew up in a broken home, was raised by a relative, became chief editor of the Harvard Law Review (hardly the house organ for a bastion of bomb-throwers), and then spent most of his political career in the bowels of that well-known cauldron of Marxism: the Illinois state legislature.

Along the way, Obama clearly made the acquaintances of all kinds of folk — including Ayres and Wright, the latter of whom became one of his many spiritual mentors and has already damaged Obama’s candidacy all that he’s going to. But the pattern throughout his career indicates that Obama apparently cultivated these gentlemen — and undoubtedly many others — more for what they could do for him and his political career than for what he could do for them. And he has already disassociated himself from both Wright and Ayres, albeit clumsily.

Does that make him very ambitious? Yup. But if that were a disqualification, we could eliminate virtually every presidential hopeful in history, including John McCain.

Follow the flip-flop
So how could the GOP make an effective case against Obama? The same way almost every successful campaign has built a case against a relative neophyte in the past. The more experienced opponents of Barry Goldwater (in 1964), George McGovern (in 1972), and Walter Mondale (in 1984) each ran the same kind of ad, accusing their opponents of flip-flopping on issues. Those specific assaults, of course, embodied a much larger critique.

O's got a TV eye on you

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:49:07 GMT

The era of TV advertising in presidential general elections is over
With his decision to forgo public funding, Barack Obama can raise as much as he wants, giving him a huge financial advantage in the fall campaign.

With his decision to forgo public funding, Barack Obama can raise as much as he wants, giving him a huge financial advantage in the fall campaign. If he spends that cash on organization, registration, and get-out-the-vote efforts, he will absolutely get his money’s worth. But if he spends a major portion of it on television advertising, he will only be doing John McCain a favor.

That’s because the era of TV advertising in presidential general elections is over.

It expired without anyone’s really realizing it, a victim of a new media age — and terrible implementation. In truth, TV ads have never been that important in presidential general elections (as opposed to the primary process). They’re rarely very good, and voters have always had many other competing, and more credible, sources of information out there. After all, if there’s one thing Americans know how to do, it’s how to watch TV ads with a jaundiced eye.

It’s revealing that the few creative political ads the past generation remembers actually came in contests where the outcome was pre-ordained and consultants felt free to experiment. The 1984 Reagan “Bear” ad was a classic, for instance, but would Reagan have received any fewer votes had it never aired? Ditto for Nixon’s 1972 “Turnaround” ad against McGovern. The most infamous ad of them all — Johnson’s so-called daisy ad against Goldwater (created by the brilliant Tony Schwartz, who died this past week) — not only came before LBJ’s landslide 1964 victory, it only ran once. So much for its effect on voters.

To the extent that TV ads have ever had an impact in a general election, that influence has been sharply diminished by the Internet and TiVo Ages. Viewers now receive their information in ways that minimize their contact with commercials. Sure, advertisers still flock to television. But effective product commercials these days run far more often and strategically than do political ads, and production-value-wise, they are light years ahead of anything the candidates ever put out.

The proof is in the pudding. Remember those great ads from the Bush-Kerry race only four years ago? How about Clinton-Dole or Bush-Gore? Of course you don’t. Not even political junkies can recall ads from those campaigns, though they can remember the debates, a convention speech or two, and the general themes of the campaigns.

The Obama two-step

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:18:41 GMT

Now that we know for sure Obama is going to the dance, who’s he gonna bring as his partner?
Barack Obama lost his best vice-president option when Ohio governor Ted Strickland removed himself from consideration for the number-two spot.

Inundated with stories in the past few weeks about the end of the Clinton campaign and the rise of Obama-mania, the press missed the development that is likely to have the strongest impact on the election: Barack Obama lost his best vice-president option when Ohio governor TED STRICKLAND removed himself from consideration for the number-two spot.

The importance of vice-president selections is always overrated. But in Obama’s case, it will have more importance than usual, since voters will use this first “presidential” decision to size up his approach to governing. And in a close election, the selection could prove critical.

