Category Archives: Spin Cycle

Don’t judge Don Fowler by that video


Another thing my Dad mentioned to me yesterday from his watching of 24/7 TV "news" was that the Democratic Party chair had said something insensitive about the expected Gulf Coast hurricane, and then apologized. Dad couldn’t remember the chairman’s name, so I assumed it was Howard Dean. I said something about Howard’s an OK guy; he just gets carried away.

It wasn’t until a few minutes ago that I picked up on the fact that it was Don Fowler. You SEE how outside the spin cycle I live my life?

Anyway, Don and I have been known to exchange unpleasant words, but I feel for him on this one — and I think I can say, with some confidence of being supported by others who know him, that he’s a way better person than one might gather from the video clip. If someone had been following me with a hidden camera back in my newsroom days, you’d think I really was, as Don once suggested, a devil of some sort. Gallows humor goes with the territory. A defense mechanism, or whatever. I probably wouldn’t be aware of it, except I have been guilty of saying similar things in my wife’s presence, and SHE has made sure I know that she is appalled. And when I see it through her eyes, I am chastened, even ashamed.

There’s no explaining things like this afterwards; you just look bad, period. But I’ll say it again — I feel for Don on this. Yes, he’s a partisan, and that causes us to disagree sometimes, but he’s not a bad guy at all.

You know that column I did about the Capital City Club, and how it was started to allow blacks and Jews and women into the halls of power? Don was one of the people who started that club. And it is my impression that things like that are much more representative of who he is than an ironic wisecrack made to a friend in what he evidently supposed was a private moment.

To bounce or not to bounce

My Dad does something I don’t do — he watches the 24/7 cable TV "news" channels — so he’s usually much more up on the latest spin than I am. Yesterday, while I was pulling nails from a large pile of lumber in my driveway so I could reuse it, he mentioned having seen that Obama didn’t get a "bounce" in the polls from the convention.

My reaction: Well, of course not — that was not a convention designed to appeal to independents. It was aimed at the hearts and minds of the already committed. Even Obama’s speech, which I had expected to go well beyond that, was (for him) pretty much party boilerplate. If you want a bump up in the polls, you have to appeal to people who aren’t already for you, and the Obama campaign didn’t do that last week. Hence my Sunday column.

Of course, there are different schools of thought as to whether Obama got a bounce or not. CNN says not. Gallup says he did. The WSJ today handled it about right, saying merely that "Early polls gave mixed readings on how much of a bounce Sen. Barack Obama got from the Democratic convention."

Then of course there’s the usual silly back-and-forth over expectations.

The bottom line is, this is what it was before the Democratic convention — a close race. And the only poll that counts is the one in November.

Choosing Sarah Palin

Mccain_veepstakes_pal_wart

Folks, I’m absolutely swamped, this being Friday morning, but I thought I’d give those of you with the time a place to discuss McCain’s choice of … let me go check her name again… Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Here are some conversation-starters:

  • One thing’s for sure, I don’t have any video to share with you of Gov. Palin. Never met the woman.
  • For a brief moment this morning, I thought maybe Bobby Jindal was back on the short list, when I saw this piece by him in the WSJ. (I know that’s not logical, but the human mind is susceptible to the suggestion of coincidences.) That would have been cool, because it would have made the two tickets perfectly symmetrical — McCain playing the role of Biden on the GOP ticket, and Jindal (young, charismatic, ethnic) playing Obama.
  • Do you think McCain made a big mistake not beefing up his ticket’s economic cred with Romney?
  • Not that I want to attach a lot of importance to her gender, but it would seem that McCain is really, really serious about going after those disaffected Hillary voters, the ones who took HER gender very, very seriously.
  • Where’s Wayne Campbell when you need him for expert commentary on whether she, if elected, would qualify as the first babe to be a heartbeat from the presidency?

Talk amongst yourselves.

How about that Obama speech?

Obamaspeech

On the Sarah Palin post, Wally said he wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama’s speech last night. Well, here’s PART of what I have to say about it in my column coming up Sunday:

    Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
    Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s speech on the facing page.
    When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.

Don’t just go by me; be sure to read the Broder column I mention above (it’s embargoed until Sunday). Frankly, I was a little worried that I was the only one (other than David Brooks) left flat by the speech, until I saw what Broder had written.

