Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Great analysis of Hillary spin.

There's a great article over on Time's website talking about the insanity of Hillary Clinton's spin machine. Here are my favorite paragraphs, from later in the story:
    It's understandable that the Clintonites operate in permanent spin mode; they weathered a constant barrage of attacks in the 1990s, and they came to see politics as a perpetual war room where you say whatever's necessary to win the day. It's hard to know whether their self-justifying and self-contradictory nonsense bothers actual voters, or just the reporters who have it force-fed to them. Strategy and marketing can be overrated in the world of retail; it might just be that a majority of Democratic voters, faced with a choice between two strong candidates with similar policies, prefer the Obama product.

    But the Orwellian spin and the silly gotchas certainly could reinforce Obama's message that Clinton is mired in the small-minded, zero-sum, it's-all-a-game Washington politics of the past. There was that classic debate moment when Hillary said her worst quality was her impatience to change the world, and then criticized Obama for admitting he was disorganized. The next day, Obama said that if he had known that was how the game was supposed to be played, he would have said his worst quality was his overeagerness to help old ladies cross the street. Who do you think won that argument?

No comments: