archives

Paul Waldman at Huffington Post:

McCain has every right to talk about Vietnam all he wants — it's his story, and no serious person has ever disputed the details. But don't tell us he's reluctant to use it, because he isn't. He talks about it to voters, he talks about it to contributors, he talks about it to reporters, he talks about it with seriousness, he jokes about it, and his campaign makes every attempt it can to remind people of what happened to him in Vietnam.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with that. But what happened with Gen. Clark reveals the McCain Rules, as he and the press would have us understand them. Here's how things are supposed to work: It's fine for the McCain campaign to run ads touting his time as a POW, create web videos touting his time as a POW, have him mention his time as a POW in speeches, and have him bring it up in debates (remember "I was tied up at the time"?). In other words, it's fine to have John McCain's entire presidential run be presented through the filter of his POW experience. Should, however, someone even ask the question of whether the fact that McCain was a POW really qualifies him to be president, that would be a deeply offensive affront to all that is right and good, and must not be tolerated. Talk about having it both ways.

You might have heard that a few thousand Obama supporters have created a group on Obama's own campaign website to ask him to vote against the Democrats' latest travesty of a FISA bill (NYTimes):

The group, created on Wednesday [June 25], has more than 8,000 members, and recently passed the group "Women for Obama." (On Monday morning, there were barely 4,000 members of the anti-FISA group.) [...]

The entire episode shows the potential complications of an open site becoming an enabler of criticism from ardent supporters, let alone from opponents in disguise, so-called "concern trolls." But the campaign said it wouldn't have it any other way.

In an e-mail message, Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesperson, wrote: "This campaign has an extraordinary group of committed supporters, and we greatly appreciate their willingness to share their time and ideas with us. We believe that an open dialogue is an important part of any campaign, and are happy that my.barackobama.com has become a vehicle for that conversation."

The member count for the anti-FISA-bill group is now 11,759. Click here to join the group.

And a follow-up from The Nation:

Even conservative bloggers are impressed that the Obama campaign provides an open platform for supporters to organize against the candidate's position. "Rather than react in accordance with the practices of most campaigns by shutting and muffling dissent," observed the GOP blog The Next Right, "Obama is providing dissidents (many of whom are supporters of his) the opportunity to organize on his campaign web-site." The blog contrasted the approach to top-down campaigns on the right. "Can you imagine a Bush campaign reacting like this? I can't."