Ron Fournier’s “analysis”:
Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence
By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 23, 2:12 AM ET
DENVER – The candidate of change went with the status quo.
In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.
***The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn’t beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden pick is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.
Hrmm. That isn’t the kind of reaction I remember when a certain young man eight years ago chose a seasoned veteran as his running mate. Let’s flash back. CNN, 25 July 2000:
GREENFIELD: Oh, very clearly, it sends a signal that “I may be the governor of Texas, you may not know of my foreign policy credentials, but just as I surrounded myself with people like George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell, I’m picking as my running mate somebody who knows the world stage.”
In fact, I rather suspect that Dick Cheney has met more world leaders during his tenure as defense secretary than Governor Bush has. It’s an interesting kind of way that you put a No. 2 person on the ticket who is more credentialed in the international arena, but that’s what happens when the governor is the presidential nominee. There’s no other choice. And I think it is a clear signal this is somebody with some seriousness of purpose.
PBS:
VIN WEBER: It’s a great testimonial to Governor Bush that he feels secure reaching out to a person of such great stature, and it’s a testimonial to Dick Cheney that he’s still willing to go back and contribute some more to government.
***The most important thing about the selection of a vice president is not the vice-president himself but what it says about the presidential candidate that did the choosing. And that’s why I think this is not only a great choice substantively for the country but I think it’s a good choice politically because people who are looking at George W. Bush outside of Texas for the first time are seeing the first real governing decision that this prospective president has made – and that’s what the choice of a vice president is – it’s your first really governing decision — reflected a tremendous stability, a tremendous amount of judgment. It reflected putting conventional political considerations like ideological balance or geographic balance behind you and putting ahead of you somebody who has serious experience in the legislative branch of government foreign policy, the business sector, somebody who clearly can walk in and be President of the United States tomorrow and everybody would be comfortable with it.
Republican names a running mate with lots of experience- a sign of wisdom and good judgement and a sense of being secure.
Democrat names a running mate with lots of experience- a profound lack of confidence.
Go liberal media!
*** Update ***
More on the disgraceful Ron Fournier here.
dr. bloor
Meh. While most of America was getting a text message from Obama, Fournier was getting his from Karl Rove.
Ripley
Hey, you don’t get to be Karl Rove’s concubine by going off message, y’know.
bud
Go Fuck Yourself, Fournier! You fucking concern troll trollop.
AkaDad
Ron Fournier: Super Hack
incertus
And another dagger gets thrust into the moldering corpse of the myth of the liberal media.
Keith
I crahsed out early last night assuming – via a now-hilarious Drudge “scoop” – that Obama let me down ala FISA by going with the yawner of Evan Bayh. I did and still do think Biden is absolutely the best choice (had the Hillary rivalry had gone differently, she would have been a shoe-in) and am relieved to wake up to news of him being the choice. He should be a riot at the debate (and that would make a McCain-Giuliani ticket all the more hi-f’n-larious) as well as the campaign trail, providing some much-needed bite against McCain’s juvenile ads of late.
charlotte
Fournier Fournier — hmmmm. Is that really an American name? Has a very honi soit que mal y pense ring to it, non?
Me thinks some folks are sweating it today.
Heshe
I hope and pray McMansion pick Alfred E. Newman for his VP… Pardon me, I meant Joe Lieberman.
ThymeZone
How many bylines are out there in the MSM on a day to basis with stories and commentary on this election? Hundreds? How many threads and subthreads around here are about Fournier? Why does this asshole deserve this kind of attention?
The whole MSM thrust right now, as we speak and write, this morning, as the Biden story breaks, is about how the choice of Biden fits into the packaged themes that are pimped by the MSM. Not about Biden’s ideas on foreign policy, or his record, or his service, or any of that. About how things like the “Clinton divide” is affected by this choice, as if that were the story. About how the pick “means this” or “means that” in terms of the media’s established story lines. Was it Kevin Drum, or Steve Benen, I can’t remember … who today pointed out that the “Biden pick means Obama is shoring up his weakness in (weak area here)(c) ….” approach can be applied to any running mate. Picking Clinton would mean that Obama is shoring up his weak support with Hillary voters. Picking Bayh would mean that Obama is shoring up his weakness in reddish midwestern states. Etc etc.
The real story here is that MSM is pathologically incapable of doing anything other than crafting and following its own irrelevant story lines, and this Fournier guy is just a face in that crowd, no worse than twenty other of these fuckstains.
