On Thursday night Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) gave his historic acceptance speech.  It was historic in the sense that he is the first black major party presidential nominee and historic in the sense that he actually has a chance to win in November.  The Democrats and Obama carefully crafted their convention finishing with a flourish as they choose to have the speech delivered in a stadium a la JFK and on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”  And Obama delivered using his great oratorical skills to get the crowd of some 80,000 fans rocking and rolling.  After the speech ended viewers were treated to a fireworks spectacle that even Fox News chose to focus on before going to analysis of the speech.

Obama was having his day in the sun.  On Friday morning the sun set.

Instead of waking up to stories about his historic moment Obama and his fellow Democrats were shocked to see the news cycle had already shifted to who would be the Republican vice presidential nominee.  This interest was fanned by the revelation little by little that first Tim Pawlenty and then Mitt Romney were not going to be in Ohio for the announcement later that day.  The speculation then shifted to Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska who would be a dark horse candidate. For the next several hours as more information arrived it became clear that the McCain campaigned has pulled off one of the greatest head fakes in politics by choosing Palin.

Even after the announcement became official people were glued to their television sets as they tried to learn more about this little known governor.  In the meantime the Obama campaign’s role was reduced to being asked what they thought of the selection.  And they handled that badly by panning Palin.  It was so bad that Barack Obama had to later issue his own statement distancing himself from the official campaign statement.

The much criticized McCain campaign in one fell swoop managed to remove Barack Obama from the news cycle, energize the conservative base and potentially succeed in wooing some disaffected Hillary supporters to vote for him in November.

One example of the Palin effect on the news cycle is Friday’s edition of the ABC World News with Charles Gibson.  The first six minutes of the broadcast was about Palin.  Only after that segment did they talk about Obama’s speech and spent a grand total of two minutes.  Think of it this way, ABC spent 20% of their broadcast time, 27% if you omit the commercials on Sarah Palin.  How many news stories get that kind of air time?

It is clear that Obama and the Democrats are big losers so far in the aftermath of this selection.  Obama received a small bump from his convention but McCain could receive an even larger bump after the Republican convention is over this week depending on Palin’s performance.  The other loser is Libertarian candidate Bob Barr.  Barr a former Republican congressman from Georgia was counting heavily on the disaffected McCain supporters to energize his campaign and make a statement that conservative leaning voters wanted a better candidate than McCain.  For all intents and purposes those supporters are now back to the GOP fold and firmly in the McCain camp. 

We will have to see how this all plays out in the months ahead, but when the vice presidential nominee can still dominate the news cycle for days after the initial announcement it leaves the impression that this is even more historic and newsworthy than Obama himself.  That’s not what the “Messiah” was counting on.

 

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author

2 Comments for Palin Nomination K.O.‘s Obama