The Winning Strategy for Barack Obama: Turn Hillary Clinton into a Caricature Without Appearing Nasty

February 17, 2008 
Category: Keys to Victory

Barack Obama’s camp has, for the most part, shown a striking inability to take full advantage of the many weaknesses that have transpired from Hillary Clinton’s own campaign rhetoric. Nowhere has this inability been more evident than in the first one-on-one debate that opposed the presidential hopefuls at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. Hillary Clinton clearly won this debate, not because she was superior, but because Barack Obama played too much of the nice guy and, as a result, failed to seize the various moments that could have allowed him to pulverize his opponent and, concomitantly, impress the American audience with his conviction and strong belief in the idea of change that he champions. For Barack Obama to appear as a credible potential president of the United States of America, he will need, in future debates and on the campaign trail, to hammer his ideas with a conviction at least equal in tone to the type of assertive and confident tone used by Hillary Clinton, a tone that tends to give her an edge in one-on-one debates.

My analysis is that the best moments of Hillary Clinton during the January 31 debate in California were also her weakest ones. Those are the moments which, if exploited correctly, would have allowed Barack Obama to achieve what most people still do not believe he can do: beat Hillary Clinton convincingly in a televised, one-on-one debate. Yet, this task would be relatively easy for Barack Obama if he were willing to take the risk of being a bit more aggressive in his assertion of his convictions as well as in the way he draws the contrasts between himself and Hillary Clinton. Let us be reminded of the fact that the higher dose of calculated aggression demonstrated by Barack Obama during the January 21 debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, served him very well. For the first time, he showed some spine and willingness to go toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton on a number of issues. In the expectations game, each time Barack Obama, the obvious debate underdog, will hold his ground against Hillary Clinton, he will be perceived as the winner. It is this same expectations principle that allowed George Bush to come out as the perceived debate winner against Democratic smart men such as Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 in some of the televised confrontations they had during the campaign process. By simply doing better than expected, Barack Obama will become the winner in the eyes of most people.

As far as substance is concerned, it is true that Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric often gives her the edge because she is often able to lay out the issues in a way that sounds convincing and masterful. She is generally perceived as someone who knows the issues well. By contrast, Barack Obama’s rhetoric often comes out as “vague,” “idealistic” and even too out of touch with the real down-to-earth issues that Americans are facing today. But this “Hillary advantage” is really not difficult to understand. When she speaks, she backs her ideas with concrete examples and economic figures and statistics that lend to her rhetoric a dose of realism and groundedness. What Obama needs to do, then, is to build into his ideology and discourse of hope concrete examples as well as concrete statistics. This will allow him to come out as in control of the issues as well. When Obama, for instance, talks about poverty in America, all he needs to do is memorize a few key figures and statistics that he can throw around in support of his case. Doing this systematically for every subject addressed during the debates and on the campaign trail will go a long way creating the impression, as it does with Hillary Clinton, that he also is in command of the issues.

The next round of campaigning and voting in must-win states such as Wisconsin (Feb. 19), Ohio and Texas (March 4), and Pennsylvania (April 22) is so crucial for both candidates that Barack Obama, who until very recently was still the underdog, must outperform Hillary Clinton, especially when it comes to debate as well as campaign trail confrontations.

And he will need a dose of political realism. When it comes to American politics, practice has shown that the Republicans are much more efficient at winning elections than the Democrats. This is because the Republicans have excelled in two important areas: they have, on the one hand, masterfully succeeded in turning their Democratic opponents into mere caricatures, and, on the other, have pragmatically understood that in order to win elections, they must turn political confrontation into a bloodbath. This is why George Bush, with his simpler rhetoric, was able to undo intellectual monsters such as Al Gore and John Kerry in successive presidential contests in 2000 and 2004 respectively. One was caricatured as “too stiff,” the other as a “flip-flopper”. These characterizations, among other masterfully-crafted ones, never left Gore and Kerry. No matter what they did or said in attempt to redress these perceptions, they eventually lost the election on their being perceived exactly as the Republicans had painted them. This is what I call the “caricature principle” or “political caricaturing.” Political caricaturing is different from character assassination in that it bases its characterizations on those visible (physical, discursive and/or ideological) aspects and stances of a candidate that, once deconstructed and reengineered through the prism of derogation, are subtly transformed into traits of ridicule. It turns a serious political argument into a ridiculous one, and as a result, leads to a derogatory perception of the candidate whose argument or stance is so caricatured.

