Face It, McCain was the First to Play the Currency Card

Here are images from a McCain ad that first appeared in June, way before Obama ever mentioned anything about his face on a dollar bill:

The ad says:

Let's look at what Barack Obama has changed so far. ... What will he change next? The Statue of Liberty? Mount Rushmore? The $100 bill?

I'm not sure what having his face on the Statue of Liberty is supposed to convey, but to the bigger point, what do they mean about changing the $100 dollar bill? In what way would it "change" if he is elected and distinguishes himself to the point where he would be considered for that honor (change that is different or more worrisome than calls from conservatives to put Reagan's image on coins/currency)? Whatever they mean, Barack Obama did not raise this issue first (contrary to the impression left by this editorial in the Washington Post, and by other reports on this issue).

Update: Jonah Gelbach at Economists for Obama points to the choice of the still image on the ad linked above:

Bottom Decking Started in June, by Jonah B. Gelbach, Economists for Obama: ...Jed Lewison ... notes that

As you can see, the video's still image is of Obama on currency. Note that the image doesn't occur until about three-quarters of the way through the video. The way YouTube works, the default image occurs at the midpoint. In other words, McCain's campaign affirmatively [chose] this image.

No doubt all this will be well covered by the MSM...

Comments

[master of none]

it's a cheap, cheap shot. mccain is losing and losing badly, so he started with the lame punches. it's meant to stir racial tensions. ' you want a [edited] on your dollar bill? billy bob joe? vote accordingly' they tried the muslim card and that didn't work.

[erewhon]

You cheapen yourself and your blog if you get into discussions about currency card, race card, latest polls, etc. Race and class are factors in almost every election in spite of the stranglehold that the corporations have over American politics... The Press does nobody a favor by constant prattling about what the candidates say, who played what "card", what the latest polls show etc. However, a thoughtful discussion of the 1928, 1932 and 1980 elections in historical retrospect as related to the present election could be very interesting.

Herbert Hoover was well known and widely respected. An orphan who made a fortune, a man who raised millions for food and medical relief, a mining engineer, he exuded confidence and competence. Many prominent Democrats considered the 1928 election hopeless and were happy to see Al Smith, the Catholic mayor of New York, as nominee. The Ku Klux Klan campaigned actively against Smith, many were sympathetic to their claim that a vote for Smith would be opening the door to a Papal takeover. Smith was also connected to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine and was believed to be opposed to prohibition, although he made no campaign statements about prohibition. It was no surprise that Hoover won a landslide victory, but in fact the ten largest cities all gave majorities to Smith. Hoover’s image of competence faded as the depression got worse and worse of course.

The Klan is gone but suspicion of nonwhites is not. Does McCain exude competence? I think not. He's a brave man who has trouble controlling himself, he was shouting next stop Baghdad in the summer of 2002. He knows little if anything about computers. Maybe the most important factors are the bad economy today- Bush and McCain may claim that everything looks good, but they have no credibility- and the tremendous urbanization of the country. The percentage of Americans living in urban areas went from 6% in 1800 to 56% in 1930 and 79% in 2000. Are urban voters smarter and more informed than rural voters? Not necessarily- I agree with Shenkman’s Just how stupid are we? Facing the truth about the American voter, which argues that voters today are even dumber than in 1928, due to our disgraceful media. However, there is one big advantage to our urban population; that is that most urban voters can be reached by a personal neighborhood campaign. Personal contact will do much more for Obama than advertising. Debates may well show to those with open eyes that McCain is old and shaky. Obama is calm, thoughtful and thoroughly modern. I hope that he has learned from Jimmy Carter’s mistakes.

[donna]

I strongly disagree that it cheapens the blog. I consider it very disturbing that McCain is already resorting to negative tactics -- this kind of crap is usually saved for the late desperation campaign.

After Bush's cheap shots against McCain in South Carolina, McCain vowed he would not campaign this way. He's broken that promise, like so many others. It is very telling about what kind of administration he would run if he's given in to the Rovian forces already. It indicates he would also give in to the very negative forces that have pushed this country to the edge of ruin for the last seven years.

McCain was above this, but now, he's not. And it is a very telling point.

[hari]

I raised the race issue last week - simply put there is no way to avoid it in this election. However, my intuition says BO, so far, has not shown defness of purpose in handling the socalled race card. Unfortunately McCain has succeeded in doing exactly what he needed to do...bring down his galloping preferences with the independents and those sitting on the fence - after the foreign policy trip and Berlin crowd!

You've to accept the round was won by GOP attack machine...they forced BO to use the word *race* - as a factor
with relentless diminishing return for BO and his strategy.

Now, all this tells me is - simply a fact of life - BO is not capable of dealing with this type of *attack* on his integrity. Therefore, more reason why he needs someone more superior to his personal profile, in all seriousness, to be VP candidate. And, why not HRC?

