No it won't destroy his campaign. But things rarely do. What it will do however is further define him for the electorate. This is all about positioning. For the last several weeks, McCain has seen an opening in Barak's armor in which he can paint Barak as an out-of-touch elite liberal. Look at how McCain dealt with Rockefeller's attack on McCain sense of humanity: he used it to attack Obama and made the point that Obama did not sufficiently dissassociate himself from those comments.
So this statement is like Christmas Day for the McCain campaign. Obama's statement has neatly summed up exactly how they want to portray him to electorate. Now, see where Obama has been positioned:
Yeah, Americans now have a good picture of him now. He's the elite far-left liberal that McCain's campaign wants to portray him as.
Fairly or unfairly, positioning is everything in an election. Either you position yourself or your opponents do it for you. For example, Dan Quayle got positioned as an airhead and once that happened any gaff no matter how small or insignificant fed into that impression. Other candidates could misspell potato, but Quayle could not afford to.
Because of Wright and now this, Barak has been positioned and anything he says from here on to election day will be viewed in that light. Any gaff, any misstatement, any poor choice of words, is going to feed into that perception and will be seen as confirmation of it.
The thing is, once your positioned, you can only change that perception over a long period of time. It can't be done quickly or else your efforts appear to be gimmicks. You look like Dukakis riding in a tank or Hillary releasing a cookie recipe. People figure (often rightly) that you're trying to pull a fast one. The best you can do in the short run is to change the topic and try to emphasis a different perception that plays to your strengths.
Reagan knew how to do this instinctly. When critics claimed he was lazy, Reagan laughed and said: "I know that hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?" The perception of Regan's laziness was totally at-odds with the facts, but if Reagan had attempted to deal with by releasing stories about how hard he actually did work, it would not have been effective. Laughing at it, worked and enabled Reagan to move the conversation into an area that played to his preceived strengths, namely his affability.
Obama's probably going to deal with it this way: 1) The story's gonna have legs over the next fews day and Barak will kind-of sort-of apologize for his poor choice of words, assuring us that he really loves the heartland; 2) the MSM will declare the matter resolved because there will be nothing left to say and it will appear that Barak has put it behind him; 3) Conservations will rail about how Barak got "away with it". 4) Barak will start doing some more folksy things that rural people like to do.
In the end though, none of that will work because once Barak messes up again, people will remember that perception of him as an elite liberal snob. He simply is not going to lose that perception and it will carry into November. His best hope is to find a different aspect of his perhsonaility that he can emphasis and use a counter-weight to this one.
Good comments. I’m not sure the MSM will be completely cooperative with Snob-ama’s attempt to put this behind him in your #2, though, because in this case we also have the Clintonistas desperate to bring him down..... and they still have plenty of allies and flacks all over the media. So I would not be surprised if this stays alive for quite awhile and he could be on life support well before the convention.
If Obama should manage to be crowned at the DNC convention, he’ll still have to engage in at least ONE debtate with McCain and while they may both be Left of Center, (A) Obama is farther to the Left and (B) will try to paint McCain as a far right extremist with support from racist-sexist-warmongering-zealous-greedy-homophobes. “You know the type”.
He’ll have some rehearsed talking points to brush over in the debate but he’s sure to go off the cuff now and then guaranteeing at least a few “water cooler” moments that are discussed the next day (is his political career DEAD afrer saying THAT or not). And the Networks will be happy because it’ll be the cheapest “reality tv” drama they every had to air.
“Obama’s probably going to deal with it this way: 1) The story’s gonna have legs over the next fews day and Barak will kind-of sort-of apologize for his poor choice of words, assuring us that he really loves the heartland; 2) the MSM will declare the matter resolved because there will be nothing left to say and it will appear that Barak has put it behind him; 3) Conservations will rail about how Barak got “away with it”. 4) Barak will start doing some more folksy things that rural people like to do.”
Yes, but you know - is this how he imagines the Presidency will be run? Tally up all the gaffes (and intentional misrepresentations), all the clarifications, all the comforting pats on the back and what do you have? Inexperience to deal with the simplest of matters. What about the big ones yet to come?