While mastery, clarity and knowledge of the issues is important to voters, it seems, however, that American elections are often won on impressions, looks and rhetoric rather than substance. The winner is often the one who can best caricature both the strengths and weaknesses of his/her opponent. At times, one needs to almost become childish in rhetoric in order to win. Simply look at how John McCain, during his February 12 victory speech following his win in Washington, DC, Virginia and Maryland,  attempted to reduce Barack Obama’s formidable speech rendering and rhetoric into one single, deriding sound bite: He called it “a platitude.”

For Barack Obama, the strategy for winning debates and campaign slogan battles does not consist in becoming nasty. Rather, it is about adopting a strategy that will take advantage of Hillary Clinton’s own slogans and words, and subtly turn them against herself through the prism of caricature without appearing to be nasty. In boxing, this is called “counterpunching”. In other words, Barack Obama, who has a clear advantage in the “likeability” contest, does not need to attack Hillary Clinton in ways that are too obvious. On the contrary, he simply needs to wait for Hillary Clinton to attack him, and once she does, he needs to respond blow for blow, and with devastating poignancy. At the game of caricaturing, Barack Obama is more likely to win than lose because he has more upsides than Hillary Clinton. He is also shielded by the exceptional novelty and excitement which he brings to the political scene.

There are, currently, four aspects of Hillary Clinton’s campaign that can readily qualify for caricaturing:  

1. On Hillary Clinton’s “Cleaning Up After the Bushes” Slogan

During the January 31 debate in California, Hillary Clinton scored big when she rekindled her already overused campaign slogan, “It did take a Clinton to clean after the first Bush, and I think it might take a second one to clean up after the second Bush.” While this was indeed what John Mccain would call a “platitude”, it nevertheless became Hillary Clinton’s best line of the night. Barack Obama, unfortunately, missed a perfect opportunity to reverse the balance by stealing this very same line from her and score an even bigger winner for the night. A perfect debate and campaign strategy for Obama, therefore, would be to develop a strong sense of what French rhetoricians call “sens de la répartie” (sense of, or instinct for, repartee), that is, the ability to be on the outlook for such Hillary zingers as the “cleaning up after the Bushes”, and find a way to immediately and instinctively turn them against herself. This is easy to do because Hillary is always on the attack during the debates. All Obama has to do is wait for her to throw one and counterpunch accordingly. Here is, for instance, what Obama could have done on the night of January 31 to steal the spotlight from Hillary Clinton:

OBAMA would have won the zinger battle if he had said:

“You know, there is an African proverb that says that “one does not give a new name to an old dog.” My take on the whole issue of judgment is that Hilary showed a regrettable lack of judgment by siding with George Bush and John McCain on the Iraq war. Not only can she not win an election against McCain on this type of record, she is also partly, by virtue of her vote, responsible for the mess that the Iraq war has become because she is among those who blindly authorized it in the first place. I had the same type of evidence, and read the same types of documents on the Iraq war as Hillary did, yet I showed better judgment in the face of the exact same evidence. Secondly, let it never be forgotten that the Clinton years, just like the Bush years, were among the most divisive years this nation has ever known. This is to say that despite the years of economic boom that the country witnessed under Bill Clinton, America was as divided then as it is divided today under George W. Bush. America has, in fact, experienced a very gruesome 16 years during which our presidents have divided us instead of uniting us. So, I strongly disagree with Hilary’s contention that it will take another Clinton to clean up after the second Bush. What I think is that it will take an Obama to clean up not only after the Clintons, but also after the Bushes.”

