If you’re a Democratic primary voter in Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania, and are still torn between Obama and the Clintons, here’s the best reason I know to throw your support to Obama: Mark McKinnon.

Love him or hate him, there’s general agreement that McKinnon — the chief media adviser and strategist for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain – is a genius at what he does. So it’s no surprise that, even though it’s relatively old ‘news,’ word that McKinnon will stop working for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee has been freshly burning up cyberspace of late.

Citing his admiration for the Illinois senator, McKinnon says he cannot face being part of a campaign that “would inevitably be attacking” Obama. “I have met Barack Obama. I have read his book. I like him a great deal, he told National Public Radio. “I disagree with him on very fundamental issues but it would be uncomfortable for me and it would be bad for the McCain campaign.”

But who is Mark McKinnon — and why does his unusual stance matter so much? For starters, because as the chief media adviser and strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaigns, he arguably deserves more credit (or blame, depending on your politics!) than any other individual for George Bush being in the White House. Anyone who can get George Bush elected President of the United States twice (and Governor of Texas before that) is a danger to Democrats everywhere, and the fact that McKinnon will withdraw his services from McCain in the event of an Obama nomination should be music to the ears of anyone who wants to see an end to our long national nightmare—aka the Bush Administration and its possible successors.

I first met McKinnon in 2004, while covering the presidential media campaigns for the television industry journal Broadcasting & Cable. He returned my first call immediately — unlike his inept Democratic counterparts, who failed to return fourteen calls and then hung up when I finally got through. After telling me to check in with presidential counselor Dan Bartlett (who also promptly returned the call) McKinnon then invited me to spend a day at the Bush/Cheney campaign offices in suburban Virginia.

Upon arrival, I asked McKinnon what his media plan for the campaign against John Kerry would be. To my surprise, instead of dodging, filibustering or ignoring the question, he answered in a forthright manner. “We plan to spend sixty million dollars in the next ninety days defining John Kerry before he can define himself,” McKinnon told me.

“How are you going to define him?” I shot back.

“As a flip-flopping liberal who’s wrong on defense,” McKinnon replied.

I then watched in amazement over the next three months as he proceeded to do exactly that. Within weeks of our conversation, ordinary people all over the country suddenly began saying that they had doubts about Kerry – particularly, they parroted, because he seemed like such a “flip-flopper.” The mainstream media lapdogs soon followed suit.

Kerry never recovered from the preemptive assault on his authenticity, which was later reinforced by images of windsurfing and clips of him saying, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Game, set and match to the Republican side.

So who then is Mark McKinnon? And why is the man who first elected George W. Bush, and later rescued John McCain from the land of the politically dead and then took him to the brink of the nomination, saying he won’t help McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic candidate? The high-school dropout, onetime staff songwriter for Kris Kristofferson, formerly Democratic political operative who once denounced Karl Rove and friend of such liberal heavyweights as onetime Clinton advisers Paul Begala and James Carville seems an unlikely choice as President Bush’s or candidate McCain’s campaign media director. But politics is first and foremost about winning — and McKinnon’s candidates win.

“It all started with Hank the Hallucination,” McKinnon recalls. “Hank and Paul Begala are the reasons I got into politics.” Hank, an illustrated comic strip character in the Daily Texan, the student newspaper McKinnon edited, ran with his backing against Begala in a 1982 contest for student government president at the University of Texas in Austin — and won. “I was a bit of an anarchist in those days,” McKinnon recalls.

Hank was the first in a long series of winning candidates that McKinnon has backed. “I was a volunteer for Lloyd Doggett in my first real campaign in 1983,” he says. “Carville was the campaign manager, and Begala was in the upper echelon. He brought me out of the basement.”

McKinnon continued to work in winning Texas Democratic campaigns after that, helping to elect Ann Richards as governor in 1990 and Bob Lanier as mayor of Houston in 1991, among others. But by 1996, as he explained in a Texas Monthly essay called “The Spin Doctor is Out,” he had burned out on partisan politics and “last-minute attack and response ads.” Instead he planned to concentrate on corporate clients and public affairs, such as a successful 1997 effort to preserve affirmative action.

Then he fell in love, and everything changed. As he famously told a reporter, McKinnon saw Bush at a party and had the feeling that a man has “when he’s at a party with his wife and sees a beautiful woman across the room.”

The object of his newfound affection was George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. “It is unusual” for a conservative Republican politician and a liberal Democrat media maven to hook up, McKinnon admits. “The nexus was [Democratic] Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, who was my mentor.” McKinnon and Bush became jogging partners and fast friends. Soon Bush began courting McKinnon professionally as well.

