Globe Biden Its Time?

October 11, 2012

As the hardreading staff always hopes, the local dailies have very different takes today on what’s front-page news, specifically about the vice presidential bakeoff tonight.

The Globe serves up a  traditional preview piece, a sort of he-should-say/he-should-say:

Biden, Ryan face high stakes in vice presidential debate

Once anticipated as an entertaining sideshow between two feisty candidates, the vice presidential debate Thursday night has taken on higher, unexpected importance in the wake of President Obama’s listless performance last week in Denver.

Democrats are nervous, Republicans sense a surge, and Vice President Joe Biden and GOP challenger Paul Ryan suddenly have a chance to influence the campaign in a substantive way when they meet at Centre College in Danville, Ky.

For Biden, voluble and aggressive, the goal is to steady the Democratic ship amid sinking polls and rising angst. For Ryan, a hard-line budget hawk, the game plan is to maintain or build on the bump that has buoyed Mitt Romney after the first presidential debate.

And etc.

Crosstown at the Herald, it’s a whole different ballgame, one that involves whacking Joe Biden (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

The Joe Battenfeld piece inside predicts Biden’s credit-card-friendly track record may draw some interest and penalties from Ryan in the debate.

Joe Biden’s swipe at middle class

It’s the Joe Biden embarrassment you may not have heard yet, but it could become one of the Romney campaign’s biggest weapons.

Biden likes to portray himself as a fighter for the poor and middle class, but for years in the U.S. Senate he sided with one of the most hated enemies of the middle class — credit card companies.

The vice president has skated on this issue in this campaign, largely because most people have been paying attention to his verbal blunders. That may come to an end as soon as tonight, when he faces off against GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

We’ll see exactly what Ryan charges tonight.

 

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Just Call Him Howie Carr-toon

October 3, 2012

Actually, that’s unfair to Howie. The entire front page of today’s Boston Herald is sort of cartoonish (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

Start with the don’t-watch-without-Howie warning. His must-read column  – “It’s lights, camera . . . and drool all over Obama” – is just more of the same: the Chris Matthews tingle up his leg, the limousines, Granny Warren, and, of course, this zinger:

How can it be that Mitt Romney putting his dog in a crate on the roof of his car is approximately 100 times as big a story as Barack Obama actually eating one in Indonesia?

Talk about predictable: Carr has essentially moved beyond the formulaic into the algorithmic.

At the bottom of Page One, you’ll find the predictable self-promotion lower left, and the not so predictable self-promotion lower right.

The former:

Debate dominates local airwaves, Web

A stunning 338,000 viewers tuned into the UMass Lowell/Boston Herald U.S. Senate debate Monday night on Ch. 7, WHDH-TV, easily trouncing all the competition on the other stations.

The live-stream of the debate also generated more than 155,000 total streams and was viewed nationwide and in Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Italy, France, South Africa and the Russian Federation, among other places.

“It’s just amazing. We’re delighted with the incredible viewership all over the world,” said UMass Lowell Chancellor Martin T. Meehan, who added he was bombarded with calls from former colleagues in Congress about the debate.

The latter:

Faceoffs in need of a facelift

Tear down the podiums. Toss out the time limits. Make the candidates squirm. Let a live audience watch.

It’s a formula that made the Herald-sponsored U.S. Senate debate at UMass Lowell so compelling, and it should be a model for future political showdowns — especially the presidential faceoffs starting tonight.

But that’s not really the surprising part. This is: “The Senate debate on Monday night showed what happens when a world-class questioner such as David Gregory of NBC’s “Meet the Press” is allowed to push the candidates to explain their positions and cut them off if they’re not answering.”

Joe Battenfeld is definitely swimming upstream in that take on Gregory’s moderating chops. (See here for opposite impressions.)

But, hey, that’s what makes horse races.

 

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Debate and Switch

September 24, 2012

Both local dailies front-page debate stories today as campaign season shifts into high(er) gear.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

 

 

 

The Globe piece is pretty straightforward:

First debate called critical for Mitt Romney

Higher stakes than for Obama

After months of sniping from a distance, President Obama and Mitt Romney are nearing the unsparing crucible of one-on-one debates that could alter the dynamics of the presidential campaign.

For Romney, particularly, the stakes are enormous.

After a month of missteps and missed opportunities — from his convention speech, to his reaction after the US ambassador’s death in Libya, to a video in which he described nearly half the country as government-dependent “victims” — Romney faces three debates in the national spotlight, beginning Oct. 3 in Denver, that could bolster or bury his chances.

