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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (50190)	10/5/2008 1:20:33 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224718

Gerald Ford closed the gap on Carter from 33% to 2% within 10 weeks. "Ford was right about Jimmy Carter. Look what happened to his presidency. We lost more acreage to communism during that time than any other time in history." Carter's attitude towards the Shaw of Iran ultimately led to Ahmadinejad, and Jimmy drove the US economy into the ground: Here's what McCain can learn from Gerald Ford about closing a gap: The Spirit of '76 by Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, 10/13/2008 Ford assessed Jimmy Carter's strengths and weaknesses. Positive: --A man with real personal appeal. --A man with strong spiritual values. --A family man. --A man who says he cares about the common man and his problems. --A new kind of politician. --A man who says he's concerned about government efficiency. --A man who seems to deal with issues in a non-controversial way. --He is seen as an economic liberal and a social conservative. --He is a man with quiet strength. --Seen as a non-extreme Democrat. Negative: --An arrogant man. --A man who wears his religion on his sleeve; he is very self-righteous. Lacks humility. --A man who tries to be all things to all men; we don't know where he stands on the issues. --A man about whom we don't know enough; we really don't know who he is as a person. --A Southern Democrat. --May not be experienced enough to be President. Ford's strategists believed that voters saw Carter as "mystical, almost evangelical," and they sought to diminish this view with "a major and highly disciplined attack on the perception of Carter." The goal was to transform his positives into negatives. They wanted Carter to be perceived as: --An unknown. --A man whose thirst for power dominates. Who doesn't know why he wants the Presidency or what he'll do with it. --Inexperienced. --Arrogant--(deceitful). --Devious and highly partisan (a function of uncontrolled ambition). --As one who uses religion for political purposes --As liberal, well to the left of center and a part of the old-line Democratic majority. To win, Ford strategists argued, the campaign had to improve its communications by "choosing our message, simplifying it and repeating it" and by "improving the speeches and tying them to the overall strategy instead of continuing to develop speeches in an organizational vacuum." Ford's advisers refined their plan at a high-level meeting at Ford's vacation home in Vail, Colorado, as the campaign headed into the fall. Bob Teeter, Ford's pollster, described the meeting in an interview with a historian from the Ford Library. "I think the basic decision we made there--and I'm not sure we focused on it quite as clearly as I can now with the advantage of twenty years of hindsight--was to shift the question mark off of President Ford and onto Jimmy Carter," Teeter explained. We raised three questions about him. One, "Was he experienced enough to be president?" Second was, "Did you know enough about him?" The third was, "Did he have enough of a record as a Governor of Georgia?" The Ford campaign ran a series of ads featuring man-on-the-street interviews with voters discussing Carter. The criticism is mild by today's standards. Woman: All the things that we read about Jimmy Carter I think are true that he is fuzzy on a lot of the issues. Man: He changes his mind on the stand every other day or so. Man: He contradicts himself from one day to the next. Woman: He's much too wishy-washy. Man: He seems to be a little wishy-washy. Man: Well, if he'd stand up and say what he's for he'd be a little bit easier to understand and to believe. Woman: I like President Ford, a man who will tell you just exactly where he does stand. The Ford campaign strategy almost worked. By portraying Carter as too much of an unknown and telling voters that supporting the Georgia governor was too risky in such perilous times, Ford closed the gap from 33 points to 2 in ten weeks. (Ford's convention came in the middle of that period, giving him an added boost.) Several McCain advisers believe their campaign should focus on two very similar questions for the final push of the campaign: Who is Barack Obama, and can he lead the country in these difficult times? The advisers say the campaign will work to remind voters of Obama's "corrupt" associations with Tony Rezko and with "the terrorist William Ayers." There has been no decision made as to whether the campaign will directly raise Obama's relationship to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. "Rezko and Ayers are clearly in bounds," says a top McCain adviser. "McCain has said he doesn't want to talk about Wright. If others do, then it's a topic of conversation and we can join that conversation." One McCain adviser says the lessons from 1976 go beyond the campaign. "They were right about Carter. Look what happened to his presidency. We lost more acreage to communism during that time than any other time in history. And the Iranian hostages? And look at the economy." "The guy was too risky." Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD weeklystandard.com