Perhaps I’m not completely clear. This is about reframing John McCain not reinforcing some McCain image. There is a difference between words like my fellow Senator or my Senate Colleague and some of the words coming out of both of the mouths of Clinton and Obama.

I’ll use Rotten’s comment as an example.

One of the attractive things about Obama is that he is secure enough to drop a compliment on his opponent, McCain, from time to time.

Reading that you would think Obama has it all over Hillary, But frankly they both compliment McCain as Bowers’ shows in the original post. But the way Rotten’s words are written - they plug Obama while not pulgging Clinton.

Our candidates need to do the same thing when speaking about McCain. they need to plug themselves and not plug McCain.

“The McCain is a nice guy blather helps build a wall around McCain that the non-informed person won’t penetrate. Informed voters like yourselves get it - uninformed voters will not.

Elections are about persuasion and giving a reason to vote for you not the other person.

Informed voters have probably made up their mind - The uninformed probably haven’t started to yet pay attention.

Hope it is clearer.

Compliments also do something vitally important: they open ears. If everything politician X says about their opponent is negative, then someone listening with an open mind is going to discount everything X says, assuming (rightly) that X is too involved in the process to render a fair opinion on anything. A compliment or two show that X at least tries to be fair minded.

It would not upset me for McCain to say something nice about Obama or Clinton.

I would like to believe that the voters are smart enough to understand the differences in the candidates even if they do say nice things about each other