ike/Speaking Generally

Colin Powell is appearing on Meet the Press Sunday and the expectation is that he'll endorse Barack Obama. Powell's admiration for Obama has been evident since early 2007 and he has openly discussed the "electrifying" nature of an Obama presidency.

By and large, political endorsements are overrated. But Colin Powell, long-viewed as a dissenting but participatory voice in the Bush administration, adds credibility to Obama's foreign policy bonafides.

ike/Quote of the Day

"Fox News accused me of fathering two African-American children in wedlock."

--Barack Obama

ike/Quote of the Day

"Gov. Palin and her husband were obsessed with Wooten the way Capt. Ahab was obsessed with the Great White Whale. No Wooten, no peace. Has Gov. Palin committed an impeachable offense? Hardly. Is what she did indictable? No. But it wasn't appropriate, especially for someone elected as an ethical reformer. And her Orwellian claims of "vindication" make this blemish on her record look even worse. You asked us to hold you accountable, Gov. Palin. Did you mean it?"

--The Anchorage Daily News

ike/Jumping Ship

Bye Bye.

ike/Quote of the Day

"Last week's so-called town hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience."

--Christopher Hitchens



The intellectual, conservative class continues its sprint away from John McCain.

ike/That Sound You Hear...

Is the Straight Talk Express jamming on the brakes and turning around.

ike/quote of the day

"And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away. "

--David Brooks


While these are historic times economically, they are also historic times politically. We are watching the death of this version of the Republican Party, a party that has lost the coalition that elected and re-elected W. The GOP has become a caricature of itself, represented now only by its fringiest and most socially conservative elements. At least Sean Hannity is happy.

ike/Quote of the Day

"Last night, he (McCain) took that position on the housing issue of buying up everybody's mortgage. Conservatives are scratching their heads today and saying, ‘What happened?’ What on earth is that about? Then you got to ask, which houses? The condos in southern Florida, where people bought $500,000 homes as a second home and now can't pay for them? Are we buying those, too?”

--Mike Huckabee

I for one am perplexed and unsure of what McCain's base is at this point. I would say the social conservatives in the middle but they are Palin's base.

TDB | Quote of the Day

Alan Woolf, quoted on The New Republic's blog, The Plank:

Americans are denouncing Wall Street. But their hostility is too diffuse and incoherent to help them channel it constructively. The past eight years have seen the enactment of public policies that time after time rewarded lobbyists, increased the wealth and power of the already best off, and redistributed income away from ordinary Americans. Yet by and large Americans accepted all this without protest. Now, all of a sudden, they are speaking like Populists of old, attacking greed and calling for regulation. Their protest, alas, is more symbolic than concrete. As such, we are unlikely to witness blame assigned where it belongs; nor are we apt to see the passage of serious reforms dealing with long-term structural changes in the economy or any diminution of lobbyist influence. A scary economic moment will transform itself back to politics as usual in the blink of an eye.

ike/Quote of the Day

A"t a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama."

--The New Yorker

ike/McCain's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Week

If I were teaching a class on political races, I would focus some serious class time on messaging. Messaging represents the overarching idea of a campaign and a candidate, the core rational to inspire a voter.

Often, candidates are described as being "on message" or "off message." Here's an example of Barack Obama being on message. Here's an example of Barack Obama being off message.

In the first clip, Obama is in his comfort zone, clearly "on message," underscoring his core message of change, highlighting his opponent's long-standing ties to a broken system and desperate attempts to use the same old divisive politics to attack him. Being "on message" also means being consistent, repeating refrains that reinforce what a candidate stands for.

In the second clip, Obama is "off message." He is discussing his church membership and the remarks of his controversial pastor. He is forced to talk about all of the issues he doesn't want to address: black militantism; fringe elements in his campaign; whether he shares these ideas with his former pastor.

I write these past paragraphs to give some context for what I'm about to say; I haven't seen a candidate have a worse week of messaging than the one John McCain has just endured. Let's review:

On September 15th, John McCain famously declared that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong," which allowed Barack Obama to get back to talking point number one, as seen here.

Well, how sound was the economy? It was so sound, that it caused John McCain to suspend his campaign until the crisis was solved.

So to DC traveled the knight in shining armor, a true leader and the apparent missing link to a bipartisan deal to save Wall Street and the credit markets. Except according to several reports, McCain's presence in Washington only made things worse.

Of course McCain then had to attend the first presidential debate last Friday even though Congress had not reached a deal on a financial rescue package for Wall Street — something that McCain previously said was a condition for his attendance.

Could it get worse? Sadly for McCain, the answer is yes. Minutes after the bailout bill was rejected in the House, with Republicans voting against it at a 2-1 clip, we found out that McCain press guru Steve Schmidt had actually touted McCain's contributions to the "agreement."

"What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this," Schmidt said.

No wonder new polls are showing the McCain candidacy floundering. For John McCain, it truly was a no good, horrible, very bad week.