[RW]

McCain's dog whistling has been going on for awhile and will doubtless become louder as long as it results in electoral gains: He's trying to win an election and it's not really his problem (yet); it's Obama's problem and, as citizen's of a democracy that to some degree relies upon a fourth estate doing its job, it's our problem also regardless for whom we intend to vote.

I did not blame the Bush campaign's promotion of direct, surrogate or special group attacks on Gore or Kerry even when those attacks were grounded in falsehood or irrelevancy: I despised the attackers and felt some contempt for those swayed by the attacks but blamed the Gore and Kerry campaigns for inadequate response(s) and blamed the news media for not conducting themselves as journalists; e.g., not only were many of the attacks inadequately researched or analyzed by the media but the premises or imputed underlying facts of those attacks would actually be reflected in the title(s) and narrative of subsequent media reports.

This recent post from MediaMatters at http://mediamatters.org/items/200808010008 constitutes critical reading IMHO and makes it clear the same thing is happening again: Even journalists such as Andrea Mitchell who have identified outright falsehoods promoted by the McCain campaign are failing to follow up appropriately.

I'm hardly expert in these sorts of calculations and the Obama campaign is doubtless exploring many options but I personally believe the McCain attacks carry enormous risks even if Obama decides to stay on the high road as Gore and Kerry did: Let one whiff of strange fruit burning cross the nostrils of the elites who run corporate media, let even a modest impression develop that media could now be perceived in support of Jim Crow, and corporate journalism's own narrative of itself will force a change in coverage that the McCain candidacy can not survive.

Obama won't need to resort to Clarence Thomas's invocation of a "high tech lynching" and if McCain has any of that wisdom stuff he's being credited with he will call a halt to this line of attack as of yesterday and start working on his debating skills.

[Bruce Wilder]

I hope there is a competent journalist (is that a contradiction in terms?) running around behind the scenes, writing the equivalent of the Making of the President 2008, because the current exchange of fire between Obama and McCain is fascinating to me.

I am sure STR is going to try to tell us that Obama's is a weak candidacy, but I, a lifelong Democrat, marvel -- there are times when I can barely contain my impulse to run into the streets shouting hosanna. Having watched Clinton and Gore and Kerry ground down by the Republican Noise machine and its lackey Media punditocrisy, the easy jiu-jitsu of Campaign Obama is a thing of rare beauty for this news junkie. I have remarked in comments before about all the clear signs that the Republican Powers-that-be are sitting out the election; the usual sponsored candidacy simply never emerged, and a third-string of Republican campaign operatives are just going through the motions on behalf of the used-to-be-second-string, has-been candidate. Even knowing this, I cannot, in my heart, help feeling that this is 1945, well-earned after a long season of 1936-1941; I mourn the vast destruction of a long Winter, but smile at the signs of Spring.

The amateur Social Scientist and Historian in me, of course, knows that Obama has a strong wind at his back -- practically, a gale force wind of a nearly Perfect Political Storm after the serial catastrophes and scandals of the Bush years. I think it no exaggeration to say that the Republican Movement Conservatism came very, very close to destroying the Constitution of the United States (capital 'C' and lowercase 'c', if you understand the distinction). Many Democrats of a millennial cast commonly compare this election to 1932, and a few, including me, are inclined to venture the analogy to 1860. I am too sensibly cynical to entirely believe that we are to be saved; I wish that the coming triumph might gain us the material advance of National Health insurance, of course, without seeing how it can come about; nor can I see how the dull sword of the pusillanimous Congressional Democrats can be made to fully reclaim the rule of law.

The central puzzle of this campaign for me remains the fog of Obama's conservatism. On a strategic level, this electoral revolution is built on changing the composition of the Democratic coalition -- something which, in the American system, requires, at least, the pretense of conservatism, followed (one lives in hope) the reality of measured, incremental progressive reform. The naive Krugman may imagine in his fevered wishfulness, a candidate of moral outrage and progressive passion, but those guys and gals cannot command an electoral majority, are not electable, nationally, in the U.S. system. 1860 and 1932 were similar electoral revolutions -- knowing how the story unfolded afterward in radical change can make us forget how those electoral revolutions turned on the conservatism of the successful candidates and platforms (and the compensating isolation from power, from the governing coalition, of an impotent opposition partisan rump). The story does not always turn out well: the election of 1840 was a triumph of the nationalist Whig activism of Henry Clay, completely undone by Tippecanoe's ill-health, and the tactical decision to choose an extremely reactionary vice-president -- arguably, the consequence was laissez-faire economic development and, of course, civil war, provoked by western expansion on the slavepower's corrupt terms -- in other words, a long, drawn-out political catastrophe.

