The McCain Junior High Reaction to Obama's Choice of Joe Biden

Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone at 10:02 AM on August 25, 2008.

The McCain campaign ran two advertisements in response to Obama picking Biden for Veep in front of 35,000 wildly approving voters. All attack, no McCain policy to be found in the ads. Every time Obama makes a major move, there will be similar whiney responses by the McCain camp, to their detriment. They should choose their own Veep carefully.

While I predicted the choice of Joe Biden by Barack Obama several days ago, I need to say that was a prediction, not my choice. As a prediction, it makes sense to me. I’m sure Joe Biden will fight real hard in the campaign and all that stuff, but he’s not my favorite guy to represent “change.” I’m more likely to agree with my colleague Richard on that score.


Still, this is about spin, and I’m all about examining the John McCain reaction to the Biden choice. And that reacdtion so far has been straight out of Junior High. What’s the first thing the McCain camp did? They talked about Barack Obama’s misstatement. Here’s Obama’s slight gaffe: Obama, in introducing Joe Biden, said “the next President,” then immediately corrected himself to say “the next Vice President of the United States.” How many gaffes have we seen where McCain has completely misstated something and never corrected himself, waiting for his staff to say something like, “it doesn’t matter whether John McCain knows his ass from a hole in the ground, he was a POW!” Purely a Junior High reaction on the McCain camp’s part, and McCain himself should wake up soon to what these folks are doing on his behalf, or he’s going to get the votes of all those AV nerds and about nothing else. No, this wasn’t the only Junior High style reaction by the McCain camp. Check out his ads.

Here’s the first advertisement since the Biden choice, where McCain decides to take Joe Biden’s words from the primary campaign and use them against Obama. I have to say, I’m not sure who this is supposed to convince. Throughout our history of electoral politics Democrats have run against Democrats, and Republicans have run against Republicans. And there’s been unity afterwards, more or less. This is just another extension the McCain camp’s decision to treat this election as if it were for Junior High class President. Yeah, the messages here have about as much substance as a slew of text messages by 13 year old schoolgirls. Maybe the schoolgirls would be more entertaining, though.


The other advertisement? Why John McCain is going after the Hillary folks! The ad is called “Passed Over,” and the McCain folks purport to know how Hillary and her people feel about the Biden announcement. This is really ugly, if you think about it, that they pretend to know how a woman and her supporters feel, then try to take advantage politically, all the while with mock sympathy. That’s truly what it was, of course. (The McCain camp surely had advertisements ready even if Obama were to have chosen Colin Powell as a running mate.) I like Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the McCain ad with it’s faux sympathy. From CNN:

Hillary Clinton’s support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn’t. It’s interesting how those remarks didn’t make it into his ad.

CNN’s OnPolitics also makes the salient point that Mr. McCain just might choose Mitt Romney as a running mate, and the whiney attacks those guys made against each other were far more bitter than anything said by Hillary or Joe Biden about Barack Obama. McCain’s Junior High tactics of commenting on the primary campaigning in the other party has been done in the past, of course, though I don’t remember two seperate advertisements on the subject. Given the far more bitter ugliness between Guiliani, Romney and McCain, well, one hopes for McCain’s sake that one of his seven houses isn’t made of glass. Those stones will be returned, I’m sure.


What should McCain have done here? He should have left well enough alone. The American people are used to political parties having their time in the sun. The other party getting in the way of the convention strikes the American people not just as poor cricket, but as a juvenile move. No doubt someone will also take note that McCain’s people developed two different advertisements out of an Obama event that took about an hour the other day, one that had 35,000 people cheering wildly. Yeah, he should leave well enough alone. The “celebrity” of Obama is such that there’s a huge number of people in this country who are not going to like being poked in the eye by a bunch of juvenile McCain staffers.


So, is the McCain camp going to produce two commericals for ever big Obama appearance? Perhaps he could tout this as a jobs program for Republican-leaning campaign producers or something. All i know is that if the McCain camp keeps this pace up, they’re going to have no time to strategize about who should be their own candidate for Veep. That’s the interesting conversation that should be happening here.


I’m leaning towards Tom Ridge, despite the word in the last couple weeks that the religious right will have numerous cows over McCain picking a pro-choice candidate. Who you going to believe, Michael Smerconish, who claims Ridge will help McCain capture Pennsylvania from the Obama ticket who has PA native son Biden on it? Or are you going to believe FauxNews, which claims the RNC will never let McCain choose Ridge? I’ll believe neither. Ridge worked several years for Bush and instituted those stupid color coded terrorism warning thingies. The last thing John McCain needs is further association with Bush, so he’s not going towards Tom Ridge whatsoever, except in a Democratic campaigner’s dreams.


The Junior High School reactions by the McCain campaign to the Biden Veep choice is a mistake on the McCain camp’s part, not just because it makes the McCain people look exceedingly petty, but because it takes them away from the most important decision of their campaign. Oh, they are clearly going to blow it, and I just can’t wait.

Steven Reynolds is a regular blogger for the All Spin Zone