Note: It is not too late for Barack Obama to unilaterally come back to this zinger in future debates and campaigning. In other words, whether Hillary uses this again or not is inconsequential. Obama can use this line of discourse to his benefit at any time during his campaign and score great points over his opponent. The earlier he does this, the better, as this line will go a long way nullifying the advantage Hillary Clinton may have had on this exchange in the past.

2. On Hillary Clinton’s 35 Years of Experience

During several debates, Obama systematically failed to discredit Hilary’s so-called 35 years of Experience. While Barack Obama did begin to use a perfect counter to Hillary’s “experience” line by proposing his own “it is more important to be right from day one,” he still did not manage to remain sensitive to Hillary’s claims and respond accordingly. Despite Wolf Blitzer’s attempt at getting Barack Obama out of his shell, Obama resisted the appeal. I propose that, in future ads, debates or even on the campaign trail, Barack Obama reinforce the contrasts between himself and his opponent, and start to discredit her experience claims on a much more systematic way. A line such as the following will go a long way doing so:

OBAMA would say:

“Hillary is keen on boasting her 35 years of experience as if the fact of being president of the United States depended solely on the number of years one has spent in the hallways of Congress or the White House in Washington. As far as I am concerned, neither age nor experience qualify one for the job of president of the United States. If this were the case, George Bush and Dick Cheney would never have taken us to fight a war in Iraq that took away the resources we needed for hunting down Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What qualifies one for the job of president is judgment, not experience. By making a bad call on something as important as the Iraq war, Hillary demonstrated that she was not ready to be ready on day one. Why? Because for the president of the United States, it is more important to be right from day one than to be ready to make the same mistakes over and over again from day one. I had the same documentary evidence that Hilary had, and based on this evidence, I made the right call. It is too easy for Hillary to claim that she was misled by George Bush. My argument is that if you allow anyone to mislead you on issues as important as the Iraq war was for this nation at the time I voted against it, you are not ready to be president of the United States. A president needs to be able to get the truth from his operatives and thus avoid being misled. He or she needs to ask the tough questions to his entourage and make clear to all that he will not tolerate any kind of cooking of the books in order to take the country of questionable adventures. Why? Because, to be a good president, one needs more than experience; one needs sound judgment. One needs the judgment that will allow him or her to tell when his entourage is not being straight with him. He needs to have the judgment to fire those amongst his staff who are going to be playing political games with the American people.

But there is another problem with Hillary’s argument about her 35 years of experience and her claims of success. As far as I know, the most noticeable thing that Hillary did during her 8 years as the wife of the president in the White House was her attempt to reform the health care system in this country. And we all know that this single most important thing failed utterly. Although she is claiming nowadays that she is in the “solutions business,” I have a hard time seeing how such a devastating failure stands as a solution. What I see is that she failed. Why? Because Hillary, instead of bringing Americans together as a way of working out a compromise and get something minimal done, she chose to work behind closed doors with special interests and, as a result, ended up antagonizing and dividing the American people over an issue that could have begun to find a solution if we had all worked together to secure a plan that was acceptable to all. Sometimes, it is smarter to get something done than nothing at all. This is why I am a bit surprised when Hillary claims that she can be more successful at delivering universal health care to the American people than I, especially after she failed the first time around. This is why it is important for us to ensure that real change occurs in Washington because the principles of business as usual could lead us to years of divisions again, and I am not sure the American people are willing to go through that again.

