Clinton Obama Campaign: Negative Campaign Or Political Reality?

When Senator Hillary Clinton’s “change you can Xerox” line bombed bigtime while debating 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination rival Senator Barack Obama we wrote about this which discussed an article listing five reasons why negative campaigning was losing its punch.

Now, in light of Clinton’s prolific use of this kind of campaigning and how it has helped pitchfork her to political victories and high political polls, let’s give you a nice, big, fat NEVER MIND!

Clinton’s fast-paced campaign barrages against Obama, the political dividends that the well-timed and coordinated attacks are yielding, the fact that it has sometimes knocked Obama in some cases visibly off-stride, and its impact on completely negating the earlier conventional wisdom (that Clinton might as just as well get prepare to pack her bags, take the duct tape off Bill Clinton’s mouth and go home) all underscore a point: negative campaigning works, and it’ll be around in full force for a while.

At least until the confrontational, divisive Baby Boomer generation passes from the scene.

And Obama, who burst on the American political scene vowing to run a campaign that would finally seek to bring people together and discard the politics of personal attack and personal destruction, now has to decide whether to go negative (counter Clinton’s attacks and get the Clinton camp on the defensive) or try to rise above it all by reminding voters that he believes it’s a new era and time to cast aside personal and denomization politics.

To negative campaign, or not to negative campaign: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of Hillary’s persistent attacks,
And by opposing end them — or negate the original premise of my campaign?

Obama’s problem: the bottom line is that his campaign’s original premise runs counter to the current political Talk Radio culture. Independent voters and many young people may be (and are) fed up with search-for-a-weakness-and-destroy and put-’em-on-the-defensive-until-they-crack style politics.

But American political culture is now set up to operate that way.

The original Obama premise has hit hard American political reality. And some of us who’ve had enough of divisive, angry, personal attack politics by politicians of any party or ideology are concluding: in the end the political reality may win. Somehow, some way, in the end the political realist will win.

The fact is, negative campaigning is not new and has been a hallmark of American campaigns for more than 200 years.

What has changed is the vast array of people who can now make big money via the art and technology of attack, and divide and rule: from political consultants, to campaign pollsters to talk radio hosts (on both sides).

What’s changed is how quickly a campaign can be put on the attack, hit with a sudden charge and have to explain it nearly instantaneously to reporters and bloggers.

What’s changed how the news cycle has morphed into the a mega-quick talk radio, Internet, You Tube text-messaging news cycle. Campaigns hit with unflattering reports, charges from opponents, a major blunder have to be ready to respond immediately.

But, in the case of Obama, how should — and can — he respond?

Forget whether you’re left, right, conservative, or Democratic or Republican. Obama came on the scene and said something many people on both sides had wished: Isn’t it time for a new generation and a new way of politics –where we do a campaign that debates issues facing the country and tries to bring people together? Isn’t it time for a candidate to try and aggregate interests and build consensus versus become focused on fixated on personalities and “GOTCHA!” issues?

For years many have decried negative campaigning, so here was their chance. Wouldn’t it be shunned?

Actually, it has returned with a figurative and literal vengeance — and it works. And those who don’t believe the Democrats will face it should note that GOP Presumptive nominee Arizona Senator John McCain is now being advised by President George Bush’s top political operatives.

But Obama isn’t a saint or a flawless candidate: in fact, there is a growing belief that he has at times not put enough specifics into his campaign. Its structure (hope and change theme, organizational on the ground effort, Internet fund raising capabilities) but some have felt at times its content has been lacking.

Writes Robert Novak:

This week, Obama lent credence to longtime claims by the Clinton camp that the young challenger would melt under Republican heat. Now he must face weeks of struggle against a revitalized Clinton, and there’s no sign when it will end.

A month ago, before the Obama boom really began, his number-crunchers plotted a probable outcome wherein Clinton would win both Ohio and Texas on March 4 and still fall short of a delegate majority at the convention. To avoid carnage in Denver, Democrats have been telling me for weeks that a majority of delegates would somehow align themselves behind whichever candidate has the momentum.

But who has the momentum? Clinton will claim it, particularly if she wins in Pennsylvania, which would give her every major state except Illinois. But Obama will point to his advantage in the number of states and delegates won. A showdown in Denver may be unavoidable.

In fact, the Denver convention seems to be headed towards THIS.

Meanwhile, hold onto your seats. Consider the Democratic negative campaigning a mere foreshadow of the upcoming ugly campaign between McCain and Clinton or Obama.

But it is the accepted way of doing things, and that’s the whole way the system is set up (if you want to win).

