Countering the Obama Campaign Management Experience

Obama, and some of his allies in the media, are now beginning to push the idea that running his Presidential campaign successfully is in and of itself proof that he has the experience of a good manager. Here is how the Obama campaign put it today.

We've got 2,500 in this campaign," Obama said. "I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years."

Now, I will leave alone the fact that the Obama campaign totally, again, disregarded Palin's experience as Governor and just focus on his argument that his successful Presidential campaign is proof he is ready to lead. Normally, this argument has some merit. After all, if you can get 18 million to vote for you, you are doing something right as a manager. There's no doubt that the campaign has shown some political acumen. The campaign rightly began a strategy of focusing on several caucus states. While Hillary Clinton's campaign only head a plan through Super Tuesday, the Obama campaign had a strategy all the way through the end of all fifty states. Of course, his fundraising prowess goes without say.

The Obama campaign, however, is different from most. Never has a campaign been so supported by an adoring media. This media has covered up for and dismissed a plethora of mistakes that other candidates would never get away with. Is there any doubt that the totally biased media propelled Obama to victory in the primaries?

Had the media done any scrutinization of his campaign, he would have been done after he delivered this speech in Milwaukee in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting. To say this is the most obscenely inappropriate piece of oratory garbage, pandering, and despicable nonsense would be the bggest understatement of all time. Here are some highlights of things he compared the shooting to...

There's also another kind of violence though that we're gonna have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughter.

I spend, along with my wife, a lot of time making sure that my two young daughters, who are gorgeous and tall and I hope will get basketball scholarships, that they feel good about who they are and that they understand they can do whatever they can dream might be possible. And for them to be degraded, or to see someone who looks like them degraded, that's a form of violence - it may be quiet, it may not surface to the same level of the tragedy we read about today and we mourn, but it is violence none the same.

We [inaudible].... There's the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under 'em because their job has moved to another country. They've lost their job, they've lost their pension benefits, and they've lost their health care and they're having to compete against their teenage children for jobs at the local fast food place paying $7 an hour.

There is the violence of children, whose voices are not heard, in communities that are ignored. Who don't have access to a decent education, who are surrounded by drugs and crime and a lack of hope.

He went on to talk about health care, energy policy, and even abortion policy all in the context of a speech that was meant to reflect on the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting. If you are unfamiliary with this speech, you aren't alone. The only folks covering this speech were conservative blogs. The right blogosphere rightly condemned as the worst kind of political gutter trash, and the MSM should have at least acknowledged its inappropriateness. It didn't and in fact, Ben Smith of the Politico, praised the speech. Had the MSM given it the attention it deserved we would have seen just how well the Obama campaign dealt with crisis. Instead, the complicit MSM buried this speech so that no one knew about it.

In fact, so far, the Obama campaign has only dealt with crisis twice, the initial revelations of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his comments in San Francisco. When the Wright comments first came to light, the Obama campaign ignored them...I assume because they figured they would just go away. In fact, most of the media was complicit in trying to bury this story. It wasn't until O'Reilly lead with the story on the factor that the comments exploded. Then, Obama made a few interviews. He initially denied ever hearing the comments and defended Wright as being taken out of context. It wasn't until several days after the comments exploded that he made the announcement for his now well known speech. In the speech, he again defended Wright the he acknowledged hearing some of the comments. Once again, the media spun into action and most of the MSM called this speech a turning point. It wasn't until several weeks later that Wright again popped on the scene with his obscene performance at the National Press Club. Those comments and Obama's eventually distancing himself from Wright, undercut everything in the speech. This inconvenient fact was not something most in the MSM gave much analysis to.

Second was Obama's ill advised comments in San Francisco. Afterwards, the Obama campaign made several statements. None of them totally explained the comments, and often, they contradicted each other. The comments became a front burner issue for more than a week until the campaign finally moved onto other things. Nothing his campaign did actually did anything to diffuse the situation. The story ran its course after it did optimum damage. After both these stories broke, the Obama campaign went on a series of losing streaks and he has struggled in the polls since.

Furthermore, several scandals that would have put other candidates out of commission have been ignored by the MSM. When Bernie Kerik was indicted last year, that became front page news in the media. When Tony Rezko was convicted, it was largely ignored. Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers has been largely ignored by the MSM. His vote for infanticide has seen little coverage. His connections to such corrupt politicians as Todd Stroger, Emil Jones, and Richard M. Daley has received no coverage outside of Chicago. Finally, let's not forget that the campaign that was lauded for being disciplined couldn't keep their VP a secret long enough and his entire plan to text message the pick backfired and media broke it before the campaign could.

Let's put something else into perspective. Despite the fact that Democrats have an overwhelming advantage over Republicans this year, the media is entirely on his side, he is barely beating McCain. Given all that the idea that he has shown his leadership abilities because he has garnered 18 million votes is nonsense.