Here Comes The McCain/Palin Kitchen Sink: Obama Must Duck, This Way.

October 5, 2008 
Category: Keys to Victory, The Situation Room

Here we go again, with McCain planning a last-ditch effort, a sort of 29-day kitchen-sink blitz, aimed at unseating Barack Obama before the crucial November 4 vote. Various news reports, including the McCain campaign itself on various talk shows this Sunday, have all pointed to a new kitchen-sink strategy aimed at emphasizing Barack Obama’s past associations (Ayers, Wright, Rezko, etc.) with a view to questioning both his judgment and patriotism.

This move by McCain comes at the heels of various polls which, in the past two weeks, have tended to show Obama solidly gaining ground not only in national polls, but also in state polls. The Real Clear Politics average of all polls, as of this Sunday, shows Obama leading McCain by 5.9 percentage points on average (49.3% vs. 43.4%). The CNN Polls of Polls also has it 49% vs. 43% for Obama. Various states formerly considered battleground states (Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, etc.), have solidly moved into the Obama column, giving more paths to victory to Obama, and reducing McCain’s options. Even Florida, in the last few polls, has seemed to be leaning Obama’s way. And, as if this were not enough, the McCain campaign has now pulled out of Michigan, a battleground state that they were hoping to put into the McCain column. The last PPP poll shows Obama leading there by ten points, and, on the Real Clear Politics average of all polls conducted in the state since February, Obama leads there by seven points.

There is now a real sense of urgency in the McCain camp. Hence the desperation that has begun to show in that campaign in the last 24 hours. In fact, the kitchen sink has already started to fly.

Sarah Palin, for instance, did not hesitate, in a meeting held Saturday in Carson, California, to openly accuse Barack Obama of “palling around” with terrorists. She said Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists.” In a CBS interview this very Sunday, when confronted with an AP report that saw the Palin claims as tenuous, Palin responded, unmoved, that “the Associated Press is wrong,” and that “the comments are about an association that has been known but hasn’t been talked about, and I think it’s fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy’s living room.”

Folks, the battle is on, and McCain/Palin are going for the jugular.

For Obama, the danger here would reside in a return to the defensive stances that almost cost him the primaries during the Hillary Clinton days. Because Obama spent too much time trying to explain, respond, and defend himself against such frivolous charges, and very awkwardly at that, he ended up creating doubt about himself, therefore giving credence to what was, at best, a rumor, at worst, a smear.

Obama must learn a simple truth about rumors. If you try to respond, or even explain, a rumor, you allow the rumor to take on a life of its own. And because a rumor is always meant to put the victim in a defensive position that is both awkward and indefensible, it has the potential of turning into a controversy, and once it becomes a controversy, it can sink any campaign, even when the campaign is as well rounded as the Obama campaign. Kerry knows a thing or two about rumors and swift-boating.

Obama must also learn a truth about defense: the best defense is always, and has always been, a good offense.

Obama must therefore do something that he was not able to do successfully when confronted with similar attacks during the primaries. He must mount his own attack, not by defending himself directly against the rumors, but by using the rumors as an example of the types of weapons that a desperate man will use to attack his opponent. The goal here would be to belittle John McCain and show him to be a desperate man who will do anything to win, because he has lost all sense of honor.

As an example of the types of lines of attack that Obama must use, I propose the following text, which Obama can use on the campaign trail, in the debates and/or even in some ad on both TV and the Web.

OBAMA COULD SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS: “You can tell the face of desperation when you look at John McCain nowadays. Do you remember the olden days, when John McCain used to present himself as a man of honor who would rather lose an election than lose a war? Well, those days have long past, folks. Nowadays, we see him going all over America doing the exact opposite. His current behavior shows that he would rather lose his honor than lose an election. Don’t get me wrong. I used to respect John McCain. At the beginning of this campaign season, when McCain said he would like to clean up the way Washington does things, and promised the American people that he would not engage in negative campaigning at all this season, even I started to believe him, because I thought he was still the honorable John McCain that we had all grown to love and respect. Well, my friends, that John McCain is no more. Nowadays you see him in all corners of America frantically throwing the kitchen sink at me. Folks, it is really a sad moment, and a sad sight, for America, to see John McCain, the former self-proclaimed maverick, now engaging in the very negative methodologies that he once complained about when he ran against George Bush in 2004. John McCain reminds me of those films–have you seen one of those films, like Zorro–where Zorro is engaged in a sword fight with a villain? Or a Western movie where two cow boys are engaged in a pistol duel? Well, at first, the fight usually begins equally and honorably because the two fighters usually begin the fight using the same type of weapons: swords vs. sword or pistol vs. pistol. This usually means that they are trying to fight with equal chances of winning, having agreed to an honest and honorable duel. But something strange almost always happens in those fights. The hero always almost manages to disarm the villain by snapping the sword or gun out of the villain’s hand. After doing this, the hero almost never goes after his opponent for the kill. This is because the hero values honor and, therefore, will only fight in a way that is both fair and honorable. And so, out of magnanimity, the hero always tries to spare the life of his opponent by moving away and leaving the villain alone to meditate on his loss. But then, in almost all cases, the villain almost always tries to strike the hero in the back while the hero is turning away. He usually does this either by using a concealed knife or pistol, or by picking up the gun or sword from the ground in order to strike his opponent in the back, at a moment when he is not paying attention. That’s when, my friends, you can tell who amongst the two fighters has no honor. It seems to me that John McCain is now one of those villains who just cannot fight with honor using the weapons of truth and honesty that everybody has agreed upon. When he is down, John McCain gets desperate and, instead of fighting for the issues that concern Americans today, resorts to throwing a rotten and smelly kitchen sink at me. John McCain would rather debate about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton than about the American economy and the pains that Americans are going through trying to pay for gas and staying in their homes. America, let us tell John McCain that he can throw the kitchen sink all he wants, but the smell of personal attacks and lies he is throwing around at us will not change the fact that we now know who he really is: a man who would rather lose his honor in order to win an election. And he would rather be talking about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton than telling Americans what he intends to do for jobs, education, health care, gas prices and mortgages.”

Obama can then pivot to tell the American people that, this is precisely why he is running for President of the United States, because he wants to change the way Washington works, and do away with the backstabbing and the smelly kitchen sinks that have polluted American politics in the past eight-years of Bush/McCain policies and politicking. He can also add that he, Barack Obama, promised the American people that he would not be using negative campaigning in this election, that he has kept his word so far, and that he would rather lose an election than lose his honor. He must then say that he will fight John McCain with the truth, and that he will always respond to any negative campaigning by his opponent with the only weapon he has, that is, the truth that comes with dealing with the issues that Americans are facing today.

I believe this is the strategy which, in combination with the other many strategies we have recommended for Barack Obama in the past few months on this unofficial advisory site, will allow Obama to attack McCain’s character as a man without honor. If McCain is to win this election, he will win it by successfully attacking Obama’s character on the basis of his past associations (Ayers, Wright, Rezko). Obama will be able to undo this smear and character assassination only if he can successfully question McCain’s character by bringing up the issue of his dubious sense of honor.

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 41-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.

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