This is also why I believe we need a different kind of approach and a different kind of White House. We need a president who will not divide but unite, we need a president who will be able to reach out to the American people, be they Republicans or Democrats, black, white, Hispanic or Asian, men or women, and bring them together into an agenda for change that will resolve the major issues that America is facing today: the Iraq war, terrorism, the issues of social security, poverty, the economic instability, the mortgage crisis, the insurance challenges, health care reform. It is important for Americans to have a president who will mean what he says and say what he means, a president who will not mislead just to win. We have had, in the past, too many presidents who have misled the American people, especially in the past 16 years of American presidencies. I am not sure we want to go back to that. Change is what the American people want, not a return to the old ways, the ways of the past, the ways of the politics of division and personal destruction, the ways of looking in the eyes of the American people and misleading them. Change is what the Americans want, and I decided to seek their votes because I want to become their champion and enlist them on my agenda for change and for new ideas.”

3. On the “New Voice” of Hillary Clinton

After her surprise win in New Hampshire on January 8, Hillary committed the “mistake” of saying that she had now finally found her “own voice”. Unfortunately, the Obama campaign systematically failed to exploit this weakness. Obama needs to go after this weakness “big time”. I propose a line of incursion that would sound like so:

OBAMA would say:

“It is important for a candidate for the presidency of the United States to be consistent in order to reassure the American people about his/her ability to look them in the eyes and tell them the truth. We have seen too many shifts in position on the part of some of us during this campaign, and that is not a good sign. More than anything during this campaign, we need to be straight with the American people. We want to make sure that they can trust their leaders again. The other day after her New Hampshire win, we heard Hillary declare with emotion that she has finally found her own voice. I was a bit surprised to hear that because I thought she had been speaking with her own voice since she began to prepare for this 2008 campaign several years ago. But even after she found her own voice in New Hampshire, Hillary seems to have lost it again because, since then, she has changed her electoral message so many times that I have a hard time knowing which or whose voice she is using now to speak to the American people. At times, she even seems to choose what types of American people she needs to talk to in order to ensure that she can win an election.  She campaigns as if these were not the United States of America, where we must be sure to never divide Americans according to whether they or Black or White, Hispanic or Asian, gay or lesbian, Christian or Muslim, citizens or naturalized citizens, from blue states or red states. Hillary has now gone from boasting as the “experience” candidate to boasting as the “change” candidate, then she moved from the “change” candidate to becoming the candidate who makes things happen instead of just talking about them. She now tells us that she is in the “solutions business” even as she failed to solve the issue of health care when she was in the white house for a whole 8 years. And along the way, she seems to have lost her voice again.

Now, let me ask you, my friends, does this mean that prior to New Hampshire, Hillary did not speak with her own voice? This is important, and we must start asking the tough questions: does this mean that, during all the months of campaigning that Hillary invested in these primaries prior to New Hampshire, she was not speaking with her own voice? Does that mean she was speaking with the voice of someone else? My analysis is really simple: when you change your voice several times mid-way during an election, that can only mean two things: either you were not being straight with the American people, and you simply were ready to say anything in order to win, or you are not running as the champion for change.

That’s why we must, as Americans, be careful how we elect our president. Some, in order to win, have not hesitated to try and scare us: they have said that it is all about experience, and that we must not risk the fairy tale of putting an inexperienced guy in the White House, that we should not roll that risky dice. Yet we did not see the benefit of this experience when it mattered the most. George Bush and his very experienced Dick Cheney failed the test of age and experience by sending our troops to fight a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized. And Hillary Clinton, with all her experience, naively sided with them on that. It is too easy to say, as she is claiming today, that she voted for the war simply because at the time she did not know all that she knows today. It is also too easy to discover one’s voice mid-way in the course of an election, and change the tune of that voice according to the type of audience that one is talking to. This is why I strongly believe that we, as Americans, must avoid going back to the days of divisive politics, the days of misleading the American people. We must, not only in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, but also during the general election, send a strong message to those who want to divide us again using the politics of fear and division that the time for Americans to learn to work together has come again. And this is why I am running for president of the United States of America.”

