The McCain campaign released a new spot today, and it is once again a negative ad aimed to define Obama by comparing him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (!) and play on the narrative of McCain hinted at in his previous spot, which accused Obama of canceling a visit to the troops because cameras were not accompanying him:
Is this the ad the Clinton campaign always dreamed of releasing but never dared to? Hillary was obviously frustrated by Obama’s star-appeal and tried to make it an issue by implying her opponent lacked substance - most famously in the “sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing” speech back in February. More specifically, the discrepancy between the sizes of Obama’s crowds and the election results were a theme we came back to repeatedly, particularly after New Hampshire.
Now, McCain is going all-out with a flashy (literally) ad that claims Obama is a celebrity - the “biggest in the world,” in fact - not a leader. He is in the league of personalities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, not of John McCain. The implications here are not only that there is nothing substantive about Obama’s candidacy and that he would be a dangerous choice in these dangerous times but the ad also plays on the elitism theme. Obama is associated with upper-class personalities that bear no resemblance with ordinary Americans - a strategy that the GOP successfully used against John Kerry. This was confirmed by a memo the McCain campaign released this afternoon in which they attack Obama’s habits even more directly:
Only a celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence. These are not supporters or even voters, but fans fawning over The One. Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand “MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea” and worry about the price of arugula.
Yet, despite all of the fans, paparazzi and media adoration, the American people still have questions: Is Barack Obama prepared to lead? Is being famous the same as being a credible commander in chief?
Needless to say, the McCain campaign appears to have decided to go all out and attack Obama’s character. Given the accumulation of indicators that favor Democrats this year, McCain’s chance at victory is to make Obama look like too risky a choice for Americans to take, and the strategy the McCain campaign is using to get to that result is one that comes out of Bush’s 2004 playbook. In fact, a new study released this morning by the Wisconsin Advertising Project has found that over 90% of Obama’s ads have been positive versus only two thirds of McCain’s - hardly surprising given that McCain is running as the underdog. Obama’s response to McCain’s ad played on that fact:
You know, I don’t pay attention to John McCain’s ads, although I do notice he doesn’t seem to have anything to say very positive about himself. He seems to only be talking about me… You need to ask John McCain what he’s for and not just what he’s against.
So what effect could this latest ad have on the election? The spot will run in the 11 states McCain is running ads in, so it will be seen often by voters. And there are certainly risks of going negative. For one, a negative ad can always backlash if voters feel that a candidate is crossing the line. In fact, even some Republicans are distancing themselves from the accusations of the McCain campaign, which could certainly complicate McCain’s efforts to create a coherent line of attack. Beyond Chuck Hagel - who has effectively become an Obama ally, note Charlie Crist’s refusal to endorse McCain’s accusation that Obama would rather lose the war than the election and John Weaver’s tells Marc Ambinder that the “celeb” ad is “childish.” Weaver - ousted from McCain’s campaign last year but as much of a loyalist as any - calls these efforts “a mockery of a political campaign.”
Also, McCain’s change of tone is being increasingly noticed by the media, so much so that some news outlets have started writing articles that label McCain’s charges as lacking any evidence, for instance this front-page piece in the Washington Post today. Other outlets were even more direct over the week-end; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, for instance, had clearly stated that Obama had never planned to take the press with him. In fact, the McCain campaign admitted today that there is little evidence for their claim that Obama backed out of the German visit because there would be no camera!
But there are also clear benefits to going negative - and this wave of ads could certainly impact the race. The GOP might be walking back its camera accusation, but only after days of their original charge airing in news reports and being covered in newspapers. Furthermore, the GOP appears committed to stick to these lines of attack and the memo I quoted above reads like a caricature of their talking-points: when a charge is really outrageous, something is bound to stick. Similar arguments worked for Clinton in the latter part of the primary and she certainly did not go at it as directly as Republicans are now. In the coming months, the GOP has further opportunities to play up this narrative. (I have suggested before that Obama might be making a strategic mistake by moving his convention address to a football stadium.)
The final danger for Obama is that the election does become entirely focused on him. As the NBC poll already suggested last week, voters are thinking far more about the Illinois Senator than his opponent. Right now, Obama is running ads about himself, and McCain is running ads about him as well. Not that many ads are running about McCain. That will surely frustrate some Democrats who remember John Kerry’s unwillingness to go after Bush in 2004 - just as the Obama camp seems far less willing to hit McCain more on 100 years, bomb Iran, the recent tax flip-flop and even his associations with Bush. Furthermore, most of these ads emphasize character, as Obama seeks to introduce himself and McCain is busy tearing him down.
What is the electorate going to think about, then? The building recession or who is more patriotic? Obama’s leadership qualities or McCain’s connections to the Bush Administration and his party label? However over-the-top McCain’s ads are, Democrats better figure out a way to address this problem soon.
