OK, we all know that Obama himself will trash McCain in the debates. And right now, if he were facing McCain on the nightly news and Face the Nation and the Today Show and This Week etc., Obama would be making McCain look ridiculous. But unfortunately, McCain seems to be winning the surrogate war in those venues. It’s about time the Obama campaign did something about it.
Examples:
Sen. Jack Reed stacked up poorly against Lieberman on This Week a while back. [Hint: not a good VP choice.]
Sen. Claire McCaskill had a face-off with Carly Fiorina on Meet the Press. Unfortunately the truth doesn’t stand up well against Fiorina’s CEO-style manipulations.
House Speaker Pelosi has been defensive and jittery in recent interviews. John Kerry proved that he wasn’t a good representative for his own campaign – why would anyone choose him to represent Obama?
Frankly it shouldn’t matter who does the best job of talking ABOUT a candidate – but the sad truth is that it does matter. It changes how people feel about the candidate, and the news programs aren’t going to stop calling in these people to fill their hungry 24/7 news cycle. Isn’t there anybody out there who can represent Obama properly?
Last night I watched Nancy Pfotenhauer, another youthful, assertive (not to say shrill) McCain surrogate, confront former US Energy Secretary Federico Pena, who is Obama’s campaign co-chair. She said, and I quote,
Senator McCain has proposed lowering the corporate tax rate across all industries, because we have a rate of 35 percent, which is significantly above our competitor nations. We're competing with countries like Ireland that have a rate that's less than half our corporate tax rate.
IRELAND? I thought. We’re worried about Ireland? OF COURSE we’re not worried about Ireland – we need to think about Japan, Germany, the UK, and China, not Ireland. But nobody called her on it. Secretary Pena did have to ask her at one point not to interrupt him, pointing out that he had not interrupted her (as she blathered on about why oil companies should get a tax break, if you please). Secretary Pena is an infinitely more authoritative source than Pfotenhauer, who, incidentally, was a lobbyist for the oily Koch Industries. But she is very crisp and authoritative on camera – oh, and did I mention young and attractive?
In real life, Obama is cool, calm, and collected, with the facts at his command. McCain is apt to stammer, make mistakes, and show confusion. But until they face each other in person, I wish the Obama camp would figure out who should be making his arguments.