Showing posts with label MCCAIN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MCCAIN. Show all posts

16 Oct 2008


Beware an October surprise from bin Laden
By Joseph Nye
Published: October 15 2008 19:31 | Last updated: October 15 2008 19:31

Americans are transfixed by the aftermath of the September surprise in financial markets. Could there be a very different surprise coming in October?

The public thinks Democrats do better on economic issues, and the financial crisis erased the bounce in the polls that John McCain received from the Republican convention. After the second presidential debate, Mr Obama widened his lead, but dangers remain. Polls show that Republicans do better on the issue of terrorism. Last June, McCain adviser Charlie Black was reprimanded for having the temerity to point out that the intrusion of a terrorist event into the campaign would “certainly be a big advantage” for Mr McCain. Mr Black may have been politically incorrect but an objective analysis suggests he might be right.

On October 29 2004, four days before the last election, Al Jazeera aired an 18 minute video tape in which Osama bin Laden addressed the American people and threatened further retaliation and a desire to bankrupt the US. In the first poll after that tape was released, President George W. Bush opened up a six point lead over Senator John Kerry. The deputy director of the CIA commented that “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favour today for the president”.

Since the election turned on 120,000 votes in Ohio, it is plausible Mr bin Laden was able to affect the election. From the al-Qaeda leader’s point of view, Mr Bush’s policies were more useful for his efforts to recruit supporters than Mr Kerry’s might have been. Mr bin Laden is involved in a civil war within Islam. He wants the US to pursue policies that create the appearance of a clash of civilisations. Anything that polarises the mainstream of Muslim opinion helps his recruiting. As the deputy director for analysis at the CIA commented at the time: “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”

From that point of view, Barack Obama must be unsettling for Mr bin Laden. An African-American with a father born in Kenya and a childhood spent partly in Indonesia presents a very different face to the world. A recent BBC poll of 22 countries found that if the world could vote, Mr Obama would win in a landslide. The pro-Obama margin varied from 82 percentage points in Kenya to 9 points in India.

Of course, Americans do not like outside interference in their elections. When Mr Obama attracted a crowd of 200,000 to a speech in Berlin last summer, Republican critics portrayed him as an elitist who appeals overseas but not to blue collar workers at home. On the other hand, in a recent poll that asked Americans to rate a series of foreign policy goals for the next president, 83 per cent ranked “improving America’s standing in the world” as most important. Certainly, the election of the first African-American as president would do wonders to restore the soft power that the Bush administration has squandered over the past eight years. That is why Mr Obama is such a threat to Mr bin Laden.

Some voters worry that even though Mr Obama might be good for US soft power, he might not understand hard power. Mr Obama’s statements in the two presidential debates suggest that he gets it. He has promised to give priority to finding and killing Mr bin Laden but there is more to the story. Niccolò Machiavelli said that it is more important for a prince to be feared than to be loved but we sometimes forget that the opposite of love is not fear, but hatred. Machiavelli made it clear hatred is something a prince should avoid at all costs. Smart power is the ability to combine hard and soft power into an effective strategy.

Both Mr McCain and Mr Obama have impressive hard power political and organisational skills, or they would not be where they are today. After all, Mr McCain has a military background and Mr Obama came up through the rough and tumble of Chicago politics. More over, Mr Obama’s campaign has set a new standard for political organisation. But on the crucial soft power skills of emotional intelligence, vision and communication, Mr Obama has the edge as reflected in the global polls and that must be giving Mr bin Laden a headache. In the next few weeks, as the remaining undecided voters have to make up their minds, Mr bin Laden may again be tempted to enter the fray. Given the scale of the financial crisis, it might take more than a video tape to refocus the attention of the American electorate this year but we should be alert to Mr bin Laden’s temptation and the danger it presents.

The writer is a professor at Harvard University and author most recently of The Powers to Lead

SOURCE: FT

6 Oct 2008



CLICK HERE to read the story.


Here's a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web: by Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray 

It's been a bad stretch for Sen. John McCain, but few have been willing to go this far: Former Hillary Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, now writing for The New Republic, declares flatly "The race is over." Sen. Barack Obama will win, he says. 

"John McCain's candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill. Like those once vibrant institutions, McCain's collapse was stunning and quick. One minute you are a well-respected brand. The next you are yelling at the messengers of your demise as all around you the numbers start blinking red and stop adding up." Before the Wall Street collapse, Wolfson writes, "Senator McCain was ahead." But today, "an election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters."

But the Obama campaign isn't taking any chances. Politico's Mike Allen reports that his campaign "on Monday is launching a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the ‘Keating Five' savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain's public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer." The move is a reaction to the McCain camp's new efforts to tie Sen. Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers and scandal-plagued Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. Overnight, Allen says, the Obama campaign "began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends. The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis."

The Huffington Post's Thomas B. Edsall writes that "At a time of extreme economic crisis at home and two wars abroad, John McCain is gambling that an attack mounted by Sarah Palin on Barack Obama's tangential ties to 1970s radical bomber Bill Ayers will reverse the Arizona Senator's steadily diminishing prospect of victory on November 4. This strategy carries high risks. First and foremost, a number of experts in the field doubt that when the economy has been on the brink of collapse, when the situation in Afghanistan is worsening, and the debate over the US war in Iraq has intensified, negative campaigning is an effective political tool." 

