The American Mind

Hi Sean, I used you as a possible improvement to the site, hope you don’t mind…. Text as follows-

Dear team McCain, I like the way the site is coming along! yet have a suggestion to make it better.
Back when Mr. Thompson was running for office his campaign had what I would consider to have been the best campaign site of all the candidates I have seen this election year. It had morning and evening updates with video when available. It Helped to keep the support base up to date on what was going on and generally more involved. also there were links for the debates on the site, a feature I hope to see here once we start into the general election debates. If it is possible I would also like to see a link with info. on the folks that MR. McCain is looking to as possible VP’s as I know there is a lot of intrest in this choice and curriosity may draw more folks to the site. Fred also used to do personal messages to the “FredHeads” his support base this also helped the base feel more personally involved. Sean Hackbarth at the American Mind ran Fred’s web presense and did a great Job with it, you might want to tap him for further ideas. sean@theamericanmind.com

Thanks for considering my suggestions, hope they Help, Steve

Steve, thanks for your kinds words.

Hi Sean - were you shocked by the WSJ photo this morning of the “war room” (Pounder, Conant, Goldfarb) with the “Not Ready” posters behind them on the wall? Do these guys have so little imagination that they can’t think up / tape up a positive McCain poster? I thought the absence of a McCain poster striking. What these guys don’t understand is that political advertising is effective when it strikes a chord in some small way. They guys are missing the boat if they think “Not Ready” is going to win them this election. Obama is terribly, terribly ready and if elected with both houses in his pocket will forcefully lead our country right back to the seventies. Card check anyone? Massive increases in welfare spending masquerading as tax cuts? First, these guys gotta get McCain posters up, and second, if they insist on highlighting Obama in their war room, they should at least put up posters focusing on issues with resonance - an Obama poster emphasizing lockstep voting with the liberal Washington establishment, “Back to the Seventies” Obama wearing a sticky polyester shirt with sweat stains and unkept hair, etc etc (I could give many more ideas if you are interested). Obama is a much better politician not to mention smarter than Gore or Kerry and Not Ready is just not going to cut it - I don’t care about the Biden soundbite.

McCain posters should emphasize that he is the one not Obama who fought the establishment, the one who reaches across the aisle, the one who represents the modernization of current political thinking about Washington - let me know if I can reduce these to two words for you - shouldn’t be that hard.

The war room also has to stop running from the economy. We are currently being dragged through a massive housing slow down that started with two trillion dollars flowing into mortgage securities from overseas - two trillion that both parties were cheering all the way as a means to increase home ownership. Created a massive bubble. Both parties cheered this - maybe even more so the Democrats. Too little regulation? Republicans have been calling for better and more effective regulation of Fannie and Freddie since the 1980s - blocked by the Democrats at every opportunity. The Democrats’ hands are all over this slowdown. We need to quit running from the economy and emphasize the massive increase in Federal revenue due to the tax cuts. We need to point out Michigan’s current third world country status due to our (yes I reside here) strong labor unions and the right to work states in the southeast growing like crazy with auto plants. Obama means card check. Card check means no more new auto plants for the Southeast and, given enough time, a reduction in those plants. Democrats will chase jobs away just as they have been doing for years with their unfunded corporate mandates (try calculating the true effective American corporate tax rate - already among the highest in the world just on a marginal basis, and add to that a quantification of the expense of the thousands of Democratically-sponsored unfunded corporate mandates - ADA, FMLA, etc etc etc - all fine ideas but Congress has to fund them if they are so important to us as a country - results in a punitive existing corporate tax rate - even before Obama - that fluid capital will simply move away from over time to other countries). With Obama and both houses, they will crush the living daylights out of America’s truest and best “natural resource” and finest competitive advantage - American businesses.

That’s it for now - I need more coffee.

Dave