McCain really blew it

For a while the McCain campaign seemed to be doing everything right. Then assorted financial institutions began failing, and McCain went all hot-headed populist on us...temporarily, at least, blowing a golden opportunity in the process.

Barack Obama was a HUGE recipient of contributions from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac--#2 in Congress, in fact, while John McCain was around #50, and was in the Senate for five years more than Obama during the relevant period. On a time-adjusted measure, Obama would be #1 by a mile. On any measure, though, he took an extremely large amount of cash from Fannie and Freddie. What's more, John McCain introduced legislation to reform Fannie/Freddie, and even predicted the meltdown that recently occurred. Congressional Democrats blocked any reform, however. Then there's the fact that former Clinton administration officials made tens of millions of dollars working at Fannie/Freddie. And finally, for the past 1.5 years Democrats ran the oversight committees with authority over Fannie/Freddie (not to mention the other institutions that failed), and apparently did nothing to stop the looming disaster.

You could turn all of this into an ad that: a) gives the lie to Barack Obama's whole argument about being a different kind of politician; b) shows McCain to be the true reformer; c) shows Democrats in general to be incompetent, greedy hacks; and d) raises doubts about deepening the government's involvement in health care (you want the federal government to do for health care what it's done for the mortgage industry?).

So, why hasn't the McCain campaign done this? (Or maybe it has; Texas isn't what you'd call a toss-up state.)

Comments

[Lehigh]

Nuthin like that in Michigan. Main ads here both say "Hey, your economy sucks, and Obama/McCain is at fault." McCain is at fault because he didn't back loan guarantees for the big 3, and because he had some vote or other that sent jobs overseas. Obama's at fault because he didn't try to limit health care expenses, or support energy reform, or support tax breaks for businesses.

The interesting thing about the anti-Obama ad is that it superimposes images of Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy, etc. saying that "Democrats are bad". How many voters even know Patrick Leahy outside of saying "Hey, that dude was in the Dark Knight!"?

I think the ad you propose could play, but unfortunately the logic chain may be too long to be an effective message.

[Special Agent Johnny Utah]

McCain could do something simpler: Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were headed for failure, McCain tried to stop it, Barack Obama and the Democrats wouldn't let him because they were bought off with campaign contributions. Now you, taxpayer, are stuck holding the bag. Barack Obama: bad for taxpayers, bad for America.

[Vox]

Something like this works pretty well.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/09/any-questions.html

[Lehigh]

Not bad, though I'd eliminate all specific references to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and refer to them more generally.

[Lehigh]

Oops -- maybe Rick Davis is the reason McCain's not running such an ad.

[Special Agent Johnny Utah]

Lehigh, did you see the McCain campaign's response?

http://www.johnmccain.com/mccainreport/Read.aspx?guid=74063c9d-7cb5-47c9-acf6-53c0c2d88376

[Lehigh]

And what about this?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160713

I think the NYT has a pro-Democratic bias. It was telling that in their articles about Palin, they would bury the mention that her approval rating was at 75-80%. At least, however, they said it. If you ask me to choose either the McCain campaign or the NYT as the most trustworthy news source, I choose the NYT. Similarly, I accept that Foxnews.com will be more objective than anything put out by the Obama camp.