Campaign Trail: The Wrong Attacks at the Wrong Time

You have to give McCain campaign manager Rick Davis credit for one thing: he’s quickly becoming a master of the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” strategy. Or perhaps we could better characterize it as a page from the “Do as I say, not as I do” school book. As we continue to await Gustav’s unwelcome arrival somewhere to the West of New Orleans today, Rick was busy – and no, I’m not making this up – criticizing Barack Obama for “playing politics” with the storm.

“Look at what happened today — did Barack Obama attack John McCain or Sarah Palin?” Davis asked.

Told Obama had criticized McCain and Palin on the campaign trail over pay equity, Davis continued: “So he attacks us while there’s a hurricane going on and John McCain suspends his convention basically. What bigger contrast can you have about putting your country first?”

Perhaps more amazing was the way which the campaign press corps mutely stood there recording his words and image as if he had simply commented on the weather. He was referring, of course, to a campaign stop made by Obama and Joe Biden in Toledo. The Democratic nominee gave one of his standard stump speeches, then tossing in an employment-related jab at Sarah Palin.

She “seems like a very nice person,” he began, repeating remarks he’s made often since McCain announced her selection on Friday. “But I’ve got to say she’s opposed, like John McCain is, to equal pay for equal work. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

What gave these scenes their Twilight Zone quality was the fact that Davis delivered his address only hours after McCain’s appearance in Mississippi with Palin at his side. As I noted yesterday, not one member of the press paused to ask him why the Governor of Alaska and a Senator from Arizona had dragged a sizable Secret Service retinue and burgeoning campaign press cadre down into the middle of an area in the midst of preparations for a major hurricane and delivered a press conference. Given the four states in the hurricane’s potential path – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama – there were four Governors and eight Senators available for such duties. Of the other 46 Governors and 92 Senators, none but McCain and Palin (only by coincidence, I’m sure, candidates for the Executive branch this fall) seemed to be inclined to clog up the proceedings in the storm’s path, unless Lieberman was lurking in the background off camera as usual. Obama and President Bush both opted to “get out of the way” of the process.

So essentially, Davis was pointing out that, while McCain and Palin used the approaching storm to demonstrate – on every camera which could be found -, exactly how they were “on top” of a situation which neither had any pressing business or authority to oversee, Obama should completely suspend his campaign lest he be seen as “using the storm” for politics. It will be interesting to see how well that sells with the public, regardless of how meekly the press accepted and reported it. Fortunately for the Gulf Coast, Gustav should be their only worry for a while, as Hanna is currently predicted to rake the Eastern coast of Florida before coming ashore somewhere near Georgia or South Carolina.

In closing, I would note that it probably seems like I’ve been doing an awful lot of slamming of Team McCain over the last 96 hours, but rest assured that I have not joined the masses of the Obama faithful. It’s simply a case of “The One” really not doing much to make any news since the end of the convention. In fact, the Toledo appearance is the only thing in the news feed about him since the Big Speech. (Which we already covered at length.) Conversely, McCain and Palin have been making all the news, and not much of it has happened to impress me. Rest assured, as soon as the Democratic nominee and his running mate get back to stuffing their sizable feet into their respective gullets, we’ll be bringing you the details.