It's also naive to expect that Obama won't fight back. Plus, negative campaigning tends to damage both candidates. Edsall quotes polling expert Nate Silver as saying "It may be quite difficult for McCain to attack Obama in this fashion without significantly damaging his own brand. What's interesting is that, with the exception of the past couple of weeks, McCain's and Obama's ratings have been fairly strongly correlated, tending to rise and fall together. This is not to say that negative campaigning doesn't work - it sometimes does - but it works at diminished efficiency, because you may be giving back 50 cents on the dollar by harming your own approval scores."

Now onto battleground states. Washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza has updated his electoral map, which puts Obama above the 300 mark. "The movement is most noticeable in states - particularly in the Industrial Midwest - where the economy has been a front-burner issue for years...With that in mind, we have moved Ohio from McCain's column to Obama's - amid polling including a new Columbus Dispatch survey that shows the Illinois senator with an edge. The other major change in this week's Fix map is Virginia, which we are moving from McCain to Obama. Electoral history in the state is daunting for Obama - the last Democrat to carry the state at the presidential level was Lyndon Johnson way back in 1964 - but the Democratic candidate is lavishing time and money on the Commonwealth. And, even top Virginia Republicans are starting to express their concern publicly about McCain's dimming prospects there

SOURCE: Wall Street Journal


27 Sept 2008


Related News: GOP concerned about Sarah Palin (Click the link)

18 Sept 2008









Picha ya hapo juu inafurahisha.Ndio namna jamaa wa The Huffington Post wanavyo-summarize masahibu yanayomkumba John McCain.Kwa mujibu wa Gallup polls,Barack Obama amefanikiwa kumwengua McCain kwenye kura za maoni ikiwa ni mara ya kwanza tangu mgombea huyo wa Republicans apande chati kufuatia convention ya chama hicho hivi karibuni.Zaidi,angalia video hii hapa chini


14 Sept 2008

Let me make a confession:Until when Hillary Clinton withdrew from the Democrat presidential campaign,and eventually endorse Barack Obama,I strongly believed that the latter's nomination could lead to another 4 yrs of a Republican in the White House ie a win for John McCain.It's not that I didnt want to see Obama making history by becoming the first Black president of the US of A,but I was rather scared of  the Republican dirty tricks (known in Bongo as "Siasa za Majitaka") on an easy target as Obama.I imagined how the GOP smear machine would assassinate Obama's character,bearing in mind how they successfully made John Kerry's bid to the White House a nightmare.

Perhaps I was wrong.Obama is now on the verge of making history.Given the unpopularity of Bush's presidency,the Dem's road to victory should have been easier.Unfortunately,the Republicans certainly know the odds against them.As I have always suspected,when the going gets tough in politics,any option on the table could be usefull.Of recent,McCain has been accussed of lies and deception,a possible sign that all might not be going well for the GOP candidate.And it seems he will soon receive support from same old groups that focuses on producing emotional rather than rational responses from voters.

HERE they come! (CLICK TO READ THE STORY)

6 Feb 2008

Makala yangu ndani ya toleo la wiki hii la gazeti la Raia Mwema iliandaliwa kabla ya "kimuhemuhe" kilichoanza leo huko Bungeni.Kwa kifupi,makala hiyo inaelezea namna siasa inavyoboa (au ni wanasiasa ndio wanaoboa?) na kutoa mfano wa namna baadhi ya wahafidhina katika chama cha Republicans "wanavyotiana vidole kwenye macho" kufuatia mwenendo mzuri wa harakati za Seneta John McCain kuingia White House kwa tiketi ya chama hicho.

Pia makala hiyo inagusia vimbwanga vya siasa za huko nyumbani kwa kuonyesha mshangao wa namna Spika Samuel Sitta "alivyoruka kimanga" kwamba aliwahi kuweka vikwazo dhidi ya harakati za Dr Slaa kufichua ufisadi wa BoT.Pia makala inazungumzia "utoto" wa CCM (licha ya kuwa majuzi ilitimiza miaka 31) pale inapodai kuwa yenyewe ndiyo iliyoibua hoja ya ufisadi.Hivi Chama hicho kimeishiwa busara namna hiyo hadi kusahau kwamba sababu ya mawaziri wake kuzomewa mikoani ilikuwa ni reactions za wananchi dhidi ya jitihada za vigogo hao kuua hoja za wapinzani kuhusu ufisadi!!!?
Lakini kali zaidi ni pale Spika wa Bunge alipotoa maelekezo kwa Naibu wake kwamba "asikurupuke" kuendesha mijadala ya Richmond na BoT/EPA hadi yeye (Spika) ataporejea kutoka ziarani Marekani.Angalau sasa tunaelewa kwanini Spika alitaka kutumia mbinu za kupoteza muda katika mjadala wa Richmond,kwani RIPOTI YA KAMATI TEULE YA BUNGE KUHUSU MKATABA KATI YA SERIKALI NA KAMPUNI HIYO (BONYEZA HAPA KUISOMA)imemu-implicate Spika kwa namna flani (kwa vile Kituo cha Uwekezaji-IPC-kikiwa chini ya uongozi wa Sitta,kiliiruhusu Richmond iwekeze pasipo kuchunguza uwezo halisi au uwepo wa kampuni hiyo).

Pamoja na makala nyingine zilizokwenda shule ndani ya gazeti hilo,bingirika na makala yangu hiyo kwa KUBONYEZA HAPA.


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