How a Palin dilemma is manufactured, and Obama "loses" either way

The fundamental aspect of gaming this kind of dilemma rests on media manipulation. The tendency of the media to create a false equivalency between the parties on -every- point of debate makes this sort of thing possible. It happened during the Swiftboating of Kerry, and it's happening now. How does it happen?

Most importantly, the parties' respective message machines are presumed equal when they are not. The GOP is authoritarian in the extreme when it comes to message control--being a far less diverse / fractious party, nearly all their surrogates repeat the same talking points, which are designed under the McCain campaign's exclusive control. Within a few hours, Republican spokespersons and pundits will have a few key lines to repeat, which may be safely attributed to McCain's campaign. The Democrats do not work the same way, yet are expected and believed to by the media. Take a DLC senator, a Kucinich-style congressperson and an ex-Clinton strategist: you'll get three different and individual statements on the same issue, none necessarily guided or controlled by Obama's campaign. Despite this basic difference, the media freely attribute -any- Democratic spokesperson's comments as implicitly speaking directly for the Obama campaign.

Now take Palin. She has dominated the news cycles for nearly two weeks. In the scramble to both define her and justify McCain's choice, the GOP have talked about little else in the media. While Obama / Biden have largely avoided addressing her in any significant way and have kept to the issues, the Democratic spokespeople are constantly asked to respond to the ubiquitous Palin coverage. As this is all the media and the GOP are talking about, they have little choice in being asked. Those who are not affiliated with the campaign directly are nonetheless believed to speak for it, and -whenever- they answer a question about Palin or respond to a Palin misrepresentation, it's seen as coming from "the Democrats" at large and therefore from Obama. Even Clinton advisers and conservative Democrats are viewed in this way.

From here the media start to crow "Obama is talking too much about Palin!" despite the fact he has devoted scarcely any time to her. They crow this even as they cover her almost constantly, and the GOP spokespeople exult over her almost constantly, and they demand opinions from any and all Democrats on her.

So there we already have a dilemma. Should Obama respond strongly? She's dominating the coverage and the GOP should not be allowed to define her, since her media identity will reflect strongly on whether McCain made a bold and innovative move in choosing her, or an erratic and basely political one.

Well it doesn't matter if he does or not. He makes an old chestnut of a political metaphor about pigs and lipstick, directly referring -to the issues- and not to Palin, and yet even this old bromide is immediately considered to be about none other than Sarah. After it is ridiculously framed as such by the GOP, the media do not report "McCain brings down discourse with non-issue." They report this latest distraction as being the fault of -both- candidates, in the same false-equivalency manner to which we are accustomed. Moreover, this is cited as further evidence of Obama's obsession with Palin, and concern trolls from all over worry that Obama is focusing "too much" on Palin; this after he has studiously avoided that very focus. Given the newsgasm over her that suffocates all other narratives in the campaign and its spawning of an invasive multi-hour series of network interviews with her, might we attribute this "focus" to other parties?

So if I had to strategize, as ignorant and lazy as I am, I would argue to go after her full steam and in unrelenting fashion. Never give up pointing out her inadequacies and misrepresentations, and never give up relating them back to McCain's erratic and desperate behavior in these past weeks. They're a good narrative, Obama will be blamed for either focusing on her or not focusing on her, and she's the only positive image for the GOP ticket left to energize their base or snare independent voters. We're going to get accused of jumping on her no matter what, so we may as well get the benefits of actually doing so.

Let's make the most of it. :)

:)

:kick: