The Failure of the GOP Attack Machine (At Least So Far)
Though we still have a month to go--and anything can happen between now and then--there's no question that Barack Obama is in a much stronger position right now that John Kerry was four years ago. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the ones that's not being discussed enough is the failure of the GOP attack machine.
If there's one thing that Republicans can usually be counted on to do effectively, it's attacking the character of their opponents. They're usually pretty good at convincing a large swath of the electorate that the Democratic nominee is The Worst Person Ever. Indeed, in most campaigns, the Republicans spend virtually the entire pre-debate period of the campaign single-mindedly pursuing this goal. The idea is to make independent and swing voters personally despise the Democratic nominee to the point where they can't bring themselves to pull the lever for him, even when they generally agree with him on the issues.
That was certainly the case in 2004. Going into the first debate in 2004, the CBS/New York Times poll found that John Kerry had a favorability rating of just 32% and an unfavorability rating of 44%. This was the end result of a relentless months' long effort to portray him as an effete, out-of-touch flip-flopper.
But this time around things are very different. Going into the first debate, the CBS/New York Times poll found Obama to have a favorability rating of 43% and unfavorability rating of just 30% (John McCain, by comparison, was at 38/35). That's dramatically better than Kerry.
The 30% unfavorability rating is particularly significant. It means that the only people whom the Republicans have convinced to hate Obama are the true partisans, the same folks who still think George W. Bush is doing a heckuva job.
What explains the lack of success in demonizing Obama? Part of it is that Obama is a skilled politician, a likable guy who is good at deflecting character-based attacks. But part of it is also due to the fact that the Republicans never really settled on a narrative about Obama. In 2004, they labeled Kerry a flip-flopper very early in the contest and consistently hammered that narrative home for the rest of the election. But this time around, there's been no such consistency or discipline. The closest they've come to a consistent negative narrative is the "celebrity" charge, but they haven't really stuck with that, and I'm not sure it was all that effective an attack to begin with.
To put it another way, they haven't managed to define Obama in the way they've defined past Democratic nominees. He has (at least so far) survived the demonization process relatively unscathed. Which is why I expect that the GOP will devote much of the remaining month of the campaign to attacking Obama in ways they haven't really tried yet. Most likely, they'll try to radicalize him by associating him with people like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The real question is whether it's too late for that to work. Obama is not the unknown commodity he once was. It may be too late to redefine him. Let's hope so.
UPDATE: The first post debate CBS/New York Times poll is out. Obama now has a 48% favorability rating, with 32% viewing him unfavorably (that's +16). McCain is at 39% favorable, 42% unfavorable (-3).
By comparison, following the first debate in 2004 (in which Kerry clobbered Bush), Kerry was at 40/41 and Bush was at 44/44.
If there's one thing that Republicans can usually be counted on to do effectively, it's attacking the character of their opponents. They're usually pretty good at convincing a large swath of the electorate that the Democratic nominee is The Worst Person Ever. Indeed, in most campaigns, the Republicans spend virtually the entire pre-debate period of the campaign single-mindedly pursuing this goal. The idea is to make independent and swing voters personally despise the Democratic nominee to the point where they can't bring themselves to pull the lever for him, even when they generally agree with him on the issues.
That was certainly the case in 2004. Going into the first debate in 2004, the CBS/New York Times poll found that John Kerry had a favorability rating of just 32% and an unfavorability rating of 44%. This was the end result of a relentless months' long effort to portray him as an effete, out-of-touch flip-flopper.
But this time around things are very different. Going into the first debate, the CBS/New York Times poll found Obama to have a favorability rating of 43% and unfavorability rating of just 30% (John McCain, by comparison, was at 38/35). That's dramatically better than Kerry.
The 30% unfavorability rating is particularly significant. It means that the only people whom the Republicans have convinced to hate Obama are the true partisans, the same folks who still think George W. Bush is doing a heckuva job.
