Kinder Words – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
For months, all you’d hear from the lefty blogs was hand wringing about how Obama wasn’t “going on the attack,” wasn’t fighting back, and (god forbid) was tossing in the occasional comment about McCain having a genuinely touching life story before launching into the criticisms. They wanted him to get down in the muck, to fight fire with fire. You’d hear laments about the Republicans knowing how to play dirty and the Democrats being ineffectual
Now, I can understand why people were frustrated, but I think there are larger issues at work here. First and foremost, that’s just not who he is. He is not going to take the low road. And that is as it should be. There are core principles, I think, that cannot simply be brushed aside for the sake of expedience. I believe that the basic principle of truth-telling and honesty is one of them.
This is not necessarily an anti-utilitarian claim. I’m not suggesting that lying is immoral in all cases. Of course you lie to the Nazis about the Jew in the basement, and of course you lie to Victor Lazlo to protect his feelings. No, I’m talking about the way hypocrisy corrupts us, destroys that higher principle that we thought ourselves to be defending.
Think of Guantanomo. Palin in her acceptance speech mocked the Democrats’ position: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” But the point here is that we don’t know they are terrorists. And the further point is that we should be better than this. We hold ourselves to a higher standard precisely because this is what separates a liberal democracy from terrorists bent on destruction. We ensure rights, we do not torture, we hold ourselves in check even when we could unleash the worst devastation.
And this is beacuse we know enough about ourselves to be aware of the demons everyone carries within them that must always be held at bay. And that’s the danger. You may believe that you can play-act as a mud-slinging hypocrite, always keeping in mind the higher purpose. But such control is fleeting. As Vonnegut warns in Mother Night “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
All that said, there’s clearly a case to be made for ratcheting up the pressure that need not play into the worst techniques. And this brings me to the strategic case for Obama’s strategy. Effectively, it can be summed up in board game terms as “waiting for your opponent to overstretch.” Or in poker terms as “slow playing.” Basically, Obama is keeping things cool on his side and just letting McCain dig himself deeper and deeper.
If he had struck too early, McCain would have retained all his residual credibility on questions of “honor” and his maverick status that he spent years carefully cultivating. Now, however, those bridges are starting to burn. Witness, for example, this scathing attack from Richard Cohen – who admits to being “in the tank” for McCain until now: “And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can — as he did in South Carolina — renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won’t work. Karl Marx got one thing right — what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.”
Combine both of these ideas and you get an idea about the broader Obama campaign strategy: to have faith in democracy and the American people. Now the pessimist in me can often find this difficult to accept. But in my heart I basically believe that people are good, that we can be distracted by shiny objects and stupid campaign narratives. But when the chips are down, we feel an obligation to make the best decision that we can. And when faced with one campaign that consistently emphasizes policy and the process of government and one campaign that has straight-up admitted they are trying to obfuscate issues, people will see the McCain strategy as the desparation tactic that it is. And punish them accordingly.
I don’t mean to say that this was all planned months ago, evil-genius style. It’s not like Obama knew that McCain was going to go off the rails so absolutely. But then again…it’s not really so surprising is it?
Think of it this way: one thing we know for sure about McCain is that he really, more than anything else in the world, wants to be president. He was never really so maverick as the stories made out – it was in part a ploy to try and snake the 2000 nomination. He’s admitted to lying (on the Confederate flag) to try and get votes. And his actions of the previous couple years demonstrated that he was not going to feel beholden to previous honorable stands (immigration, tax cuts, etc.) if they stood in the way of the presidency.
Further, the country is in the midst of a Blue Wave. The war is unpopular. Although the major economic crisis that just hit might have been unpredictable, the general state of the economy was unlikely to improve. Knowing that, McCain was always likely to be behind come August.
So what else was he going to do? The degree and the intensity of the of cannonball into the deep end of sleazy campaign strategies was probably unforseen, but the general strategy…certainly predictable.
So now that it’s happened, Obama gets the best of both worlds. He can drop all the “McCain is an honorable man” rhetoric, and can stop positively referencing McCain’s life story, which sends the signal of the gloves are coming off. Because he usually comes off as so measured, so reasonable, so ready to lend compliments…it doesn’t take a lot of bluster to communicate the message. The old saying holds true here, I think speak softly, and carry a big stick.
Moreover, this approach lets Obama spend the final two months on offense, but does worlds to shut down the inevitable and annoying trope the media loves to trot out: the idea that anything less than absolute lovey-dovey lets-hold-hands rhetoric violates his “new politics.”
Look, he can say in response, I’ve done my best to run a positive campaign. Look at all those times I and my surrogates went out of our way to compliment Senator McCain, to point out his heroism, his patriotism, and his honor. All I’ve ever wanted was to debate about the issues. And in response we got a campaign full of lies, disdain, and character attacks.
And this will all have the advantage of being true!
With all this in mind, I remain cautiously optimistic. I’m still a little puzzled about how McCain’s numbers have withstood the media awakening this week, but they’ve started to dip quite a bit in the last couple days. In short, we’re very close to being back to where we were before the conventions, except I think Obama is in a much stronger position going forward. The narrative that McCain lies about everything and isn’t honorable is out there, and it’s a powerful one. It’s likely to infect a lot of other stories in ways that will be difficult to predict.
Given that, I think Obama needs to use the media’s shame at being so completely besotted with the McCain narrative long after it had been debunked. That does not mean persistent character attacks or purely negative messages. The time will soon pass for ads which have the sole purpose of pointing out that McCain has sold his soul. Those are useful in this moment to help drive the story for the week. But it will soon be embedded.
Once that happens, just make this a constant subtext.
The economy: McCain claims to care about the troubles of ordinary people, but he’s really just lying to you to try and get your vote. He’ll claim to be a populist, he’ll claim to fight “special interests” and “lobbyists” but really he’ll just keep supporting the same Republican policies that have ruined our economy.
Health care: McCain says he wants to “reform” it, but we all know that’s just a fancy word for cutbacks. His plan is to give tax credits for health care, but what he won’t tell you is that this comes in the context of incentives to encourage employers to drop coverage for 20 million people, who will then face a cost that will dwarf the small credits he wants to provide. Effectively, this makes health care more expensive for those who most need it, while doing nothing to improve the quality of care.
Tax cuts: a huge percentage of people are still under the impression that if Obama wins their taxes will go up. Now, that’s true if they make over $250,000 a year. But for everyone else, they will fare better with Obama. “Senator McCain wants to sell you on a tax plan that gives huge kickbacks to the upper 1% but does nothing for ordinary people.” And then throw in a crack about him having a bridge to sell you, too. Or point out that McCain decried these very same cuts as reprehensible earlier this decade when Bush proposed them for precisely this reason. But don’t worry, Senator, you’ve still got time to decide to be against them before you were for them before you were against them.
You get the point. This is now part of the narrative. Use it, with all the sly wit that Obama has shown he can wield so deftly. Be a little snarky, but always in the context of steering the debate back to the real issues.