Stop Talking About Pizza And Orange Juice

I actually saw this on Hardball yesterday and decided not to post on it because I wanted to erase it from my memory. But Media Matters brought it back to my brain.

MATTHEWS: Did you see him there?

SHUSTER: -- but that's --

MATTHEWS: He's not that good at that -- handshaking in a diner.

SHUSTER: No --

MATTHEWS: Barack doesn't seem to know how to do that right.

SHUSTER: -- he doesn't do that well. But then you see him in front of 15,000 people in some of these college towns, and that's why, Chris, we've seen Chelsea Clinton and Bill Clinton in Bloomington and South Bend and Terre Haute. I mean --

MATTHEWS: What's so hard about doing a diner? I don't get it. Why doesn't he go in there and say, "Did you see the papers today? What do you think about that team? How did we do last night?" Just some regular connection?

SHUSTER: Well, here's the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, "I'll have orange juice."

MATTHEWS: No.

SHUSTER: He did.

And it's just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, "Here, have some coffee," you say, "Yes, thank you," and, "Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?" You don't just say, "No, I'll take orange juice," and then turn away and start shaking hands. That's what happens [unintelligible] --

MATTHEWS: You don't ask for a substitute on the menu.

SHUSTER: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: David, what a regular guy. You could do this. Anyway, thank you, David Shuster. I mean, go to the diners.

After that, Matthews went to a stunned Bob Casey and asked him about why Obama just can't connect in diners. I thought he was going to turn off-camera and say "Did he just ask me that question?"

Now, this isn't limited to Democrats, actually, here's a recent report about how McCain couldn't fold his pizza in half like a real New Yorker. The difference is that those quick hits on Republicans don't usually make that metaphorical leap to turn some random event about bowling or orange juice into a symbolic manifestation of the candidate and Democrats in general. I mean, if this did hit Hardball, someone would say that everyone knows McCain's a real man and he just isn't used to New York's way of chowing down on pizza but he made a game attempt and isn't it great that he tried? What a guy!

Which really doesn't matter to me, they shouldn't be spending 5 seconds commentating on campaign trail events like they're in the skybox watching the Patriots and the Giants. But when it comes to a Democrat in a similar situation, they plug whatever "gaffe" they've decided on into the overall narrative. That's because the conservative noise machine has been browbeating the media for years and years and basically setting up the themes. Democrats are weak, they're effete, they don't "play in Peoria," they can't connect with reg'lar folks. So this puts the media types on the lookout for this garbage, and then eager to take the slightest of opportunities to play them up into some reflection of character. It's a typical game, and it's easier than using your brain. It's also a lot cheaper. Sending out a tracker to film Obama on the road beats doing a hard analysis of policy positions. One requires researchers and a need to probably locate and film experts, and come up with graphics and fact-check - but a tracker just points and shoots, and you don't even need a microphone because the tea-leaf readers are just going to show the visuals and talk over them anyway. It's both vapid and cost-effective, and that's why it's so ubiquitous.

Penn Leaking Ink

I saw the Hardball appearance that Ezra Klein references as well, and it was riveting. I don't know if I'd ever seen Mark Penn live on television before, and he was uniformly awful, especially when he tried to not-so-subtly bring up Obama's cocaine use again. Joe Trippi called him on it immediately, and it became a total mess. Here's Ezra:

My hunch, right now, is that if Clinton goes down, Penn is going to be blamed. You can see the knives coming out already, but he really does a poor job here, and he's hampered not merely by his shortcomings as a speaker, but by the absence of message within the Clinton campaign. When the rationale for your campaign is that you're the frontrunner with the experience to win, losing your lead in the polls doesn't only put you in second place, it actually shreds the argument for your candidacy. What we're beginning to see here is how underdeveloped the arguments for Clinton were when separated from her aura of inevitability.

You can also see Trippi trying to position Edwards as above the fray of a Clinton-Obama food fight, and apparently Iowans are buying that. But it's not really true. It's a one-sided food fight, with the Clintons flailing away in an old style of politics. This is because, as Ezra notes, there's no rationale for her campaign. She's running on the name Clinton, as a re-election campaign, more than anything else. I made this argument earlier this week, that her candidacy is entirely about how she's in first place. It's really Iowa or bust for Clinton, and it didn't have to be that way. That's entirely a fault of positioning, and a fault of Mark Penn.

An Inconvenient Bitch

I know it's progressive blogosphere dogma to claim "why didn't this story get the attention it deserved," and a lot of times that's true, but the New York Times op-ed in question is being discussed quite a bit on Hardball today (in two segments, in fact), and Hardball also did a long story on the couple that was arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to a Bush rally, complete with an interview with the couple. Plus, it should be mentioned that the editorial appeared in, you know, THE NEW YORK TIMES, not exactly the Bumblefrick Ohio Daily Shopper.

(Tucker did a segment on it too - and of course it's being framed along the lines of "Is it good to have active military members writing editorials?", but it's still getting out there.)

Time For a Cable News Ethics Panel

I noticed this too yesterday on Hardball, Margaret Carlson was going on and on about Fred Thompson without mentioning anything about some particular rumors that she may have been dating him.

On the Republican side, Sen. Fred Thompson is said to have hurt his vice-presidential chances when his name was linked romantically to that of Margaret Carlson. The Time columnist and "Capital Gang" regular is reportedly too liberal for George W. Bush. Thompson's standing was not enhanced when gossips said he was simultaneously involved with another woman.

This is the same woman who has no problem talking about Bill Clinton's sex life and how he hasn't learned his lesson yet.

Has she?

Short answer: no.

(on a related note, James Carville is working for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and as such shouldn't be commenting on the 2008 race without disclosing that fact.