Remember when Bill Clinton was portrayed as a waffle in Doonesbury? I bet you probably don't:
When Clinton was elected in 1992, Trudeau gave his readers the chance to vote on what his presidential Icon would be. The choices both reflected Clinton's reputation for being wishy-washy: a flipping coin or a large waffle. The waffle got the most votes and became Clinton's official avatar. However, the waffle appeared infrequently after a while when Clinton's "waffling" became less of a hot-button issue and fewer people got the joke. Thus Clinton was most often portrayed by the "White House Dialog"
Also, remember when the 2004 Bush campaign ran ads of John Kerry windsurfing, and spent months trying to label Kerry a "flip-flopper?" During that phase of the campaign, Kerry's numbers actually steadily rose:
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Remember when Barack Obama was attacked for "moving to the center?" The McCain campaign even held regular conference calls detailing Obama's many flip-flops. However, in the twenty-two days since July 17th, the day the McCain campaign released a web video accusing Obama of flip-flopping on Iraq, "move to the center" is a phrase that has only appeared in Google News twenty-one times. On most occasions, it appeared in small, alternative news organizations. In fact, not only has McCain entirely dropped that line of attack on Obama, they are now criticizing him mainly for being too resolute on issues like energy and Iraq.
I argued recently that Obama's mid-July downturn began on July 8th, and was a result of the "move to the center" meme peaking in the media. However, a look at the polling trend chart above shows that Obama actually reached his national polling peak on June 22nd, and has a been in a slow decline ever since. Given that the move to the center meme didn't really enter the discourse until about June 27th, in retrospect it is difficult to argue that the flip-flop or move to the center attack on Obama was responsible. Combine this with the failure of the attack against Bill Clinton and John Kerry, and also combined with the McCain campaign dropping the line, and it is worth calling into question the overall effectiveness of the flip-flop charge against any politician.
Do flip-flop attacks hurt politicians? I'm not seeing much evidence of it. I could be wrong, but I at least wanted to float the thesis: flip-flop attacks are generally ineffective. They also form large percentage of the attacks that people seem to be suggesting, and even engaging in, against McCain. If my thesis is right, they probably won't work.
What attacks might work against McCain? I don't know for sure, but probably that he is a liar and a Republican. Obama has opened the liar line of attack today, even tinged with a hint of partisanship:
This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam.
While I don't know for sure that this line of attack will work, it seems very promising. |