“Unquestionably, he has to do well in the first debate,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser in Romney’s successful 2002 campaign for Massachusetts governor. “There’s more on the line for him, whereas Obama has proven before that he can handle it.”

The Herald, on the other hand, has three – count ’em, three – columnists on debate patrol. Start with Joe Battenfeld’s cover story:

A glimpse inside Mitt’s strategy

He’s not Mitt Romney, but he got to play one in debate practice. And he says the real Mitt needs to resurrect his personable performance from 10 years ago to beat President Obama in their upcoming face-to-face showdowns.

Jeffrey Robbins, a Boston attorney who played the role of Romney as Democrat Shannon O’Brien prepared for the debates in the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race, divulged for the first time key details of the Democrats’ strategy to turn Romney into “Gordon Gekko” — a strategy that ultimately failed then.

Robbins predicts Obama’s debate plan will come right out of the playbook 10 years ago, when Democratic gubernatorial nominee O’Brien tried to reinforce Romney’s image as a greedy, out-of-touch businessman.

Bit of a stretch there, eh?

Next up is Holly Robichaud’s piece giving advice to Romney.

Like Brown, Mitt must pack a punch in his debate

Last week it was great to see an aggressive U.S. Sen. Scott Brown take on Lizzy Warren. After months of her endless whining commercials, Brown called her out on multiple issues — including her fake American Indian status, helping Travelers Insurance avoid paying poisoned asbestos workers and her whopping $350,000 salary for teaching one class at Harvard University.

Brown had the right combination of talking directly to voters and discrediting Fauxahontas. He showed how a candidate can remain likable, but still deliver a solid punch.

Our former Gov. Mitt Romney would do well to take a page out of this playbook. President Obama is not going to be forced out of the White House if Romney keeps playing defense. It is time to put points on the board.

Finally, Kimberly Atkins weighs in:

Wisdom of pols’ rules is debatable

WASHINGTON — The debate season is in full swing, and with it we are seeing the emergence of a nifty approach by some candidates as they prepare to face their rivals face-to-face: avoidance by agreement.

The true pioneer of this debate is U.S. Rep. John Tierney who, as the Herald reported, insisted sponsors of two of four scheduled debates with GOP challenger Richard Tisei focus only on certain topics and preclude the participants from asking questions of one another.

Of course, this conveniently will allow Tierney to avoid an issue both Tisei and national Republicans have focused on: his in-laws’ gambling ring and his wife’s federal tax-evasion conviction.

Atkins goes on to relate other debate-related kerfuffles before offering some free advice to candidates, such as “[Elizabeth Warren] could try to throw U.S. Sen. Scott Brown off  his well-rehearsed game by demanding that the candidates be barred from using the word ‘professor,’ thanking the moderator after each question or referring to a truck at any point.”

The hardreading staff would be all for that.

 

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Slamming/Not Slamming the Mass. Democratic Party Edition

August 11, 2012

Yesterday’s local papers nicely illustrated the yin and yang of the 10th Congressional district election coverage.

From the copyediting challenged Boston Globe:

Democrats launch new attack on Tisei

Website part of new strategy

Democrats on ramped up Wednesday their efforts to turn the tables on Republican Richard R. Tisei, whose challenge to US Representative John F. Tierney has been boosted by the legal troubles of Tierney’s family.

State party officials announced a two-pronged effort to allege that “Tisei personally benefited by at least $30,000 dollars from the sale of a house that was among the assets his parents were alleged in court to be hiding from parties they damaged.”

The allegations — denied by Tisei, a Wakefield realtor who served in the state Senate — were recently reported in the Boston Phoenix.

The Democratic Party put up a website, http://www.TiseiFacts.com, and state party chairman John Walsh held a conference call with reporters.

Pretty straightforward, yeah?

Not if you read the Boston Herald, mister.

Front page (via The Newseum):

Joe Battenfeld column:

Mudslinging Dems sink to an all-time low

Smearing someone’s family is about as low as it gets in politics, but Massachusetts Democrats are setting a new standard in sliminess.

The party’s new website targeting Republican congressional candidate Richard Tisei claims to show his family’s “web of fraud and deceit,” but all it really shows is how dirty the Democrats are willing to get to win an election.

The joys of living in a two-daily town, yes?

