McCain's Challenge: Redefine the Campaign as Inside Change Blame Versus Outsider Reform

Palin was the first step, now he must continue to make the race about insider blame vs. outsider reform

September 2, 2008 RSS Feed Print

U.S. News asked speechwriters from past Republican administrations to weigh in with their thoughts on John McCain's acceptance speech. Clark S. Judge wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan.

Republican nominee-to-be John McCain has a chance to redefine the 2008 presidential race on Thursday—if his convention acceptance speech lives up to the standard set so far by his surprisingly astute campaign.

This astuteness was on particular display last Friday, when the senator introduced his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Coming hours after Barack Obama's Invesco Field extravaganza—complete with celebrity entertainers and fireworks (balloon drops are so old politics)—the McCain announcement almost entirely reversed the momentum behind what television analysts said was the most watched convention address ever. Within little more than half a day, the media seemed barely able to remember anything the Democratic nominee had told his mile-high crowd. Yet despite its superb timing and execution, the Palin rollout was only part a larger initiative.

Most commentators focused, initially at least, on the new vice presidential candidate's gender. Team McCain made no secret of its hope to win over disappointed Clinton supporters. Throughout the Democratic convention, they had filled the nation's TV screens with ads inviting Clintonites to bolt. But while the gender factor shook up the contest and gave the media an easily understood story line, redefining the 2008 contest requires something entirely different.

A simple fact informs every move of both parties this year. For what is now the longest period in polling history, when asked if the nation is on the right or wrong tack, most interviewees say "wrong track." This is the root of Obama's "Bush equals McCain" mantra. Your discontent, he tells his crowds, stems from the occupant of the White House. There is no government but the Republican Bush administration and Senator McCain is its disciple.

When faced with an unhappy electorate, parties in power and their nominees typically revert to denial. Things aren't that bad, they insist—not nearly as bad as you think, and they're getting better. "Turning the corner," "light at the end of the tunnel"—we've all heard the desperate metaphors. Former Sen. Phil Gramm's "nation of whiners" remark fit the mold of this long and futile tradition. It is hard to think of any campaign in such circumstances that has not tried to shout back the waves of public sentiment—or of any that has succeeded.

McCain—who fired Gramm almost as soon as the whiner quip was out of his mouth—has set a totally different course. In ads and speeches, he has embraced the public's discontent. "Washington is broken. John McCain knows it," announces one of his most frequently run spots. In picking for his vice president, a Republican who has built her career on fighting corruption and cronyism in her own state's Republican Party, McCain set the stage for arguing, in contrast to Obama, that the source of our discontent is not this or that passing administration, but the insider game played by both congressional parties. He is poised to maintain that only an administration led by reformers of proven tenacity, strength, and experience in confronting the creeping corruption of persistent power—who won't spare any malefactor of either party—can make the system work again.

But if he is in fact to redefine the election this way, McCain must develop his message of insider blame and outsider reform personally and in detail before the American people. And the only place he or any candidate can make a thematic move of that magnitude is in his convention acceptance speech.

Unwittingly, Obama has given McCain enormous openings.

In Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Senator Obama selected an insider's insider as his running mate, someone so much of the old boy crowd that he felt compelled to call out a not entirely appropriate bon ami to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the end of one of his convention appearances.

More telling, for all its elegance and eloquence and despite a few rhetorical tweaks to disguise the banality of its substance, Obama's stage-managed-to-the-hilt acceptance speech could have been delivered by almost any Democratic presidential contender of the last quarter century. Indeed, in retrospect, all the glamour and pyrotechnics may have been intended—much like the smoke and screens of the Wizard of Oz—to disguise how little was at all postpartisan about the man (in this case) in front of the curtain. Barack Obama is indisputably a transformative figure—but for his person, not his program. In his program, he is entirely a creature of the Democratic Party's old-line establishment.

So, this is John McCain's challenge on Thursday: Make the beyond-partisanship theme of reform so full, real, and urgent that the campaigns of both parties revolve around it. That's a lot to ask, but, judging from his astuteness to date, he is fully up to the task.

Clark S. Judge is managing director of the White House Writers Group, Inc. and a former speechwriter to President Reagan.

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presidential election 2008,
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John McCain

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To the Devoted Obama Supporter

What does it take to get the Obama supporters to think with their head instead of their feet!

If Obama is guilt free why does he:

(1) Continue to refuse to produce the long form birth certificate and not the short form certificate of birth? There is a difference. One has very little information, while the other contains more descriptive information allowing for a better trace of his birth record and background. Don’t give me a lame brain excuse that he is tired of proving his citizenship! We couldn’t get by with that excuse and neither can he!

