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March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review June 20, 2008 / 17 Sivan 5768

A little trouble with the image

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama got the polling bump he expected when he clinched the Democratic nomination, but the bump only bumped him to the edge of a shallow but inconvenient ditch.


A new poll by the Zogby organization for Reuters finds that John McCain, whose campaign is having trouble getting on track, has nevertheless pulled within five points of Sen. Obama. This is a gain of three points over the past month. He leads John McCain 47 to 42 percent, close to the margin of error, which means the two presumptive nominees have moved into a tie, more or less.


Tightening poll numbers, subject to fluctuations every time the wind blows, the mouse squeaks and the dog barks, don't mean much until after Labor Day. But the damage done to Mr. Obama's saintly image by events he seems unable to control is something real to worry about. Worse, he's having his first lovers' quarrel with his camp followers of press and tube.


Reporters were told this week to expect less access to the candidate; photographers especially are poison. The camp followers are still miffed because the Obama campaign dispatched his plane with reporters aboard back to Washington while he, without telling them, slipped away to stay in Chicago to chat up Hillary Clinton. Several bureau chiefs and the Associated Press accused him of deliberate deception.


An incident in Detroit, where Obama aides asked a young woman in a Muslim head scarf to step out of a photograph to avoid the appearance of any association however remote with Muslims, threatens to mark the end of the affair between the candidate and the press. Or at least the late recognition that the object of affection all sublime snores, burps and blows his nose just like everybody else. The Obama campaign was founded on the proposition that the senator is without a marketer's "image." Now we see that Barack Obama works to project a marketing image just like all the other pols. It's enough to break a lover's heart.


The Obama campaign tried to fix the Detroit damage with grovels, apologies and promises. "It doesn't reflect the orientation of the campaign," a spokeswoman told reporters. "I do not believe that mistake will be made again." The word apparently never made it downstream. Obama aides subsequently barred cameras at a rally of black preachers and community leaders, apparently in fear that he might be surrounded by too many black and brown faces. Earlier his campaign declined to identify several religious figures with whom he met in Chicago, and the preachers were directed to leave by a side door to avoid reporters and photographers.


Photographers were definitely not kept out - they were urged in - when Mr. Obama met with several retired military officers to suggest that he is, too, tough enough to be the commander in chief. He wore his flag pin on his lapel, and flags fluttered everywhere. There might even have been a cross somewhere in the folds of the bunting. The Democrats have clearly rediscovered God, generals and the flag. A claque of adoring ladies on the television program "The View" continued the reconstruction of Michelle Obama, to display her as patriotic not proud, soft not squishy, warm not hot. "Mrs. Obama," wrote an admiring columnist for the New York Times, "went on [television] ... to combat the notion that she is a little too authentic to be the first lady, while Mrs. McCain did it to undercut the image that she is too fake."


Managing an image is hardly new to the Obama campaign. That's what modern presidential politics is all about, and the Obama campaign usually does it very, very well. When his campaign was struggling with Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, the campaign worked hard to see that white women, waving tiny American flags, always formed a reassuring backdrop for the photographers.


The McCain campaign does this, too, just not as well. Advance men, hired to make the fakery look authentic, carefully choose the faces that surround the candidate. But Barack Obama was first sold as a politician who was above stooping to the level of everyone else. He has to be careful now not to be seen exploiting "identity politics," the fashionable euphemism for "racial politics." When the going gets tough, and the tough get going, it won't be easy.

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JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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