Wednesday Morning: McCain Under Fire, Obama's Alleged Ego, and a Ted Stevens Ripple Effect?

Happy hump day, gentle readers.

Oppo-emailers at the DNC and Obama HQ are having an easy day of it. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times write up McCain's recent pivot to negative camapign tactics against opponent Barack Obama. The Post focuses on the dustup over the cancelled military hospital visit in Germany, and concludes that the McCain camp's repeated accusations that the stop was cancelled because Obama couldn't bring photographers "lack evidence." The Times looks at the bigger picture of recent negative ads and McCain's new not-angry-just-disappointed tone, and says "some Republicans" think it's a risky tactic for McCain to stay in a reactive posture and allow the election to be a referendum on Obama. The NYT visits the meme on its editorial page as well, accusing McCain of taking the "low-road express." In an article titled It's All About Obama, Politico writes that "McCain's bitterness, frustration and near-obsession with Obama are on plain display." And the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page hits McCain from the right on his claim over the weekend that "nothing's off the table" with regard to Social Security reform -- including raising the payroll tax cap. Tough morning! What was that Media Matters was just saying about the press's love affair with McCain?

A hint of balance comes from the Post's Dana Milbank, who zings Obama thusly...

Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.

...after the Democratic nominee-to-be spent yesterday meeting with Cabinet members and heads of state and zipping around town in a motorcade. And then there's this from Obama's meeting with Congressional Democrats:

[A]ccording to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Hmm...hubrisy. A round of follow- ups reveals that the quote was taken out of context (there's no tape of the comment) and in the first half of it Obama actually said "it's not about me at all. it's about America. I have just become a symbol..." But nonetheless, it only takes one partial quote to fuel an already-smoldering fire about Obama's ego, and this one is already flying around the blogiverse.

On the Congressional side, Sen. Ted Stevens' indictment could be bad news for GOP House and Senate candidates. Don't forget that a series of Republican corruption scandals -- Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Conrad Burns, need we go on? -- were a major contributing factor in the 2006 Democratic wave. (Democratic Rep. Bill Jefferson also got into some trouble that year, but his constituents didn't seem terribly concerned about it and re-elected him anyway. He is, after all, from Louisiana. And I write that with love, as a fellow-Louisianian.) The Washington Post zooms out this morning on the uphill battle for Senate Republicans to hang on to their seats.

And finally, the RNC has disabled the discussion threads on their BarackBook app on Facebook, which had been dominated by hearty mockery from Obama supporters. Though as Ben Smith points out, you can still write reviews of the application...

-- Evie Stone

10:00 AM ET | 07-30-2008 | permalink

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