 

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Globe Rips Off Herald Edition

August 6, 2012

From Glen Johnson’s Boston Sunday Globe Political Intelligence column (headline: “Warren draws criticism over comment on Wall St. Support”):

Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, a proud champion of the middle class, nonetheless claimed support from the very same Wall Street crowd she so frequently targets for criticism.

“Every now and again, I meet with someone who’s been very successful on Wall Street, who says, ‘I want to support your campaign because I believe you will save capitalism,’ ” Warren said during an interview with the National Journal’s Jim O’Sullivan published July 29.

By Monday, the comment was pinging around the Internet and Twittersphere, accompanied by a fairly snarky reaction.

Pinging around the Internet and Twittersphere?

Seriously?

Warren’s quote was Page One of the Boston Herald last Tuesday, as the hardreading staff duly noted:

Elizabeth Warren Saves Capitalism Edition

U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren (D-Capital!) kicked off her Wall Street waltz with this quote in National Journal, according to Hillary Chabot in yesterday’s Boston Herald:

“Every now and again, I meet with someone who’s been very successful on Wall Street, who says, ‘I want to support your campaign because I believe you will save capitalism. I believe in capitalism, and I understand there have to be rules. And they have to be consistently enforced.’ ”

That earned Warren this front page photo in the feisty local tabloid:

 

More from Johnson’s piece:

That prompted Warren to backpedal . . . as she made a campaign stop in Somerville.

“I passed along a comment that was over the top, and it was silly for me to do so,” she told reporters. Warren repeated the statement to each question on the topic.

 

Old news, Glen – not to mention unattributed.

From IGTLTDT:

[Last Wednesday’s] Herald had not one, but two columns (conveniently side-by-side) whacking Warren for the walkback, among other things.

First up, Joe Battenfeld:

Warren’s cop-out may represent a turning point in her campaign, because it’s the first time she’s actually disavowed something in such record speed.

But don’t expect Warren to go all silly on us. She is still claiming American Indian heritage, and that she created “much of the intellectual foundation” for Occupy. And she still claims she’s the sheriff who cleaned up Wall Street, despite what a few “over the top” executives may say.

Next up, Howie Carr:

How does Granny Warren do it? I mean, do you know how much time it must take, saving capitalism and simultaneously providing the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street, which wanted to destroy capitalism?

Talk about keeping balls in the air. She’s both an Indian and “Okie to her toes.”

C’mon, Globe editors – and Glen. Credit where credit’s due, eh?

 

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Tom Menino Good News/Bad News Edition

August 3, 2012

The Boston Herald wins today’s local news bakeoff with a Page One story about Tom Menino.

The good news? He might run for  another term.

The bad news? He might run for another term.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

(Oddly, the column by Joe Battenfeld not only doesn’t lead the Herald’s web site, it’s all but buried on the News & Opinion page, the caboose to a Menino/Chick-fil-A piece.)

Regardless, here’s the gist of it:

[C]lose Menino associates and other City Hall watchers say they believe the mayor will give it another go in 2013, despite a host of health problems. His fundraising reports suggest he is getting ready to run again.

The mayor has raised $225,315 in just the first seven months of the year, and has nearly $600,000 in the bank, dwarfing the fundraising of even statewide office holders who are girding to run for governor.

“All signs point to him running again,” said Hyde Park City Councilor Rob Consalvo, a close Menino ally. “The guy is working harder than ever.”

Yes, well, that’s part of the problem. Another run – likely unopposed since his challengers get not just beaten, but vaporized – would produce a knee-buckling sixth term for Menino’s, who’s successfully turned Boston into the political equivalent of Mayberry.

Except he’s not likable.

UPDATE: See the column’s Comments section for details.

 

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Elizabeth Warren Saves Capitalism Edition

August 1, 2012

U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren (D-Capital!) kicked off her Wall Street waltz with this quote in National Journal, according to Hillary Chabot in yesterday’s Boston Herald:

“Every now and again, I meet with someone who’s been very successful on Wall Street, who says, ‘I want to support your campaign because I believe you will save capitalism. I believe in capitalism, and I understand there have to be rules. And they have to be consistently enforced.’ ”

That earned Warren this front page photo in the feisty local tabloid:

It also generated this moonwalk by Warren shortly thereafter, as the Herald reported in a follow-up:

“I passed along a comment that was over the top, and it was silly for me to do so,” she told the Herald at a Somerville campaign stop.

Ya think?

Then again, ya think the Herald would leave it at that?

