Obama Ephemera

1. I know there’s a lot of gnashing of teeth over the Obama team’s intensive vetting process, but just because you wrote something stupid on a Facebook page doesn’t mean you won’t get your dream job, it just means the incoming administration wants to know about it in advance.

2. “Without a doubt, Barack Obama creamed John McCain when it came to links,” Search Engine Watch reports in “Obama’s Link Strategy Fuels Election Victory.”

3. Obama won the T-shirt wars too.

4. Don’t blame Anchower.

5. The final stats on statements by Obama vetted by Politifact:

* True: 49
* Mostly True: 31
* Half True: 33
* Barely True: 19
* False: 25
* Pants on Fire: 2

By McCain:

* True: 30
* Mostly True: 28
* Half True: 28
* Barely True: 27
* False: 34
* Pants on Fire: 7

Searching for Sarah

Here are the top 10 searches involving the presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the four weeks ending Sept. 27, according to Hitwise.

SARAH PALIN
1. sarah palin
2. sarah palin biography
3. sarah palin pictures
4. sarah palin photos
5. tina fey sarah palin
6. sarah palin bio
7. sarah palin hot photos
8. sarah palin affair
9. sarah palin hot
10. sarah palin interview

Field Notes: Indonesia

Relayed to Division Street from a loyal reader:

On Wednesday morning I went to the Obama house before the neon gets fitted and the coach park installed. Very nice area but they rented a small outbuilding. Perhaps it will be a stable in the movie. The owner of the house having declined to sell to some retired general who wanted to commercialise it suddenly died on Monday. Journalists are a sniffing. Then I went to his school. They have not forgotten Fox New reporting it as a madrassa. The world’s media and me was there. I was with a friend who is a BBC journalist and I assumed he talked our way in. He told me later he never mentioned the BBC and they simply unlocked the gate when they saw me the white man arrive. Just as it should be. I was brought down to earth later when I had the honour of being shoved out of the way by an Al Jazeera cameraman. The kids erupted when he won but I suspect they think one of their own wins the presidency now and then. When I was that age we were bundled into the school hall to watch the moon landings but I never realised it was an unique event. I later saw that the BBC gave us about 15 seconds. CNN covered the Kenya connection where Saint Barry never even lived.

The head of the school asked the us embassy for posters of Obama but they refused unless he took McCain as well. The school was not so neutral. The local paper reported that for a week before the election the kids were allowed 15 minutes a day to pray for an OB victory.

The Obama Aftershock

These comments landed in my in-box from various correspondents on Wednesday.

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My conductor on the Blue Line this morning came over the intercom to say, “To all of you who came out to vote in the historic election last night, thank you. Thank you for riding the Blue Line. Enjoy life.”

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It’s great to be living on the South Side right now. Folks down here are happy this morning.
Very happy.

Laughing, singing, horn-honkin’, cryin’-ass happy. And this morning there’s nothing but smiles and lots of talk of it being a truly blessed day. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be right now.

Changing Daley

I had to shake my head when I heard Richard M. Daley tell reporters approvingly today that Americans want change. It reminded me of something Barack Obama said over the weekend:

“Here’s my question for you, Ohio: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain’s going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?”

Here’s my question for you, Chicago: do you think Richard M. Daley is delighted to support Barack Obama because he thinks Barack Obama’s going to bring change? Do you think Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?

Only if he leaves them alone in Chicago.

Ad Wars

Barack Obama’s unprecedented ad spending continues to set records.

A new study out by the Wisconsin Advertising Project has found that Obama is oustpending John McCain by three to one on television, and that 75 percent of the spending is in red states.

“From October 21st to October 28th, spending on television advertising in the presidential campaign has totaled nearly $38 million. Over this time period, the Obama campaign spent nearly $21.5 million while the McCain campaign spent nearly $7.5 million. Another $6.7 million was spent by the Republican Party and $2.2 million was spent by interest groups.”

Additionally, the campaign of the candidate who keeps repeating that Americans are tired of attack politics and has built his campaign on a theme of changing the political discourse has sharply upped his negative ad buys “even as McCain’s team has mixed in a little sunshine into what had been one massive ad front of foreboding,” Crain’s Chicago Business reports, citing data from the Wisconsin study.