HERE’S SOME OTHER MEDIA REACTION TO THIS ISSUE:
–Andrew Sullivan:

My view is still that Obama should not go negative. His surrogates and supporters should - especially those of us who remember the Clintons’ sleazy, polarizing past. But he does need to become more aggressive and more direct. I should add: asking for the Clintons to release their tax returns is not negative. Pointing out that Clinton has very little experience in foreign policy is also not negative. It’s simply true. One way of not going negative while being aggressive would be to explain, along the lines of this post, why the Clintons represent the past and the Washington establishment; why they actually mean a third term of Rovism. He has to stop hoping that his veiled references to Rove-Morris politics somehow sink in with people, without spelling it out. He needs not just to resist the Clintons’ tactics, but to expose them. And show them as the bankrupt, irrelevant diversion that they are.

–Red State:

Mrs. Clinton, for her part, well understands the value of power. In the pursuit of power, her ability to shift gears as the need arises is nothing short of Protean. She’ll go from soft-and-cuddly to weepy to the woman-who-would-presumably-push-the-nuclear-button-at-3-AM, all in the blink of an eyelash. Such shape-shifting is easy when all of your shapes are substance-free chimeras.

….In enterprise sales, you have to take an intelligent approach to the customer’s problem, and show her why your product addresses it more effectively than your competition’s product. You have to prove that doing business with you and your company is not risky, and you have to demonstrate unequivocally that you can and will follow through on your promises. (And of course, you have to make this case to her over lunch in the kind of restaurant she can’t afford on her corporate vice-president’s salary.)

In short, you have to have substance. That’s the box Obama is in. He can’t go negative on Clinton because his whole campaign is based on rejecting that kind of selling. But he’ll have a hard time closing the deal because he has nothing to sell in the first place.

–TimesOnline:

It all worked, of course. She won the big prizes of Texas and Ohio, and critically, according to exit polls, she won by a two to one margin among the large numbers of voters who said they made up their minds in the last few days of the campaign.

To be sure, she was helped by Mr Obama, perhaps reeling under the deluge of household plumbing, showing his first signs of wilting.

…The danger, I think, for Mr Obama is that the kitchen sink volley of the last week has revealed a central truth about the Democratic contest: she wants it more. In politics, it’s not necessarily the better person who gets the top job, but the one who is really, really desperate for it and willing to go to any lengths to get it.

For Mrs Clinton - and for her momentarily quiet husband - this is it. This is the alpha and omega of their existence; the sacred mission at the heart of their life’s journey. They will do anything to get there. Mr Obama has time on his side - at only 46 he will be a leader of the Democratic party for 20 years or more.

–Dick Polman:

Therefore: advantage, Hillary. She has been portraying herself as a “fighter,” somebody who knows to do what it takes to win. If her people want to rumble in a back alley on her behalf, that’s fine with her. But Obama has been promising a “new politics” of civility, which means that he can’t sanction back-alley rumbles without losing some of his luster and compromising his core principle. Indeed, he’s on record as vowing to sack any underlings who talk trash about the opposition.

Hence, the Obama conundrum. If Hillary pulls a knife on him, and he refuses to slash back, can he win over the lunch-bucket Pennsylvania voters who yearn for a fighter? On the other hand, if he does meet her in the alley, can he outfight such a seasoned street pugilist? Either way, this looks a bit like what the military specialists refer to as asymmetrical warfare.

–Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey:

Even then, it wouldn’t have mattered if Obama had handled the negative campaigning with any kind of aplomb. Instead, his campaign made a serious unforced error over NAFTA and essentially got caught in a series of lies over their outreach to Canadian diplomats. That undermined Obama’s political integrity, his greatest asset. He also got caught up in the expected media feast of the Tony Rezko trial, an opporunity for the press to look a little more like journalists than hagiographers.

And how did Obama react? He blew up during a Texas press conference heavily attended by Chicago journalists. He stormed off after only eight questions regarding the contacts between his campaign and Canadian diplomats over NAFTA and the Rezko trial. The national press had already been grumbling about his insularity, and Obama gave them an excuse to write reams of material about it, Rezko, and the NAFTA dance.

In short, Obama has exposed himself as a seriously inexperienced and flawed candidate. He hasn’t really been tested until now, and the glass jaw he showed in the first few days of the real bout must have the party establishment worried about a lengthy battle against either Hillary or McCain. Against both, he may soon flounder — and that slim lead in pledged delegates will not present much of an obstacle to bypassing him in Denver.

Cagle Cartoon by Sandy Huffaker