Month: July 2008

McCain’s Message Guy

by Chris Bodenner
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating profile on Steve Schmidt (aka "Sgt. Schmidt"), McCain’s newest and most influential strategist:

Mr. Schmidt specializes in the combat that dominates today’s political culture — the minute-by-minute, talking point-vs.-talking point battles that fill a 24-hour news cycle. His formula: a tightly controlled message delivered repeatedly and with almost military-like precision. … Above all, Mr. Schmidt argues that a campaign needs one positive message about its own candidate, and one negative message about the opponent. Sen. Obama has that: He’s for change, while Sen. McCain represents more of the same. Sen. McCain long didn’t have a strong, simple message of his own. Now, Mr. Schmidt has settled on this formula: Sen. Obama represents a big risk, while Sen. McCain rises above partisanship to put country first.

Conversely, we get: "[Obama] would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."  Also, it appears Sgt. Schmidt has a bit of a temper:

Those who have worked with him before say the McCain campaign should steel itself. "The nostrils would flare, he would get very red-faced and angry, and you would just want to quit," Kevin Madden, a Bush war-room colleague, says. He also says he always learned something from Mr. Schmidt: "It was the learning part that would always make you forget the part where you basically wanted to crash a chair over his head."

Mr. Schmidt’s intense approach matches the man. Two colleagues say that when Mr. Schmidt gets really angry, his nose bleeds, though Mr. Schmidt denies it. Sometimes he stares at a questioner for several moments while forming a response. Then words stream out of his mouth at a steady clip, in a distinct New Jersey accent.

The Audacity Of Multilingualism

By Patrick Appel

Matt tackles Ruffini:

Patrick Ruffini slams the Obama campaign for using a foreign language in its promotional material for an event in Germany. Apparently it’s now unpatriotic to so much as concede that they speak foreign languages in foreign countries. Or maybe American politicians should only be allowed to speak in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK.

Larison adds:

If the problem with Obama’s rally in Berlin is that it’s in Berlin, you can make the case that this is unwise and will cause a backlash here at home, but are we really supposed to expect the Obama campaign to advertise the rally using English?  Isn’t it enough that Obama can’t speak German (or pretty much any other foreign language)?

Matt also notes Melissa Couthier’s juxtaposition of Obama’s flier with Nazi propaganda, which affirms Godwin’s law.

Quote For The Day II and III

by Chris Bodenner
"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don’t run the country, all I can do is yell at ’em. The other option is to run ’em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that," – Robert Novak, quoted in the Washington Post in 2001.

"I didn’t know I hit him," – Novak, today, after striking a pedestrian with his car.

Imaginative Sewage Disposal?

By Jessie Roberts

Former NEA chair Bill Ivey raises an interesting policy proposal:

To start with, we need to have artists working on important nuts-and-bolts projects in their communities. If we’re talking about a new sewage disposal system, there should be an artist on that panel; there should be artists on school boards and neighborhood commissions, not to make the project look pretty, but to bring a unique approach. Artists are very good at metaphor, at seeing less-obvious links, at right-brain thinking that might not be linear but that gets you to a good result by making an imaginative leap.