Negative Attacks

Lately there has been an awful lot of attacks on Obama by the McCain team. They are desperately trying to link to him William Ayers who is a former terrorist. The hope is to discredit him by association and when they tested this attack in a poll I am sure it scored quite well. While I think Obama and Ayers do have a relationship I have no faith that this line of attack will actually work.

There are a couple main principles to effectively attacking your political opponent. First, the attacks have to be believable to the average voter. On the surface I would say that people could believe that Obama has allied himself with less than reputable people. After all, he is a product of the Chicago political machine. But the McCain people have made the mistake of pushing this too far by implying that Obama endorses Ayers terrorist acts. Most people are simply not going to believe that. How many people can honestly say that Obama condones acts of violence against the country? Maybe some radical, fringe voters will buy that but to the typical voter it doesn't really pass the smell test.

The second principle is that the attacks have to be relevant. Here is the larger problem for McCain. Quite simply, when the stock market is in free fall nobody cares whether or not Obama knew William Ayers. To be effective the attack has to fit into the overall theme of the campaign. For instance 2004's campaign was predominantly about the war and who would be a better commander in chief. Attacking Kerry for his flip flopping undermined his image as a strong leader and played into fears over whether or not he could be President in a time of war. The 2006 campaign was all about corruption. In that year I think Obama's shady associations might have resonated with voters. But this year the election is all about the economy.

To beat Obama this year, they have to undermine voter confidence in his ability to handle the financial crisis. Ironically, just the opposite has happened as McCain has appeared erratic and reactionary the last few weeks while Obama has been calm and poised. This is why Obama is gaining and McCain is losing ground.

Instead of going after Obama for being friends with Ayers, they should aggressively argue that Obama has no experience dealing with the economy at any level. He has never run a government or private agency and never had to balance a budget or make hard economic decisions. McCain should pin him down on specifics in the bailout package and ask him to explain it in detail at the next debate hoping that he will not be able to explain it. Make the case that if he can't understand what's in the bailout package then how can he understand how to fix our economy.

He should also use Obama's calmness against him by saying that he doesn't really care about the stock market crash because has plenty of money already. Paint him as out of touch with the average voter. Ask this question: If he feels the same unease about the economy as you do, why isn't he much more visibly upset over it?

While this line of attack might not be enough to beat Obama, at least it plays into the campaign narrative and into the minds of the voters.