Everyone's Giving Obama Bad Advice

(updated below)

The conventional wisdom at the moment is that Barack Obama has to step up his attacks on Hillary Clinton if wants to have any hope of beating her. That's the advice he's getting from nearly every pundit and blogger (as well as, apparently, many of his backers and consultants). Heeding this advice, Obama clearly made an effort in the last debate to be more confrontational with Hillary. The resounding response from the commentariat was that Obama was not aggressive enough, that he's still too tentative in his attacks.

But this advice strikes me as unwise and ahistorical. Can anyone point me to an example of a second-place candidate clawing his way to the nomination by aggressively attacking the front-runner? Particularly in the Iowa or New Hampshire?

Let's look at what happened in the last election cycle. In the two months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, polls consistently showed Howard Dean with a narrow lead over Dick Gephardt. Dean had a much larger lead in national polls and in New Hampshire polls. Sensing that Dean was pulling away, his rivals began to attack him, none more fiercely than Dick Gephardt. But the constant sniping between the two perceived front-runners ended up damaging them both. Dean eventually finished third in the caucuses, but he still beat Gephardt.

The lesson here seems to be that attacks can work, but rarely to the benefit of the attacker. The primary beneficiaries of Gephardt's attacks were John Kerry and John Edwards, both of whom were largely content to let others (including Gephardt, Lieberman, and various proxies) do most of the attacking.

The current race in Iowa is very similar. Clinton is the obvious front-runner nationally and in New Hampshire, but the Iowa polls still show a close race. Clinton's rivals are all hoping that a surprising showing in Iowa can catapult them to victory, as it did with Kerry in 2004. And Obama is currently occupying the position Gephardt did in the last election cycle. He's in a solid second place, within striking distance of the leader. But for some reason, everyone is advising Obama to follow the Gephardt strategy of aggressively attacking the leader. That strikes me as really bad advice.

Iowa voters tend not to reward negative campaigning. While I think Obama should continue to draw contrasts with Clinton, I don't see what he has to gain by aggressively attacking her. In the debate the other night, both John Edwards and Chris Dodd attacked Clinton repeatedly, and much more aggressively than Obama did. And that's exactly what the Obama campaign should want to happen. There's no need to attack aggressively when others are willing to do it for you. Obama doesn't want to be the Gephardt of '08. He wants to be the Kerry or Edwards, the person whom voters turn to when they have second thoughts about the front-runner. If Clinton had a commanding lead in Iowa, the story might be different, but she doesn't. Obama doesn't have all that much ground to make up.

I seem to be in the minority on this, but I actually thought Obama had his best debate performance the other night. I think he struck the right balance. He was more confrontational than in previous debates, but not the most confrontational person in the room, and not so confrontrational that he risks alienating voters. The media keeps prodding him to be more aggressive, but I don't see how that would work to his benefit.

UPDATE: Uh oh. Joe Klein is channeling me:

All of which occasioned that most banal of modern journalistic ceremonies in the days leading up to the Oct. 30 Democratic debate: a fevered, unsolicited-advice orgy. None of the advice was substantive, of course. It was all about tactics. He had to attack Hillary Clinton. He had to make his move or lose — which, given the tendency of Iowa and New Hampshire voters to make last-minute decisions, wasn't remotely true. Even his consultants got into the act, requesting an interview with the New York Times, in which Obama announced — pathetically — that he was going to be more specific in his criticisms of the front runner.

. . . I'm still stuck on the frenzy to judge Obama's worth by his willingness to attack Clinton. I spent part of the day of the debate watching a parade of talking heads expatiate endlessly on how dire was the need for Obama to go macho. It was "journalism" at its most useless. The ability to eviscerate your opponents is far less important in a President than the ability to defend yourself. In the nine primary campaigns I've covered, the willingness to attack was a) a sign of desperation and b) a leading indicator of failure, especially if it became the defining characteristic of a candidacy. Four years ago, John Kerry wisely decided not to go negative on Howard Dean and won the nomination when Dean and Dick Gephardt slaughtered each other in a negative-ad shoot-out. Now that Edwards has taken the lead against Clinton, Obama might profit by staying aloof and presidential.

I wonder if he reads this blog?