After a couple of weeks of dubious and misleading criticisms directed his way, Barack Obama’s campaign has decided to respond in kind, unveiling an aggressive new ad. It argues that Hillary Clinton is “making false attacks on Barack Obama,” and she “will say anything to get elected.”
As far as I can tell, there are no obvious factual errors in Obama’s ad, and in general, I think the “say anything” line is a pretty good one. The Clinton campaign has been using a “kitchen sink” strategy since the Iowa caucuses, and a blanket “she’ll say anything to win” meme takes a dismissive attitude towards all the attacks.
The Clinton campaign has issued talking points to surrogates about the commercial, though, and it highlights Obama’s catch-22....Obama said he wanted to stay positive; Clinton said she wanted to win. When Clinton went on the attack, including taking a few cheap shots, it created a conundrum — if Obama returned fire, he’d be guilty of the same kind of politics he finds distasteful in Clinton. If he didn’t return fire, Clinton gets away with dishonest attacks and Obama gets hit with stories like this one, which question whether he’s ready for the rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred national stage.
Assuming that Americans see no difference between unprovoked first strikes and retaliatory responses, Benen and Clinton's points are undoubtedly true. The problem is that I'm fairly certain that this assumption is false. From everything I've ever seen in the history of campaigns, Americans expect you to respond forcefully when you are attacked, with any hesitancy on your part interpreted as weakness. That was the lesson of the Swift Boat Vets, just as it was the lesson of Willie Horton. You can't just grin and bear it. You have to swing back, and swing back hard.
That's not to suggest, however, that in responding you can't go too far. Of course you can. If your opponent is telling lies, say so. But as you do so, you must be careful to be honest. You can't respond to lies with lies. The goal is to create a backlash, not provide evidence that your opponent's charges are true.
And if my understanding of campaigns is true in general, it must be particularly true in this specific campaign. Hillary has spent the few weeks implying that only she can stand up to what the Republicans will inevitably throw at her. She survived 16 years of their bullshit, so she can surely survive 8 more. Obama, by implication, is too weak to take the full force of their attack. Except... by launching these sorts of attacks at him, she's providing a perfect opportunity for him to rebut what has become one of the key arguments for her campaign.
Think on it: If she can survive and win because she knows how to fight back, what will it say about Obama if he can survive her attacks? If she's good enough to beat the Republicans, and he is good enough to beat her, well.... remind me why we should vote for her again?
No doubt this will be a tightrope act, but if he can walk the line, he may be able to turn the entire campaign.
UPDATE: I know I said he should walk the line carefully, but this is a bit much. He's already pulled the ad?
And as to Benen's updated analysis here, I think he's still missing the point. I highly doubt the point of all this is for the Obama camp to paint their man as some sort of helpless David going up against an all-powerful Goliath. Not at all. The idea, I suspect, is to remind people that the Clinton's represent the very worst of the kind of politics his entire campaign is premised on rejecting. This episode is a way of getting Americans to think about what another 4 or 8 years of the Clinton dynasty would mean for our national political discourse.
There's no doubt that Obama is risking some of his golden boy image with this strategy. No doubt that's part of what drove the decision to pull his response ad. But on balance, I think the downside for the Clintons here is far more severe. Many Americans - particularly the political independents Obama so desperately needs if he is to win - are likely to be much more predisposed to believe negative things about Clinton than they are about him. We all know their history. With them charges of lying are likely to stick, no matter how you want to define what the meaning "is" is.
But then again, what do I know? I would have thought this was precisely the kind of fight that Hillary would have wanted to avoid. I would have thought she would have done everything she could to get people to forget about her husband, at least until after November.
UPDATE II: One of the benefits of posting late-night is that I have time to add updates before the emails come in. I was expecting a demand for hard data on the way the trust and honesty issues might backfire against Clinton, but I looked earlier and couldn't find it. But here it is. And it is worse for Clinton than I thought.
If Obama can use this to pivot the campaign narrative from a debate over experience to one over truthfulness and trust, he wins. I really think it is that simple.
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