You have an industry here that wraps its arms around people from Katie Couric to George Stephanopoulus to Rush Limabaugh to Sean Hannity. Come on. Fournier is not your problem.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that this trainwreck of an information system is not really that influential. It follows more than it leads. And while people love to talk about how swiftboating cost Kerry his election, the truth is that the reason Kerry lost his election was that Kerry was a miserable and ill-chosen candidate.
Obama is not a miserable candidate, this is not 2004, and Fournier is not your main concern.
gbear
This comment is extra extra funny/ironic/sick when you consider that Cheney basically named himself as the VP choice after Bush brought him in to vette the choices.
nightjar
Christ almighty, what a putz. If Obama had picked a newcomer to fit Fourniers theme, he would be poo-pooing Obama’s poor judgment for not adding to the ticket someone with foreign policy experience. These knuckleheads are not journalists, they are modern day streakers hoping someone will notice their naked genius.
ThymeZone
The whole thing reminds of the old, and wonderful, David Steinberg sketch.
Steinberg protrayed a psychiatrist welcoming a new patient to his office.
“Sit anywhere you like.”
Patient looks and thinks.
“Really, sit wherever you like. Couch, fine, Chair, fine, That chair over there, fine. Just be comfortable.”
Finally the patient moves toward a chair.
“AHA! SCHIZOPHRENIC!” roars the psychiatrist.
That’s your media today. Ignore them, pretty much everybody does.
Prince Roy
I’m disappointed with Obama (becoming more and more the norm). Biden is a nice enough guy, I guess, but he epitomizes the Dem Establishment. He should’ve went after Hagel.
Tsulagi
That Vin Weber guy must have been on crack when writing that. That or dating “Bush is a misunderstood genius” Assrocket.
Other than outlets like FNC, Moonie Times, and some others created or bought to push tighty righty messaging and POV, I think the outlook of the broader MSM tends center-left.
But as with the Dems, they’ve been trained by the 28%ers. Who will huff and puff, get tantrum mad, and call them (Dems, MSM, anything) names when they’re not coddled. So to avoid that, “The Liberal Media,” like the Dems are not afraid to go ass up. See GWB presidency, especially first term. They pick their battles and keep their powder dry too.
And the 28%ers, the Party of Bush? They will keep throwing their tantrums because it works. Any spoiled brat given room to continue being a brat knows that. Just ask Commander Guy.
dr. bloor
Because it goes without saying that the best antidote to the Dem Establishment is an anti-abortion, pro-Big Oil Republican who endorsed an amendment to prohibit flag burning.
But thanks for playing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Word on everything else you wrote about the MSM and how Fournier is a symptom, not a cause.
But this conventional wisdom about what a crappy candidate Kerry was is BS. Democrats need to stop using him as a scapegoat, as if anybody else would have beaten Bush, and we just got unlucky picking the wrong guy. However comforting that piece of revisionism may be, it doesn’t ring true.
Bush in 2004 had the smallest winning margin (as a percentage of popular vote) of any incumbent President running for re-election during wartime in US history.
Kerry may not have been a particularly good candidate (I never liked him myself), but if he had been as crappy as you claim, the 2004 election would have resembled the one in 1972 more than the one in 2000. Crappy candidates don’t come within 1 state of ousting a wartime President.
Prince Roy
Right, the Dems have done so well with their Northeast Establishment candidates in recent elections. Hagel would’ve shaken things up, he has as much (if not more) foreign policy cred than Biden; unlike McCain, he really has gone against his party and Bush on the war, he has a good reputation among his Dem colleagues, and he has veteran bona fides. Webb would’ve been my top pick, but for whatever reason, he didn’t sign on.
Biden will not change anyone’s mind. It was a weak choice and Fournier’s analysis in this respect is right on the money.
Blue Buddha
Except that Bush didn’t pick Cheney, Cheney picked himself to be VP. It was the first time that has happened in history, and gives more credence to the idea that Bush is just a sockpuppet for Cheney.
dr. bloor
Including this cycle, the Northeast has been represented by exactly two presidential candidates and three vice-presidential candidates over the past thirty-two years.
Your understanding of geography is rivaled only by your mastery of the policy positions of sitting senators.
jbarntt
John,
Ron Fournier of the AP expresses an opinion, which makes him and/or the MSM two faced because in 2000 Greenfield of CNN and Vin Weber of PBS lauded Bush’s choice of Cheney ?
Fournier is not responsible for what Greenfield or Weber said eight years ago, nor is he the MSM, even though he works in the MSM.
Fournier may be right, wrong, a jerk, an operative of Karl Rove, etc., but your logic lacks something to be desired.
