Double-O: Better for Obama than Oprah

Most of the attention on the effect of Double O -- Obama and Oprah -- has been focused on how much the daytime television diva helped her home-state senator by endorsing him and appearing at all those rallies in Iowa and South Carolina with him.

The 54-year-old Chicago TV hostess also helped raise a hefty chunk of change by loaning out her Montecito estate for that Barack Obama fundraiser last summer.

Oprah Winfrey has long enjoyed an immense popularity tied to her long-running show, which started in 1986. So well known is she that one name will suffice.

In one 1999 survey of the most admired and respected 20th century women, Oprah (26%) came in second only to Mother Teresa (33%). Fourteen months ago, a Gallup/USA Today poll found 74% of Americans had a favorable view of her.

Then on May 1 last year, Oprah announced during CNN’s “Larry King Live” that she was for the first time going to throw her considerable popularity behind a political candidate -- Obama. King’s suspenders nearly snapped.

“I think,” she said, “that my value to him, my support of him, is probably worth more than any check.”

But little attention has been paid to the effect of Obama on Oprah. Now along comes Costas Panagopoulos, an assistant professor of political science at New York’s Fordham University, to ask and answer just that question.

Writing at Politico.com, he suggested Winfrey has paid a price for getting into the dirty business of politics. By August 2007, a CBS poll found her favorable rating had dropped, from 74% to 61%.

Recently, her rating dipped a bit more, to 55%.

And Panagopoulos pointed to an AOL survey of 1.35 million Americans that found 46% said the daytime TV host who “made their day” was Ellen DeGeneres, while only 19% chose Winfrey. Panagopoulos drew the conclusion that celebrity endorsers run the risk of costing themselves more than they benefit the endorsee.

But then, how many hundred million dollars a year does an assistant professor at Fordham pull down?

Do shake-ups matter?

If one measure of a presidential candidate’s potential effectiveness in office is staff management and cohesiveness, there’s a clear winner among the remaining contenders.

It’s not John McCain, who last summer discovered he wasn’t on the same page with either his campaign manager (Terry Nelson) or chief strategist (John Weaver). Both departed, leaving behind an empty treasury and a candidate whose prospects appeared to be on life support.

It’s not Hillary Clinton, who has presided over two major staff upheavals. In mid-February, loyalist Patti Solis Doyle stepped aside as campaign manager, replaced by loyalist Maggie Williams. And last week, the controversial Mark Penn was jettisoned as chief strategist to serve in a lesser capacity.

The negative effects of such personnel shake-ups can be overstated, in part because most voters couldn’t care less and in part because the changes ultimately might be a good thing. Still, it’s hard not to be struck by how little it seems Barack Obama’s brain trust has been riven by jealousy, backbiting and bad vibes.

It’s not as if there haven’t been moments when a barrage of internal sniping could have been expected from team Obama; his surprise loss in New Hampshire springs to mind. And perhaps there have been bouts of finger-pointing among his top aides that have been kept private. But even that speaks to a discipline not evident in the workings of the Clinton campaign.

Name that Thune

Chris Matthews has made his call: John Thune, a freshman senator from South Dakota, will be John McCain’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.

Matthews informed the world -- as well as Thune himself -- of his prediction while the MSNBC commentator interviewed the senator on the air late last week.

Thune firmly established himself as a comer within the GOP when he knocked off then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Telegenic and relatively youthful (he was born in 1961, just like Barack Obama, another member of the Senate’s ’04 class), Thune almost assuredly is on the working list that McCain recently revealed he’s put together of vice presidential possibilities.

But Matthews didn’t just mention him as a prospect. Ignoring the boomlet for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that’s been in vogue of late, the host of “Hardball” said flatly -- twice -- that Thune would be the pick.

The senator handled Matthews’ chutzpah like a pro, modesty saying he did not expect to get the nod and adding that he was sure whomever McCain did select would be top-notch.

As much as anything, the exchange underscored a key calculation the McCain camp must figure out: the timing for unveiling his choice.

Anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before their national conventions has become the window for the presumptive presidential nominees of both parties. But waiting until just before this year’s Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., doesn’t seem like McCain’s best option.

The gathering convenes late in the campaign -- the first week of September. And it starts just after the Democratic convention in Denver wraps up, so that last part of August probably is out as well.

The larger question is how long McCain wants to tolerate the guessing game. It will be fun for a while. But at some point, perhaps sooner than in past elections, it will become tiresome and, of more concern to McCain, diverting from his message.

Cachet from Cleese

Now comes the prospect of something completely different. John Cleese -- of Monty Python, “A Fish Called Wanda” and “Fawlty Towers” fame -- let this drop in an interview with the Western Daily Press (a newspaper that circulates in parts of England):

“I am due to come to Europe in November, but I may be tied up until then because if Barack Obama gets the nomination I’m going to offer my services to him as a speechwriter because I think he is a brilliant man.”

Cleese, who now lives most of the year in California, already is on record contributing $2,300 to Obama (the maximum allowed for the primary campaign).

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Excerpted from The Times’ political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com /topoftheticket.