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Positive vs. Negative

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June 11, 2008

If you listen closely, you can hear the knife sharpeners grinding away.  The attack ads are being prepared right now.  The 527 groups are headed into the studios with their “Swift Boat”-style TV spots.  Floyd Brown, the godfather of the Willie Horton ad campaign against Mike Dukakis, has already started a web ad campaign against Barack Obama, based on the “secret Muslim” theme.  In today’s Los Angeles Times, Robin Abcarian discussed the numerous negative magazine and blog articles directed against Michelle Obama.  In today’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that there are “creepy web sites … dedicated to painting Michelle as a female version of Jeremiah Wright, an angry black woman.”  Without Hillary Clinton to kick around any more, those with unreleased sexist rage are now turning to Mrs. Obama as the new focus of their attention.  This could result in drawing support for Obama from those disgruntled, female Clinton supporters, who were ready to cast a revenge vote for McCain.  This may be happening already.  A report issued today by Jeffrey Jones of the Gallup organization, revealed that Obama’s lead among women has now expanded from five percentage points to 13.  Barack may owe some thanks to the Michelle-haters for this popularity bump.

Meanwhile, on June 9, Tim Reid of the London Times reported that Barack Obama has established a “crack team of cybernauts” who “will form a rapid response internet ‘war room’ to track and respond aggressively to online rumours”.  Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Senator Obama, told the Times that “the only way to run a campaign is to respond immediately when inaccurate information is put out”.  The Obama campaign might want to re-think this strategy.  Rather than allowing itself to be placed on this defensive course, constantly putting out fires, Obama’s team might want to consider a more sophisticated counterintelligence strategy.  They should try fighting disinformation with disinformation.  The various “smear” campaigns themselves are examples of disinformation.  Yet there are also disinformation campaigns that are used to attack the use of rumor and innuendo.  As explained at Wikipedia.org:

When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with a lot of easily-disproved false claims.

So here’s my idea:  the Obama camp should fight these smear campaigns by flooding the internet with even more false rumors that sound more ridiculous than those being circulated by the opposition, thus undercutting the believability of the rumors originating from the anti-Obama crowd.  Some examples might be:  “Obama wants to paint the White House black” or that Obama wants to change the National Anthem to an expletive-laden, rap version of “The Star Spangled Banner”.  Eventually, people will have heard so many stupid rumors about Obama, that they will no longer pay attention to them.  As soon as someone starts out a sentence with “Well, you know, Obama is secretly trying to …” the listener will tune out.

Rather than counterpunch with a negative smear campaign against McCain, the Obama camp should try a positive approach.  This would involve unlimited positive remarks about the Libertarian candidate, ex-Republican Bob Barr.  A little more consideration for Mr. Barr might also be appropriate. When the subject of “town hall meetings” is raised, Democrats should ask:  “Is Bob Barr agreeable to those?”  When debates are being scheduled, they should ask whether Bob Barr is being invited to participate.  Of course, the Republicans could strike back by inviting Ralph Nader to those events.  However, the Democrats would not have to worry, since Nader would simply reinforce their theme of corporate control of our government.  Nader would pose no threat to Obama, since Ralph has about as much charisma as a breadstick.  (Nader became a problem for the charisma-impaired Al Gore, although he won’t pose that same threat to Obama.)

Of course, the Democrats would never go along with this strategy.  They are dedicated to the preservation of the two-party system.  To change that, would be to make life more complicated (and expensive) for the lobbyists.

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