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We are in the final stretch of the election, and things are expected to be negative. But the recent move by the John McCain campaign and the response from the Barack Obama campaign has made this campaign go beyond negative. It's downright ridiculous.
Since the summer, the character attacks on Obama had been put aside by the McCain campaign in favor of criticism on real issues: the economy, gas prices and Iraq strategy. Now that the economic crisis has reached catastrophic levels, however, the McCain campaign has started to lose in the polls. Obama has now gained an 8-point lead in major polls due to his successful strategy of connecting McCain to Bush's failed economic policies. The McCain campaign has given up on trying to counter; now instead of valid criticisms, they are making character attacks the official center of their strategy. No joke.
This mirrors the desperate final strategy of Hillary Clinton to defeat Obama in the primary, including the infamous 3 a.m. telephone call ad. These tactics utilized speculation, questions of patriotism and blatant exaggerations to play on voters' fear, distrust and xenophobia. Not only were they dirty and untrue, they took the debate away from important issues - some of which Clinton could handily defeat Obama in. Now, in a similar mode of panic, the McCain campaign is resorting to fear tactics. Sarah Palin kicked off the new battle plan by recycling some old Ayers-Obama connections cited by the Clinton campaign. She said that Obama sees America in such a different light than other Americans that he's willing to associate with someone who planned to bomb the Pentagon. The hype-bloggers then took up the banner with new vigor, decrying how they had each individually uncovered the Obama terrorism conspiracy ... an impressive feat I might add, seeing as Columbia, Harvard and the Senate did not seem to see the "obvious" evidence.
The scary thing about these tactics is the fact that they work. Swiftboating defeated John Kerry, and the 3 a.m. phone call won Hillary Pennsylvania. The McCain campaign has clearly come to believe that the ends justify the means. Scarier still is that on Monday, the Obama campaign retaliated in a similar manner - with an ad about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five Scandal. Somehow the ad connects Keating Five to the current economic crisis. It almost made me run over to the Republican Headquarters and start phonebanking.
Hey Obama: McCain was acquitted for a reason. He even created a finance-reform bill to make up for it. And the Obama campaign tries to portray their candidate as innocent and fair even while they making this accusation. At least the Republican candidates say it themselves. These character attacks are not only destroying the real debate, but they are also destroying the only no-smear political strategy we've seen in some time.
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