What explains the lack of success in demonizing Obama? Part of it is that Obama is a skilled politician, a likable guy who is good at deflecting character-based attacks. But part of it is also due to the fact that the Republicans never really settled on a narrative about Obama. In 2004, they labeled Kerry a flip-flopper very early in the contest and consistently hammered that narrative home for the rest of the election. But this time around, there's been no such consistency or discipline. The closest they've come to a consistent negative narrative is the "celebrity" charge, but they haven't really stuck with that, and I'm not sure it was all that effective an attack to begin with.
To put it another way, they haven't managed to define Obama in the way they've defined past Democratic nominees. He has (at least so far) survived the demonization process relatively unscathed. Which is why I expect that the GOP will devote much of the remaining month of the campaign to attacking Obama in ways they haven't really tried yet. Most likely, they'll try to radicalize him by associating him with people like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The real question is whether it's too late for that to work. Obama is not the unknown commodity he once was. It may be too late to redefine him. Let's hope so.
UPDATE: The first post debate CBS/New York Times poll is out. Obama now has a 48% favorability rating, with 32% viewing him unfavorably (that's +16). McCain is at 39% favorable, 42% unfavorable (-3).
By comparison, following the first debate in 2004 (in which Kerry clobbered Bush), Kerry was at 40/41 and Bush was at 44/44.
posted by A.L. at 2:48 PM
8 Comments:
One presumes there is an official Keating Five advert ready to launch in retaliation. It would resonate very well with the current banking crisis.
The howls of "but he was exonerated!!!" would be an extra treat.
Because of his position in the polls Obama is now in a position to do what Bob Casey did every time Ricky Santorum launched another goofy attack--just say my opponent is getting desperate because he's behind in the polls and it's showing. It's a nice easy deflection that allows Obama to look like he won't stoop to his opponent's level and avoids treating the attack as if it's serious.
I have a theory on why this stuff doesn't stick to Obama very well. I apologize in advance if this turns out to be half-baked. I made a slightly different stab at it here.
Liberals and conservatives each have a set of basic positions about how the world works. I think that, by and large, both sides have developed those positions intellectually until they are quite robust. Conservatives have an affinity for certain sets of ideas and liberals have an affinity for others, based more on how they're each wired up than anything else. If you have an affinity for an idea, chances are that you are receptive to its intellectual underpinnings, even if you're a fairly low-information voter.
But of course campaigns never, ever, ever deal with ideas on an intellectual level. So they construct a set of buzzwords that represent the ideas. If you like the thought behind the buzzword, you're likely to accept it as a symbol for the more complex idea and forgive its imprecision. If you don't like the thought, the buzzword sounds like arrant nonsense.
McCain is perfectly comfortable with the buzzwords. When he says "market principles" or "personal responsibility" or "low taxes to create jobs" or "small government" or any of another dozen similar things, conservative-leaning voters know what he's really talking about even though liberal voters' skin crawls. Meanwhile, the independents (who drink Kool-Aid from both tubs) sort themselves out and have to decide which way they're going to jump.
Kerry was also comfortable with his buzzwords. His supporters immediately grasped the more complex ideas behind phrases like "corporate greed" or "attacks on civil liberties" or "help for the disadvantaged." (See? I couldn't come up with as many here. I'm wired up to be conservative.)
The way you win an election is to interfere with the other guy's buzzwords. And the key method you use to do that is by undermining the electorate's trust that the other guy is faithfully representing the idea with the buzzwords. In Kerry's case, the vaunted Republican attack machine (aka a competent campaign) had a nice fat hanging curve ball to hit out of the park, and it only required 13 words: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
I think a lot of Obama's success is that he has stayed away from the traditional buzzwords and is slowly making up his own vocabulary as he goes. This forces the electorate to listen a lot closer. But more importantly, it's much harder for McCain and the GOP to interfere with the electorate's trust in Obama because they're not quite sure they understand what he stands for in the first place, even though it sounds really pretty. Of course, this is a double-edged sword: They have to get comfortable enough that they believe that he knows what he's talking about, or they'll fall back on McCain's familiar buzzwords, even if they're not quite as happy with them as they would be with consistent use of the traditional Democratic lexicon.