The problem that Obama has is that McCain much more well known and therefore harder to define through ads. Also it is more important for Obama to introduce himself than attack McCain. If Obama does this, then he undermines his message for a new type of politics and will allow McCain to undercut him. On the other hand, McCain’s negativity can be used against him, as McCain is using a page from Karl Rove and Bush in 2004, and Obama can use this as evidence that a McCain candididacy would truly be a 3rd Bush term.
On the stadium question, I’m not sure that it’s really a negative. Party conventions are not full of ordinary Americans but die-hard partisans, and it would be hypocritical for McCain to use the stadium in a negative ad to portray Obama as elitist as McCain is also going to give a speech to his own die-hard partisans, only it will (likely) be worse than Obama’s. I think it will be more of a neutral effect. McCain could use the Football stadium as a way of showing Obama as more of a celebrity than as a President, but Obama’s speech will increase Democratic enthusiam to the stratosphere, despite some Clinton supporters deciding to not support Obama on the premise that Clinton will not be on the ticket. So in a sense, neither candiate will get a big boost from the conventions, which probably favors McCain. If Obama wants to win the election comfortably, then that chance won’t come until the debates. Just as Taniel has said, Reagan was considered a dangerous cowboy but he assured voters in his debates that he could be trusted and he beat Carter easily in the end. Obama can do the same. Only reason why it is less likely is that McCain is not an incumbent president running for reelection.
I dunno, Jaxx.
First, Reagan was a well-known and admired white actor, and the primary issue was temperament/competence, so his challenges were different and simpler. He was already a guest-member of the club so to speak, and only had to establish his credentials, ot his acceptability. This doesn’t bear any comparison.
Furthermore, in every cycle, we convince ourselves that the voters have had it with good old boys who turn out to be policy nightmares, and in every cycle, the electoral vote disproves that, so it’s like ‘wait till next year’ was for the Brooklyn Dodger fans. It seems to me that what happens is that many voters decide first if they like and trust a candidate, and when they do, they reverse engineer their thinking so that his policies don’t seem so bad. That’s why we see such a divergence between pure policy-based polls and the presidential preference polls. And of course its magnified by race, which isn’t going to go away - we can only hope to limit it’s impact, and that gets back to convincing a lot of people he’s just a darker skinned version of their next door neighbor. It’s the convergence of racism and perceived elitism that’s dangerous. McCain will never overtly play the race card, but the elitist argument is a surrogate for people that accentuates his alienness.
So, Obama may be his own worst enemy. He has begun to believe some of the things that his most fanatical supporters have claimed for him. By any rational standard, McCain is a dismal choice, but Obama has to get down off Olympus and convince a lot of people that he’s the real thing. His recent press coverage doesn’t help in that regard, and the debates won’t do it either because of a possible sympathy for an over-matched McCain - style points don’t get full credit.
He needs to get out with people, stop the airy discussion about hope and change and talk turkey. Like a lot of others, I’m pulling in harness to go after McCain full bore, and there’s a time for that, but it isn’t before Obama has come back to earth and established his street creds - it’s afterwards.
Zoot I agree with you on your points in that Obama has a much harder time than what Reagan had in 1980. However, I do disagree about your point on the debates. If Obama destroys McCain in the debates, McCain isn’t going to get a sympathy boost, on the contrary McCain will finally start to match the generic Republican and go down easily. Alot of people will be watching the debates, and often it is style, not substance, that is the biggest winner. Reagans way of saying things in the Debates, such as saying that the recession would end once Carter loses his job, and “Are you better now as you were four years ago” were not very substantive but they put in the minds of Americans that Carter really is messed up. It is easy to envision a moment during the debates in which Obama makes McCain look like a fool, such as McCain’s use of Bush like campaign tactics, that could be enough to seal the deal with a electorate that still despises George W. Bush. Sympathy? Americans are not very sympathetic to politicians are totally outclassed in a forum. Of course, the debates were not Obama’s strongest suit (Clinton was better) but neither are they for McCain (Rommney and Huckabee were better during the GOP primary).
Jaxx, from your lips to God’s ear, as they say - fingers crossed that you’re right, but as you can judge, I’m not enthralled with the way my candidate is campaigning. By the time they get to the debate, McCain may well have embedded a negative image of Obama in the minds of the undecideds. Obama has a way of sounding off-hand that will play to type.
I’ve been wrong before, and this is just late summer speculation, so all I can do is trust that the campaign has already diagnosed the problem and planned a response. One thing however that Andrea Mitchell said the other night echoes what I’ve heard before and stuck in my mind: Barack can be exceptionally stubborn and hard to move, so I hope they’re extra-persuasive in bringing him around.
Did you all see that Obama has a reponse ad? It could be better, but he has finally responded to the attacks.