I am not normally of the view that endorsements mean much in Presidential politics. But Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama today is a real sledgehammer blow to the already staggering McCain campaign. Not just because a Powell endorsement shores up Obama’s shaky foreign policy bona fides, but even more because of the content of Powell’s remarks on Meet the Press. The General showed he still knows how to launch a brutal offense. Powell’s remarks were an across the board indictment of the McCain campaign. He threw a subtly delivered but perfectly targeted series of chops at each of the the major fractures of the shaky McCain campaign; the Palin choice, the dark tone of the campaign, the Helter Skelter antics at the onset of the economic crisis. As a great McCain admirer, I am sad to say it, but the truth is the video of Powell’s endorsement will boil across You Tube and do great damage in these closing days of the campaign.
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The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy
More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.
