There have been several diaries of late referring to the effectiveness of keeping the lie meme going in the media. I myself recently wrote a diary on the issue. I believe this must not get lost in the mix.
Looking back on the 2000 race, Al Gore was positioned to win. The media lauded his run as "his race to loose." Sound familiar? And Gore did indeed loose.
Before jumping on me with "George stole it," to which I believe a strong case can be made, with all the indicators, the race should have been handly won by Gore.
So why did Al Gore loose? Well looking back on it, several researchers (taking into consideration the polling, the economy all being in Gore's favor) they have come to the conclusion it was about TRUST!
It seems that many have asked the same question. The Brookings Institute queries:
As riveting and historic as the weeks-long post-election struggle to determine the winner of the 2000 presidential contest has been, a prior question begs to be answered. Why didn't Vice President Al Gore win in a walk? The nation enjoys unprecedented peace and prosperity. President Bill Clinton's job approval ratings are consistently among the highest of any modern president. The Democratic party is near the center of the ideological spectrum and champions policies at the top of the public's agenda. How did we get to the point where a few hundred votes in Florida would determine who would be the next president of the United States?
I too was amazed that Gore did not "win in a walk." To tell you the truth, I did not follow the election closely that year believing that Gore would win handily. I did not hear of the "invention of the Internet" controversy until after the election. Is it possible that Gore lost the election because of the amplification of what was made out to be a lie?
To be fair the Brookings Institute advances other very probable possibilities for the loss.
First, and I am paraphrasing here, the economy was not in bad shape - making the potency of the economic agrument not that potent.
Second, Gore didn't run on the Clinton/Gore record instead he tried to distance himself from Clinton. Clinton had and has the highest approval ratings in modern history.
Finally,
The Bush campaign did an excellent job in portraying their candidate as an ideological moderate, blurring differences on issues with a natural Democratic advantage, reducing the perceived policy stakes in the election, and pressing a telling critique of Gore as an overbearing and untrustworthy candidate.
Link to original article: http://www.brookings.edu/...
Does the last possibility sound familiar? McCain, as of this moment, is basically running on the Democratic and Moderate platform. They are working hard to make Obama a untrustworthy and scary choice in the uncoming election.
So why are they doing this? Is there a precidence for doing so? Many studies and polls have been conducted on trustworthiness. In poll after poll and Monday-morning quarterback anaylsis, the American public votes ultimately not on issues (argh), but on a candidate's character.
new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says 55% of those surveyed consider honesty, integrity and other values of character the most important qualities they look for in a presidential candidate.
So how did Bush win re-election in 2004, well according to Ken Mehlman, per USA Today,
"Voters only look at policies as a lens into what type of person the candidate is," said Ken Mehlman, chairman of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. That campaign based its voter targeting and messaging strategies on the character-first theory.
Bush turned the campaign into a character issue. Kerry was framed as a flip-flopper (ie, Liar). Couple that with the fact that American's rarely change leaders during war time and you have a win for Bush. Bush's integrity ratings did not start to fall until:
His decline in the category of trust is widely attributed to the fallout from the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The drop is most prominent among people 30 to 39, suburban women, married women with children and people with household incomes in the $50,000 to $75,000 bracket.
Bush's collapse in the character test should serve as a warning to the 2008 presidential candidates. Character matters, voters say, and they already are sizing up the field.
Ken Davis gave us a glimpse into their very similar strategy when he said last week that this election was going to be about personalities. Cue the 527's. Huffington Post recently had an article about the gearing up on the Republican 527's. Any doubts Karl Rove is running this campaign?
Need more backup? Harvard did a great study on the ineffectiveness of Pollsters and the reason behind it. While the entire article is enlightening, when referencing the Dukakis run, the salient part for my diary is:
A more sophisticated news media analysis argues that character matters more
than campaign tricks: 'The Democrats . . . lost for a variety of reasons, but
principal among them was that they presented a candidate whose virtues did
not include plausibility as a president or, often, even an apparent feeling for
the nature of the job.
Here's a link to the entire study: http://gking.harvard.edu/...
So what is the point of all of this you might ask? Barack Obama has to crush McCain's character; not just tarnish it as Gore tried to do with Bush.
The "Liar, Liar, pants on fire" meme must continue and gone after hard. McCain must be seen as an unplausible candidate for office. Barack can't be seen as doing all the dirty work. The Democratic and Progessive 527's must take on the bulk of the work like the Swiftboaters. Hopefully, it's not to late.
Ad's like these help:
That's detestible you say? Yes, but necessary. Ask yourselves what we are fighting for.