Paul Waldman marvels at Obama's ability to reverse a decades-long Democratic deficit in media strategy:
While Barack Obama was photographed standing on mountaintops and being mobbed by adoring troops, John McCain was filmed tooling around in a golf cart with George H. W. Bush, a figure from the political past. Then, while Obama spoke in front of a crowd of 200,000 Germans waving American flags, McCain answered questions in the dairy aisle of a supermarket.
Watching the week's events, I was reminded of the 1990 U.S. Open, when John McEnroe, clearly past his prime and five years removed from his last Grand Slam final, made an improbable run to the semifinals. There he met 18-year-old Pete Sampras, whose cannon serve and freakishly precise ground strokes were so overwhelming that it seemed as though he were some kind of tennis-playing cyborg sent by an advanced race of aliens to humiliate human athletes. By the end of the match, it was clear McEnroe's career would soon be over.
And, in an article from our last print issue, Clyde Prestowitz writes that American CEOs often have greater incentives to concern themselves with needs of foreign leaders than American ones:
In December 2004, IBM announced the sale of its personal computer division to China's Lenovo. The announcement came as a surprise in Washington but was old news in Beijing. As IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano later told The New York Times, the deal had originated during his July 2003 trip to Beijing to meet not with Lenovo but with top-level Chinese government officials from whom he sought permission to sell to a Chinese company. IBM wanted to support China's industrial strategy (including the upgrading of its technological capacities and know-how), Palmisano told the Times, partly because "if you become ingrained in their agenda and become truly local and help them advance, then your opportunities are enlarged. ... You become part of their strategy." After Beijing approved the proposal, Palmisano proceeded to Lenovo to negotiate the deal that wound up not only with Lenovo taking over IBM's PC division but also with IBM and the Chinese government as co-investors in China's fifth largest company.
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--The Editors
