Pourquoi devrait-on être pénalisé pour notre réussite? Joseph Wurzelbacher (interview ABC)
Joe, non seulement, je vais vous aider à acheter cette affaire pour laquelle vous avez travaillé toute votre vie, mais je vais maintenir vos impôts à un niveau bas et vous fournir une assurance-maladie abordable pour vous et vos employés. Joe, vous êtes riche. Félicitations! John McCain
Sénateur Obama, je ne suis pas le président Bush. Si vous vouliez faire campagne contre lui, vous n’aviez qu’à vous présenter il y a quatre ans. John McCain
John McCain a poursuivi son offensive lors du dernier débat de mercredi sur les liens présumés entre Obama et l’Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). L’association, qui s’enorgueillit d’avoir enregistré à elle seule 1,3 million de nouveaux électeurs, est suspectée par le FBI de fraudes sur des milliers de cartes d’électeurs. Plusieurs de ses employés, des jeunes souvent issus de milieux défavorisés et aujourd’hui licenciés, ont été traduits en justice pour avoir gonflé les listes d’électeurs imaginaires. L’erreur de l’Acorn aurait été de rémunérer leur travail, les poussant ainsi à la tentation. L’Acorn soutient officiellement Obama, qui a récemment financé l’une de ses filiales et a, par le passé, défendu ses intérêts, lorsqu’il était avocat. Le Figaro
Obama
Pendant la première moitié du débat, le candidat démocrate a trop souvent montré ses plus mauvais traits – mesquin, distant, impérieux – et s’est comporté comme s’il aurait préféré être ailleurs, bien qu’il soit devenu plus chaleureux et plus engagé à mesure que la soirée progressait. Il ne semblait pas avoir de stratégie explicite, répondant aux questions au coup par coup, sans réussir à faire passer un message ou même un thème particuliers. Il a maintenu son constant flegme et a eu quelques bons moments. Si la stratégie était de gérer son avance, elle a effectivement fonctionné – mais peut-être au risque d’en perdre une partie. Note globale: B
McCain
Pendant la première moitié du débat, le candidat républicain a montré le meilleur de lui-même – convaincu, sincère, patriotique, enjoué, sérieux, plein d’autorité – tle out sans jamais sembler vieux ou impatient. Il a même marqué quelques points dans la rubrique « changement », contre le candidat qui en avait fait son fonds de commerce. Il était également clair, optimiste et totalement sur le message. À son détriment, cependant, il est devenu plus agressif et distrait pendant la deuxième moitié, et a peut-être perdu une chance de gagner l’événement véritablement dramatique dont il a besoin pour changer la donne. Pourtant, si la majorité silencieuse des électeurs qui pouvaient encore être persuadés regardaient le débat, ils avaient largement de quoi comprendre pourquoi les conseillers de McCain croient en lui et pensent toujours qu’il peut gagner cette élection. Note globale : A-
Time
Mais qu’est-ce qui arrive à Time?
Alors qu’au lendemain d’un ultime débat (qui aura au moins fait découvrir Acorn au Figaro!), nos médias en pilotage automatique et leurs sondages ventriloques ont repris, comme un seul homme et après le coup du chantage au racisme, leur matraquage pro-Obama …
Voilà que, contre l’ensemble de sa corporation, le magazine aux deux photos noir et blanc de McCain et sept couvertures couleurs d’Obama pour la seule année 2008 décerne un A- au candidat républicain contre un petit B à son propre poulain démocrate !
Certes, il faut dire que malgré les sondages fantaisistes de sorties de débat à la representativité plus qu’approximative (les sympathisants démocrates y dépasseraient leurs homologues républicains de 10 points: 40 % contre 30 %), les sondages les plus sérieux commencent à montrer des choses un peu inquiétantes pour le candidat au bilan aussi vide que son expérience mais, comme son prédécesseur dans les poubelles de l’Histoire, aux caisses bien remplies …
En effet, comme le rappelle le maitre stratège (certes républicain) Karl Rove lui-même, il reste encore, à moins de trois semaines de l’élection, presque deux fois plus d’indécis qu’en 2004.
Mais surtout, selon le sondeur qui était le plus proche du résultat en 2004 (The Investor’s Business Daily… à 0.4% près !), l’avance du nouveau Robin des bois de nos valeureux journalistes est redescendu dans la marge d’erreur, soit un tout petit 3%.
Et, selon un autre sondage (The Washington Post/ABC), 45% des électeurs interrogés continueraient à penser que le sénateur le plus à gauche du pays (actuellement réduit à promettre des réductions d’impôts à tout va et à attaquer comme trop dépensier le plan d’assurance maladie de son concurrent républicain) n’est pas qualifié pour le poste, soit, quelques centaines de millions dépensés plus tard, à peu près le même nombre… qu’en mars dernier!
Obama Hasn’t Closed the Sale
Both candidates continue to tinker with their strategies.
Karl Rove
The WSJ
October 16, 2008
In the campaign’s final two weeks, voters will take a last serious look at both presidential candidates. The outcome of the race isn’t cast in stone yet.
Barack Obama holds a 7.3% lead in the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, but the latest Gallup tracking poll reveals that there are nearly twice as many undecided voters this year than there were in the last presidential election. The Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll (which was closest to the mark in predicting the 2004 outcome — 0.4% off the actual result) now says this is a three-point race.
This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn’t closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don’t think he’s qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.
