He’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 [1]. The Witt’s End appears alternate Thursdays this semester.
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[1] mailto:associate-editor@cornellsun.com