McCain's New Strategy -- The Right Move

Posted by Ashish on 08.01.2008

Surprised? Read on for my thoughts...

The new McCain strategy of going super negative, attacking Obama daily, and basing those attacks on very controversial things like comparing Obama to Britney Spears or claiming Obama played the race card is dirty, gritty politics. No doubt about that. This is similar to something Karl Rove would do, and the McCain of 2000 and even the McCain of a few months ago who vowed to play nice is no more. Let's all acknowledge all of this.

But, as Marc Ambinder also argues, let's also acknowledge that the new negative strategy is something McCain had to do. There is a VERY real chance that this strategy will backfire in a major way in the long term and result in McCain being branded as angry, bitter, and negative, in addition to the #1 word associated with him, which is old. It also ties him more to the "typical Bush-type Republican" and does nothing to strengthen his weak position on the economy (which is the #1 issue). But in the short term, it is working. Suddenly, McCain's campaign has some life, he is on the offense, and Obama is playing defense. That is a positive for the McCain campaign.

The reason McCain is taking such a risky move, and basically putting it all on the line now with a strategy that will backfire in a major way when October rolls around or spark his campaign is because I think most of the people around him realized that waiting until October would risk the election already being lost. The dynamics of this race simply do not favor McCain and if he has any chance at winning, he is going to have to launch these types of attacks and hope something sticks. Simply scoring a political point here and there won't change the outcome of this election. It will take a major change in how the country views Obama AND how the country views McCain for McCain to win. This strategy is based on half that basis. This is McCain's attempt to change how the country views Obama. I'm not sure comparing Obama to Britney Spears is the best way to change how the country views Obama, but it's something, at least.

The Obama camp obviously knew this type of stuff was coming, so we'll get to see how they respond to it over the coming weeks and months. It's unfortunate that a guy who vowed to never get this petty (and comparing a US Senator and Presidential candidate to Paris Hilton is pretty much as petty as it gets) but what else was McCain going to do? His options were to do something to get people talking about HIM and HIS campaign, or to stand around and essentially wait to lose.

The race stuff, in particular, is a major risk. The McCain camp has more or less strategically injected race into the campaign and are trying to make it into a major issue. This could work, and result in Obama being further portrayed as a calculating politician who will use anything and everything to win, or it will backfire, and McCain will be painted in the same borderline-racist light that Clinton was temporarily painted in during the primaries, and his entire "maverick" persona will be gone. We're basically seeing McCain put it all on the line. It may have came about out of frustration, since his "honorable" tactics were getting him nowhere, or it may just be the result of the new people he has put in charge of his campaign being more aggressive (many of them are from the Karl Rove school of politics, replacing old McCain hands who believed in running more noble campaigns), but from a political standpoint, it's something he had to do. Now one can argue that from an ethical standpoint, a guy like McCain should not have sunk so low and the fact that he did says something about him, and that is the natural response the Obama camp can use against all of this, but if the goal is to win at all costs (and, again, McCain acts like he isn't that type of politician), this is all stuff he had to do.

There is a major difference in McCain going negative against Obama compared to when Clinton did it. Clinton already had very high negatives, McCain doesn't. And Clinton was more or less hated by the media. McCain isn't. McCain is a media darling and, for now at least, the media is parroting his attacks, regardless of whether they are factual, fair, or whatever else.

I expect McCain to get a bounce out of these attacks. But the other thing to remember here is that other factors are also impacting this election. One being distrust of the Republican party. Democrats have a huge name advantage and Obama will benefit from that regardless of how McCain tries to paint him. Two, the country still hates Bush, and McCain is, in many ways, running on the Bush agenda. Three, the economy continues to worsen, and that heavily favors Obama. And four, Obama's ground game dwarfs McCain'a ground game. Only so much can be accomplished by changing how Obama is viewed, and it still remains to be seen if McCain is even able to do that. Even if Obama is viewed more negatively three months from now than he is now, and that is almost surely going to happen (candidates always see their negatives go up during an election), he will still be a Democrat, will still represent the easiest way to "vote against Bush", and will still win the economy issue.

For McCain to win, he will have to continue to try and find a way to rebrand Obama (which is what he is trying to do with the Britney ads), but he will also have to do something to improve how people view HIM on the economy and as a different type of Republican. That's why so many view the current attacks as so risky. Running constant attack ads is doing to make him seem more like a Bush-type Republican, not a different type of Republican. And it also sinks millions of dollars into sending out a message that has nothing to do with strengthing McCain on the economy or anything else.

The current strategy is one McCain had to do to spark his campaign, but by itself, it will probably end up doing more harm than good. Ultimately, McCain will have to stand for something other than the anti-Obama to win.