But the trust issue is why McCain is a dead man walking, and here I'll speak from my own personal reactions over the last couple of weeks. The GOP's handling of the financial crisis has been so inept, so craven, so utterly tone-deaf, that any belief I had that McCain and the rest of the GOP really understood the connection between his talking points and the underlying body of conservative thought has been shattered. When McCain now spouts his standard set of platitudes, I pretty much have the same reaction to them that I would have if I were wired up to be liberal: they sound like gobbledygook.
Obama has by no means sealed the deal with me. He's never out front on the issues and he seems to have created a just-in-time explanation for almost all of his positions. But maybe that's not such a bad thing. Clinton did OK--at least on domestic policy--with his triangulation. Obama may have hit on the same formula.
But McCain is irredeemably poisoned for me. Through their handling of the financial crisis, he and his party have effectively disconnected themselves from everything that is cogent and good about conservative thought. I suspect that I am not alone in this opinion.
A.L., Obama is gonna win big time and I will reluctantly vote to support him, because there really is no alternative. Your team is going to be in control for a while.
Please don't screw it up.
OK, here's the truth.
What explains the lack of success in demonizing Obama? Part of it is that Obama is a skilled politician, a likable guy who is good at deflecting character-based attacks. But part of it is also due to the fact that the Republicans never really settled on a narrative about Obama.
The real answer: The media is giving Obama a pass on his association with racists, terrorists, and criminals, nor questioning his record as a supporter of infanticide, surrender, or Chicago's and Illinois' absolutely corrupt Democratic politicians. So if the general population doesn't know about Obama, it is because the media is burying the truth about him.
It's how he got to be a U.S. Senator.
Personally, I give Obama the credit for de-fanging the Republican attack machine quite a bit. Obama's strength is his ability to make McCain look small and petty. And every time McCain pulls out the small and petty attacks, it makes him look even smaller and pettier. Just like StevelL above.
Republicans have been dying to take this campaign to the mud for some time. And Obama keeps dragging it back up. That's one of the reasons Republicans are lashing out at the media...the media is not providing enough dirt for them to slither around in.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
It is expected that, unless Palin has been somehow transformed into Benjamin Disraeli over the past week, October may see the Mother of All Negativity from the GOP. So far nothing has really stuck to Teflon Obama and time is growing short. And some zealot is sure to go a bridge too far, make an overt racial attack and then all hell will break loose. Remember, the purpose of negative campaigning is to engender a like response, drive everyone's negatives up, disgust the independents and undecideds and throw the decision back to the strength of the respective bases...
We should not underestimate how much Obama has learned from Kerry and Gore.
Kerry's big mistake was his delay to call his opponents on the Swiftboat smear. Gore allowed his campaign to drift along while he was lampooned as a fantasist who claimed he invented the Internet. Both thought that being "down and dirty" was beneath them. Kerry, also, was badly shaken by the unjust attacks on his service record and it may have affected his stump performance initially.
It should also be remembered that the negative campaigning was not as effective as is generally thought. Gore won the popular vote, & Kerry was only narrowly beaten. I suppose it may have tipped a few swing voters the wrong way.
I think Obama has shown that he will not allow a smear get past the 24-hour news cycle. I think he was also made clear that whatever muck was thrown at him, he could throw back. In other words, he has pre-empted a lot of negative campaigning.
The best example I can think of is the way Michelle Obama has dropped completely out of sight as a target for the right. There were hints a few months ago that the GOP was going to use her college thesis as a basis to attack her as a black radical. Remember when she was supposed to be on tape shouting "Whitey!".
Obama got on TV and said "Lay off my wife", and they did. My view is the he hinted that Cindy McCain would also be a target.
Obama handled himself pretty ok during the crisis in his campaign following the McCain surge. I think he can respond effectively to anything that can be thrown at him.
Nor should he particularly worry. McCain has had so many "new departures" in his campaign that it will easy to portray a negative turn as the last desperate throw of the dice for crazy John.
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