Despite my anxiety, I can, nevertheless, enjoy the nearly unassailable strategic power during the campaign, that Obama's carefully modulated conservatism gives his candidacy. He pissed me off with FISA, and I expect the same pain from the choice of VP (Bayh, Kaine, Biden -- all potentially horrific Tylers, but I probably would have thought the same about LBJ, if I had attained the age of reason before 1960. Is it vain to pray for Sibelius?) How fun is it, that the most corrosive stupid Media narrative is that Obama is not as far ahead in the polls as he should be? How fun is it that Montana, Colorado and Virginia are "battleground" States? How fun is it that the Democrats may sweep Alaska, or elect a Senator in Mississippi? It is fun, really. It is. (I do need to get out more.)

Given my own dry liberalism, I could wish that the country was ready at last to jettison Empire, and embrace a frankly anti-war, anti-imperialism candidate. But, I do not cling so tightly to such fantasies, that I cannot enjoy the astounding spectacle of "President" Obama wielding power abroad. Speak softly and carry a big stick? The man enacted a shift in American war policy, seemingly just by showing up, sweeping aside the determined policy of the sitting President and the candidate of the President's own Party. The Media punditocrisy can prattle on about whether Obama "looked Presidential", but the facts on the ground visibly shifted in an unmistakable exercise of power -- an astounding feat for a yet-unnominated, let alone unelected candidate. Maybe it is not exactly the change anne would wish for, but it was the change that was possible, and he orchestrated it with the practiced ease of a well-rehearsed conductor of the philharmonic.

And, let's recognize that he didn't "just show up". He had the political foresight to adopt exactly those policy positions, which would enable him to press his advantage. The 16 month withdrawal plan and the advocacy of a strategic shift of focus to Afganistan, which have so perturbed anne, were also exactly the finely calibrated positions that could leverage a timely pivot in the committments of Prime Minister Maliki and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen. This is what political leadership and power look like. "Conditions on the ground" -- the bumpersticker handed to McCain by the Bush machine -- turned to ashes in the mouth of the Man Called Petraeus, whose objections were flicked effortlessly away, all the Bush narratives about 'listening to his commanders on the ground' rendered obsolete and irrelevant in an instant. The relentless effort of Media lapdogs to press Obama on "the success of the Surge" -- to enter a territory littered with landmines -- was successfully resisted with seemingly effortless grace.

Whatever doubts I might have about the wisdom of any concession to an Imperial Policy, implied by Obama's positioning -- that's the strategic fog of Obama's conservatism in action -- I recognize the power as an electoral strategy. My policy positions would certainly not win Virginia or Montana, let alone seduce Secretaries Gates and Rice to undermine their boss on behalf of the Democratic candidate.

Other commenters have noted that Obama is up against a decrepit, corrupt, incompetent news Media, which is often indistinguishable from a Republican Propaganda operation. The liberal blogosphere and other elements of the Democratic Party and progressive movements are engaged not so much in the electoral campaign as in a revolutionary War Against the Media. Ungrammatical grecism or not: Media delenda est!

I don't think Mrs. Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) can be made over into a competent journalist, but I credit the Obama Campaign, when I hear her calling the McCain campaign on a lie (the campaign ad accusing Obama of skipping a visit to troops in Germany, allegedly because he couldn't bring the news cameras). Andrea Mitchell, in an act of selfish self-promotion put herself on the campaign plane for the Obama trip to the Middle East and Europe; the Obama Campaign did a remarkably good job with her, evidently.

Obama's Campaign can hardly overthrow the Media, let alone the Plutocracy whose instrument the Media is, before the November election, but it can do its best to work The System as it, unfortunately, exists. And, they are doing that. The Narrative of McCain as pathetic and desperate is taking hold rather nicely, with a soon-to-be unbreakable grip. All subsequent events -- the debates and the Conventions and whatever else -- will feed that Narrative. In comparison to how a functional Media might work to support a working Democracy, it is far from an ideal situation: Obama's campaign must use the Broken Media as it is, not as we might wish it to be. On some level, it is not McCain, but my country, which is pathetic. But, still, I will take the continuing spectacle of the humiliation of McCain as a kind of guilty pleasure; I will tut-tut with all the solemn sorrow of the worst Concern Troll over how this once-proud Maverick Warrior has been brought low by his own antiquated, desperate lust for power. (But, in my heart, I will cheerfully be thinking, f* u, a*; let unrepetent Republicans gargle with the sour milk of a curdled Candidacy so far past its sell-by date as to resemble poisonous cottage cheese -- I wish them fatal indigestion.)

