The moment the McCain campaign worked to inject race into the presidential campaign, the media seemed, for lack of a better word, relieved. It was as if news outlets wanted desperately to focus on race, but needed to wait until there was some kind of news peg to work off of.
Almost immediately, the Obama campaign has been trying to downplay the notion that there’s a “story” here. On Thursday, the campaign issued a statement: “Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.”
As questions persist, Obama is still trying to convince reporters that they’re missing the point here — this isn’t about racism, it’s about cynicism.
Barack Obama told reporters in Titusville, Fla., on Saturday that he is at “peace” with a McCain campaign ad seeking to portray him as an airhead celebrity in the mold of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.
“Let me be clear,” Obama said in response to a question about the injection of race into the campaign.
“In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist; I think they’re cynical, and I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues.
“And so I’m at … peace with the Britney and Paris Web ad. Or [the campaign’s charge that] somehow I wouldn’t go visit the troops unless I had reporters with me — which every reporter who was on the trip knows is absolutely not true….
“Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks and planting doubts about people. And what we’ve got to do is make sure that we are very clear to the American people about how my policies will make a difference in their lives.
Obama concluded, “I am absolutely confident that the people in Union, Mo., Jacksonville, Fla., or any other city or town across the country, at the end the day, [are] going to be making their decisions based on what they think is going to be best for their lives and their children’s lives.”
I certainly hope so.
Obama added:
“I don’t come out of central casting. I’m young. I’m new to the national scene. My name is Barack Obama. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate,” he said.
“What that means is that I’m sort of unfamiliar and people are still trying to get a fix on who I am, where I come from,” he said. “What has been an approach of the McCain campaign is to say ‘he’s risky.'”
He said McCain’s campaign had been taken over by former associates of Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s former political adviser, and he was clearly planning a negative campaign approach.
“They are very good at negative campaigns. They are not so good at governing,” he said of McCain’s team. “We have seen this movie before.”
I actually like this line of argument quite a bit. Bush was great at negative attacks; McCain is great at negative attacks. Bush could win elections but couldn’t govern; McCain can win this election but has no idea how to govern.
There was also this exchange.
Obama was asked if he, too, isn’t engaging in negative campaigning, and how is his negative talk different from McCain’s negative talk.
“This is the classic dilemma of politics,” Obama replied. “We get four or five shots in a row (assertions by McCain), that I would rather lose a war so that I can win a campaign, that I am not willing to visit the troops, that I somehow am full of myself, that I’m an empty-headed celebrity, whatever repeated attacks have been launched this week, so when I say, boy those are kind of silly arguments, the press says, isn’t that being negative. Well no, I’m describing what their strategy has been for the last week… I’m just stating the facts….
ABC News, I think he’s talking to you.