You should live so long. The Herald had not one, but two columns today (conveniently side-by-side) whacking Warren for the walkback, among other things.

First up, Joe Battenfeld:

Warren’s cop-out may represent a turning point in her campaign, because it’s the first time she’s actually disavowed something in such record speed.

But don’t expect Warren to go all silly on us. She is still claiming American Indian heritage, and that she created “much of the intellectual foundation” for Occupy. And she still claims she’s the sheriff who cleaned up Wall Street, despite what a few “over the top” executives may say.

Next up, Howie Carr:

How does Granny Warren do it? I mean, do you know how much time it must take, saving capitalism and simultaneously providing the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street, which wanted to destroy capitalism?

Talk about keeping balls in the air. She’s both an Indian and “Okie to her toes.”

Do we detect a pattern emerging here? Or is the Herald just running out of dead horses to beat?

You can choose “Both of the Above” if you like.

P.S. The Boston Globe, not surprisingly, hasn’t had a word to say about this matter.

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Brian Maloney Middlesex Truck & Coach Edition

July 31, 2012

From our compare and contrast in clear idiomatic English desk

Joan Vennochi’s 7/22 Boston Globe op-ed:

A business built on hard work – and government

Moments before a jeans-clad Mitt Romney strode into a garage bay at a Roxbury truck repair company, a campaign aide carefully wiped grit from a tool chest slated to share the spotlight with the candidate.

Too much reality spoils a good picture. Just as his campaign put a gloss on the tool chest, Romney put a gloss on the truth about Middlesex Truck & Coach.

“This is not the result of government,” he declared. “This is the result of people who take risk, who have dreams, who build for themselves and for their families.”

Yet owner Brian Maloney acknowledged that his business did receive some government help, via a low-interest loan given for new development and start-ups. “The only way I was able to come here, because I had no money, was with an industrial-revenue bond,” Maloney told Jon Keller of WBZ-TV.

Joe Battenfeld 7/30 Boston Herald column:

Liberals attack

The vile, hate-filled messages started showing up soon after Mitt Romney and the national press corps left Brian Maloney’s truck repair shop in Roxbury.

“It was incredible,” Maloney tells the Herald. “It was crude, abusive, mindless garbage.”

Maloney hadn’t committed a crime, but to some Democrats and liberals he had done something far more heinous: He had dared to criticize President Obama.

Two different worlds. That’s American politics – and news media – these days.

Get used to it.

 

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Defending Vicki Kennedy Edition

July 24, 2012

Yesterday the hardreading staff noted the Sunday Boston Globe piece detailing trouble in Kennedyville, with Patrick and Ted K Jr. complaining that Vicki is pushing them around – and out – in the development of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate.

The already frayed relationship between Vicki Kennedy and her late husband’s children is at the breaking point, with the two sons growing increasingly convinced that she is jeopardizing the senator’s legacy and mishandling the creation of the $71 million institute that bears his name.

Much of the conflict centers around the construction and governance of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate, a project that faces potential cost overruns, according to a close family friend who was authorized by some family members to speak on their behalf, but who declined to be named.

Just like a hitman, wanting to remain anonymous.

But today Boston Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld rode to Vicki’s rescue in this piece:

Brat boys’ attack on Vicki Kennedy means family name is . . . 

Tarnished by silver spoons

Ted Kennedy engaged in his share of political mudslinging, but nothing as bad as the smear campaign being waged by his spiteful sons against his still grieving widow.

The anonymous, cowardly attacks against Vicki Kennedy are a new low, even for politics. If Patrick Kennedy and Ted Kennedy Jr. want to whine about their stepmother, they should at least have the guts to do it on their own — not through an unnamed friend.

Fair enough, if a bit overwrought.

For a tiebreker, maybe someone could check in with Hub ubermacher Peter Meade, who resigned as president of the Institute last year. As the Globe reported at the time:

Shortly after construction begins on the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate this spring, its president — handpicked by the senator just before his death — plans to make his exit.

The unexpected resignation of Peter Meade, combined with the recent departure of the chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, is fueling a growing sense in Boston’s political circles that there is confusion and conflict behind the scenes among the keepers of the vaunted Kennedy legacy.

In an interview, Meade, a longtime team player with the Kennedy family and one of Boston’s leading civic figures, confirmed he is leaving the institute, but insisted his departure is amicable.

Unlikely the politic Meade would say more now, but it’s worth a try, eh?

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Next Entries »