Op-Ed
Youth Vote '08: McCain's Tone Deaf But Trying Hard
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The Witt's End
August 27, 2008 - 11:00pmHe’s effeminate! He’s dreamy! And he’s only about 15! Is somebody finally going to call the McCain campaign and tell those people that Barack Obama isn’t the fourth member of the Jonas Brothers?
I tried my best, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Something about being young and inexperienced.
“We believe that Barack Obama is a global celebrity who has a lot of fans out there,” McCain campaign spokesperson Joe Pounder told me.
And maybe he’s right. This is clearly a quality no leader of the free world should ever aspire to. Real Americans want people to hate us! We were going to nominate Oscar the Grouch, but his publicist said he was unavailable. And besides, he has too many young fans.
In any case, I’m worried about the McCain campaign. It’s hard to see how the campaign’s efforts to garner the youth vote aren’t inexorably at odds with a message that, in painting Obama as a ‘celeb’ the likes of Paris and Britney, has Obama’s youth and popularity with young voters as its central criticisms.
Where Obama sees a selling point, McCain sees a sneering point. And when McCain asks ‘Who is this young guy who wants to be president?’ he’s also saying, ‘Who are these kids who think they get to pick the president?’
I wonder if it would really be so bad if America’s politicians attracted the same amount of attention as its doyennes of the supermarket checkout aisle. What’s so bad about a politician who young people actually care about? About American politics with something in common with American Idol?
This is a classic example of the “if you can’t join them, beat them” strategy. But can you blame the McCain campaign? Barack Obama’s Facebook page listed 1,334,162 supporters at press time. McCain’s? Only 203,223. And in an April 21 MTV/CBS poll of 18-29 year-olds, two thirds said they want a president who will withdraw from Iraq in two years or less. McCain suggested we’ll stay for 100 years.
Still, of any Republican (save, perhaps, Ron Paul), McCain had the best chance of leeching youth support from Obama. During the primaries, McCain and Obama were both heavily favored in endorsements by college newspapers, including my own. Young voters helped McCain pull out a win in New Hampshire. And the McCain “Celeb” ad has nearly 2 million views on YouTube.
In fact, McCain has begun to win over some young voters. An August 4 ATN/Zogby poll said McCain gained 20 percent and Obama lost 16 percent among voters ages 18-29. Still, Obama’s lead — which the poll pegged at 11 points — remains commanding by any standard.
GOP-ers maintain the closing of the gap is a result of McCain’s basic message getting through to all age groups — and of organizing efforts, both on the ground and online, that have begun to bear fruit.
The McCain campaign has a network of youth state and county chairs. But its social networking tools are unwieldy. “McCain Nation” and “McCainSpace” are idiosyncratically separate tools for fundraising and organizing. They are especially coarse when compared to the nimble, Facebook-engineered “myBarackObama,” an all-in-one tool that often doubles as a raucous forum for debate.
And even if the McCain youth organizing infrastructure exists, it seems half-hearted.
Joe Pounder, the campaign spokesperson, could not provide an answer when I asked why the drop-down menu listing interest groups on McCain’s site — which includes web sites for McCainiac hunters, lawyers, and Americans with disabilities — doesn’t have a listing for students or youth voters.
Other online efforts McCain has to attract the youth vote are feeble. McCainBlogette.com, a comment-disabled compilation of pretty-in-pink campaign trail dispatches from McCain’s 20-ish daughter (and two professional writers) is phony and forced. And Meghan McCain’s efforts to turn herself into an US Weekly-style celeb by hanging out with the likes of The Hills’ Heidi Montag seem at odds with the campaign strategy. Why is Mac deriding Obama’s celebrity even as his daughter’s courting her own?
McCain himself is barely computer literate — a fact that an embarrassing New York Times story, “McCain, the Analog Candidate,” described in excruciating detail.
The bottom line is that the GOP line on youth voters contrasts starkly with its professed youth-vote strategy. Too much of McCain’s try at casting Obama as a pretty boy with “dreamy eyes” and blinded-by-the-light young disciples smacks of Clinton flack Mark Penn’s infamous primary derision of Obama’s young supporters, saying they “look like Facebook” — not like voters.
The idea that Obama’s youth support derives from his baby browns — and not from his positions on college cost, the environment, and the Iraq War — is insulting. From his position on the war to his inability to Google, McCain’s not giving youth voters a very good sense of “I get you, I get where you’re coming from and I get what your issues are,” said Erica Williams, Policy and Advocacy Manager with Campus Progress, the legally nonpartisan grassroots organization.
The McCain campaign spokesperson, Joe Pounder, says “Americans, no matter the age, will ... see that John McCain is ready to lead this country and Barack Obama is not.”
But I say, no dice. Young people want to be treated like real voters. We want real solutions on our own issues. We don’t want the same old Bush-Cheney message repackaged in a pitiable attempt at Web 2.0. And we don’t, for better or for worse, want a president who doesn’t use email.
The above article previously appeared on the Youth Vote ’08 blog, a joint venture of the Washington Post, CBS News, and UWire. Check it out at youthvoteblog.com and youthvote.washingtonpost.com. David’s column appears there weekly.
David Wittenberg is The Sun’s associate editor. He can be contacted at associate-editor@cornellsun.com. The Witt’s End appears alternate Thursdays this semester.
Russia is back on its feet and you are talking about facebook?
