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"Senator McCain is absolutely right ..." Nooooooooo!
If Barack Obama has common ground with John McCain on a few details of their differing policy positions, what he should make clear to the audience is not that McCain is "absolutely right" about it, but rather that Obama himself believes and has said thus and so, and that he is "pleased that Senator McCain agrees with me on that point."
In the silly season, framing is everything.
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Comments (2)
I disagree. Those incidents show clearly that Obama can "reach across the aisle" unlike McBush.
He also prefaced many of his attacks on McBush with those statements.
Kind of like when your girlfriend starts out a conversation with, "You are a really, really wonderful guy, but...."
September 27, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect you would be correct in most contexts, but not in the context of this kind of political theater.
I have not seen the "opinion makers" in the corporate media making your point at all. They are casting it in pro-McCain terms implying a weakness on Obama's part. Typical of their MO, what intelligent observers might interpret as strength is being framed as weakness to a relatively uninformed electorate.
Obama should take ownership of every point on which he and McCain agree. If he doesn't, McCain will, and McCain's surrogates and his sycophants in the media will almost always cast it as Obama following McCain's lead.
September 27, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
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