Obama in a Box -- Cross-Examination as (Brilliant) Campaign Strategy

Before I was a teacher, I was a lawyer.  A litigator.  I only practiced law for a few years, so most of my work was behind-the-scenes stuff -- writing briefs and pleadings, filing and responding to motions, gathering evidence, propounding and responding to discovery requests. I didn't have many high-profile in-court moments; those are usually reserved for more senior attorneys in the firms I worked for.

But I did learn a few things about how to effectively cross-examine a witness.  And over the past few days, I've noticed an almost foolproof cross-examination strategy that the Clinton campaign is using to try to cripple Obama's candidacy.

Background Information on Cross-Examination (Skip if you're a Lawyer)

There are two main types of examination of witnesses.  The initial, "direct" examination is when an attorney asks questions of his or her own witness.  The witness is someone on the same side as the attorney, and the attorney's goal in this phase of the questioning is to elicit the information known to the witness so the judge or jury can hear it.  The questioning is open-ended, phrased to provide merely a jumping-off point for the witness's story.  The attorney is not allowed to try to frame the witness's answer (if they do attempt that, it is called "leading the witness," and it is against the rules).

Cross-examination occurs after the direct examination.  This is when the opposing attorney gets to go back over the topics covered in the direct.  Because the witness is assumed to be "hostile" (negatively disposed toward the case the cross-examiner is trying to make), attorneys are given much more leeway to "lead" a witness on cross-examination.  

So, for example, a question on direct might be, "Ms. Jones, what if anything did you see as you were driving home on the evening of January 23, 2008?"  On cross, the same witness might be asked instead, "Ms. Jones, as you were driving home on the evening of January 23, 2008, did you see the plaintiff run a red light at the intersection of Elm and South 3rd Street?"

Cross-Examination As Campaign Strategy

Success in cross-examination often depends on being able to frame the questions so rigidly that it forces the witness to say something they don't want to say.  One of the most effective techniques is to structure the questioning so that the witness has no choice. Not because the witness is necessarily going to answer honestly, but because whatever answer the witness gives will benefit the cross-examiner's case. A variation on "Have you stopped beating your wife?"  

Yesterday, as I fumed with rage at Clinton saying Obama was "whining" about the debate, it hit me, with crystal clarity, what the Clinton campaign has been doing by hurling all the "gates" at Obama in recent weeks.  The trap has been perfectly, cunningly set, and it can be baited and sprung an infinite number of times.  It will work equally well for any filth thrown at Obama, whether by Clinton, McCain, or the media.  

Obama is in the witness box, being cross-examined by Clinton.  Politics, like trial practice, most definitely ain't beanbag.

Here's how it works:
There are basically* three possible ways Obama (or anyone else) can respond to the kind of slime being flung at him.  We've seen all three over the course of the campaign.

First, he can essentially ignore it.  He can trust that his appeal to the voters' "better angels" will stand him in good stead, without his having to stoop to the gutter politics that he detests and is trying to move us beyond.  

He tried this approach for a while, until the frequency of the attacks ratcheted up to a point where both his supporters and his detractors were saying, "When is he going to fight back?  He's acting like a wimp!  Is he tough enough to take on the Republicans in the GE?  Can this guy throw a punch?  I want someone in the White House who will fight for their goals and for us!  Hillary is a fighter; that's what we need."

The second option is to fight fire with fire.  This was his next approach.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  They wanna see me fight, OK, I'll show them I'm capable of fighting.  I was proud of my candidate because even when he moved into this "Phase II" of slime response, the slime he threw was still less toxic, more principled, lower-key than the slime he was being subjected to; and it was often delivered with humor.  But he did get in some punches.  

Predictably, Clinton's attack dogs began comparing him to Rove, and the national scuttlebutt was -- "Ha!  What a hypocrite!  Look how fast his 'principles' evaporate when he's faced with the roughness of a REAL political campaign! Anyone with EXPERIENCE would have known this is how politics is played and wouldn't have been so naive.  What a maroon."

The third strategy, which he has employed during and since the debate, is to simply name what is happening.  To speak the truth that the media and the Clinton campaign are practicing the politics of distortion, distraction and destruction, hindering constructive political dialogue.  This has earned him the accusation of "whining."  Once again, the narrative is that he isn't tough enough to take it like a man (like Hillary).

And so we see the perfection of her plan.  All she has to do is keep hurling slime.  The more slime she hurls, the more opportunities for him to be labeled with one of these three criticisms to denigrate his response (or lack thereof):

1.  He's a wimp.

2.  He's a hypocrite and/or naive.

3.  He's a whiney little baby not equipped for the rigors of a national campaign.

But as I said in the intro, the plan is almost foolproof.  The perfection of her plan hasn't panned out in its execution.  Any other opponent, in any other year, would have been utterly annihilated by now. But while her strategy has had some deleterious effects on Obama's candidacy, those effects have not been unmixed.  There are two things she didn't count on:

First is that, as Obama recognized long ago, a large portion of the American electorate has become so disillusioned with the way politics is played in this country that they have risen up in defiance, declaring with conviction and passion, "NOT THIS TIME!"  Her tone-deafness to this deeply felt passion has ensured that as she hammers him, her own campaign feels the negative effects almost as keenly as his campaign, and sometimes even more so.

Second is the candidate himself. Yes, his response has varied.  Yes, he has been forced to some extent into playing her game. But in his reluctance, in his restraint, in his preference for humor over screed, in the honesty of his responses, in his continuing to take opportunities to show her respect even when she is trashing him, millions of us have recognized in him a brand of integrity that has been too long absent from Washington.  Yes, we have responded, you can tarnish him, but you can't take away the inherent luster.  He isn't you, Hillary, and we are smart enough to tell the difference.

With any luck, this will all be moot in less than 48 hours.
-------------------------------------

*I said "basically," because there is in fact a fourth strategy that he has used effectively: to completely re-frame the context in which the slime is generated.  We saw this with the racism speech.  In a perfect world, with unlimited time and a media that does not subsist almost solely on soundbites, I believe this would be Obama's favored approach.  But it is an approach that requires extensive time, reflection, and media coverage to succeed, and the realities of the campaign make it non-viable as a primary response technique.