I am 24 years old and I support John McCain. I don’t believe he treats young people with contempt, but quite on the contrary, he realizes many of us are moved by more than empty, childish and dreamy “yes, we can” speeches. The email/blackberry/facebook issue is so ridiculous I won’t dignify it with a discussion.
We all know the economic cycle will rebound; healthcare will be reformed one way or the other (McCain’s plan by the way is according to “The Economist” more economically sound), so the real test for the next four years will lie on foreign policy. I am talking of course, of a foreign policy that goes beyond populist vague and easy sales like we are pulling out of Iraq and bringing the troops home. McCain could go for those cheap votes too, his son has risked his life there, but he understands the responsibilities of the United States
First, there is an emerging giant that just clowned us at the Olympic Games (in terms of both gold medals, the only count that matters, and organizational capabilities relative to the much grayer Atlanta and Salt Lake City displays). Second, just this past Monday, through the recognition of independence of two Georgian separatist regions, an old rival we thought dead revived from the ashes like a Fenix and the bear’s eyes are fixed on us. We are dealing with no clowns here, Vladimir Putin, a judo champion, declared fan of Germany and former KGB agent and Dimitri Medvedev, an avid swimmer and former head of Gazprom, are calculating and careful statesmen that understand the mysticism of the Russian empire. They know oil and natural gas are geopolitical commodities and play these cards with the mastery of a chess master (ironically another one of Medvedev’s hobbies). They are not the kind of people that would make the grotesque geopolitical mistakes the United States has made in the last 50 years.
So the decision is very simple, when geopolitical conflicts arise during the next administration who do you want sitting on the negotiation tables with the likes of Putin and Medvedev. 1. The 46 year old pretty lawyer with his Harvard mouth and an easy sail to success. The one goes to the gym instead of visiting wounded soldiers. 2. The old stud that has looked at real danger in the eye, faced adversity with incredible bravery and gallantry, experienced a lot of the world (might be worth noting that Obama has never set a foot in Latin America, a region of huge national interest, even in light of the importance of the Hispanic vote) and received his education from the great United States Naval Academy and not Harvard Law School, the ultimate chicanery academy.
Adrián Niño de Rivera
When did Facebook become a campaign issue?
"And we don’t, for better or for worse, want a president who doesn’t use email." No, I don't want a President who supports infanticide and voted against the state Born Alive Infant Protection Act. McCain has a point when he calls Obama a celebrity. Obama is just as much a ditz as Paris Hilton and yet, like her, Obama has a fanatical following. Instead of asking what's wrong with the McCain campaign, why not ask what's wrong with the youth vote? Is it really that easy to fool the so called "educated" youth of our country? Does it only take a smooth talker with a nice smile to blow the issues up in smoke? I guess it's time to get ready for the next Jimmy Carter. Oh, and for full disclosure I'm 19 and a junior at CU.
cornell student
I think the reason that Obama voted down the "Born Alive" infant protection act is because he believes it to be a rhetorically-misleading piece of legislation designed to undermine abortion rights. Most infants born "alive" in failed abortion procedures are the result of dilation and extraction procedures (otherwise known as partial-birth abortions). This procedures is rare in America, and almost always takes place when the infant wouldn't be able to survive outside the womb. Meaning, it would almost be cruel to let the infant in question live. I think its kind of unfair for you to use the term infanticide (I'm assuming your referring to Obama being pro-choice). If you can accuse him of supporting infanticide, than can't I just accuse McCain of supporting Iraqi genocide? After all, he supported(s) a war that resulted in the death of thousands innocent people (many of whom could have been infants). Would that be a fitting description? Absolutely not. My point is that genocide and infanticide are both horrific levels of evil- neither of which McCain or Obama even begin to match. Just like it would be unfair for me not to make ethical distinctions between McCain and a genocidal dictator, its unfair for you not to do the same between Obama and people who actually support/commit infanticide. Both "sides" abuse the concept of moral relativism and it should stop.
Then what would you call it?
"I think its kind of unfair for you to use the term infanticide (I'm assuming your referring to Obama being pro-choice)."
I am not referring to his pro-choice position in general (that's an ideological debate for another time and place) I am referring to specifically his choice to vote down the Illinois state Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Obama says the reason he voted against the bill is because he thought imperfect wording undermined Roe v. Wade and went on to say that he would have voted for the federal bill. However, the reason the bill failed in the Illinois state legislature is because Obama himself chose not to vote for an amendment that would have made the wording of the bill the same as the federal bill. What is that about??? So when I use the term "infanticide" I am using it to refer to Obama shooting down a state bill that would prevent living breathing birthed infants from being left in a room to die because they were born prematurely during a botched abortion. Even the most ardently pro-choice federal senators (such as Kennedy and Clinton) supported and lobbied for this bill and the federal bill in turn passed in the US Senate by a vote of 98-0. So I ask you to tell me then what would you call allowing doctors to leave babies in a room to die?
"Young people want to be treated like real voters"
Well, when they atart acting like real voters, maybe they'll be treated as such. Despite monumentous efforts to register and get out the college vote, the number of 20-something voters pales in comparison to older age groups. I remember showing up at the polling places on campus and seeing more poll workers than voters.
The comparison of Obama's fame to Paris Hilton and other celebs is apt... and his qualifications are as anorexic as Hilton also.
I will be completely surprised if the 18-25 age group actually contributes to this year's election.