Striking the Right Tone

Last week, Peter Daou posted a particularly insightful analysis of how Republicans have used the art of ridicule to their political advantage over the years, especially in presidential races. He wrote:

[I]t's worth noting that the rightwing attack machine has been effective in the past because it serves a singular purpose: diminishing opponents through mockery and marginalization. Bloggers have referred to recent presidential campaigns as "genital-swinging contests" (we're using the clean version). That crude image underlines the strategy: make your opponent look small - or smaller. Shrinkage, for Seinfeld buffs. Think of how Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and their cohorts operate - it's all about the laughter, the joking, the snide remarks, the scoffing. It's about cutting someone down to size, making them look meek and meager.

Democrats have been stumped by the technique, missing the underlying purpose and getting sidetracked by the minutiae of the attacks. 'Rovian' is an overused adjective, but it is mistaken as a strategy of attacking an opponent's strength as an end in itself, when that's just one tactic in the larger mission of systematically belittling the opponent. Going after their strength is a logical part of reducing their stature.

Democratic/progressive attacks generally run the gamut from negative character association (X is just like Y) to policy contrasts (we can handle the economy better than X) to one-off hits and 'Macaca moments' (X flubbed the name of a country) to impugning the attacker (look how nasty my opponent is). These can be effective, particularly the latter, but they are qualitatively different from the rightwing machine's diminishment of an opponent's character. That's something that Democrats don't do as well. It's less about negative frames, contrasts, rapid response, and all the other mainstays of political strategy and more about making your opponent the butt of a joke.

That's right on the money. What Republicans long ago realized is that, of all the forms of negative attacks, mockery has the longest shelf life and the biggest dividend. The most successful negative attacks are the ones that are picked up and repeated over and over again by ostensibly neutral third parties, in particular reporters, political analysts, and comedians. And the simple reality is that these folks are much more willing to repeat mockery than they are most other forms of negative attacks.

In the case of comedians, this phenomenon isn't hard to understand. Their goal is to get laughs and if you give them decent material to work with, they'll run with it. But there's a similar dynamic at work among political journalists and commentators. Among this cohort, wittiness is highly valued, often at the expense of genuine intelligence or insight (see, e.g., Maureen Dowd). Everyone wants to be the funny one, the person with the snarky line that makes their colleagues chuckle. There's also an almost adolescent desire to join in the mockery of others, to prove you're one of the cool kids by ridiculing someone else. And let's face it, politicians are pretty safe targets, especially when it comes to light-hearted ridicule. It's really hard for campaigns to push back against that kind of stuff, at least without appearing like they don't have a sense of humor. For all these reasons, it's much easier to gain traction in the media when you mock your opponent than when you make more serious allegations, which is why the Republicans have made mockery and ridicule a central part of their campaign strategy for at least the last two decades.

As with all humor, however, the joke only works if you've gone to the trouble of laying the groundwork for it. Take, for example, Joe Biden's crack about McCain's "seven kitchen tables" in his speech on Saturday. That line drew plenty of laughs (and subsequent airtime), but only because the Obama campaign had done a good job in the two days prior to the speech of calling attention to McCain's gaffe and trying to paint him as out of touch.

I'm encouraged by the Obama campaign's aggressive attempt to inject that narrative into the media. And I think they're starting to find the right tone of attack, as evidenced by this light-hearted ad. Obama and his surrogates need to aggressively attack John McCain, but they need to do so with smiles on their faces. The tone should be one of ridicule and dismissiveness, not anger or outrage. Not only does that tone better suit Obama and Biden's personalities, but it has less potential to generate backlash or damage the Obama brand. Moreover, John McCain has shown himself to be particularly thin-skinned when it comes to mockery of any kind, so the more that they can get under his skin, the better. When McCain gets angry, he becomes far less appealing.

The goal should be to make John McCain the butt of every late night joke. The closer the Obama campaign gets to that goal, the greater their chance of victory in November.