Gloves coming off

With less than ninety days until the presidential election, the gloves have officially come off as John McCain and Barack Obama released their first negative ads of the general election battle. However, the question remains as to whether the attacks will swing the election in one candidate’s favor or turn-off independent minded swing voters who already harbor a profound disenchantment for the political process.
The first salvos in the political hunting season were fired by Senator McCain as he launched a string of negative advertisements casting Senator Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with average Americans. Using ads depicting Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, McCain attacked Obama for being “the biggest celebrity in the world,” with a campaign more focused on feeding his celebrity status than on solving problems. Obama fought back with ads painting McCain as George Bush reincarnate who will continue the culture of Washington politics.
McCain has seized on an effective line of attack to define Obama as out of touch and unprepared for the presidency. Now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, McCain’s new character assassination approach is reminiscent of the deadly media blitz that crippled Senator John Kerry in 2004. A grave departure from a candidate who once promised to run a clean campaign, the “new McCain” has not gone unnoticed.
A recent analysis made public by the Associated Press, found that 90 percent of ads Obama aired in the past two months have been positive but a third of ads by McCain have been negative. McCain, once well-regarded for his independent thinking and lack of party allegiance has taken a page out of the Bush, Cheney and Rove manual for making elections a referendum on your opponent, not a choice between two candidates. His strategy reminds me of the tragic but true joke about the politician who says, “My people, my people, there go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.” Now, as just another follower of politics as usual, McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” drifts farther down a road he swore never to travel.
Obama has responded not with attacks on character but on the company McCain keeps. In a recent counter-advertisement, Obama featured editorial critiques of McCain’s latest assault with a narrator who says, “John McCain, same old politics, same old policies.”
In another ad, Obama uses McCain’s own words against him, featuring a Fox News interview where he says, “The president and I agree on most issues…I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time.” Likening McCain to the unpopular President Bush, citing his support for Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, breaks for Big Oil and the war in Iraq portrays McCain as Bush III. With trends favoring the party out of power and distrust of the political establishment reaching heights not seen since Watergate, Obama’s ads use the winds of change to blow McCain off the path to the presidency.
Both candidates, however, must avoid all-out warfare. During the primaries, a record number of voters flocked to the polls. Nevertheless, the electorate is a fickle group and if the campaigns get too nasty, interest can turn to indifference in the span of one too many negative thirty-second commercials. Though just a few points ahead in most polls, Obama is light years ahead of McCain in a new Times Magazine poll when respondents were asked which candidate they find more likeable. Here, Obama received 65 percent to McCain’s 20 percent. Likeability is not an accurate measure of electability, but it can be used to predict which way undecided voters may turn on Election Day, particularly if voters are disillusioned with character attacks by McCain.
Despite his vast fame and the unbridled enthusiasm that accompanies his campaign stops, Obama is still relatively new on the national scene, presenting Republicans with an opportunity to shape his image. They should be wary or risk incurring the wrath of an electorate starving for a different kind of politics and eager to feed off hope and change. Conversely, Obama’s message that a vote for McCain is a vote for four more years of George Bush will not endanger his likeability advantage and reconciles well with his campaign’s theme of change.
With scores of political consultants focusing on what the campaigns’ responses will be to each new ad, I am intrigued by how the voters will respond. Will they be so disappointed with politics as usual that they stay home on Election Day, or will they be moved to fulfill their responsibility as citizens through the peaceful revolution that is our electoral process? I hope for the latter but would not be surprised by the former.
News & Notes:
While the race between Republican incumbent Senator Serphin Maltese and likely challenger, City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo Jr., hasn’t reached the heights of acrimony of the presidential contest, it is certainly heating up as of late, with both sides battling hard for a seat that could be among the few to decide control of the State Senate.
Addabbo’s campaign has been bolstered by a surge of Democratic Party operatives and the support of Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, who pledged to spend at least $1 million on the race.
Maltese, who has already spent $400,000 on television advertisements, has also received $200,000 in cash from the GOP and the support of new Majority Leader Dean Skelos.