This is seven points more than George W. Bush’s highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis’s 56% unqualified rating in 1988. It explains why Mr. Obama has ignored Democratic giddiness and done two things to keep victory from slipping away.
First, he is using his money to try to keep John McCain from gaining traction. The Obama campaign raised $67 million in September and may be on track to raise $100 million in October. Sen. McCain opted last month for roughly $85 million in public financing, giving him less than half of Mr. Obama’s funds for the campaign’s final two months. Even with robust Republican National Committee fund raising to augment his spending, Mr. McCain is at a severe financial disadvantage.
So Mr. Obama is spending $35 million on TV this week versus the McCain/RNC total of $17 million. Mr. Obama is outspending Mr. McCain on TV in Virginia by a ratio of 4 to 1, in Florida by 3 to 1, and in Missouri and Nevada by better than 2 to 1. The disparity is likely to grow in the campaign’s final weeks.
Money alone, however, won’t decide the contest. John Kerry and the Democrats outspent Mr. Bush and the GOP in 2004 by $121 million and still lost.
Mr. Obama’s other strategy is to do all he can to look presidential, including buying very expensive half-hour slots to address the country next week. He wants to give a serious, Oval-Office type address. This is smart. People appreciate Mr. Obama’s empathy on the economy, but as they take a long look at what he wants to do about it, they will be less impressed, especially if Mr. McCain draws sharp contrasts with clear policy proposals.
Mr. Obama is trying to make the case that his lack of experience or record should not disqualify him. But in doing so, he seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain’s health-care plan as a tax increase. It’s a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate. We’ll know on Election Day if he is able to get away with it.
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.
Before Karl became known as « The Architect » of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.
Similarly, Mr. McCain appears to be making three important course corrections. First, he and Gov. Sarah Palin are sharpening their stump speeches so their sound bites come off well on TV. Gone are offhand remarks and awkward comments read from notes perched on a podium. In are teleprompters and carefully crafted arguments. Mr. McCain is also more at ease than before and has an ebullient, come-from-behind underdog optimism that will serve him well in the final weeks.
Second, Mr. McCain is shaping a story line that draws on well-founded concerns about Mr. Obama’s lack of record or experience. Mr. McCain is also bowing to reality and devoting most of his time to the economy. His narrative is he’s the conservative reformer who’ll lead and work hard to get things done, while Mr. Obama is the tax-and-spend liberal who’s unprepared to lead and unwilling to act.
Mr. McCain is hitting Mr. Obama for wanting to raise taxes in difficult economic times, especially on small business and for the purpose of redistributing income, and for having lavish spending plans at a time when the economy is faltering. He’s criticizing Mr. Obama for lingering on the sidelines while Mr. McCain dove in to help pass a rescue plan, necessary no matter how distasteful. And he’s attacking Mr. Obama for not joining the fight in 2005 when reformers like Mr. McCain tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. McCain’s other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP’s 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It’s threading the needle, but it’s come to that.
This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.
Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.
Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
Voir aussi:
John McCain comes out fighting and beats Barack Obama
Gerald Warner
The Telegraph
Oct 16, 2008
The final encounter between John McCain and Barack Obama was by far the best debate of the presidential campaign and this time there was a clear victor: John McCain. Commentators have grown so accustomed to lauding Barack Obama that they are now on automatic pilot and may even award the honours to him. If so, it will be ridiculous.
McCain came out fighting this time – but not the kind of mad-dog aggression in which his supporters had feared he might indulge. Nevertheless, he hit Obama hard, again and again. Starting with a reference to « Joe the plumber », whom Obama had recently met on the campaign trail and sentenced to higher taxation, McCain taunted his opponent for wanting to « spread the wealth around ». Obama went on the defensive and that was where he stayed for most of the debate, despite making repeated efforts to bite back.
McCain asked Obama when he had ever stood up to his own party. Then the moderator brought up the « nastiness » stuff about the campaign, which gave McCain the opportunity to challenge Obama on his association with former terrorist Bill Ayres, who bombed the Pentagon and said in 2001 he had not bombed enough, and the ACORN organisation which has enrolled Mickey Mouse among many thousands of newly registered voters on behalf of the Democrats. He did not expect Obama to crumple: he just wanted him to give transparently misleading answers to be deconstructed by the media and Obama obliged.
By now Obama was wearing a sneering, patronising smirk, like a protective mask, whenever McCain was speaking. It was wiped off his face momentarily when McCain, after denouncing him for wanting to fine small businesses if they did not provide the healthcare programmes for their employees that the authorities dictated, suddenly addressed Joe the plumber again: « Hey, Joe – you’re rich! Congratulations. » It was a good piece of debating theatre, mocking Obama’s defence of his proposals.
Finally came a spirited debate on abortion in which McCain pledged he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court on merit, with no litmus test. Obama initially took a similar line, then realised he dare not offend the harridan constituency of pro-abortion feminist Democrat groupies and came out defiantly for sustaining Roe v Wade. McCain then confronted him with his record in the Illinois Senate on opposing legislation to give life support to babies surviving abortion and supporting partial birth abortion. Obama caustically denied this which, again, will provide ammunition for the record checkers in the media.
The concluding statements from both candidates were strangely anticlimactic, presumably because they had been rehearsed. Otherwise, this encounter displayed more spirit than the whole of the rest of the tournament. Whether or not it will help him much is a moot point, but McCain won by several lengths.
jcdurbant 