Ultimately, we may be electing Caesar to replace Bush's Sulla; or, worse, it may turn out that Obama's is the ultimate Sucker Presidency -- the Plutocracy and its Media will turn on a dime, to blame the Democrats for losing Bush's War and worsening Bush's Depression, extinguishing all hope for continuing the American Republic. Or, Obama may turn out, himself, to be the Plutocracy's willing tool, continuing the subversion of constitutional democracy in the last days of decadent Empire. I don't really think so, but the strategic fog of Obama's conservatism necessarily makes it impossible to reject such depressing hypotheses. But, I choose to be more cheerful.

[Bruce Wilder]

Kevin Drum offers the useful perspective of Andrew Sullivan, in bestrowing today's "QUOTE OF THE DAY":
Andrew Sullivan on the depressing but all too predictable arc of the John McCain campaign:

They really played the arugula card? For all McCain's personal qualities, we're learning that the machine behind the GOP simply re-makes the campaign in its own Coulterite image. Instead of actually fighting on the core questions — how do we get out of Iraq with the least damage? how do we get past carbon-based energy? how do we tackle al Qaeda's new base in Pakistan and within the nuclear-armed Pakistani government? how will we reduce the massive debt bequeathed us by the Bush-Rove GOP? how do we restore the Geneva Conventions? — we are debating people's cultural insecurities and food choices.

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy is not unrelated to this. If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?

Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism. Surely we're not just now noticing this?

Indeed.

Somewhere here in the dynamic that relates Sullivan's Tory conservatism and Drum's moderate liberalism, we can glimpse how Obama's own strategic conservatism has worked to leverage the exposure of the corrupt conservatism of Rove/DeLay/Abramoff/Bush/McBush III to partisan electoral advantage.

Race is a wedge issue, but it is a wedge separating principled conservatives from the Republican Party and independent moderates from sympathy with McCain. The hand-wringing over how this affects Obama is sympathetic to Obama, but treats McCain as disreputable and pathetic. David Gergen Called Out Racial "Signals" of McCain Ads this morning on ABC. (David Gergen!)

Almost all the voters, who would vote for McCain on race, are already Republicans. It is the voters, who might otherwise vote Republican, that are really persuadable, and that dynamic will tend to work to Obama's advantage as the Media narrative develops.

[one tree]

Mr. Wilder - I am also a political junkie and my take is the democrats realize the republican tree is rotten and ready to collapse.

The democrats are terrified of the powerful incumbent, and the strategy is simply get out of the way of the falling tree. The Obama campaign is really trying to say and do nothing except make sure the tree will not fall on them. In 2004 the tree fell on the democrats, but they have learned and adjusted, so 2008 should be a cinch.

This narrative explains why the Clinton's fought so hard - they realized 2008 is year of the Democrat.

I hope you enjoy watching the tree fall.

[Bruce Wilder]

ot: "I hope you enjoy watching the tree fall."

timberrrr!

[X Man]

It's all about the Benjamins, apparently...

[hari]

There is political nostalgia in Bruce Wilder's narrative to finally dump the GOP machine....for the good of the Old Republic.

My take is that BO knows intuitively that the winds are filling up his sails - for the *tacking* (I'm a sailor boy) *left* and *right* - to finally get to the finish line before the incumbent (GOP) machine attacks....(again).

However my fear is that despite his lack of political experience (at this level) and whatnot, there is definitely no time to waste on not attacking the decline and fall of the Imperial Empire under GOP, and by the latest version of an MBA. The economy stupid! Why the hell can't his advisors get him to speak in depth on the growing menace of economic decline and unemployment under Bush...and McCain?

GOP is pretending the issue is BO and not their incompetence in managing the economy. BO is afraid to come out of his skin and lay bare the facts and attack the *dishonesty* of his opponent on a myraid of pressing national issues. Or is it that he's too academic to pretend to come down with simple logic and connect with the average voter?

His choice of campaign language is stifling in such a challenging and pivotal election - not only for America but for the peace and welfare of the world. Whereas McCain is blunt and direct, BO is long-winded and without semblance of an attack machine of his own. WhY? What's he afraid of?
And, for Gods sake, get those hands out of your pocket in public! That's the most nonchalance and disrespecting sign of an elite academic...who can't get out of his own skin!

I've been thru it at the higest international professional levels, as I once reported here; one's professional integrity is a serious factor...once lost it's difficult to recover...McCain machine attack is geared toward the goal of dis-assembling BOs self-confidence and elitism.

I agree with BW that American media is the problem; not simply because they're just incompetent or lack moral antenna; but because of their gross intellectual inability to assess *truth* from *false pretense* of the racial attacks implicit in the GOP media ads.

[Ryan]

I liked this blog better when it was about Economics.

As for the feigned confusion about the ad's message; it is the same old McCain attack mantra "Obama is an arrogant and inexperienced whelp."

[berni]

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