There’s talk among Democrats that Obama needs to pick someone as new and fresh as he is to preserve the “brand,” but the truth is that there’s more than enough glitz at the top of the ticket. What Obama needs is a reassuring figure who won’t get him in trouble, and who hopefully can bring him a key state.

That’s why Strickland made the most sense. There are no perfect choices, but Strickland, 67, came close. The GOP has never won the presidency without carrying the Buckeye State, and as the popular governor of Ohio, Strickland could have gone a long way toward putting it in the Democratic column. He was originally a Hillary Clinton supporter, so choosing him would have helped unify the party. His relative age and experience (he’s also served a number of terms in Congress) would have provided a nice complement to Obama’s youth, and Strickland’s appeal to working-class whites (he has a strong rating from the NRA, for example) might have helped Obama with a group he has so far had trouble reaching.

With Strickland gone, Obama’s best choice is probably Pennsylvania governor ED RENDELL, 64, another Clinton supporter, as well as a former Philadelphia mayor and general chairman of the DNC. Pennsylvania doesn’t have quite the swing-state importance of Ohio, but Obama can’t afford to lose it, and Rendell might help in neighboring New Jersey, too, as well as among his fellow Jews. (Would some voters balk at a ticket of an African-American and a Jew? Maybe a few, but they wouldn’t be voting Democratic anyway.)

And then there was one
In truth, all the other possibilities being mentioned in the press have major problems. The Virginia duo of current governor TIM KAINE and former secretary of the Navy turned first-term senator JIM WEBB might put the state in play, but Webb is too interesting (yes, that’s a downside for a veep) and outspoken to put on the national scene in a short nine-week campaign, when any diversion could be costly. As for Kaine, he’s as new as Obama is — hardly an asset.

Going Dutch

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:38:47 GMT

If Obama is to win the general election, he’ll have to crib from the playbook of . . . Ronald Reagan
One odd thing is already clear about the fall campaign: in it, one of the two major candidates, John McCain, is going to play only a minor role.

One odd thing is already clear about the fall campaign: in it, one of the two major candidates, John McCain, is going to play only a minor role.

Sure, he’ll occasionally get the spotlight, and there are things he can do to improve his chances marginally. But in the end, this election is about Barack Obama. The country wants a significant change in direction and Obama and the Democrats are the only ones who can credibly promise to deliver it. Thus, the results in November are going to come down to one question: can a significant portion of the electorate abide Barack Obama as its next president?

Right now, it’s an open question. And for Obama to get the answer he wants, he’s going to have to be another Ronald Reagan or another Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

There is always a threshold over which nominees must pass when the electorate decides whether a candidate can be trusted with the most powerful job in the world. For some, like General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, doing so is a cakewalk. For upstarts and more ideological purists, it’s harder. Obama, of course, is the upstart of upstarts.

The good news for Obama is that most nominees do, in fact, successfully make the transition, especially when there is an overriding desire for change. John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992 all faced an initially skeptical electorate and, through favorable debate performances and constant exposure in the general-election campaign, gradually reassured the public that it had less to fear from the unknown than from the known.

Upon closer examination, however, the Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton comparisons may not offer much of a precedent for Obama. After all, each of the three was a centrist who ran at his challenger from the right as well as the left. Clinton and Carter came from the Southern GOP base and founded their appeal, in part, on their willingness to deviate sharply from party orthodoxy. JFK, too, was a hawk on military policy, running against Nixon from the right on the basis of a purported missile gap.

In contrast, as his Senate voting record and positions demonstrate, Obama is as liberal as they come, without any public record of straying from his party’s left-leaning causes and constituencies. That means to win, he’ll have to replicate the Reagan experience and basically lead an ideological revolution that will redraw the electoral map.

‘Sorry’ state

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:59:03 GMT

How to eliminate a bad decision or policy misstep and win back voters
A leading theme among Democrats this year is how they won’t allow Barack Obama to be “Swift-boated,” as John Kerry was in 2004.

A leading theme among Democrats this year is how they won’t allow Barack Obama to be “Swift-boated,” as John Kerry was in 2004, or “Hortoned,” as Michael Dukakis was in 1988 when the Willie Horton issue trailed him all the way to the election.

