OMG. The Reverend Wright is going on Bill Moyers tomorrow, according to Matthews.
Update: Making a speech at the National Press Club! (Monday?) I...I...the sheer arrogance to think that they can shape the behemoth that this has become ... from a one-hit podium.
I smell potential disaster. After having assured everyone that he could not be swiftboated, they may actually do it to themselves, if they are not careful.
1. After Wright spoke semi-publicly at a funeral, the Obama campaign should have realized that they needed to get out in front of that curve, before he took to the airwaves again (as is his right). They need/needed to have Wright sit for a series of well-formed, carefully proscribed rebuttals to feed to the press one way or another, long before any real "interview".
2. Wright has not laid the advance groundwork for a wide-ranging, full-scale interview, himself. At a minimum, he needs to have already withdrawn his factually incorrect comments, carefully, about the government and AIDS (not his opinions, but the facts he got wrong). Doing this not to help Obama, per se, but to avoid having poor teachings out there associated with his ministry. Wright might be able to "get by" with an explanation of his drug-related comments, but he cannot start that dialog cold on Broadway, so to speak - there has got to be a warm-up for that story to get some traction. Finally, there are NO indications that Wright is disciplined enough to know when to stop talking or not answer a question. As such, he's just as likely to lite a new fire for everyone he puts out.
3. Obama appears to have failed to refine his own message on all this, perhaps imagining that he has already done enough. He's wrong and his campaign should be all over him about it, especially after his poor response during the Philly debate.
4. Among the ideas for his own message about Wright: He should not "disown" Wright. That means he has to keep the distortions of Wright to a minimum. That, in turn, means they have to actually defend Wright, in some ways, with conviction not sentiment. This has to be done both in words and in pictures. They need a Trinity Church greatest hits list, that Obama knows by heart, without mumbling or hestitating. They need to fight images with images. This means a "loop" of their own, showing Wright saying some inspirational things, some clever things, some funny things, some very touching things. They need faces of kids. They need to go on the offensive against the distortions, especially this one going on in North Carolina - that kind of swiftboat stuff cannot go unanswered. Finally, they need to find more of the rumored "negative clips" that exist and have not been shown widely, so that they can deal with them on their own timeframe. (They must take their medicine on this! John McCain is powerless against even his own party, so he's not a safe bet to keep a lid on it.)
5. All this needs to have been done long before Wright himself submits to even a friendly interview, re-igniting all the well-worn grooves that the opposition has already put in place. Now, the pressure will mount for Obama to "disown" Wright, and that is the wrong thing to do!
If they are already on top of this and just setting a trap, so be it. Let's hope so, for all our sakes.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Breaking: Obama Campaign About to Let Down Obama?