4. On the Divisive Potential of the Clintons Back in the White House

Something Barack Obama has also systematically failed to do during the debates is to remind Americans of how divided America was under the Clintons. While pointing directly at Bill Clinton’s moral misgivings with women during his presidential tenure would be in very bad taste, it would not however hurt Obama to throw a few innuendoes out there that would remind people of those years of the Clintons in the white house as years of staunch divisions among the American people. And this is what, in part, explains the loss of both Congress and the White House by the Democrats after Clinton left office in January 2001. It is certainly important for Barack Obama to give credit to the time of prosperity that the Clinton era was. But it is also important to very subtly remind Americans of the need to avoid going back to the politics of division that crippled the nation during the impeachment process. Obama could use a line such as the following:

OBAMA would say:

 ”There are people in this country who want to divide us again. As I have always said, this race is not about men vs. women, blacks vs. whites, Latinos vs. Asians, blue states vs. red states, young vs. old. It is about the United States of America and making America believe again. We have, in this country, witnessed what the politics of division and personal destruction have done to us as a nation. America has been a divided nation for the past 16 years of presidencies because of politicians that entrenched themselves into the politics of division and personal destruction. The politics that made us lose sight of our moral duties and obligations towards the American people.

For 16 years, they divided us along political lines. For 16 years, they divided us along racial lines, gender lines and all the lines. They divided us by misleading us into believing that there is only a blue America and a red America, that there are no United States of America. There are, today, forces at play that are working in the dark trying to take America back to the days of division. We will not allow it. We, as Americans, have withstood the test of time and we proclaim that this is a new day, and this is a new time. Some people have brought the issue of race into the presidential competition in the hopes of dividing us again.

Our response is that, as Americans, we will not allow ourselves to be divided again. Some people, in order to divide us again, have brought the issue of gender into this race. Our response, as Americans, is that we will not allow ourselves to be divided again. My dear Americans, let us win this election as cleanly as possible. Let us not be drawn into the politics of division and personal destruction. We will not win this election using dirty tactics. From the start, we pledged to each other that we were going to change the way America does politics by bringing the nation together around new ideas and new ways. We will not, therefore, resort to the dirty politics that have divided this country in the past 16 years. We will not resort to saying just about anything in order to win. We will only say the right things in order to win. We would rather lose an election than lose our soul by misleading the American people once again.”

There are many more combinations of caricaturing elements than the four I have used in this paper. The idea was to show how, by using his opponent’s strengths as well as weaknesses, Barack Obama could subtly turn Hillary Clinton into some form of caricature and, as a result, score points during debates as well as on the campaign trail.

I believe that Barack Obama can manage to construct his political rhetoric around the above four ideas, and use them in very subtle ways each time he has the opportunity to do so during the debates as well as on the campaign trail. If he does, he will succeed in undoing the Hillary debate advantage and, probably, enlist more Americans into his agenda for change. Not doing so will basically be a way of accepting defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton and give her control over the electoral discourse and rhetoric. Just like in boxing, no one can win a fight being on the defensive. It has been clear over the past few weeks that this Democratic primary election is no longer really about the issues. If it were, Hillary Clinton would have pulverized Barack Obama well before the February 5 “Super Tuesday” primaries.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have practically-identical platforms and their differences are so minor that the Democratic competition has become more of a beauty contest than an election about ideological differences. The person who will win this primary will do so because he or she was able to raise the right kinds of doubts about the ability of the other to rule from day one, to stand for what he or she believes in, and to lead the American people towards a united country again, a country of hope, a country of big dreams and big aspirations. To win this competition, Barack Obama will need to show he has some spine by standing firmly up for the change he believes in, and this includes going toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton during the debates and on the campaign trail in order to prevent her from gaining momentum in the area of political rhetoric.

Barack Obama should also refrain from playing too much of the “nice guy” during the debates because this tends to allow Hillary Clinton control over the tone of the debate. Playing the nice guy basically means giving free reign her opponent who is then able to freely boast of her experience totally unchallenged.

