Various insiders are now fretting about Obama's campaign strategy going off course, and are doing what insiders do, which is to recommend shifts in how the campaign operates. My guess is that, as with Gore and Kerry, at this point no one is in charge of the Obama campaign, there are too many competing fiefdoms for message discipline to work. That's why lobbying on the inside doesn't really work for things like message changes on a Presidential level.
Remember also that just being negative is not 'taking off the gloves' or 'going on the attack'. Polling about issues and then criticizing McCain based on that data is not working, Obama is going hard against McCain on big oil and McCain but McCain is still gaining. So any effective messaging strategy will have to start from outside and gradually be adopted by the campaign, since it will have to seem internally as if the major power centers have independently arrived at the same conclusion. So how do you insert a message meme into the campaign? It is of course very very hard, but possible in a way it wasn't in 2004. Not only is the blogosphere far more developed and integrated into the party (both with insiders blogging and reading blogs), but amateur web video can compete with the campaign's video work (cartwrightdale made this amazing ad, for insance).
Lots of people are going to suggest new narratives for McCain, but what is important is not the specifics of the attack but that the Obama campaign find a way to test potential narratives. McCain fished around for awhile with his ads before hitting on celebrity. He tried going after him for being a flip flopper on Iraq, for cutting funds to troops, for raising prices at the pump, for being wrong on Iraq, for arrogance, and for being an obstructionist. They didn't stick. When McCain did find a line of attack against Obama - as evidenced by youtube views and cable news views - that stuck, he went off and produced new versions of that same theme. It's an approach that is evolutionary, not top-down. This is not Karl Rove evil genius work psychoanalysis or sophisticated psychographic polling and micro-targeting, it's simple trial and error that any popular junior high school bully uses to find the weak spot in the new kid. Mock him until he starts squealing, as measured by outrage and youtube views.
Why not do the same in going back at McCain? Obviously Clark's line of attack, that McCain's POW status is pretty irrelevant to his race for the White House, and that he has no actual executive experience, drew blood. The reaction was fierce and angry, which is precisely what you need for a message to resonate with the public at large. But really, any effective narrative on McCain would work. What is clear though is that any narrative that does work draws, as Clark's did (and as McCain's celebrity ad did) squeals from elite pundits and journalists. Elites don't like changes in narrative, so be aware that any real shift against McCain will be disliked by elites.
It probably makes sense at this point to work from outside to test different narratives. Right now, there are two competing ideas. The first is that McCain is no longer the honorable man he used to be, the second is that McCain is old, crazy, and unsuited to be President.
Let's start with narrative number one, the storyline pushed by insiders. James Vega at the Democratic Strategist, a publication edited by Stan Greenberg, Ruy Texeira, and William Galstan, writes of a possible McCain narrative. He argues that McCain should be painted as an honorable man gone awry, someone who is allowing Karl Rove's minions to literally put words in his mouth. Vega puts forth an ad called 'McPuppet' and one called 'Character', ending with 'he's no longer the man he used to be'. Vega dismisses aggressively the idea that McCain should be portrayed as old and hot-tempered, considering that 'trivial.'
Now, I'm going to disagree with Vega on the substance of the attack for a lot of reasons (most notably, being old and crazy is incredibly unappealing to voters), but it's a theme worth testing. Obama's already gone there sort of with Low Road Express, and it didn't work, and tired repeats of 'Karl Rove style' attacks don't tend to work with anyone but the base. They are fundamentally process arguments; no one cares that your opponent is going negative, if they did, the only campaigns we'd see would feature nothing but puppies and flowers.
Still, here's Vega and how he thinks Obama should paint McCain. I would test this if I were the Obama campaign.
The more difficult problem is that McCain is not, at first glance, an easy target for attacks on his character. His youthful military experience as a pilot and POW and his well-cultivated media reputation as an occasional "maverick" in the 80's and 90's present no obvious vulnerabilities. Current characterizations of him as old, ill-tempered, easily flustered and prone to blundering, while certainly true, are also essentially trivial. Comparing McCain to "The Simpsons'" Mr. Burns or to a clichéd grouchy grandpa simply has no meaningful political effect. But, in fact, McCain is actually profoundly vulnerable to a powerful, aggressive and damaging attack on his character. McCain's actions in recent weeks have provided compelling evidence for three genuinely disturbing propositions about his character, core values and integrity.
That John McCain has become desperate to win this election and is willing to sacrifice his deepest principles and his personal honor in order to do it.
That the John McCain we see today is only a pale, diminished shadow of the
man he once was in his early years.
That John McCain is allowing men he once despised and held in complete contempt to manipulate him and tell him what to do - to literally put words in his mouth and tell him what to say.
At first glance these statements are so strong that they sound almost defamatory. But each is supported by McCain's recent actions (as described below) and they fit together into a single coherent narrative of ambition overcoming integrity and moral character.
I don't think these attacks are strong at all. In fact I don't think that how McCain runs his campaign is relevant to anything except that he's willing to do anything to beat his opponent, and I kind of respect that. But let's go to Gallup, which actually has the data to prove that Vega's contention about McCain's age is complete and utter bullshit.
Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be ..., would you vote for that person?
Catholic
95
4
Black
94
5
Jewish
92
7
A woman
88
11
Hispanic
87
12
Mormon
72
24
Married for the third time
67
30
72 years of age
57
42
A homosexual
55
43
An atheist
45
53
In other words, 72 year old candidates have about the same appeal to voters as homosexual. And you can be sure that being a homosexual would be considered an unbelievably severe liability for a candidate for President, so much so that among political professionals someone with that biography running for President would be considered giving the Presidency to the other party.
But the main point of this post is not to argue that we should go after McCain for being old and crazy, or corrupt, or lobbyist-driven, or a Karl Rove controlled puppet, or McSame, or anything else. Outside groups should use all of them, testing with different subtle commercials, and then the most resonant one, the one that draws blood and gets plays on cable and youtube and generates discussion, should be the narrative for McCain.
