Obsessed with the Other Guy

It's kind of ironic, really. The McCain campaign can't stop complaining about Barack Obama getting all the attention--and, in the process, they give Barack Obama even more attention than he already had. As ABC's Political Radar notes, the obsession has even leaked over into the GOP contender's TV ads:

It may only be July and Americans may be more tuned into summer vacation plans than the presidential election, but that hasn't stopped the two presidential campaigns from filling the airwaves in key battleground states with television ads hammering home their best selling points...

The Wisconsin Advertising Project rates each ad as positive or negative and found that over 90 percent of the ads aired by Obama are positive in nature and do not mention Senator McCain. Approximately a third of the McCain campaign's ads are negative, contrasting the two presidential candidates.

Does the media harbor an irrational love for Barry? Absolutely. Are many members of the press completely in the tank for Obama? Sure. But does it help the McCain campaign to complain about that fact? Probably not. As the New York Observer notes:

The McCain campaign's response to the quantifiable imbalance in volume-of-coverage--a function, depending on whom you ask, of the fact that the press loves the Barack Obama story or that John McCain is the Republican nominee for president - has been a petulant cry of foul for the kind of infraction gentlemen are supposed to ignore.

Key word: petulant. The tone they should be after is "presidential," which doesn't exclude attacking the press's love affair with Obama, but it does exclude whining about it.

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