The meme among Democrats lately, particularly those who were never really all too sure about Sen. Obama's ability to take on the "vaunted" Republican war machine, is that Obama hasn't been hitting back hard enough.
I agree that he hasn't been hitting back very hard, but I believe he's playing Rope-a-dope.
More after the jump ...
For those not into boxing or too young to recall its origins, Rope-a-dope
is the now famous technique originally used by Muhammad Ali to defeat the bigger and arguably stronger George Foreman.
From wikipedia:
The rope a dope is performed by a boxer assuming a protected stance, in Ali's classic pose, lying against the ropes, and allowing their opponent to hit them in the hope that the opponent will become tired and make mistakes which the boxer can exploit in a counter attack.
Rope-a-dope is also commonly used to describe strategies in areas other than boxing, where one party purposely puts itself in what appears to be a losing position, and then becomes the eventual victor.
By holding back his most vociferous counterpunches against McCain's lies, Obama has set up a scenario in which McCain's pattern of lying has become not only obvious to all but the most obtuse, but a source of frustration for all who want McCain to be called out on those lies, including most especially, the media. By coming out only to refute of the lies on record, Obama has deftly begun given McCain and Palin the rope on which they will hang themselves. He's allowed them to interpret the polls, which actually show nothing more than a standard convention bounce, to mean that they are actually gaining ground. In doing so, he has lulled the Republican ticket into a false sense of security and allowed them to build around themselves an air of confidence that has led them to believe the same "Swift-Boat" tactics that worked against Kerry will work against Obama. He's put himself in a position of "looking" weak so that he could put them in a position of "feeling" strong. In such a stance, they are far more likely to underestimate Obama and the movement he's inspired. As some of Sen. Obama's previous opponents can attest, it's a dangerous, not to mention unwise, thing to underestimate the distinguished gentleman from Illinois.
By letting the McCain campaign spout the most obvious lies with only a dismissive rebuttal coming from his own campaign, Obama has also deftly drafted the media into a fight that they likely would not otherwise have joined. Had Obama slammed McCain hard a week ago, the media would simply have covered his response to McCain's "assertions". As it now stands, we see the media covering McCain's insistance on repeating known "lies." By not hitting back harder just yet, he has forced observers first to acknowledge that McCain is "lying," not "telling half-truths", or "embellishing" or "stretching the truth" or "misrepresenting the facts", but "lying." Obama has forced the media to call a spade a spade.
I suspect he will allow this to go on until the debates at which point he and the moderator will slam McCain for all of the falsehoods the McCain campaign has put forth since the General Election started. He'll be doing that, of course, in front of a much larger and more easily impressionable audience, one that, by then, will have only just started to pay real attention. And what defense will McCain be able to mount? "Well, if Sen. Obama had done what I suggest and appeared with me before the American people ..." blah, blah, blah! But by then, that assertion will be seen for what it and John McCain are -- tired! At that point, all of the lies and deceitful Karl Rove tactics used up to that point will serve Obama's singular original purpose, to expose John McCain for what he is, just another George Bush.