FYI – I think Biden is a good choice for Obama, as was Cheney for Bush. In both cases the tickets are/were upside down.
ThymeZone
He was a terrible candidate. He was tone deaf, did not listen to good advice, he was boring, he made boring and tedious speeches, he made a huge mistake trying to puff up his Vietnam experience, set himself up for swiftboating, kept silent on the swiftboating when he could have fought back, failed to keep his loudmouth wife in a closet for 90 days while he campaigned, looked, talked and acted like a bad imitation of Adlai Stevenson, and refused to get his hands dirty with the everyday dirt of politics. Last and absolutely not least, he never addressed the simple fact that a lot of people just didn’t like him, and a huge bloc of voters absolutely despised him for his actions after Vietnam.
The guy sucked and lost his own election and bears full reponsibility for it.
JenJen
There’s a McCain mouthpiece on MSNBC as I type this, pushing Fournier’s line.
Seemless!!! Pathetic!!
ThymeZone
Actually, they do. Kerry did, and that proves it. The fucking guy absolutely sucked as a candidate. The hatred of him alone should have precluded his nomination, but the nomination process is dysfunctional.
ThymeZone
McCain is making a big mistake today. Rather than do the traditional, expected thing, which is to basically congratulate Biden and welcome him to the fray, they send out the attack dogs before Obama has even introduced the man.
McCain looks like a mean, stupid old fuck who is scared of his opponents. Biden has served in the Senate longer than McCain, McCain could not wipe Biden’s shoes when it comes to substance in that body, and his welcome to the new candidate is basically “Biden proves that Obama sucks.”
Do you think anyone is really being won over by this pathetic McCain campaign behavior today? Have they said POW yet today?
ThymeZone
Dudes, why is my 1:47 awaiting moderation?
zuzu's petals
From now on, I don’t think Fournier should be mentioned without including his middle name:
Ron “Keep up the Fight” Fournier
JenJen
Well, there it is… our official nickname for Ron Fournier from here on out.
We shall call him, “Sprinkles!”
zuzu's petals
Ooh, good one.
harlana pepper
Whassamattah wid you, AP? Boot his ass out! Now!
Emma Anne
I agree with you. We Dems always blame our candidates for getting ground up by the repub/media machine and act like it wouldn’t have happened if we had picked someone else. But the fact that it has happened to every single one of our candidates from Carter on (yes, even Clinton – that’s why he was in such a defensive crouch during his entire presidency) ought to be a good clue that it isn’t just about the candidate.
Honestly, to buy this, we have to think:
(1) Mondale was a horrible candidate
(2) Dukakis was a horrible candidate
(3) Clinton was good enough to win but not to lead
(4) Gore was a horrible candidate
(5) Kerry was a horrible candidate
Isn’t it just a bit *odd* that we always have horrible candidates, even though we always try to pick a good one?
Obama is an exceptionally good candidate, but he would be chewed up and spit out too, if the system hadn’t changed a little bit. Do you think the MSM would have embarrassed poor POW McCain with the houses thing if uTube weren’t available to show it to everyone? It would be Obama the elitist morning, noon, and night.
Delia
Speaking of Chuck Hagel, here’s his statement on the selection of Biden as the Dem VP.
Two choices for you: shut up or find yourself another hero. It looks like Hagel’s about to bolt the Double Talk Express.
Dave_Violence
Great pick.
I don’t like Biden because of his anti-civil rights stance; that is, he’s an anti-gunner. However, since the SCOTUS finally settled that issue to my satisfaction (I’m important), it’s now on to things that really matter. And Biden is all about experience. He’d be a great VP: from what I’ve seen over the years and years is that he’s great with procedure and is all about good government (other than his idiotic stance on lawful citizens owning weapons). Obama cannot be considered compromising or anything else on this pick as Biden has been in the media’s focus for what, fifty years? And he has a voice that doesn’t hurt one’s ears.
BO hit a home run on this one.
McCain will have to hit a grand slam to take the edge off this one.
Prince Roy
and they lost every single one of those, jackass. We’ll see what happens this time. If Obama wins, it certainly won’t be because Biden is on the ticket.
dr. bloor
Whereas choosing Hagel certainly would have convinced millions of anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-civil rights, pro-big oil, pro-big business voters to pull the lever for Obama.
Fail. Back to No Quarter for you!
zuzu's petals
Hallelujah.
Finally, FINALLY, a MSM columnist has called McCain on overplaying his POW “get out of jail free” card. It almost makes me want to read Dowd a little more…well, almost.
Too Much of a Bad Thing