Preparing the battlefield
Dick Morris thinks that Senator McCain is doing a terrible job in his run against Senator Obama:
When is the McCain campaign going to get serious? It seems to be marking time with softball ads, more appropriate to the soundbites campaign media spokespeople exchange with one another than to strategic paid media hits. One ad talks about how the media loves Obama. Another mocks him as a celebrity. Each throws pitty-pat punches, far short of the kind of knockout blows one would expect from a presidential campaign. Were I a donor to McCain’s campaign, paying for these pathetic spots, I would demand a refund. Or sue for malpractice…
Are the McCain people waiting for September to get serious? If so, they are making a big mistake and missing an important opportunity. History indicates that the best time to beat a new candidate is in the summer. August to be precise.
Dukakis, Mondale, and Kerry all were destroyed in the summer, long before the fall campaign began. In 1984, the offensive against Geraldine Ferraro crippled Mondale well before Labor Day. In 1988, the pledge of allegiance, revolving door, and Willie Horton ads all ran in the summer. Dukakis was dead by September. And the swift boat attack on Kerry defeated him well before the summer was over.
McCain needs to make voters afraid of Obama. Not, as he suggests self-servingly, by emphasizing that he “doesn’t look like all the other presidents on dollar bills,” but by hitting him on the two fronts where it would really hurt — the economy and national security. Obama’s inexperience and the wildly liberal proposals he has made in his primary campaigning, both set him up for a crippling blow this month.
Perhaps Morris is correct. But it seems to us that Senator McCain might actually be doing a pretty good job of preparing the battlefield for the fall election. One of the first of his ads mocked the media’s mad crush on Obama, which might put them on the defensive if they had any shame. Subsequent ads compared the Democratic candidate to nitwit girl celebrities, and parodied his messianic pretensions by using the candidate’s own words. To the extent that the ads are effective, they are effective, in our view, because they amplify true things about the candidate, namely, his celebrity appeal and his grandiosity.
So the underlying messages of these ads have been that you can’t trust the media, and that Senator Obama is a pretentious windbag and a lightweight. Perhaps Morris is correct, and McCain should be attacking Obama more substantively. But portraying Obama as a fellow you shouldn’t take too seriously, whatever he says, might be a useful way for McCain to prepare for the fall. In any event, it’s hard to argue with success, and Senator McCain is certainly doing well against his opponent at the moment. Indeed, Roger Simon wonders if Senator McCain might be peaking too soon.
Addendum: Morris is wrong in his characterization of the Kerry campaign, by the way. Senator Kerry’s campaign was not destroyed “in the summer.” It is true that Kerry’s campaign was pretty badly hurt in August and September by the SwiftBoatVets, Christmas in Cambodia, and other such gaffes. But Senator Kerry’s excellent performance in the first debate, where President Bush stumbled around, brought him back strongly. Indeed, the third debate, in mid-October, was said to be do-or-die for the Bush campaign. People forget how effective the Kerry campaign actually was.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
sometimes morris is right by accident but his track record on predictions is terrible. there is a reason he isn’t (paid for) advising candidates any more. mccain is bloodying obama pretty steadily now, without receiving much return fire. look for mccain’s team to deliver the really hard hitting stuff in the fall, when obama — and his buddies in the msm — won’t have time to work out any counter messages.