Strategy vs. Tactics (again)

Also in today’s NYT: A revealing comparison of the candidates’ respective endgames.

Just like Al Giordano said, Obama’s coming full-circle on a long-term effort to persuade voters of his vision for a more perfect union. The closing argument will echo his national debut at the Democratic Convention in 2004:

From here on out, Mr. Obama’s aides said, attacks on Mr. McCain will be joined by an emphasis on broader and less partisan themes, like the need to unify the country after a difficult election.

Go back and watch the video from the debates. Obama does this every. single. time. and the little squigglies go off the charts as he builds towards his conclusion. I can only imagine that this approach will prove even more effective on a massive scale, when the concerted media spotlight amplifies the effect.

Meanwhile in Mavericktown:

Mr. McCain will stick with the message he has embraced over the last week, presenting Mr. Obama as an advocate of big government and raising taxes. His advisers say they will limit the numbers of rallies where he and Ms. Palin appear together, to cover more ground in the final days.

What part of “these attacks aren’t sticking” does the McCain crew not understand? This didn’t work during the debates, it hasn’t worked during the past two weeks, and it’s reinforcing the perception that McCain, Palin, and co. are simply out of touch with the substantive concerns of the electorate.

Everybody’s favorite corrupt D.C. has-been has a pitch-perfect soundbyte summary of the situation:

“Any serious Republican has to ask, ‘How did we get into this mess?’ ” Newt Gingrich, the former Republican house speaker, said in an interview. “It’s not where we should be, and it’s not where we had to be. This was not bad luck.”

Newt’s transparently trying to sell the commentariat on the (misleading) idea that he could have done better, but the man has a point…

How to do presentations: imitate Larry Lessig

A must-read for anyone that ever has to do a slide-show presentation.

Lessig’s blog has a sort of guest-post from a phycisist named Chris Tunnell. In the post, Tunnell breaks down the elements of a Larry Lessig-style slide presentation. I will be studying Lessig’s techniques (and Tunnell’s description of them) in preparation for a conference in a couple of weeks. If you want people to listen to you the next time you have to give a talk, you’ll do the same.

If you’ve never seen a Lessig slide-show, here’s one he did a while back on why Google books should be covered under a fair-use exception: