Obama’s Quiet Anti-McCain Campaign
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, McCainWhile John McCain has received plenty of attention and criticism for his anti-Barack Obama ad spots, most might think Obama has been taking the high road. Not exactly true. Obama has run numerous anti-McCain spots, mostly in swing states. The Obama campaign has simply decided to keep those ads quieter and not publicize them in the way the McCain campaign has publicized their negative advertizing.
To see nine of Obama’s negative ads, check out the link above. They range from snarky to purposefully misleading and they’re exactly what you’d expect from any politics-as-usual campaign. But I guess Obama is still concerned with appearing as a “new kind” of politician, so his campaign has made sure most of these ads are seen only in swing states.
I have a feeling Obama will soon have to start hitting McCain on a national level. One of the ways negative advertising works is that the spots get replayed endlessly by cable news stations and discussed by the talking heads. It’s one thing for Obama to call McCain clueless on the economy. It’s a whole other thing to have Wolf Blitzer posing the question “Is John McCain clueless on the economy?” The cable news channels fall for that kind of bait with surprising regularity.
Pretending to take the high road won’t get Obama very far. While the voter in me would prefer this to be a substantive, respectful campaign, the political strategist in me thinks Obama can’t afford to only kinda-sorta get in the trenches. It’s a shame the campaign has had to go this way – but they all eventually do, don’t they?
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:41 am
It might be strategic timing — by going more publicly negative nearer the Republican convention, Obama could do a lot to take the air out of a McCain bounce.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
This post is a perfect example of the damn-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t quandary that Obama is in. Attack, and he’s supposedly betraying his promise to run on the issues. Don’t attack, and be defined as another weak Democrat unwilling to fight.
The media and bloggers like you use the “politics as usual” line for any move Obama makes. It’s very lazy analysis. Obama’s message of change has nothing to do with his campaign tactics. It is about how he will lead, by not being beholden to special interests, lobbyists, and the inside-the-Beltway crowd. If the media (and you) had any guts, they would call out McCain for his total lack of a message, and the continuation of gutter politics at the country’s expense instead of desperately trying to find examples of Obama’s negative campaigning in order to justify McCain’s tactics.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am
An anti-McCain campaign is what he needs, particularly when he has stories like this making their way across the pond. I mean, what does it say of a man’s character, to go to his father’s ancestral village, promise to provide them with aid to help the local school and orphanage, and then three years since, fail to come through. Sen. Obama has some explaining to do.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:42 am
Ed — in no way did I justify McCain’s tactics. Just pointing out that Obama is hiiting back. I don’t expect Obama to not attack and I don’t hold it against him that he’s running some negative spots. However, all his talk about unity and a new kind of politics does put him in a bind. But it is a bind of his own making and not one I or anyone else is manufacturing. You can’t win the presidency without resorting to politics as usual. Obama would have been smart to never pretend that he could.