Friday, August 29, 2008

Obama in a Box   [Jonah Goldberg]

Some good points, from a reader:

Jonah:

Here's the thing. He did a good (maybe even great) job with the speech. It was pretty much exactly what he needed to do tonight.

Here's the rub. He was set up. The McCain campaign over the past month put Obama into the position that he HAD to give this speech - not the soaring rhetoric of The One. They boxed him into a corner where he absolutely had to talk specifics on a number of issues.

Problem for Obama is that talking specifics about a number of issues means you have to talk in generalities about each one. And Obama doesn't have a record to lend heft to those generalities. McCain does. Which means he can pick apart this speech 8 ways from Sunday. The McCain campaign will pick out the 4 or 5 issues their polling finds most important (and I think we can all guess what those are) and talk specifics on those issues in his speech. Provided he chooses a pro-life running mate (and the headfake toward a pro-choicer was brilliant in so many ways you can't get this ardent Pro-Lifer started), he can leave all but those 4 or 5 issues behind next Thursday.

McCain can simply walk to the front of the stage in St. Paul, sit on the edge, and have a detailed, personal conversation with the American people about the central issues of this campaign. The McCain camp has already demonstrated they will run a new web or TV ad daily and take advantage of free media. They will use these to pick apart Obama's speech point-by-point. By concentrating on generalities about specific issues, Obama has left so many flanks uncovered it's staggering. And the McCain campaign forced him into this position. They can focus on the most important issues and let the others take care of themselves.

(I should note that the biggest issue Obama left uncovered is government spending. When I lay my head to the pillow tonight, I will dream that John Kasich takes the stage with McCain tomorrow in Dayton. If that happens, you can close the books on the presidential race and start looking at whether the coattails will bring us one of the two houses.)

08/29 12:11 AMShare