From:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080829/pl_politico/12949DENVER As jittery Democrats urge Barack Obama to sharpen his attacks on John McCain, the Democratic presidential nominee faces a delicate balancing act: attacking McCain without damaging what Obama aides refer to as the brand."
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The brand is Obamas carefully tended image as a new, unifying and transformative figure, not just another politician engaged in petty political gamesmanship. And how to protect the brand is the subject of a key, running argument inside the Democratic Party and inside Obamas campaign.
Barack Obamas not like every other politician, said a senior Obama aide. If we start seeming like that, we lose our comparative advantage, which is our [supporters] enthusiasm.
We have to check ourselves on a daily basis for brand erosion, he said.
The keeper of the brand is Obamas chief strategist, David Axelrod.
His gut is what guides us, said the aide. He will read everything Baracks going to do or say just to get a sense of whether it seems like old politics.
But the art of keeping the Democrat and his campaign from appearing to be rolling in the political mud has never been more challenging. McCain's campaign has been mocking Obama on television and in speeches for weeks, attacking him personally as a vacuous celebrity. And while the Illinois senator responded with a series of ads in August lampooning McCain as an out-of-touch plutocrat with the candidate himself getting in on the teasing hes still under significant pressure from Democratic leaders to step up the intensity of the attacks on the Republican nominee-in-waiting, and to move that contrast from jokes and low-profile television ads to the center of the national campaign.
Barack Obama would like to see a different style of politics, and I would, too, said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is among those urging a confrontational line. But I think the reality is the political scene today is the way its been for a long time.
I think we have to smack back, Durbin said.
The high-profile calls for Obama to attack began in early August, when Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Obama to attack McCain's wealth, a line Obama subsequently followed. But Obamas campaign moved cautiously at first and warned that Obama unlike Schumer wasnt trying to cultivate the image of a take-no-prisoners urban political street fighter.
Obama had resisted the temptation before. Last fall, jittery Obama supporters pleaded with the campaign to attack Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) more directly. Obama hadnt been afraid to attack; the concern was that he would be seen attacking. Instead he assailed Clinton primarily in under-the-radar mailings. For much of this summer, similarly, his harshest attacks on McCain appeared in ads that ran in key states, but not national cable, and that the campaign didnt release.
His campaign views Iowa as a model. As the primary wore on, his top aides now say, he overstepped and allowed Clinton to bait him into a political mud fight. In the lead-up to the Iowa primary, Clinton and Obama exchanged bitter charges of dishonesty in representing their positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Again, in the days before the Pennsylvania primary, the race descended into an acrimonious exchange of attacks.
We fell into a trap, said the Obama aide. We took a deep breath after a few days and recognized that we were quickly becoming what we were running against.
Being perceived as going negative carries two risks. First, among independent voters who remain undecided, it undermines Obamas image as a post-partisan, unifying figure. Second, and equally important, it can dampen the enthusiasm of some idealistic volunteers and small donors who fueled his rise and expect him to transform American public life.
The people in this country are tired of that harsh back and forth, said another Obama aide, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand. Youve got to be mindful that if you go too far, youre going to turn them off.
That doesnt mean we wont tell the truth about John McCain, he said, defending the recent attacks on the Arizona senators difficulty answering a question about how many houses he owns. It shows that the guy is its his words. It was a situation he put himself in.
But maintaining Obamas image as a post-partisan figure without turning him into a patsy is a complicated challenge.
Its a challenging line that we have to respect, Hildebrand said.
Allow me to translate choice passages:
The keeper of the brand is Obamas chief strategist, David Axelrod.
His gut is what guides us, said the aide. He will read everything Baracks going to do or say just to get a sense of whether it seems like old politics.
Axelrod is the Democratic version of Rove. But... Obama has less capacity for autonomous decision making than even that idiot genious Bush had, since Axelrod is the English grammar teacher for this campaign with the red pen of doom.
His campaign views Iowa as a model. As the primary wore on, his top aides now say, he overstepped and allowed Clinton to bait him into a political mud fight. In the lead-up to the Iowa primary, Clinton and Obama exchanged bitter charges of dishonesty in representing their positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Again, in the days before the Pennsylvania primary, the race descended into an acrimonious exchange of attacks.
Also known as, "as a rule, Democrats always loose when they talk about real issues rather than meaningless humanitarian platitudes."
But maintaining Obamas image as a post-partisan figure without turning him into a patsy is a complicated challenge.
Running a Wizard of Oz campaign where handlers like Axelrod stay out of the public limelight is difficult. Making Obama appear to have an opinion that fits focus polling is easy when he is reading a speech from a teleprompter, but sometimes he forgets his own stances when free-lancing in a town hall or debate. Strategists need to figure out how to not engage in debate without looking like they are ducking.
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I fired up Yahoo's main page a second ago and Palin is already shadowed by "How will Obama recover/cope/blah?" stories. This was one of them.
Stupid media bias.