When asked recently about his failed Swift-boat-response strategy, Kerry noted that he lost the presidential election not because he didn’t respond with the truth. “We did,” he said. “We just didn’t do it enough.”

Dukakis, meanwhile, attributes his loss to Bush the Elder as both a matter of principle and a lack of readiness — a readiness, he notes, which Obama possesses. “It’s quite obvious that he and the people around him know what’s about to happen and they’re ready for it,” he said, referring to the Obama campaign. “I wasn’t. I made, as you know, a deliberate decision . . . that I would not respond to the Bush attack campaign. Clearly, we [the Democrats] cannot do that. [Obama’s] not going to do that.”

But to build on Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s famous remark, those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat it. If Obama follows the advice of Kerry, Dukakis, and all the other Democrats who think the way to deal with attacks is just to keep answering and attacking back, he will end up in the same unfortunate position as those two nominees.

Though they’re often grouped together, the assaults on Kerry and Dukakis were much different. Those that were focused on Kerry’s war record — alleging his actions were not as “heroic” as portrayed — were largely false. And, unlike Dukakis, Kerry answered back at his accusers.

Kerry’s real mistake — and what allowed the charges to fester — was that he made his three-decade-old war experience a key part of his campaign, even beginning his acceptance speech with the words, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.”

Once he did that, his Vietnam record became a central issue and fair game for critics. And once one gives that much amplitude to a series of personal events that happened 30 years earlier, and that others experienced too, one is inevitably going to be subject to conflicting accounts and faulty memories.

So it went for Kerry. Yes, the GOP poured fuel on the fire. But he lit the match himself — a mistake John McCain is unlikely to make this time by making his war heroism a rhetorical centerpiece of his campaign.

Going both ways

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:24:03 GMT

Here’s a strategy sheet for McCain on how to defeat Obama.
Right now John McCain is doing better than he and the Republicans deserve.

Right now John McCain is doing better than he and the Republicans deserve. He’s essentially even with Barack Obama in the polls, despite belonging to the same party as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history and leading a dispirited and somewhat divided GOP. And he’s no spring chicken, so he’s facing an uphill battle leading a race based on “change.”

To win in November, he will have to run one of the best campaigns in modern history. How can he do it? In the immortal words of former California governor Jerry Brown, by running “left and right at the same time.”

1) Running Left
If McCain runs as a traditional conservative — just repeating a mantra of no new taxes, support for the conservative social agenda, and a continued presence in Iraq — he’s toast. Instead, as political analyst Dick Morris has suggested, he needs to run counter to some Republican principles and become a rampaging populist on certain issues — attacking outrageous executive pay, corporate greed, and high credit-card fees, for instance.

The way for McCain to dramatize his empathy for the “average American” is to ditch his coat and tie and get back on the “Straight Talk Express” bus, making a number of daily stops at small rallies and town-hall meetings. McCain is at his best when he’s in his leather jacket, surrounded by like-minded folks, as he was in New Hampshire. Campaigning by bus — the mode of transportation for the powerless — and hitting the small towns is an enormously powerful symbol, especially in contrast with what is sure to be the Democrats’ more corporate, big-scale approach.

2) Running Right
How does McCain run right at the same time? By taking positions on the various initiative campaigns that will get hot in the fall. California is sure to have a measure on its ballot attempting to overturn the recent state supreme court’s decision that legalized gay marriage. McCain should endorse that initiative and challenge Obama to do the same. Initiatives banning affirmative action are also scheduled to be on the ballot in five states, including the key swing states of Colorado and Missouri. Again, McCain should express his support and ask Obama where he stands.

Finally, on immigration, McCain has to walk a tightrope between isolating Obama and alienating millions of Hispanic voters who might vote for him. He should study closely state ballot initiatives denying public funding for illegal immigrants, to see if he can back them. And he can always return to the debate question that first derailed the Hillary Clinton candidacy by stressing his opposition to driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants — a position Obama doesn’t share.