From Jim Eskin, Public Affairs Stratagist ....................... ................ JULY 2008

America can look forward to the Obama-McCain contest with genuine enthusiasm.

It features two candidates with remarkably compelling stories. And it gives voters a stark contrast in the embrace of ideology, policy, and direction for the nation's future.

In the past, you might have heard that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between candidates. Not in 2008. America has a real choice.

Strategies won't be hard to figure out. For Obama: Paint McCain as a third term for Bush. For McCain: Emphasize his opponent's lack of experience, especially in the international arena.

Attention is now focused on selection of vice presidential candidates; but keep in mind, historically, running mates have little impact on election results. Hillary Clinton could be the exception, bringing huge positives and negatives with her qualifications for the position.

Voting and participation in the democratic process have been way up. Here's to that trend continuing and a campaign focusing on real issues and substance.

AMERICA'S JOURNALIST
MSNBC is my favorite source for news and Tim Russert was my favorite political reporter.

He had a wonderful knack for providing rich historical context in every story, and making politics exciting, fun and relevant.

His love of our political system was so evident, just as he loved everything about life-family, friends, faith, Buffalo, baseball, and much more. He set an example of living for the rest of us to follow.

ADVANTAGE DEMOCRATS
The current political landscape, with the percentage of those identifying themselves as Democrats outnumbering those who identify as Republicans by a 37% to 28% margin in the Gallup Poll, provides a significant advantage for Sen. Obama.

Following very well-established patterns in American presidential elections, voter identification as a Republican or Democrat is strongly-but not totally-correlated with support for the two parties' candidates.

Those who identify as Republicans at this juncture appear to be a bit more loyal to their party's candidate, with 85% supporting McCain, compared to the 78% of those who identify as Democrats supporting Obama.

Obama is further helped by the fact that voters who initially identify as Independents are more likely to lean toward identifying as Democrats than to lean toward the Republican Party.

SWEET 17
It was a 22-year wait, but the Boston Celtics are World Champions again for a record 17th time.

Here is an amazing tale of comebacks. They accomplished the greatest single season turnaround in NBA history, then staged the most prolific single game comeback in the Finals in Game 4.

The Celtics have a proud past. They can also be saluted for breaking the pro basketball color barrier on several occasions: first team to draft an African-American player (1950), first team to field an all-African-American starting line-up (1964), and first team to hire an African-American coach (1966).

UGLY MOOD
The Harris Poll finds the nation in a foul political mood. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Rice all register their worst ratings ever. More people than ever also think the country is on the wrong track.

Only 14% of the public think the things in the country are going in the right direction and fully 80% think they're on the wrong track. The highest number of people who said the country was on the wrong track was 81% in June 1992 during the term of the first President Bush.

PRIMARY COVERAGE
Surprise: Obama didn't enjoy more positive press coverage than Hillary Clinton at the height of the primary season, at least when it came to the candidates' personal narratives. And as early as February, coverage began to turn even less positive toward Obama than toward his rival, finds the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The dominant personal narratives about Obama and Clinton-their character, history, leadership and appeal-were almost identical in tone. Overall, they were twice as positive as negative narratives for both candidates.

McCain has had a harder time controlling his message in the press. Fully 57% of the narratives studied about him were critical in nature, though a look back through the entire campaign, including 2007, reveals the story line about the Republican nominee has steadily improved with time.

A RICH LADY
Just how wealthy is she?

Cindy McCain and her children own the majority of Hensley & Co., said to be the third-largest Budweiser distributorship in the nation. Her wealth is estimated at more than $100 million.

According to her husband's financial disclosures, she made more than 220 financial transactions last year in her multi-million dollar financial enterprise-including 13 deals that exceeded $1 million each.

The fast pace of trading may reflect efforts to liquidate a blind trust, which is allowed under Senate ethics rules but may run afoul of the rules followed by presidential candidates.

CINEMOCRACY
How do you define democracy? You're invited to submit a film up to five minutes in length answering this question.

The top 25 videos (as determined by public online voting) will be screened publicly during the week of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The winning film will be screened as part of the official program of the 31st Starz Denver Film Festival.

Do Republicans know of a similar project for the Republican National Convention?

BOOK WORMS
Despite the growing availability of other formats for reading-such as online or with an e-book reader or PDA-the vast majority of readers still like to read the old-fashioned way. In a Random House/Zogby poll, 82% say they prefer to curl up with a printed book over using the latest in reading technology.

Women (85%) are more likely than men (79%) to say they prefer reading printed books. Reading printed books also has greater appeal among older respondents, although it's by far the preferred method among all age groups.

BOOKS BY POLS
Being an author remains a lucrative way for politicians to make money.
Hillary Clinton earned $10.5 million from two books, Living History and It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us.

Barack Obama has reported more than $4 million in royalties last year from Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope, and has disclosed a complex deal that will give him a cut of the proceeds from another nonfiction book and a children's book.

John McCain has reported a more modest take of about $175,000 from the sales of five books he has co-written about his life and ideas between 1999 and 2007.

MOORE POLITICS
Take cover, McCain. You too, Obama. Michael Moore is coming out with a new book.

The tome, titled Mike's Election Guide, a manual of mockery for the 2008 presidential election, will be published Aug. 19 by Grand Central Publishing.

DATA WARS
The GOP's ability to microtarget critical voter constituencies is being countered by the Democratic National Committee's restructuring of its data banks into a single centralized file that blends traditional voter statistics on gender, geography, or party identification with consumer and census data.

Microtargeting is becoming increasingly valuable to political parties as more traditional communication media, such as political advertising, become less effective as campaign tools. For instance, 15% of Americans receive the bulk of their campaign news online. Among the chief characteristics where consumer data points are most helpful are ethnicity and race, gun ownership, marital status, church attendance and gender.

HISTORY LESSON
You probably know that our first president was first in war and first in peace, but did you know that George Washington built, owned and managed the country's largest whiskey distillery?

At its peak production period in 1799, GW's distillery boasted five state-of-the-art stills and a boiler that produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey.

FAVORITE TV SHOW QUIZ
There's not much time when you're running for president to crash in a La-Z-Boy and be a couch potato. Still politicians watch TV. Match the following nominees and wannabes with their favorite TV shows.

Answers presented below. See you next month.

Answers: 1=a, 2=b, 3=d, 4=e, 5=c

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