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10 Aug 2008 02:58 pm
Turn Him Into An Alien
That was Mark Penn's advice to the Clintons about Obama this spring. Money quote from Penn:
“All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in
Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse,
multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050. ... Every speech should contain the line you were
born in the middle of America American to the middle class in the
middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about
the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and
that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility,
giving back.
Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the
values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American
Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can
give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds."
It's Rove-Morris in a nutshell. The McCain camp is now trying the same thing. In my view, a critical issue in this election is whether we are going to reward this kind of politics - rooted entirely in feeling, in prejudice and in group loyalties - or whether we can return to a greater emphasis on how to win this war and how to restore the Constitution. At this point, only Obama represents any kind of move forward from this. McCain has signaled he'll do whatever the Clintons tried - and then some.
(Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty.)
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