The Anti-Obama Campaign that Didn't Happen

While I was wandering around the internet today I came across this interesting piece in Time Magazine called "The Anti-Obama Campaign that Didn't Happen." You know, to be perfectly honest, I'm still a little stunned that a relative unknown with almost no political experience, no major leadership shown ever, and questionable associations just won the Presidency. The question still needs to be asked- what happened? Well, apparently McCain purposefully ran a bad campaign.

Even after one of his best ads was about how Obama was simply an empty celebrity, McCain still choose not to follow that up with more plays on the celebrity angle. McCain refused to bring up Obama's associations with Ayers, Wright, or Rezko. McCain refused to connect Obama to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This line from McCain's main advertising advisor Fred Davis in particular annoys me:

"One of the big hands that I felt was tied behind my back was [that] so many things — like [Obama's record on] crime — you would logically do were perceived as 'Oh, we can't do that. That was playing the race card,'"

Next time, play it, and let it be called 'the race card', and deal with that. McCain ran a scared campaign, and got thumped because of it, deservedly so. You've got to want to be President- and Obama wanted it more, apparently.

Davis said:

He says the campaign also agonized over the music in the ads, paying special care not to play drum-heavy tracks that could be seen as an African tribal reference.

You've got to be kidding me. Who was talking to Davis and McCain, telling them this stuff? The article ends on this note- 'Obama won because he was the better guy' or 'Obama won because the stars were aligned'. This is garbage- Obama won because McCain was the wrong candidate and ran a bad campaign where he purposefully avoided attacking his opponent. And America is going to suffer for that.