Why Tell a Lie?

Today may mark the first and only time in history that Karl Rove and I agree on something. In a recent interview with Fox News, Rove stated that "McCain has gone in some of his ads one step too far...and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test."    

I find several aspects of this development quite interesting. First, let me put it in writing that I do agree with Rove. Several recent ads that have been put out by McCain have been quite nasty and border on actual slander.    

A recent example is an ad, released in areas with high latino populations, that stated that Obama voted against immigration reform and was instrumental in stalling the creation of any guest worker program or a path to citizenship. The problem with this ad, of course, is that Obama and McCain actually worked together on this bill, each voting to end the filibuster in the senate; in fact, they voted identically on the procedural and final passage votes.    

All political ads lie to some extent, and to pretend that Obama hasn't produced negative ads either would be a mischaracterization. However, Obama has not been foolish enough to create an ad that states a lie that can easily be verified and shown to be untrue. What is more startling, however, is when one examines where the nastiest attack ads are being run, it is pretty clear that the demographic groups that are being targeted are those containing individuals who are statistically on the lower end of the income and education scales.    

This tactic is about as low as it gets as it amounts to directly lying to confuse people who will not be able to gather complete information about the candidates due to limitations regarding time, resources, and language ability. Candidates launch such attacks because they can be very effective since these voters are not constantly tuning in to see what is occurring in the campaign, and reserach has shown that first impressions of a candidate are very important in deciding who to vote for among voters with lesser educations.    

The decision to go negative is not a surprise, but the manner in which is has occurred is highly questionable. It raises questions about McCain's ethics that I myself would not have thought possible. It is clear though that the straight-talking express has broken down.    

I think it is silly to argue that campaigns should always be positive; that’s not how the world works, and it isn't how campaigns are won. We may all hate negative ads, but they are really effective. I don't deplore McCain's choice to go negative, but the degree to which he has done so has the potential to backfire in a big way. 

Is the Tide Turning?

Quick post tonight, as with Hurricane Ike going full force there is not much election coverage.  Over the last few days an interesting set of events has been set in motion that may set the stage for a poll reversal this week. 

The first is that, unlike the relatively unsubstantiated attacks that were leveled at Palin, the media has actually started to find cracks in the Palin armor that cannot be whisked away. Neither crack is that large, but both highlight an odd trend on the McCain/Palin ticket: to lie about information that can easily be fact checked. 

One, claimed earlier in the week, is that Palin had visited Alaska troops in Iraq. This has been disproved quite easily by the media, who got access to her travel record. Another is her claim that she brought in both republican and democrats to work in the executive branch in Alaska when she was elected Governor. The New York Times is reporting that this claim is false and that the appointment and civil service records show otherwise.

The other event is that the Obama campaign has learned that it needs to stop going after Palin, as it makes her an issue. Instead they have returned to attacking McCain. In my opinion this is the correct course of action. Palin appears vastly more popular than McCain. Obama's best bet is remind voters that they aren't voting for Palin, but McCain. In addition, McCain has a much longer record to defend, which clearly shows it is hard for him to be a candidate for change. Remember, before Palin came on the ticket, people were not excited about McCain. This is probably still true and Obama needs to remind them who is running for president on the republican side.

Lastly, as a poll update, the numbers still look terrible for Obama in both national polls and key swing states. We still have a long time to go, but if we don't start to see some halting to the McCain gains in swing states by the end of the week it may be time to start getting concerned. 

Together Forever?

Parting ways can be difficult, which would be one explanation for why McCain and Palin are still campaigning together now that the convention is behind us. That explanation would be wrong, but it makes for a nice lead in for today’s post.   

Traditionally, after the conventions, the newly foraged party candidates for President and Vice President head off and do about 3-4 days of heavy campaigning together. After that, they bid each other ado and separate. The logic in separating is that two people can cover far more ground than a single person, and since a party ticket is usually designed to appeal to different types of voters, the splitting of the two candidates allows each to go and campaign separately to court these voters. It is not unusual for the ticket-mates to meet back together for large events, big fundraises, or meet for rallies in swing states, but generally each will spend the month of September campaigning alone.   

Obama and Biden have followed this traditional form to the letter. After the convention, the two drew huge crowds at several joint events and have since separated to court voters individually.  Since separating, Obama and Biden have done several big events together, but by and large they have been keeping separate travel schedules, events, and hotels.   

Over on the republican side, the original plan coming out of the convention was for something very similar for McCain and Palin. They would do a few events together and then separate to hit their respective bases of support. However, this has not occurred. Rather, they have repeatedly added joint events and have not really separated yet (take today’s joint campaign stop in northern VA).   