But don’t just go by him, either. What did y’all think?

Obama has a secret, and he’s not telling

Robertwagner3

Barack Obama is playing very coy with his veep selection, saying "I’ve made the selection, and that’s all you’re going to get." At least until Saturday. Unless you’ve joined the secret club.

That Obama, he’s such a tease.

On a serious note, I’m hoping for my man Joe. No, not that man Joe, my other man Joe. No, and not that man Joe, either! I mean the one from Delaware. Sheesh. (Y’all know I like Joes.)

He is the perfect complement, just chock full o’ experience, thereby compensating for Obama’s greatest weakness. Yeah, Joe can talk you to death, but he’s a smart and thoughtful guy, and about the only Democrat who was putting forth a real plan for Iraq back when it was the thing to talk about. (You’ll notice that now that the surge has succeeded, and we actually can talk about timetables for withdrawal, they’re a lot quieter on the subject.)

Kathleen Sebelius is cool — very UnParty — but he really doesn’t need another fresh new face on his ticket.

Unfortunately, I have reason to believe that it will be neither Biden nor Sebelius. Apparently, the folks at the WashPost know something, and they’re giving us a hint with their headline: "Obama Says He Has Chosen His No. 2."

Obviously, that means he has chosen veteran actor Robert Wagner.

Remember, you read it here first.

WOW but we’re self-absorbed

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in
Journalism sends out a weekly tracking report on news coverage of the presidential election, which I generally glance at. This week’s floored me:

    Last week, for the first time in nine months, another event generated more media attention than the presidential campaign. The conflict in Georgia filled 26% of the newshole from August 11-17 while campaign coverage registered at 21%, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
    The election generated its lowest level of coverage since December 2007….

"…for the first time in nine months!"

Folks, the presidential election IS very important. But that’s not ALL that’s important. Sheesh. I guess I should take some comfort from the fact that for one week at least, we acknowledged it.

New category: ‘Spin Cycle’ (today’s nontopic: John Edwards)

Frequently, readers get frustrated because they come here all ready to rant about the latest pointless Topic of the Day on the partisan, 24/7 TV "news" spin cycle, and I’m just not into that stuff. People accuse me of being too much into trivia, but to me, there’s nothing more trivial than the latest attack by one side or the other in the endless wars among the Republicrats.

But I do like to make folks feel at home. So I’m going to try a new category, "Spin Cycle," and at least provide a landing place for those of you who want to discuss these things. I’m torn about doing this, because it sort of makes me an enabler — seen in the worst possible light, it makes me like those idiot parents who have beer parties for their teens so they’ll do their drinking at home (never mind all the drunken teenage guests they unleash on the highways). But perhaps I can have a good effect, tossing in the occasional comment as to why the latest spin topic is so mind-numbingly insignificant. Or maybe someone else can do that.

Anyway, let’s kick it off with all the ranting going on out there about John Edwards these days. I’ll start it with an excerpt from a blogger out there who’s trying to bait the MSM into treating this as a serious topic:

    I can think now of five separate angles the mainstream news outlets are missing with the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal story. In other words, by not writing about the charges originally—airing them out and letting their audience assess their validity—the media is now in the position of stamping down not one story, but five. What tangled webs we are weaving!
    Once the story hits the front pages, as it inevitably will, we’re going to hear all the excuses as to why reputable news outlets couldn’t find their way to telling their readers patently interesting news about a major political figure that was widely available on the web. This arrogance will help reinforce the perceptions in the audience that the media is not always looking out for their best interests and continue the move to alternative outlets. I’m as devoted a follower of the traditional media as can be, but this willful non-disclosure makes me want to scream…

Well, I almost screamed myself when I read the bizarre assertion that John Edwards is "a major political figure." Oh, yeah? Maybe you should leave the blogosphere and pick up a few newspapers. The last time I bothered to write about the guy, it was to dismiss him (and boy did the spinmeisters have fun with that), and Democratic primary voters quickly agreed with me, once they actually got to vote.

As relevant news goes, talking about this also-ran’s personal life is like gossiping about, oh, I don’t know, Gary Hart or somebody.

Make a case to the contrary if you think you can, but don’t expect me to stay awake for it…