Needlenose

A month ago, right after the Republican convention attempted to reinvent John McCain as a reform-bringing outsider, I remarked to someone via email that “with McCain pretending to offer the same ‘change’ as Obama, the choice for low-information voters is which one seems authentic versus which one seems risky.”

By the middle of the month, Obama was using issues-based positive ads as a way to seize the high ground in terms of authenticity, and since then his response to the Wall Street meltdown has presented him to voters as less risky than McCain as well.

Michael Scherer of Time magazine, not heretofore noted for his insight, explains how McCain’s latest mud-slinging barrage is a belated attempt to reverse people’s perceptions in these areas:

The Albuquerque speech represented a dramatic pivot in the McCain campaign’s strategy, to what Republican strategists have called the “Manchurian Candidate” attack.

The Manchurian Candidate is an well-trod technique in political warfare: You claim that you are the candidate people know, while your opponent is not who he seems to be. In fact, you argue, he has secret ulterior motives that he is trying to hide. You say he is a danger to all that the country holds dear. . . . let me repost some of the excerpts, edited for brevity to show how the Manchurian strategy works:

I didn’t just show up out of nowhere, after all — America knows me. You know my strengths and my faults. You know my story and my convictions.. . . And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent. Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign. We have all heard what he has said, but it is less clear what he has done or what he will do. What Senator Obama says today and what he has done in the past are often two different things. He has often changed his positions in this campaign, and the best way to determine where he would really take this country is to examine where he has tried to take it in the past. . . . For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. . . . Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama.

The goal is that, even if the electorate doesn’t immediately buy the doubts McCain is selling, at least Obama will be drawn off the subject of the economy as he tries to explain himself on whatever bogus issues are raised. And that loss of focus in itself will create room for more questions to be raised in people’s minds… and, well, who knows what will turn up then? (This kind of opening is the best a campaign trailing in the last month can hope for.)

There’s an easy way, however, for Obama to defuse this attack and simultaneously turn the subject back to his preferred themes.  All he has to do is say that the most dangerous secret he could be hiding is that he supports another four years of the same economic policies and philosophy we’ve had under George Bush.

Another four years like the last eight is the result from this election that the American people should fear most.  And it’s exactly the risk they’d be taking if they vote for John McCain.

Stumble it!

Tags: framing, McCain, Obama, WH 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 11:47 am by Swopa and is filed under 2008 US presidential election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.