[digg-me] Katie Couric interviewed Michael Dukakis today – the man who lost the 1988 presidential race to George H. W. Bush. The quote that makes the interview worth watching is from the very end:
Look, I owe the American people an apology. If I had beaten the old man you’d of never heard of the kid and you wouldn’t be in this mess. So it’s all my fault and I feel that very, very strongly.
H/t Jason Zengerle.
Over at The Plank, Jason Zengerle discusses how Steve Schmidt and friends over at the McCain campaign turned Obama’s popularity into a negative:
…you’d think that his popularity – which is something extrinsic to the candidate – would be impossible to demonize. Sure, Hillary Clinton tried, with her digs at Obama for making nice speeches before big crowds, but those attacks ultimately fell short. It wasn’t until the McCain campaign’s celebrity ad – and the repeated meme in other McCain spots of Obama standing before adoring crowds chanting his name – that Obama’s popularity came to be viewed as a sign of his own haughtiness.
This reminds me of what Rick Perlstein describes in Nixonland, as the conflict between the Orthogonians and the Franklins that Nixon used to gain political power.