Polls, Veeps and Smears (with Updates)

Veeps first. I've just watched Tim Kaine being interviewed by Charlie Rose for 50 minutes, and I'm sold. I'd be very comfortable with him as Obama's VP. I think he'd add a lot to the dialogue, he's very positive, his vocabulary can connect with everybody--especially those much discussed white working men--he has a good grasp of Obama's vision and shares it, and he has a real presence in motion (as opposed to the still image.) He's fresh and refreshing, he talks sense and that's motivating. I think in his own quieter way he can bring some excitement to the ticket.

He's not likely to be the cliche of the attack dog VP, but the way McCain is going, what's there to attack? By attacking Obama so much so early--a smart strategy in some ways, for as Craig Crawford explained it Wednesday on Countdown, the McCain people want to burst the Obama balloon before they lose hold of it and it floats up, up and away--McCain is giving the Obama campaign ample opportunity to learn what works in defense. And they're starting to get good at it. Obama himself is calling McCain out, challenging him to articulate his positive vision---if he has one. Meanwhile, refutation of McCain lies seems to be working--but more on that in a minute.

As all this pertains to the VP, Obama doesn't need an attack dog, but maybe somebody like Kaine who can defend with a genial half smile and that great flat midwestern accent (for this Governor of Virginia is from Kansas City.) I don't much like the sound of Obama-Kaine, for several reasons (confusion with "McCain," the sound of it as one word and various associations) but if the campaign avoids using it as much as possible, looks to me like Kaine is a plus.

But for all the speculation, a NY Times piece indicates that the selection process is chugging along but not at the decision stage, and may not be for a few weeks. Their reporting shows that Obama hasn't yet become directly involved. Update: Chris C. of the WAPost agrees, saying that the list of names under consideration is still longer than generally believed.

On the GOPer front, I saw a fairly startling quote from Mitt Romney at the Political Wire, but no one else seems to have picked it up or read it the way I did--as a disavowal of interest in being McCain's VP. Meanwhile the debate goes on as to whether he'd be a plus or minus to McCain.

Which brings us to smears and lies. I'm trying to focus politics at this blog, but when this election has such a major impact on the future, I revert to posting about this stuff at Dreaming Up Daily, so there are pertinent posts about the latest round of McCain lies and negative ads here and here and here. What's been interesting about the lying doesn't care about the troops ad--which was directed at McCain's base: the media, since it has been played much more on the hot air networks for free than as a paid ad--is that while the bloviators, especially on cable, started by treating it as a false "controversy" the way they did the Swift Boat Liars in 2004, there was a backlash in the past couple of days thoroughly exposing the lies.

Partly that's because the facts were known to reporters traveling with Obama, and some of them took umbrage (although some at first simply allowed the lies and talked about how the Obama campaign should have handled the situation.) But part of the reason probably is that Obama enthusiasts aren't sitting still for it, whether on the blogosphere or in direct contact with networks and newspapers. Witness Wednesday's idiocy, when a Washington Post reporter (with a reputation for GOPer sympathies) took an Obama quote out of context to make it sound directly opposite to Obama's meaning. That inspired this call to let the Post know about it, and we'll see if that's also effective.

Update: Here is the revealing story of the campaign so far--David Kiley's column in Business Week (hat tip to Political Wire.) Kiley begins with a summary of the ad technique used by Faux News Hannity and political adsters of repeating a lie relentlessly until it becomes real in the political dialogue. He then turns to McCain. "I've written good things about McCain's ads in the past, and I expect I will again if they ever return to a level of at least being for grown-ups." But after reaffirming that the charges in the McCain ad on Obama not going to visit wounded soldiers in Germany were blatant lies, he reveals the other ad that the McCain people were preparing.

Recall that Obama ultimately decided not to visit that hospital after the Pentagon questioned whether bringing his military advisor would constitute a partisan campaign stop. Obama didn't want the visit to be politicized, and decided that it now would be, so rather than subject the troops and the hospitals to becoming political fodder, he didn't go.

Here then is what Kiley reveals: What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie. End o update.

Is this this corporate media trying to fix the election, the result of a comfort level with the old buddy McCain over the new Obama and his new political team, or the frantic attempt to inject drama into an election that may be one-sided already? Well, it could be the first, but the second and third are sufficient. In any case, the controversy is more often about Obama than McCain. Tuesday's was: Sure Obama is leading in the polls and he has been for weeks (the recent Gallup poll showing McCain ahead has been pretty much discredited as using a lunatic likely voter model), but why can't Obama break 50%? Much bloviating on that matter, and then the CNN poll came out Thursday: Obama 51%, McCain 44%.

Today's blather was about Obama being presumptuous and arrogant (though that same poll showed the voters aren't buying it.) And supporting that was the misquote of something Obama has often said, that the campaign is not about him, he's just the symbol of the change America wants.

Some attention is being paid to McCain going relentlessly negative--even some GOPers aren't too pleased about it. But more apropos is Mark Green's focus in his piece titled "McCain's 1968 Heroism Can't Excuse His 2008 McCarthyism" : Pundits on the talks shows say that the '08 election is all about Barack Obama: Can he pass the commander-in-chief test and avoid gaffes and reassure white voters? The burden is always put on him. But another question is whether John McCain can pass the character test. So far, he's failing.

It's time that McCain's acolytes and the mainstream media stopped assuming that his extraordinary military service nearly 40 years ago gives him immunity to questions about being President today in a different century...Start with the truth that a maverick has morphed into a McCarthy -- and that the honorable McCain of 2000 wouldn't vote for the angry McCain of 2008.

Or wasn't eight years of a Liar-in-Chief enough?