But there's something more going on here -- something that I think belies McCain's understanding of the office and his inability to fulfill what that office requires.
I mean, George Bush had great backdrops. Even John Kerry had great backdrops. Bill Clinton and his rooms-full-of-multiracial-children really set the bar. But McCain seems to let himself be photographed in places designed to look small and cramped and underwhelming. He still does most of his major interviews in the tiny press room at the back of the Straight Talk Express. That's fine for the cold winters in New Hampshire. But get out of the bus and bask a bit in the wonder of America, man. Or at least don't look so damn awkward:
In his defense, McCain did try to create a major photo-op by giving a speech on an off-shore oil rig this week. But a massive oil tanker accident and a roiling hurricane squelched that one shot...but not before McCain's camp announced it, forcing them to sheepishly retract later in the day.
In all seriousness, though, I think McCain's inability to conjure the grandeur of the office is a terribly troubling problem. During the past eight years, America's face to the world has morphed from a shining beacon of hope into a glowering monster of war, despair and arrogance. It will take a pretty massive public relations battle to win back the hearts and minds of an entire generation of people whose first word associations with America are "Iraq" and "Guantanamo," not "freedom" and "liberty."
Public relations in its own right won't win any hearts. It is not sufficient...but it is necessary. And John McCain just ain't got what it takes.
2 comments:
They really are bad at that stuff, quite remarkably so in fact. They have not even really made a virtue out of necessity by running with a "down-home, not flashy like Obama" image which would seem like an obvious thing to do. McCain has a sense of humor, and his campaign would do well to make fun of itself and its lack of hipness. Most Americans, never having gotten off the Bedford Ave. "L" stop in Williamsburg, don't feel all that hip either so that kind of thing would actually probably play well.
Obama on the other hand has to be careful not to look TOO photogenic and too polished for the media because it plays into the idea that he's all style and no substance. I'm really surprised the McCain people have done such a piss-poor job of exploiting that angle. McCain is a relatively uncool guy in his 70s, but it's the job of his campaign stuff to turn that to his advantage and they just haven't done that.
On a related note, the McCain's campaign decision to run radio spots in the those three American "Berlin's" while Obama gives his big wunderspeechenschauzen (sp?) in Germany is actually pretty clever (and cheap) PR in my view, but those kind of moves have been few and far between, and they'll probably actually screw the radio ads thing up somehow in the end.
I kind of liked the Berlin radio ads, too. But they seemed like such a JV move...like the kind of thing that makes you chuckle when you read about it online. Instead, it seems to be the PRIMARY pushback against Obama's wildly successful European swing. They're throwing spitballs while Obama's scoring the winning touchdown, having sex with the naughty librarian and acing his SATs. The spitballs can be kind of funny...but c'mon.
I think the McCain camp will have to embrace the "Joe Six Pack" schtick sooner or later, just out of necessity. I expect to see him driving around in a dusty pickup wearing flannel shirts and carrying a lunch pail.
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