“Even as Governor, President Bush was famously skeptical about political consultants,” McKinnon says. “And at the time, all the typical Republican hired guns were circling. Hiring me was certainly a counter-intuitive move. I think he liked the idea that I wasn’t looking to work in politics anymore.”

In the end, McKinnon says, he decided to work for Bush “out of respect, loyalty and friendship — which as you know are qualities that are very important to the Bush culture.” Those feelings were reciprocated by Bush, who put McKinnon in charge of two of the most well financed media operations in history.

The strategies McKinnon employed in the past decade may seem awfully negative for a man who says, “Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.” (After all, McKinnon was the architect of the ads that trashed John McCain in South Carolina and beyond in 2000, ensuring a Bush nomination.) But McKinnon says it isn’t so.

“It’s not negative to define John Kerry. We’re not doing attack ads, we’re doing strong contrast ads,” he told me four year ago. “That’s legitimate, not negative. We aren’t saying Kerry is ‘Weak on Defense,’ we’re saying he’s ‘Wrong on Defense.’ There’s a big difference.”

As I wrote at the time, “The war of words matters a lot, and while McKinnon concedes that the Bush campaign is busy testing them in focus groups, he offers no details. Still, it’s clear he is attempting to position the president as a ’steady’ leader and Kerry as a ‘flip-flopper’ who changes positions often for political expediency. If the words work, they will be repeated over and over as part of that ‘coordinated blitz’ aimed at defining Kerry as ‘indecisive and lacking conviction.’”

Despite the fierce hatred he has engendered in some of his former friends, McKinnon generally remains an approachable and affable figure. Even Begala – who eventually did become student body president by winning a runoff between the “two top humans” after Hank the Hallucination was gunned down — extols him. “I love him!” Begala told me. “He’s a wonderful, terrific guy.”

Even though he went over to the Dark Side?

“It’s a free country. Sure, he was way to the left of me in college, and now he’s way to the right,” Begala responded. “But hey — James Carville goes home every night and goes to bed with Mary Matalin… Mark has changed his life, but I don’t believe he had a conservative epiphany.

“I believe him when he says this is based on a deep and personal love of George Bush. But this is not a race for student government president,” Begala concluded. “Still, if Bush is ruining the country, I say let’s attack the organ grinder and not the monkey.”

“I haven’t taken as many shots as I thought I would,” McKinnon conceded at the time. “Probably because Begala blessed me.”

Would he describe himself as a Republican?

“Let’s just say I’m a man of evolution,” he responded with a grin.

His many critics now contend that, far from “evolving,” McKinnon is just an opportunistic turncoat, a lustful chameleon, a bizarre sellout… and worse. In any event, now it’s time for another hallucinatory campaign, and McKinnon is once again in the thick of it.

Just ask John McCain—or Barack Obama, for that matter!

The horse race just turned into a marathon. The big Super Tuesday surprise was that Super Tuesday really wasn’t so super. And the winners so far are… the voters and the media.

Those are the bottom line takeaways from yesterday’s fascinating and energizing display of civic engagement. Record turnouts, highly motivated citizens, and two still-competitive races mean the show must go on for both Democrats and Republicans, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton traded victories and delegates, while the indefatigable Mike Huckabee proved once again that he and his constituency of social conservatives cannot be counted out in what most observers had already decreed to be a two-man race between the resurrected John McCain and the resolute (and rich) Mitt Romney on the GOP side.

Once again the smart money turned out to be counterfeit and the paid pundits were shown to be shallow, as those pesky citizens proved they’re the ones in charge, at least until November. As the biggest single day of nominating contests in history, Super Tuesday was supposed to be decisive; now it appears as if both races will continue for weeks — maybe even months. In the end, what emerged from one of the most complicated days in primary election history – with complex, ongoing delegate counts now superseding voter totals in importance – was really quite simple: the American people want more time to make up their minds, and they have decided to take it.

The unexpected extension of the nomination process on both sides of the political divide is good news for all of us, as an informed, involved and active citizenry is de facto beneficial for our democracy. But it is particularly cheering to mainstream media mavens and television network executives who have already profited greatly from the campaigns to date. Newly involved voters mean newly engaged viewers. Ratings for primary debates –once derided as CSPAN-like snoozefests, but now dressed up as the best reality programs this side of American Idol — have never been higher; nor has the price of advertising for the slew of spots already seen and those now to come.