Often times also, Barack Obama has appeared to be on the defensive each time Hillary Clinton has thrown an attack at him. This is evident in the charge Hillary Clinton threw at him during the Myrtle Beach debate in South Carolina on January 21. When, for example, Hillary Clinton said: “It is very difficult having a standup debate with you because you never take responsibility for any vote,” Obama did not have an answer

This is because Barack Obama tends to be on the defensive after such attacks and often does not appear to know how to come back at Hillary Clinton with an equivalent counterattack. Using immediate countermeasures in the form of appropriately gauged responses is important because it can take the minds of the listening audiences away from the devastating impact of the charges levied, especially if Barack Obama has no concrete answers for such charges.

Secondly, Barack Obama needs to be assertive and avoid shying away from his record. He needs to use a McCain strategy that seems to have worked well so far, that is, to never offer excuses, but to always take full (but intelligent) responsibility for his voting record. Obama needs not explain this record in defensive mode. Rather, he needs to offer a clear rationale as to why he voted one way or another. An answer of the following type will go a long way helping him escape many an embarrassment:

OBAMA could say:

“Yes, Hillary, I voted against that amendment and I am not going to stand here trying to play political games with the American people. Not only did I vote for it, I also continue to stand by my vote because Americans know what my convictions are, and they perfectly know I would not vote against an amendment that would be beneficial to the American people. The reason I voted against that Amendment was because it did not contain the types of provisions that would have made it failsafe for me and I wanted [this and that aspect] to be added to it. But let it be clear to all: we can all play this political game of trying to parse words and votes and attack each other on why we did, or why we did not, vote against such or such amendment or such and such bill, but I firmly believe that this is not the kind of politics that the American people want to see us engage in. It is important for me, as a Senator or presidential candidate, to stand firmly for what I believe in on the side of the American people. If this means some of my votes in opposition or in support of some bills run the risk of being misconstrued and misrepresented by my political opponents for political reasons, so be it. I stand by my votes because I know and the American people know that no matter which way I voted, it has always been because I believed that my stance with regards to the various issues would be beneficial to them. I am sure that, for example, when Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, she did not vote for it because she wanted American soldiers to go and lose their lives in a war that should never have been authorized. Using such a line of attack is not only cruel, but also irresponsible. I am convinced that Hillary did this because she deeply believed in the ability of her vote, however misguided, to secure the United States of America. There is, therefore, no reason for anyone to believe that I would act any differently. The job of politics is a hard job. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose in our attempt to do the job which the American people entrusted us with. I can certainly question my opponent’s lack of judgment in voting for the Iraq war, but what I will never do is question her motives. Doing so would be immoral, doing so would be unacceptable and I will never, ever resort to saying just about anything in order to win an election.”

One good thing that the Obama campaign has done very well recently is to never miss an opportunity to respond to Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad attacks. It is a good principle of electoral communication to always respond to attacks, especially those that are approved by the presidential candidates themselves. The Obama campaign did not just respond to these attack ads, they used them as a way of portraying Hillary Clinton as someone who will stop at nothing to win, and who will basically distort information in order to gain political advantage.

This strategy is good because it grounds itself on two important premises: the first is that Barack Obama should never initiate an attack ad. In this sense, he must always wait for Hillary Clinton to provide him with the ammunition he needs in order to portray her as desperate and resorting to attacks in order to win. The second is that it allows Barack Obama to subtly mount his own attacks on the back of Hillary Clinton’s own ads. The argument is that he is just defending himself and responding to Hillary Clinton’s irresponsible behavior. As such, the Obama side is able to achieve three winning goals: portray Hillary Clinton as a sore loser, put into question her honesty, and counter her “nasty” arguments with positive arguments that present Obama’s case in a much favorable light while discrediting Hillary’s.

Of course, now that Barack Obama has taken pleasure in smiling more and throwing out more jokes than he did earlier on, he is well on his way to becoming the perfect candidate not only for the Democrats, but also for America. This Democratic primary will be won on character, not the issues.

Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.

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