“Obama Moves to Reintroduce Himself to Voters“, the Washington Post, notes, but check out the language of the opening paragraph:
In the opening weeks of the general-election campaign, Sen. Barack Obama has moved aggressively to shape his campaign and offered a clear road map for the kind of candidate he is likely to become in the months ahead: an ambitious gamer of the electoral map, a ruthless fundraiser and a scrupulous manager of his own biography in the face of persistent concerns about how he is perceived.
“Aggressive”, “ambitious”, “ruthless”–this sounds far more like the press at large is beginning to describe Obama using the David Brooks Machiavellian badass political samurai model, rather than the positive Hope! and Change! Yes We Can! new politics message that Obama began nationally with.
If the press continues to describe Obama in such terms, this could create a nifty opening for McCain to attack Obama on his cynicism and rote Chicago politics, much as Reagan deflated Carter in 1980 (who masked his own punitive opinions of America underneath a similar veneer of sunny optimism four years earlier) with his “Well, there you go again” line.
And on a related note, Lexington Green of the Chicago Boyz notes, “It is weird how so many who claim to like Obama hope he is lying. Three examples come to mind immediately”. Read the rest.
Update: Jennifer Rubin observes Obama as he loses “His Teflon Sheen”.
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