The pundits have noticed this occurrence, but have attributed it to the fact that when McCain was campaigning alone before the convention, he was pulling crowds in the 100s, whereas after the convention, he and Palin together have been attracting thousands. Thus, the two have not split yet because they want to ride the wave.   

While there is clearly merit in this explanation, I have trouble with it because logically it doesn’t make sense. It is not the fact that they are campaigning together that is drawing larger crowds, but that the republican convention really energized republicans. So whereas the support for McCain was luke-warm before the convention, that indifferent sentiment has been completely replaced by an air of excitement and enthusiasm.   

Now some will claim that if Palin wasn’t with him, he wouldn’t get the crowds. So what? If Palin is the reason they are getting crowds, then her campaigning on her own would still pull the large crowds and McCain could be working a different, if smaller, group of people at the same time. To me, the republicans’ strategy here makes no sense if the explanation is to ride the Palin wave to bigger crowds for McCain.

However, there are two alternative hypotheses that do explain why the republicans have not yet shifted to the split campaigning. The first is that the McCain staff is very afraid that if they separate, Palin will pull more people to her events than McCain will to his. Such an event would clearly be covered in the media and make McCain look weak. Obviously, the VP candidate should not pull more than the boss.   

The second alternative hypothesis is that the McCain camp is afraid to have Palin campaign by herself on the national stage at this point. It is clear that she can be very powerful when she is protected and in a controlled environment, but if she is on her own at her own events, the McCain campaign will have little control over what she says or how she answers questions.   

In both cases, these alternative hypotheses are good news for Obama. The longer McCain and Palin campaign together, the more ground they will lose as Obama and Biden each individually reach out to voters. Plus, McCain and Palin will have to separate at some point, and in terms of having something embarrassing happen, the farther it is from November 4th, the better off it will be for the campaign that makes the mistake.     

The Power of Lipstick

Well who would have thought that lipstick on a pig would cause such a ruckus? For those who are not following the constant news feed of the campaign, here is the back-story before we get into some analysis.   

In a recent speech (I believe it was yesterday), Obama said that McCain’s economic plan is like putting lipstick on a pig. The phrase was supposed to imply that one cannot make a bad plan better by simply dressing it up. Thus, Obama saying McCain’s economic plan was like putting lipstick on a pig was the equivalent of saying that McCain’s economic plan is worthless and tries to fix the economy by making only cosmetic changes.   

Obama’s comments immediately caused outrange in the McCain/Palin camp, but not exactly as one might expect. Rather than being upset that his economic plan was called into question, McCain responded that Obama’s remarks were an unjustified sexist attack on Palin.  

The connection, for those who are lost and wondering why the McCain campaign would react the way it did, is that during Palin’s acceptance speech, she said that the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom is that one wears lipstick. Thus, the McCain/Palin ticket reacted believing that the swipe was at Palin and not the economic plan.   

It will never be known what Obama intended, but to be honest, whether it was planned or not, the move by Obama was absolutely brilliant. Since the end of the republican convention, all that has been talked about is Palin and how strong she is, what a good selection she was, etc. She has been caught in a very powerful and positive media cycle. Since there hasn’t been anything else for the media to really cover since her speech, she has stayed in the news. However, McCain’s response seems to have ended that by giving the media something new to cover.   

Now, you might ask, why is this comment by Obama good? Because McCain’s response is completely irrational based on what was said. Palin’s name was never mentioned and Obama was talking about economic plans. It shows that McCain can’t talk about real issues, but would rather talk about unrelated aspects of the campaign. It feeds into the image of the republicans that the democrats are trying to build: republicans are out of touch, they have no new ideas, and they can only win by relying on platitudes.   

Luckily for Obama, McCain took the bait, and the resulting news cycle has done two important things. First, the post-convention positive coverage of Plain has ended. This is possibly the most important change the democrats could hope to effectuate. They had to find a way to shift the focus without attacking Palin directly because doing so would just add to the media frenzy. Second, they were able to once again show that McCain/Palin would rather talk about lipstick than real issues. Obama attacks an economic plan and McCain responds by calling the attack sexist. I think I can see the campaign ad already.   

Clearly, this is not going to be remembered as a key turning point in the election, and for the vast majority of people, it will remain completely unknown. But in reality, this little comment has once again shifted media focus back to Obama and gotten Palin’s name out of the positive news cycle. For this to really be a turning point, Obama now needs to capitalize on McCain’s mistake and really drive home that McCain would rather talk about lipstick than issues that matter to Joe America.   

As one final note on this story, McCain’s response becomes even more bizarre when you take into account that he was actually the first person in this election to make the comment that someone’s ideas were like putting lipstick on a pig. He was referring to a plan by Hillary Clinton in the early primaries. Don’t think that that aspect won’t make it into the news cycle as this story passes.