The Bottom Half Of The Top 25

October 23, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 

The Daily Telegraph (London), which has become obsessed with lists, has an interesting new on on offer: “US election 2008: Top 25 turning points in the campaign”.

Today’s paper serves up numbers 25 through 13.  A few are arguable, some are snarky, but all are interesting. Here’s a sampler:

25 Romney pretends to be a hunter

In seeking to remind conservative Republicans that he was one of them, Republican candidate Mitt Romney portrayed himself as a sportsman, claiming he was “pretty much a hunter all my life”. Faced with claims the former Massachusetts governor had only been hunting twice, for rabbits and quail, his campaign reluctantly admitted he was “not a big game hunter”.

19 The fist bump

To the dismay of its liberal readership and the Obama campaign, the esteemed New Yorker magazine ran a cover cartoon in July, showing Barack and Michelle Obama in radical garb bumping fists in the Oval Office. He was depicted as Taliban fighter, who had hung a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall. She had a full late-60s afro with an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder.

It all started with a fist bump the Obamas shared on stage – a celebratory gesture commonly used in America. A Fox News presenter promptly asked if it was a “terrorists’ fist bump”. The New Yorker said its cartoon satirised attitudes to the couple. The Obama campaign said they found it “tasteless and offensive”, but the image failed to exact any lasting damage on the Democratic candidate’s campaign.

13 The Greek columns

By mid August, Barack Obama was being mocked by John McCain as a celebrity Messiah, whose ego and presumption exceeded his abilities and experience. So imagine the glee of the press pool who got a sneak preview of the stage at Invesco Field in Denver, the scene of his grandiose convention speech to 76,000, when they saw the stage flanked by Greek columns.

Did Obama think he was a political Adonis, or was he trying to provide a backdrop with echoes of the neo-classical designs of the White House and the US Capitol? After 24 hours of mockery, it didn’t matter. The speech, his most detailed, if not his most passionate, appeared to answer the questions of doubting voters and steady the ship of a campaign that had seemed like it was beginning to wobble.

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