Lesson Obama Needs to Learn: A Good First Punch Is Superior to a Solid Fact

I can't quantify this observation, but it seems to me that the McCain campaign and its surrogates have, within roughly the last week, softly introduced a co-element to their principal thrust of attack against Barack Obama.

Perhaps I'm just imagining this -- it's true, commentariat dementia is coincident to the candidates' as these things drag on -- but I could swear that when the week began, the solitary drums-thumping from the McCain camp was that Obama is indeed a marvelous human being, a real beaut of a man, but wholly, even pathetically unprepared to lead the nation as president. He just isn't ready.

As the days of the week accumulated, however, I began to sense that increasingly coupled with this message was the additional charge, usually expressed with almost laughable sententiousness, that we, the people, cannot possibly know where Obama stands "on the issues," because Obama himself doesn't know. And even in those instances in which he purports to know, there have been dark, worrisome and sinister shifts.

Again, I'm unable to quantify the frequency of this additional and equally weighty emphasis from the McCain camp, but I can, I think, at least identify its causal culprit, assuming real correlation.

Which is to say, this week Politico.com actually managed to commit some actual reporting amidst all the media hoopla over McCain's latest TV ads, and its reporting came to two fundamental conclusions: We, the people, cannot possibly know where McCain stands "on the issues," because McCain himself doesn't know. And even in those instances in which he purports to know, there have been dark, worrisome and sinister shifts.

Yes, it would seem the McCain folks are simply trying to head other reporters off at the pass. They're afraid, that is, that some others in the press might read the Politico's reporting on McCain's vast discombobulations and actually ask McCain about them. So better to get the first punch in, against Obama. In politics, one cherishes a good offense -- let's have none that sports-analogy stuff about good defenses.

Here, in a nutshell, is what the Politico concluded about McCain's supposedly superior expansiveness over Obama when it comes to taking positions on the momentous issues of our day: "Many of the domestic policy plans of John McCain have been notably short on details. Analysts caution that both McCain and Barack Obama have produced policy pronouncements that are just as much election documents as workable proposals; after all, that is what presidential candidates do. But when it comes to the metric of paper produced, McCain trails Obama in spelling out the nitty-gritty."

Even richer, though, were the outside opinions the Politico sought and quoted in developing and then fortifying its findings. Said, for instance, Robert Bixby of the centrist-as-you-can-get Concord Coalition, "The Obama people are much more detailed [on budget matters]. The McCain goal is quite responsible, but I can't see any way he could get there under the policies they've been proposing. There's a disconnect there."

And even better than Bixby's observation was this lollapalooza of no-confidence from no less than Brian Riedl of the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation: "[McCain] has not offered very much in specifics that I have seen."

What's more, antecedent to this reporting was another Politico piece that dissected and then destroyed any McCain-campaign contention that it possesses many a clue as to where it does stand on any given issue, assuming the campaign purported to know in the first place.

"Republican faithful have grumbled in recent weeks about the lack of a consistent message from John McCain’s campaign on key issues, leading observers to wonder what McCain’s top advisers are thinking," wrote the Politico in its lede.

And things went, frankly, downhill from there.

"Some of McCain’s most visible and engaged advisers have advanced positions that appear to conflict with the Arizona senator’s stances ... The ideological mishmash in McCain’s Kitchen Cabinet lends itself to questions about who’s crafting the campaign’s message ... McCain has staked out an eclectic and occasionally politically inconvenient hodgepodge of policy positions that has bucked the Republican line on some issues, backed it on others and -- on still others -- gone from bucking it to backing it."

Just try, for instance, to keep up with McCain's opinion of the day on Social Security taxes. One day they're a "disgrace," the next day they seem to be the stuff that status quos are made of; one day they're subject to an increase, the next day they're sacredly locked in; one day the whole bloody system should be sort of privatized, the next day it kind of shouldn't.

As the Politico summarily and rather gently bookended its story: "McCain’s campaign has been sensitive to perceptions of conflicting agendas."

Indeed. So what is that campaign to do? Simple. Turn the tables with lightning speed and get the first punches in on the larger media stage. After all, the comparative facts of the situation don't really matter; only who strikes first. And on this aggressive count, it's Obama, I'm sorry to say, who's beginning to trail McCain in the "nitty-gritty."