So what happens next? The frenzy subsides for a short while, then the next ‘Super’ Tuesday of March 4 begins looming large, with its delegate-rich contests in Ohio and Texas, as well as primaries in Rhode Island and Vermont. The Republicans have more states that are winner-take-all, so there may be a quicker decision made in the GOP race, but even that is looking too fluid for any prediction to be safe. The Democrats, of course, have a vastly more diffuse process involving proportional allocation of delegates in many races, so even March 4 may not be determinative. Before that, this weekend’s Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington will keep voter interest high across the nation; then it’s on to the Mid-Atlantic block of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. next Tuesday and Wisconsin a week later.

If Super Second Tuesday doesn’t decide things, the suspense will continue to build, with the next large contests for the Democrats not taking place until late April in Pennsylvania and early May in Indiana and North Carolina. And who knows? We may even be seeing campaign ads this summer – right up until the conventions themselves. Good news for the news media, which for once may be good news for the rest of us as well.

Hillary won by not losing. That’s the bottom line takeaway from last night’s low-risk/low-reward Democratic Party love-in… I mean, conversation…. uh, CNN debate between Hillary-Billary and Obama-Wan Kenobi. It was, in the pundits’ words (accurate for a change!) very “calm, civil, cordial, and sedate,” a non-confrontational confrontation wherein the previously sharp edges were all softened, and most of the differences blurred… There was little fire and certainly no fireworks, as the overall tone of harmony and unity on deliberate display led one to suspect that Party elders and officials from both campaigns clearly must have agreed in advance that the time had finally come to stop standing in a circle and shooting and instead turn their fire on George Bush and his presumptive heirs – where it really belonged in the first place!

Obama’s remark that he was “friends with Hillary before this campaign, and I will be friends with Hillary after it” epitomized the evening. Where there differences were addressed, they were highly predictable, focus-grouped and campaign-tried-and-true. Hillary ran out her experience trope: remember, she’s the one who will be “Ready from Day One.” Obama politely countered with his judgment mantra, nicely phrased as “Right from Day One” to underscore his anti-war street cred. Both aimed various sallies at the crucial California constituency of Latinos – with Obama repeatedly trumpeting his endorsement by Ted Kennedy and questioning Hillary on her since-corrected political misstep of supporting the ill-fated Eliot Spitzer driving- licenses-for-the-undocumented plan. She was for it before she was against it, soto speak…

When the two candidates had finally finished their restrained, wonkish interchange, CNN trotted out the “chief strategists” on both sides to reiterate their candidate’s major points once again in a thankfully truncated fashion. David Axelrod naturally and effectively hammered Hillary on her indefensible Iraq position; a less-composed and effective Mark Penn relied on clichés to tell us:

1. Hillary will be ready on Day One (again!)
2. Universal health care is important
3. So is “comprehensive immigration reform”
4. And the economy
5. And—oh yeah – Iraq…

Penn in fact came off as incredibly lame on the subject of Iraq, thereby compounding his candidate’s problems with the issue. (Note to Hillary’s people: Why do you send out this overweight, sweating and hardly mediagenic guy to “spin” the press and the public? He’s terrible at it!)

What’s it all mean? Clearly the Democratic faithful will be happy with either of the Last Candidates Standing as their standard-bearer in November. (Of course by now, most of them are so sick of Republican rule they would welcome a corpse as a candidate if convinced it would win.) But overall, this was Hillary’s debate - and now it’s her race – to lose, and at the very least, last night was a tie. Obama remains the neophyte challenger who needs to make up ground – and not much ground shifted.

So Hillary won by not losing – and Obama lost by not winning. Simply appearing presidential—he certainly has grown into at least looking the part — wasn’t, and isn’t, enough to put him over the top. In order to continue his momentum and vault into the lead, he needed to show that there are large differences between him and Hillary on crucial issues – and other than on Iraq, he failed to do so.

So yes, Barack “won” on Iraq – but in light of the plummeting economy, the issue seems to be fading in relative importance to both the candidates and the voters. Meanwhile, Hillary obviously “won” on health care, by clearly positioning herself as the one candidate with a plan to ensure truly universal coverage. She generally “won” on substance as well; he triumphed again on style – and many argue that voters base their choices more on personality than actual politics.

Who will win on Super-Duper Tuesday? Will the Amazing Race continue to go beyond? Might we eventually see a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton “Dream Ticket?”

Stay tuned, as they used to say back in the day!

Remember back in the last century, when Toni Morrison playfully dubbed Bill Clinton our first “Black President,” adding that Clinton “displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas?”