(2) Why has he hired a team of lawyers to look for loopholes to circumvent our constitutional requirement?

Anyone wanting to move on and clear up this explosive situation would certainly not waste time in producing documentation to prove us wrong. Without considering the other areas of documentation requested that he has also refused to provide, he has by means of failing to produce these documents omitted his disqualification and guilt.

To jeopardize the safety and stability of our country and its citizens is inexcusable and should render the highest degree of punishment since the possibility of permitting exposure and potential infiltration of an enemy within the confines of one of the most critical positions of our government could become reality. These rules were made for the sole purpose of keeping out foreigners yet we hold out our hands and welcome them in.

If you haven’t learned a lesson from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center wherein Islamic/Muslim terrorists infiltrated our government with the sole intension of doing physical harm, you never will! The Islamic/Muslim statement they will raise the flag at the White House, does this mean Obama will be the one accomplishing this on their behalf?

According to our constitution whenever a government becomes destructive against the people affecting their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government, and to institute new government. We intend to pursue this right to the fullest extent of the law and to demand punishment for the fraud and conspiracy perpetrated by Obama, the Democratic Committee, and all others who refuse to take a position in rectifying this injustice.

Joanofarc of 8:45AM December 23, 2008

Our Governments Lack of Concern Over Obama’s Qualification

The first copy of a Hawaiian birth notification presented by Obama over the internet was certified, by a credible source, as being fraudulent. Since then he has evaded the issue constantly. When he was in Hawaii visiting his ailing grandmother, he could have collected a copy of the required document, but did he, no? Why not? Since we were advised that the director would not release a copy of the document without authorization from Obama leads me to question, “Did Obama meet with the director when he was visiting Hawaii, to gain his support sufficiently to refuse to release a copy of the birth notification? Why did our government not demand a copy be produced? Now you expect us to accept a mere confirmation from the Director of the Hawaiian Department of Health that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii, when their practice back then was merely to accept they were born there, not really caring they were not, (since they did not have a good control on the actual recording of births back then) in the hope that people would not openly lie to accomplish the desired result of gaining improper citizenship into the United States. I thought our government was supposed to be more thorough than that, but I guess not. It depends on who you like or dislike!

If our government was on top of the issues, they would know that the following documents were likewise requested since Obama found it necessary to earlier on provide a fraudulent one: There is more than the mere birth issue at stake here. The constitution was a general outline and it was up to the governing bodies to define further their needs to assure the safety of our government. Thus, the accomplishment of the required background check to assure additional fraud was not perpetrated. These additional documents have also not been provided and Obama has not been provided with a certified national and international security clearance. Unless Obama has likewise been able to sway our F.B.I. into providing him with this document as well merely on the basis that the people have elected him as President and he deserves to receive it! Regardless of his ties to radicals in our country and in Europe which normally would not make that possible, and previously was not accomplished. It is funny how when an individual refuses to summit the required information, and then conveniently provides it when forced to do so, its value is lost in contemplation that payoffs could be involved to achieve the required result. We certainly did allow him sufficient time in which to accomplish that. Obama caused these controversies to take place.

Documentation needed to clear up questions concerning Obama right to be President:

(a) a certified copy of "vault" (original long version) birth certificate;

(b) certified copies of all reissued and sealed birth certificates in the names Barack Hussein Obama, Barry Soetoro, Barry Obama, Barack Dunham and Barry Dunham;

(c) a certified copy Certification of Citizenship;

(d) a certified copy Oath of Allegiance taken upon age of maturity;

(e) certified copies of admission forms for Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School; and

(f) certified copies of any court orders or legal documents changing his name from Barry Soetoro.

What do you have to lose by demanding that Obama provide the following information which would clear his name and support the validity of his qualification as our next President? Had this information been provided when requested earlier from him and the Democratic Party we wouldn’t be taking this action now!

It is reasonable that these documents should be produced considering that his father is Kenyan, his adoptive father is Indonesian, and his grandmother claims to have been present at his birth in Kenya. If he is a natural born citizen then producing these documents should not be any problem.

Are you so willing to subject yourself and your country to possible infiltration of enemy forces within our own government by electing someone that has too many ties with foreign governments to afford him access to our top secret information? You should be asking the question, what is he trying to hide? Many citizens were angry with the government by not providing adequate protection from the enemy attach on the World Trade Center so the Dept. of Homeland Security was developed to provide more safeguards which you now throw to the wind by refusing to hold Obama accountable to support his background to sufficiently qualify him as President of our country.

These allegations will not go away until Mr. Obama produces proof to federal authorities and the public. If he will not do so voluntarily he must be compelled to do so by every means possible.

