Video: Arrogance?

Chuck Todd analyzed the Barack Obama missteps of the past week and wondered whether Obama realizes how he comes across to voters. Todd believes that Obama has left McCain an opening to claim the mantle of reformer after Obama tossed public financing under the bus, given McCain’s long track record on the issue and Obama’s non-existent record in return. And Todd notes that it’s one thing to be an empty suit in a season of change, but an arrogant empty suit won’t cut it:

There would be a lot of Democrats that say you have this ability to raise $300 million, just take the hit and say you’re going raise – and flip flop and go raise the money. But you know, there is an image here that I think the McCain people think they are going to be able to paint of Obama.

And that is there is a sense of arrogance. Think about that Presidential seal debacle of last week where somehow Obama’s campaign thought they should make their own seal. It’s this idea that somehow the whole campaign is about him. That it’s not about other people.

And I think that you do these little things and you backtrack on this campaign fundraising deal. You decide not to do these town halls when you said “oh, that would be an interesting idea to do.” And you allow McCain to say “hey, you know, he is saying he is all these things, but so far, he seems to be just another politician.’ You heard Lindsey Graham, he kept almost shaking his head yesterday almost like, “it is so sad, this bright young man, seems so great,” and it might actually be effective. Clinton tried it, but she was also a craven politician so she couldn’t do it. I think McCain has the image that he could pull this off.

Given the rate of Obama’s reversals, almost anyone in politics has the image to pull it off. The only politician in America that couldn’t stand against such a series of opportunistic politics would be Hillary Clinton, and she still managed to beat Obama in 12 of the last 15 contests in the primary.

That calls into question whether Obama really will have an advantage in opting out of the public-financing system anyway. He may raise three or four times what McCain can spend within the limitations of that system, but he outspent Hillary three- and four-to-one in the later battleground states, too. He wound up winning only the gimme states, and couldn’t carry even a single swing state in the end despite the huge money advantage he had over Hillary. And with his fundraising totals dropping 20% or more month-on-month since his peak in February, Obama’s presumed advantage may not ever appear — and now he will have to spend a considerable time on fundraising rather than campaigning.

An accomplished man may look arrogant and get away with it. An arrogant man with no track record to justify the hubris looks a lot more like an empty suit — who needs pseudo-Great Seals to shore up his ego. Todd nails this.