MCCAIN, NOT DISARMED (Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times) [Obama is] pounding McCain for seeking the third term of George W. Bush. At the same time, [he] implores McCain in the interest of “one nation” and “one people” not to attack him. The shorthand, widely repeated by the news media, is that the Republican candidate must not “Swift boat” Obama. That amounts to unilateral political disarmament by McCain. McCain is not about to disarm. His campaign has no intention of fighting this battle on Democratic turf. During the more than five months ahead, Republicans will explore the mindset of this young man who is a stranger to most Americans. That includes his association with the Chicago leftist William Ayers, who has remained unrepentant about his violent role as a 1960s radical. This will not be popular with McCain’s erstwhile admirers in the mainstream news media, but America has not heard the last of Bill Ayers in this campaign. Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign’s plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research – digging up derogatory information about opponents.
MORE: McCain Struggles on Cusp of General Election (Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen, Politico) Once optimistic about Sen. John McCain’s prospects for the fall general election, Republicans are increasingly concerned that he could wind up badly outgunned, saddled with serious deficiencies in money, organization and partisan intensity against the likely Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). After making a promising debut as their nominee, McCain has worried many Republicans by seeming to flounder during the past few weeks. The campaign recently has been rattled by fallout from McCain’s determination to purge his campaign of lobbying conflicts. The departure of five staff members has provided ammunition to Democrats and produced a snarl of damaging news coverage questioning McCain’s reformist image. It’s a troubling development, for when Obama likely finally captures the nomination and begins to consolidate his party, there’s yet another matter for Republicans to lose sleep over—the polling bump the Democrat is expected to receive… Republicans now fret that at the very time they expect to face an opponent who has generated record participation and enthusiasm, they are going into battle with a campaign whose mechanics are a generation behind–a pager measured against an iPhone.
ISSUES, SHMISSUES (Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix) During the past few weeks, we’ve heard yet more media laments from our self-appointed guardians of political civility, warning us that this campaign is about to go over a cliff… The often astute Joe Klein of Time warned that the election was becoming so trivialized - with discussions of flag pins and the like - that we would lose our chance to have “a big election this year… Get used to it. After all, it’s rather un-American to have an election that focuses on the “big issues.”… What was an issue in the campaign of 1860 - one that should have focused on the “big issues” like no other? It was how ugly Abraham Lincoln was, with one paper describing him as “a horrid looking wretch” … Why can’t we have a “civilized” discussion of the issues? Part of it is because the voters are smarter than that. They know that politicians will say pretty much anything to get elected, and they also know that no one can foresee the issues a president will have to confront. So, they focus on what some critics might call “small issues” but others might define as the key issue of “character,” since in the end, that’s what really counts. In part, it’s because politics in this country early on became a branch of popular culture - prized as much for its entertainment value as its social one… Related and equally important, Americans don’t take their politics all that seriously, which is why only about half of our fellow citizens even bother to vote, in sharp contrast with much of the rest of the world… But a larger part of it is also that most Americans assume, quite rightly, that, no matter how an election turns out, things will end up all right for the nation as a whole - as they almost always have.
VIRAL EMAILS ATTACK OBAMA’S LIFE STORY (Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin, Politico) The main obstacle standing between Barack Obama and the White House was distilled into five words by a local television correspondent in South Charleston, W.Va., earlier this month. Prefacing a question about the challenges of winning over white, blue-collar voters, the reporter offered this observation: “They think you are un-American,” he said. Such questions, asked by reporters and plainly on the minds of voters in Appalachia and elsewhere, are the fruits of an unprecedented, subterranean e-mail campaign. What began as a demonstrably false attempt to cast Obama as a Muslim has now metastasized into something far more threatening to the likely Democratic nominee. The spurious claims about his faith have spiraled into a broader assault that questions his patriotism and citizenship and generally portrays him as a threat to mainstream, white America. The spread of these e-mails has forced Obama to embark on a campaign to Americanize his image and his biography. Pivoting away from his pitch to a primary election audience uninterested in flag-waving and nationalism, he’s returning to the message that first brought him to the national spotlight in 2004: the idea that his is the quintessential American story.
MCCAIN ADVISER’S WORK AS A LOBBYIST CRITICIZED (Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post) Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is John McCain’s man in Washington, a political maestro who is hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November. But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi’s man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black’s contacts in Congress and the White House… In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others. That client list is now the subject of a fierce attack from Democrats who are clamoring for Black, 60, to be fired as McCain’s top political strategist. And the candidate’s decision this month to impose a strict ban on lobbying for foreign governments by members of his staff has only intensified the scrutiny of Black’s past.
CLINTON SIGNALS SHE MAY CARRY FIGHT TO THE CONVENTION (Katharine Q. Seeyle and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times) Mrs. Clinton stumped across South Florida, scene of the 2000 election debacle, pressing her case for including delegates from Florida and Michigan in the final delegate tally. On the trail and in interviews, she raised a new battle cry of determination, likening her struggle for these delegates to the nation’s historic struggles to free the slaves and grant women the right to vote. But behind the scenes, the campaigns were working with the Democratic National Committee to resolve the dispute over the delegates before May 31, when the party’s rules committee is to decide the matter. Mrs. Clinton has said she wants all delegates counted and apportioned based on the popular vote of the two candidates in both states, although Mr. Obama did not appear on the ballot in Michigan… That strategists are working behind the scenes on the matter raised the possibility that Mrs. Clinton’s newfound fervor was an effort to make sure her apportioning method prevails. It also raised the possibility that her campaign was split over how to handle the end game of what some have admitted privately is a lost cause. Some Clinton aides said that she was well aware of her uphill climb and that she was making a symbolic point. They said she was hesitant about declaring that she could overcome Mr. Obama’s lead, but at the same time did not want to be seen as surrendering.
OBAMA’S TROUBLING INSTINCTS (Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal) What… does Mr. Obama think he can offer the Iranians to get them to become a less pernicious and destabilizing force? One of Iran’s top foreign policy goals is a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. This happens to be Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy goal, too. Why should Iran or other rogue states alter their behavior if Mr. Obama gives them what they want, without preconditions? On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said in Florida that in a meeting with the Iranians he’d make it clear their behavior is unacceptable. That message has been delivered clearly by Republican and Democratic administrations in public and private diplomacy over the past 16 years. Is he so naïve to think he has a unique ability to make this even clearer? If Mr. Obama believes he can change the behavior of these nations by meeting without preconditions, he owes it to the voters to explain, in specific terms, what he can say that will lead these states to abandon their hostility. He also needs to explain why unconditional, unilateral meetings with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea’s Kim Jong Il will not deeply unsettle our allies.
MORE: Nuance or Confusion? (David Reinhard, Oregonian) In trying to talk his way out of his position, Obama’s only made matters worse for himself. It began last week when he cited John F. Kennedy’s sit-down with Nikita Khrushchev as a precedent: “When Kennedy met with Khrushchev,” he said, “we were on the brink of nuclear war.” Uh, no, Senator, the brink of nuclear war came in the Cuban missile crisis more than a year later. In fact, Kennedy’s weak performance in Vienna prompted the Soviet decision to put missiles in Cuba, which brought us to the brink of nuclear war… Team Obama isn’t even clear what its own candidate favors. Obama adviser Susan Rice told CNN that Obama never said he’d meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Israel-is-a-stinking-corpse-and-must-be-wiped-off-the-map fame. He only said he’d meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. An odd response in and of itself, but no sooner had she spoken then around came the YouTube video of Obama telling reporters last fall that he would meet with . . . Ahmadinejad.
