PLANK SEPTEMBER 26, 2012
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I’m a fan of NBC’s First Read blog, and consider its morning briefings pretty much the best, well, first read that you could ask for. But they had an item a couple weeks ago that was unintentionally hilarious:
What’s particularly striking about the new Bob Woodward book is that, unlike his past works, he’s making an argument rather than trying to recreate and report on a past event and letting others draw the conclusions. Woodward’s argument here: Obama didn’t lead in the debt-ceiling debate. Woodward told ABC, per Political Wire: “President Clinton, President Reagan. And if you look at them, you can criticize them for lots of things. They by and large worked their will, Woodward said. On this, President Obama did not.” He added, “Now, some people are going to say he was fighting a brick wall, the Republicans in the House and the Republicans in Congress. Others will say it’s the president’s job to figure out how to tear down that brick wall. In this case, he did not.” Does the Woodward book on such an ugly inside the Beltway fight have legs in the swing states in these final days? We’ll see.
The notion that an inside-Beltway account of the debt-ceiling debate would have “legs in the swing states” is a delightful window into the solipsism of the Washington bubble: we care about Bob Woodward, so those people in Dayton and Denver and Danville must, too. It’s right up there with David Gergen’s declaration after Obama’s convention speech in Charlotte that Obama’s favorable reference to the Simpson-Bowles commission’s recommendations to balance the budget would help him with undecided voters:
They’re rallying around Simpson-Bowles because it’s one of the most popular ideas around the country. If you travel everyone says, why didn’t they take Simpson-Bowles?
I travel around a lot but clearly not to the right places, because I don’t have a lot of people button-holing be about Simpson-Bowles, or Bowles-Simpson, or even its near cousins Rivlin-Domenici and Domenici-Rivlin!
Joking aside, the fact of the matter is that political scientists and pollsters have found that truly undecided, late-deciding voters tend to be very “low-information”—the industry euphemism for “not reading Bob Woodward in their spare time to help them decide how to vote.” Saturday Night Live captured this contingent pretty brilliantly last weekend.
But lo! This week it became apparent that Mitt Romney’s campaign believes that the science on this is wrong. It broke out an ad built entirely around Woodward’s book, specifically his claim—vigorously denied by Nancy Pelosi—that she muted out a conference call with Obama so that she could get back to a meeting with Harry Reid during the debt ceiling showdown last year. The ad concludes: “If he cannot lead his own party, how can he lead America?”
If this ad shows any signs of swaying swing-state undecideds outside of McLean, Virginia, I’ll eat a strategically-placed flowerpot.
Follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis
14 comments
Bob Woodward? Is he that guy who did the great Watergate stuff before most Americans were born, and then produced a series of increasingly fatuous books about other stuff in subsequent decades? Seriously, though, surprisingly ridiculous criticism has proven crucial in presidential politics in the past. See: Kerry, Swift Boating; Gore, debate sighing; Dukakis, Willie Horton. So while I hope and suspect this attack won't go anywhere, anything is possible. If criticism based on Woodward's silly arguments could go anywhere, though, I'd think it would be based more on his overall dissing of Obama's role in the debacle, rather than whether Pelosi exhibited lousy phone etiquette toward him.
- Thunderroad
September 26, 2012 at 6:09pm
Guy's such a sanctimonious bore ...
- austinous
September 26, 2012 at 7:15pm
Obama can't lead his own party, but he is leading America to a socialistic nightmare. Uh huh.
- blackton
September 26, 2012 at 7:15pm
Obama can't lead his own party, and he is NOT leading America to a socialistic nightmare. Rather, he is enabling a constant rightward drift that will greatly accelerate if there is severe economic downturn, as predicted by the CBO and Keynesian economists to occur sometime in the next 9 months-- even in the absence of an EU economic/political crisis. Uh huh.
- drofnats1
September 26, 2012 at 7:29pm
drofnats back again. Uh huh.
- ironyroad
September 26, 2012 at 9:22pm
The President let the Republicans have their way and it caused us problems. So, vote for Mitt?
- Nusholtz
September 26, 2012 at 10:09pm
Now, I seem to recall that drof was predicting economic collapse in October. I gather that that is no longer the Talking Point? So we should ensure a Republican win because "Keynsian economists" are predicting a "severe economic downturn" in, er, the next 9 (and not eight, or ten, but nine) months? Drof, we get it, you are either a troll who thinks that the other "Leftists" here are so stupid that you can persuade them to "play the long game" by electing Romney now to usher in a New World Order of Leftist Librul Progressive Socialist United States ... or you are so deluded as to think that that is how politics is played. If a troll, your masters are seriously crazy; if not, you are. Either way, you don't make sense and are getting really boring - so change the talking points. Like, now that Obama is inching closer to victory, we should all elect Republicans to the Senate and the House, because that way we can make sure to show everyone how batshit crazy they are, so that in 2024 we have a supermajority of Republicans in both Houses, and in all State Houses, to change the Constitution and ban Republicans from office forever ...
- icarus-r
September 26, 2012 at 10:58pm
Bob who?
- Sophia
September 26, 2012 at 11:29pm
Until reading this article, I had long thought that Bowles-Simpson was an over-the-counter digestion enabler.
- tommyduke
September 26, 2012 at 11:51pm
If claiming that "Pelosi once hit the mute button during a teleconference with Obama" is the best that the Romney campaign can come up with, then this election is in the bag.
- NateG
September 27, 2012 at 12:09am
tommy, hate to disillusion you, but it's a laxative. I hope your toilet is working well, or at least you have a good plunger, or at least a good auger.
- skahn
September 27, 2012 at 12:38am
drofnats fancies himself to be Cassandra, who was always right, but cursed to be ignored. Unfortunately, he is never right, and can't be ignored.
- zardoz67
September 27, 2012 at 10:29am
"If he [Obama] cannot lead his own party, how can he lead America?" If Romney wins in November, we'll see how well he leads his own party. The Tea Party jackals in Congress will eat him alive and spit out his bones. Woodward is losing it. If he can't grasp the fanaticism of the GOP opposition in Congress (signed pledge vowing to never cooperate with Obama on anything at all to help the American people, because that would help Obama get re-elected; portraying Obama in the media as the Other, an illegitimate president who is not an American), maybe Woodward should give up "reporting" on politics. The idea that any leader, even a dictator, can bend those around him by force of will is ridiculous. Hitler and Stalin had to fight like tigers to implement their pet programs in their own countries. The difference in the U.S. is that Republicans, a minority, aren't afraid of losing their heads, so they themselves become the dictators, forcing their own bizarre programs on us. Right now our economy is a 100% crappy, Republican one. That will only change if Obama gets re-elected.
- magboy47.
September 27, 2012 at 3:52pm
"Obama can't lead his own party, but he is leading America to a socialistic nightmare. Uh huh." Best comment so far, courtesy of blackton.
- magboy47.
September 27, 2012 at 3:55pm