According to our constitution, whenever any form of government, in this instance the Democratic Party and possibly the Supreme Court, refuse to take a position to rectify an injustice, especially of this magnitude they become destructive of our rights, and we the people have the right to demand alteration or to abolishment of it, and can institute new government or associated agencies to bring about the necessary result. Let’s hope this does not become necessary.

American was founded on strong values. Our country has been the champion for freedom and human rights since it began. I feel it the responsibility of us all to continue to represent these standards and not our own selfish desires. Freedom if never free! There will always be someone or a country out there that will want to have what we have and will be willing to do whatever is necessary to gain control. To ideally equate that we will never have to go to war says we will be willing to give up that freedom because the cost is too high. In exchange for the lost of freedom we accept militant rule and become the new immigrants looking for another country to migrate to because we learned too late what lack of loyalty has caused.

We may become laughing stocks to the world because we not only allowed a foreigner to become President of our country, but we just looked the other way believing every word he said, not checking the validity of his statements. Terrorists no longer have to sneak into our country, they can just walk in, make promises which the American people eat up and then vote him into one of the most critical positions in our country. What are we thinking! We may eventually wake up to a country we no longer recognize. A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within.

Our government has made it so cumbersome for the American citizen to initiate a complaint by refusing to accept communication from them. They advocate the use of a specific form be used to file an official complaint with the hope to discourage one being accomplished and then when one is submitted, they provide flimflam excuses to support their decisions. No wonder our government has received such negative comments.

In looking up the Electoral Committee to identify how they can be contacted, I find easy e-mail access to the Electoral Committee for a number of other countries except our own. The European countries provide more access to their government officials then we do. Our government has purposely and conveniently become inaccessible to the American people.

The Hawaiian Directors confirmation of birth by word of mouth, is an invisible document providing nothing to support who Obama really is. By not demanding a copy of that document only substantiates that by taking that form of action, Obama would not qualify due to numerous discrepancies that would come to light that do not match his comments or his fictitious stories of his life. What a pathetic attitude to have when the security and stability of our country could be at stake. How can anyone be willing to gamble on someone involved in so much controversy rather than protect our rights.

It appears our concerns have no degree of importance at all.

Joanofarc of 8:31AM December 23, 2008

With all due respect, after reading Your words, it was quite disappointing how You quickly viewed Senator Obama's historical event as a:

"Invesco Field extravaganza—complete with celebrity entertainers and fireworks (balloon drops are so old politics)—the McCain announcement almost entirely reversed the momentum behind what television analysts said was the most watched convention address ever."

Along with other condescending words to attack his character-

but since You claim to be a speech writing expert- I imagine You would be critical when an African American man from the opposite party speaks to unite America, not try to divide with below the belt politics humored by the last 8 years.

It is obvious who You support- for it appears You are happy with the current administration to NOT give credit where credit is due~ there are poor sports in every field-

when another accomplishes something on a grand scale~ it seems some people find it difficult to accept- hard pill to swallow.

I don't know You nor have to meet You to see how biased this column is- yet it Inspires those who want *Real* change to look deeper beyond a pretty face- why not allow the readers to investigate both candidates & see beyond flesh-

but unfortunately one VP whom You praise without hearing her stance on foreign affairs, economy, etc does not want to speak to the Media- claiming discrimination- gender bias & anything else that Carl Rove whispers.

I imagine You have been in the political scene for years & are a mentor or role model for others in some capacity~

It's sad if You can't accept an African American can do better than the current admin who has not worked to help all races- all income brackets & both sexes~

Can You sleep well at night with animosity in heart?

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure-

attack a person's strengths & make them appear as weaknesses~

which You are currently reporting. I imagine Senator McCain

remembers President Bush doing that to him.

If You want to do *Character Assassination*

& not focus on the *real issues that plague America*

Wouldn't You fall into the *old school of politics*

where the citizens of America are *assumed* Ignorant

so say whatever floats the boat-

Degrade the opposing candidate & incite FEAR

for if You evade the Media- then the public will have the deer in the headlights look-

*See no evil-Hear no evil- Speak no evil*

however Your candidate of choice- makes the Media 'appear' like they are evil & Senator Obama is the Anti-Christ-

which I imagine Americans are too smart to fall victim

to salacious rumours & eat from hands of political pundits.

For Your candidates to 'make reference' that Senator Obama thinks he is God- is blasphemy~

I do hope Sir that You choose to show both sides of the coin-

not just the tail of the donkey~

& try to pin as Perfect.

No human is Perfect- some Republicans try paint their candidate to be mightier than God~

I hope You're different.

Sunshine of CA 5:29PM September 08, 2008

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