"Good for America--or Good for Obama?" Asks a new RNC mailer. "A bill [Obama] has sponsored in the U.S. Senate, the so-called Global Poverty Act (S. 2433), would raise the amount of American tax dollars allocated to United Nations’ redistribution efforts to $845 billion. That’s $2,500 from every American taxpayer, when many in our country already are struggling to make ends meet." It won't surprise you that the dollar amount attached to the Global Poverty Act is a lie; $845 billion never appears in the bill, and the actual authority on these matters, the Congressional Budget Office, says, "CBO estimates that implementing S. 2433 would cost less than $1 million per year, assuming the availability of appropriated funds." Divide $1 million by 300,000,000 and see how big of a number you get. But put aside the lie for a moment. One of the useful things about keeping an eye on party mailers is that the national party works with the presidential campaign, but isn't under quite the same spotlight. It's the official attack of the campaign, but without the fuzzed edges meant to protect McCain's "favorable" rating. So following the Party's messaging allows you to see the contours of their attack with unusual clarity. Here, for instance, McCain has settled on the slogan "Country First." The RNC is pushing the obvious corollary: For Obama, country is not first. Depending on the ad, Obama is first, or celebrity is first, or, here, the hated United Nations is first, as are poor countries who will take from struggling Americans. It's not so much that Obama is un-American as he's pro-Other Countries. This will, of course, be neatly fit into a narrative of Jeremiah Wright ("God Damn America!") and Michelle Obama ("For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud to be an American") and Barack Obama's weird middle name. This UN mailer is one of the first data points to be explicitly tested for inclusion in that narrative. Barack Obama, after all, has a complicated relationship to America. His surname, his race, his background, and his writings all assure that. What the RNC is going to do is remind you that John McCain has a simple relationship to America. For him, it's "country first."