“[F]rom Oct. 21-28, 63% of the Obama ads and 79% of the McCain ads were negative. In its previous report, about ads running from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4, the project said that 100% of the McCain campaign’s ads and 34% of the Obama campaign’s ads were negative.”

Gaming the Presidency

I just came across this by accident; seems the lottery in Mesa, Colombia chose to put Obama’s visage on its new tickets.

“We’re always looking for somebody people are raving about,” Mesa Lottery manager Luis Enciso told the AFP news service. “We’d never think of using John McCain. McCain has the look of somebody who’s standoffish, unpleasant and tiresome.”

The American gambling industry has a different view, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

“Gaming has bet the house on the presidential campaign of Republican John McCain,” the paper says in its examination.

Endorsing Obama

By the end of a long presidential campaign, it’s hard for anyone to come up with an endorsement that does little more than rehash the talking points and familiar memes most of us have heard a million times. But I was struck this week by how one of the four endorsements of Barack Obama I paid attention to this week was clearly superior. It was the one by Colin Powell – republished as text by the Sun-Times and in my view more sophisticated and persuasive than what the editorial boards of the Sun-Times, Tribune and New York Times could muster. Let’s take a look.

Chicago’s Counsel

The new issue of the ABA Journal features a cover story called “The Lawyers Who May Run America” that speculates on which attorneys are most likely to attain senior positions in either an Obama or McCain administration.

I found two Chicago connections among the speculative McCain picks. One is potential solicitor general Maureen Mahoney, who heads up Latham & Watkins’ appellate litigation group in Washington, D.C. Mahoney is a University of Chicago Law School graduate whom, the ABA says, has been called “the female John Roberts” by legal historian David Garrow. The second is Michael McConnell, a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who is also a University of Chicago Law School graduate and is mentioned as a possible U.S. Supreme Court pick.

At least three names with Chicago connections are mentioned among possible Obama appointees, including the choice du jour for everything from White House chief of staff to replacement in the U.S. Senate Valerie Jarrett. In this case, the ABA has Jarrett tabbed for HUD Secretary.

Law professor Cass Sunstein is at Harvard now, but he is a former University of Chicago Law School colleague of Obama’s and an advisor. He is also married to Samantha Power, one of Obama’s foreign policy specialists also likely to play a role in an Obama administration. The ABA thinks Sunstein is in line to be White House domestic policy advisor. (He supported George W. Bush’s appointment of Michael McConnell to the court of appeals, by the way.)

Diane Wood who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Illinois and is based in Chicago, is seen as a potential Supreme Court pick. “A Clinton appointee to the appeals court, Wood is seen as one of the country’s smartest judges,” the ABA says. “She’s a liberal who has authored a fair amount of high-profile dissents in the conservative 7th Circuit.”

Notable omissions include U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a Harvard Law School graduate frequently mentioned as a possible U.S. attorney general or FBI chief, and Bill Daley, a John Marshall Law School graduate. Daley sounds far more interested in running for governor than returning to Washington, but he is a former Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton.

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In a brief roundup (not available yet online) of similar speculation among a variety of media sources, the new Chicago magazine cites U.S. News & World Report predicting Bill Daley as Treasury Secretary, while Ebony Jet picks Jarrett for the same job.

McCain’s Chicago

The McCain campaign isn’t totally dormant in Chicago. I found this list (keyed to my zip code) of upcoming events – though I also found them wanting. For example, this Friday night you can get together with fellow McCainiacs and watch . . . the first debate!

Three long hours, hosted by John Hampilos, who I’m sure is a fine human being. But geez!

The Chicago Young Republicans (also seen here) are holding “Super Saturday” events that look to be more productive; the CYRs are taking field trips to Mayfield, Ohio and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Finally, Obama may have booked Grant Park, but the local McCain campaign will be at the Hilton Chicago on Election Night. Not necessarily a bad option: It’s free, there probably won’t be a long line at the bar, and Tony Peraica is expected, so you never know.