Back then, it was considered cool to have a “black president”—as long as he was really white, of course! But how will the race card play in the high stakes presidential poker game now doubling down, when hidden decisions taken in darkness center on the real possibility of a real “first black president?”

If the “horse race” for the Democratic presidential nomination just turned into a “race race,” Barack Obama may find that in winning the bitter battle of South Carolina, he succeeded only in losing the war against the Clintons.

Let me explain. Saturday’s primary in South Carolina came, as the New York Times noted in its usually understated manner, “at the conclusion of a weeklong campaign, where issues were interwoven with discussions of race.”

In fact race was so dominant that the less-restrained and more accurate Associated Press concluded at week’s end that Hillary had in fact won “the larger campaign to polarize voters around race and marginalize Obama (in the insidious words of one of her top advisers) as ‘The Black Candidate.’”

A major contributing factor to that campaign, of course, was the not-so-subtle manner in which former president Bill Clinton cunningly injected race into the race throughout the run up to Saturday’s vote — such as his invoking Jesse Jackson’s victories decades ago in South Carolina caucuses. The references served mainly to remind voters that:

A) Obama, like Jackson, is African-American; and
B) Jackson’s campaigns never succeeded despite two wins in South Carolina — in part because of white resistance to the idea of any black man leading the country.

But “it was not just the Clintons who played the race card,” as the AP’s Ron Fournier noted:

“There were plenty of people dealing from the sordid deck: Obama advisers who pointed reporters to the remarks; Obama supporters who took the Clintons’ remarks out of context to condemn them; a Clinton surrogate who made a veiled reference to Obama’s drug use as a youth; the conflict-obsessed media that exaggerated every twist of the race debate; black voters who publicly declared a black man is unelectable; and white voters who openly admitted that they or their neighbors couldn’t vote for a black man.

“If nothing else, South Carolina has reminded us, sadly, that race is still an issue in America.”

A cursory look at the breakdown of votes from Obama’s victory shows that more than eighty percent of his support came from African-American voters in every category, across the board — and African-Americans made up the majority of the voters in South Carolina’s Democratic primary. Obama was buoyed in particular by strong support from black women, who themselves make up fully 35% of the Democratic primary voters there. But he carried just one of four white votes – while white male candidate John Edwards, who came in a distant third overall, garnered the most votes from – guess who? — white males.

What’s it all mean? Well, as we “now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the 22 states, including American Samoa, who will vote on Feb.5,” (as Hillary’s pithy South Carolina concession statement put it) let’s also remember that:

A) The vast majority of primaries in those states are majority-white;
B) Most of those millions of Americans are not black; and
C) Many of them — especially white males and including numerous Hispanics — would even vote for a woman before they’d ever pull the lever for a black man.

It would be stunningly ironic if the buttoned-up, Ivy League, Law Review Barry Obama –- son of a white girl from Kansas, raised mostly in multiculti Hawaii by his white grandparents, once reviled in certain African-American circles as “not black enough” – was first marginalized and ultimately undone by his own previously marginal blackness. Although his Kenyan father may grant Obama greater claim than others to the term African-American, he hardly seems ghetto fabulous in either experience or presentation. And while it’s exceedingly odd that anyone with even a modicum of African-American blood is automatically deemed ‘black’ in our culture, it’s nonetheless true, and no doubt indicative of the deep-seated racism that still permeates every aspect of American social and political life. Those who underestimate its vestigial power do so at their peril.

Now that it has been decisively shown that calling Bill Clinton “the first black president” was just a silly metaphor—and it has also been determined that calling Barack Obama ‘not black enough’ was equally silly—the real racial dynamics of the Democratic race are beginning to emerge. Blacks have overwhelmingly decided to put aside any remaining questions and to embrace Obama wholeheartedly despite a determined and vigorous campaign to dissuade them waged by our previous ‘first black president.”

Now the Clintons — long renowned for their steadfast devotion to the Democratic Party’s African-American base—have cleverly switched tactics and succeeded in identifying Obama as the black candidate in a race that is about to be decided by whites and Hispanics. They appear to have won by losing the predominantly black South Carolina primary.

After winning South Carolina, Obama told his supporters, “I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina.” But are America’s politics truly that color-blind? Are the days really gone when we could correctly assume “that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate; whites can’t support the African-American candidate; blacks and Latinos can’t come together?”

Or will long-entrenched racial dynamics and deep-seated prejudices instead decide the Democratic race? Will white and Hispanic voters have the audacity to vote their hopes – or their fears — on Super Tuesday? If the latter prevails, Obama’s only remaining hope may be to try quickly to convince white voters he is “white enough” to win!