Jujitsu - a martial art developed around the principal of using an attacker's energy against him.
This is a short diary to put forward a proposal on how to respond to McCain's attacks against Biden.
For those who haven't seen the ad (and its hard to miss this morning) McCain has put out an ad showing two Biden clips, the first attacking Obama for his purported lack of experience back in the primary debates, and the second of Biden saying that he would run gladly run with McCain, since McCain is such a great guy.
The people on TV with the nice hairdos seem impressed with McCain's "rapid response," as represented by this ad.
Now I've been among those arguing that the Obama camp needs to do a better job of branding John McCain -- a better job of crystalizing the argument about why McCain would make a terrible president. I've argued the branding needs to be more consistent (not just a catalog of McCain gaffes) and more personal to McCain (I think we need more than the McSame meme -- people don't believe that anyone could really be as bad as George W. Bush).
Please see below the fold for a proposal on how the Obama campaign can use the attacks on Biden as an opportunity to further brand McCain.
Let me propose the following as a synthesis for what's wrong with McCain:
John McCain is a man who has sold his soul.
This organizing positioning works in a couple of ways:
- It enables the transition from the Obama campaign saying nice things about McCain's past heroism, to commenting more directly on McCain's current deficiencies.
- It provides a narrative to those voters out there who still, somehow, see McCain as a maverick or a moderate, to help them in moving toward Obama -- sure McCain might have looked like a moderate guy in the past (working with Feingold, getting his kneecaps broken by the Bushies, and flirting with John Kerry about the VP nod in 2004) but that McCain is dead. (its sad.)
- It is consistent with (and actually serves as an organizing theme for thinking about extending) the earlier attacks that have pointed out how McCain is a captive of lobbyists and the radical wing of the Republican Party -- which attacks have not registered with the voters we still need to move.
- It fits with the observation that McCain no longer seems to think for himself (or to even keep track of things like water rights in the west or the difference between Sunnis and Shias -- "my aides will get back to you on that").
The average voter may first have heard about McCain as a war hero (1970s - 1980s) or a moderate (1990s), but somewhere along the way, between the 30 years in Washington, the 7-12 houses, all the trips by private jet, having no one but corporate lobbyists for friends anymore, he lost his way -- transforming into the John Smeagol McCain you see today -- an ancient, damaged being who would literally do or say anything if he thought it would help him get "the ring."
So what is the jujitsu opportunity?
When the press ask Biden about his statement(s) describing what a great guy McCain is, I would propose the following be Biden's core response:
McCain was a respectable man -- that guy wouldn't have reversed himself on Bush's tax giveaway to the rich. That guy wouldn't have voted with the Bush Administration 100% of the time last year. That guy wouldn't have hired Karl Rove's people. That guy wouldn't have lobbyists for the Republic of Georgia writing his foreign policy positions. etc., etc.
This would actually be a huge win, as there is a chance to shift the conversation to just how far McCain has fallen, and away from the microscopic examination of Biden's (regrettably) long list of gaffes that otherwise threatens to dominate the next couple news cycles.
As for Biden blunting his previous attacks on Obama, how about the following:
"If you're running a political campaign against a younger guy, you automatically want to attack his experience. The thing is, with Obama, as I found out, as Hillary Clinton found out, and as the McCain campaign is finding out: the attacks don't stick. He's consistently shown better judgment -- from Iraq to the mortgage crisis -- than his rivals. And that's why he'll be the next President of the United States."
The most important point, though, is the need over the next several weeks to succinctly brand McCain into a hole that he can't slime out of. Particularly considering the mindset of voters who are still seriously considering McCain -- who must still buy more than a little of the moderate maverick branding McCain created for himself (with boatloads of pundit-help) in the 1990s -- establishing the dominant McCain narrative as that of a man who sold his soul is a pretty compelling fit with the need, and the evidence.