They’re calling it Jujutsu. Obama preempts McCain.
Tell me if you thought you’d see something like this from a Democratic candidate four years ago. The talk in the press on Saturday was word from the McCain campaign that they were going to start an exclusively negative campaign on Obama, questioning his associations with Rezko and Ayers. It’s their last shot at getting back in this thing.
Barack Obama is having none of that. From Politico:
“We think the McCain campaign made a huge error by telling the press that their strategy was to distract from the most important issue facing voters,” a senior Obama official said. “Every attack going forward will be easy to characterize for what it is – an attempt to distract from the Bush-McCain economic record.”
He is exactly right. Had McCain kept a lid on his strategy, and hit the airwaves with REZKO!, or AYERS!, and let the media pick up the story, they could have generated a lot of spin from the traditional media. Now, because of the quote in the WaPo from the campaign:
“We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,” said Greg Strimple, one of McCain’s top advisers. “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama’s aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans.”
Obama can argue this isn’t about him, it’s about McCain. McCain is hiding his weaknesses, instead of illuminating Obama’s. It defuses any punch the attack has, and exposes the attacker. It also reduces these attacks to “cards.” Instead of the story being “McCain associates Obama with 60’s radical,” it becomes “as predicted, McCain has played the Ayers card.” Then the discussion turns to his desperate campaign, his need to find a new story, because his economic thesis is so poor. Every time he tries to attack Obama, the public is reminded that the only reason he’s attacking Obama is because he has nothing. He becomes self defeating.
Admitting you want to turn the page on the economy is admitting you aren’t prepared to be President. A President should look to solve crises, not distract from them, and that’s essentially what McCain is admitting here. He’s undermining is entire legitimacy to be President, because an issue doesn’t favor him. And a surrogate admitted this to the press.
I have to be honest, in the face of all the buffoonery of the McCain campaign, you can’t help but feel like you’re missing some diabolical trap they’re just waiting to unveil. A modern Presidential campaign can’t be this incompetent, can it? But more on that, later…
I have always thought in terms of all the ‘tomfoolery’ of JMac camp, but “bafoonery” pretty much catches the gist too.
Maybe Mac’s tactics would have half an assed chance to hold if he actaully had a strategy. He is managing his campaign worst than Clinton did in the primaries past Super Tuesday. Fascinating, really…
Two good points. I’ve recently been thinking about the similarities between the Clinton campaign and the McCain campaign, and you mentioning it warrants me putting my thoughts to a post tonight/tomorrow.
In regards to the first point: they had a strategy, it was to paint Obama as a celebrity. They spent pretty much all of September off that strategy, and absolutely destroying their own brand along the way. Now they’re going to go back to it, with much less credibility, to attack a target much more solidified in the minds of the electorate.
They had a clock: they had to discredit Obama before the debates, and then hope he in any degree proved them right in the debates. Obama’s debate performance shattered all the perceptions McCain was trying to sell. It cost him his credibility, and probably the election.
The McCain campaign’s problem was never not having a strategy, it was having a poor strategy, executing it poorly, and shooting themselves in the foot while doing it.
Parallels to Clinton, for sure.
Ah, touché! And both Clinton and Mac severly lack(ed) message discipline. Interesting post over at 538 discussing why Macs attacks may not work bc of his low net posives on favorability, I sort of appreciate this kind of data…
Yeah, I caught that article. Everything they do over there is aces.
I’ve always felt that negative campaigning was an effective way to make space between you and a close opponent, but when your personal favorabilities are at such a disparity with your target, it makes sense that they lose effectiveness.
Look at what’s going on with Palin now. She’s starting the attack dog role, and it’s all being reported with such cynicism, that it’s just not registering.