Where Have You Gone, John? by Jonathan Alter

[ErinBerin84]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/150477?from=rss


Where Have You Gone, John? by Jonathan Alter


In the middle of John McCain's dopey Britney & Paris attack ad, the announcer gravely asks of Barack Obama: "Is He Ready to Lead?" An equally good question is whether McCain is ready to lead. For a man who will turn 72 this month, he's a surprisingly immature politician—erratic, impulsive and subject to peer pressure from the last knucklehead who offers him advice. The youthful insouciance that for many years has helped McCain charm reporters like me is now channeled into an ad that one GOP strategist labeled "juvenile," another termed "childish" and McCain's own mother called "stupid." The Obama campaign's new mantra is that McCain is "an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign." Lame is more like it. And out of sync with the real guy.

Of course, it might work. Maybe depicting Obama as a presumptuous and vaguely foreign presence will resonate. (Why else would one of McCain's slogans be "An American president for America"?) Maybe voters will agree with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, who played the fussy card last week by arguing the central importance to the future of the republic of Obama's taste for "MET-Rx chocolate roasted peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew called Black Forest Berry Honest Tea." (Davis somehow forgot to mention McCain's own preference for $520 Ferragamo shoes.) Maybe convincing nervous white voters that Obama is another Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in his use of racial grievance politics will carry McCain to the White House.

But this is not 1988, when Vice President George Bush turned Michael Dukakis into an unpatriotic coddler of criminals. (Bush that year had a popular president and a strong economy behind him.) And it's not 2004, when his son Swift-Boated John Kerry. (The president would have likely won anyway by playing on post-9/11 fear.) This year, McCain is running under a tattered Republican banner, with more than 80 percent of the public thinking the country is on the wrong track. Without some compelling vision beyond support for offshore drilling, the negativity may well boomerang. "It's hard to imagine America responding to 'small ball' when we have all these problems," says John Weaver, McCain's chief strategist in 2000 who was pushed out of the campaign last year.


With the exception of Mark Salter, who is still friendly with Weaver, the rest of McCain's high command says Weaver is just bitter and disloyal. "Actually, it's being loyal," Weaver says. "I want him to win." He's despondent over the destruction of a priceless maverick brand. McCain's zesty Theodore Roosevelt-style attacks on corporate greed and inspiring plans for expanding national service are gone, replaced by Karl Rove's playbook. "When was the last time you heard the word 'reform' or 'service' come out of his mouth?" Weaver asks. "We need to return to the John McCain who speaks his mind. Instead, it's Dick Butkus running a West Coast Offense or Wilt Chamberlain playing point guard. It's not going to work."That's because McCain is patently insincere when his heart's not in it, like a little boy who eats his peas when his parents tell him to but remains transparently unhappy about the experience. It's not clear how committed McCain himself is to this latest assault on Obama. Does he genuinely believe that Obama is an out-of-control egomaniac who thinks he's Moses? McCain no doubt comforts himself that the ad making that argument—an argument that is beneath a major-party candidate for president—was not part of a big media buy but just chum thrown to the media piranhas via the Drudge Report.


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[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

1. Love Alter. Thanks.

[madaboutharry]

2. Jonathan Alter is disgusted by what is going on.

I saw him the other day on MSNBC and he looked shaken by this turn of events from the McCain campaign. He said "We can all see what is going on here...." He saw ugly racism and was calling them out on it. I think he feels the same way that Andrea Mitchell feels. It is almost like a death. It is as if some in the media are now bereft of the man they thought was principled and decent. McCain's craven acts this week will end up damaging him, I really believe that.

[ErinBerin84]

4. I remember

seeing him once on Dan Abrams speaking out against the RW attacks on Michelle Obama , and he was saying " The right wing always goes for these character assasination attacks. I'm not going to attack John McCain personally , I have a problem with his policies. I even have kind of an affection for him and his family personally, which I sometimes catch flack for by the left." But I'm sure that affection for him on the personal side is being eroded by his activities as of late as well.

[writes3000]

3. John McCain's Mom thinks his ad is stupid. Classic. n/t