Michael Dukakis

By the end of the 2010s, we could be calling him President Scott Brown. 

The newly elected US Senator from Massachusetts ran an error-free campaign, strongly emphasizing economic and security issues and always taking the high road. His opponent, scandal-scarred Attorney General Martha Coakley, ran a vehemently negative campaign filled with disgusting lies—and she paid the price for it. 

Assuming that Brown is re-elected in 2012 (the winner of the January 19th election will complete the remaining three years of the late Ted Kennedy’s term), and also assuming that the Republican challenger to President Obama (whoever he or she may be) comes up short that year, Brown would have to be considered an odds-on favorite to become the GOP’s standard-bearer in 2016. Will he have liabilities? Of course—but his positives will outweigh those negatives by a factor of a thousand. 

Brown is a center-right figure for what conservatives often assert is a center-right nation. As a candidate for the US Senate, he tapped into the same spirit of optimism Ronald Reagan embodied on his way to winning Massachusetts in the 1980 Presidential election. He also tapped into the voters’ desire for competent leadership. 

Remember when doomed 1988 Presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis declared that his campaign was about competence, not ideology? In reality, that’s what most voters in this country are looking for. While Reagan and Barack Obama are on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they both achieved blowout Electoral College victories because they convinced voters that despite their policy positions, they would place effective leadership above ideological crusades.  

Brown traversed ideological barriers because of his promise to do the same. He was a true uniter on the campaign trail, attracting even committed progressives with his message of stewardship and honesty. He could do the same if he attempts to win the White House. 

Can he make it to the Oval Office? Why can’t he? The two biggest liabilities he will face involve his status as a “Northeastern Republican” and his moderately pro-choice stance on the abortion question. He should be able to overcome these obstacles. 

With regard to the “Northeastern Republican” image, it should be remembered that Brown is to the right of the last Republican to win a US Senate seat in Massachusetts, the profoundly progressive Edward Brooke. Brown may not march in lockstep with the broader Republican Party, but he certainly shares the party’s main vision with regard to economic reinvigoration and aggressive antiterrorism efforts. No one will ever confuse him with Dede Scozzafava. 

Conservative primary voters who reject Brown in 2016 because he’s from the Bay State would make a crucial mistake. Brown can explain conservative principles with vigor in his voice and hope in his heart. Few Republicans can do the same. Brown is a throwback to the days of optimistic conservatism—the only brand of conservatism that is proven to win national elections by significant margins. 

As for the abortion question, by the mid-2010s the GOP will have decided whether to accept moderately pro-choice Presidential candidates such as Brown, or to pressure them to shift their status on this issue, as George H. W. Bush did in 1980 after being selected as Reagan’s running mate. With aging Focus on the Family founder James Dobson shifting roles and few obvious successors to inherit his position as the most influential figure among social conservatives, it’s possible that the GOP could decide to effectively tell values voters that they have nowhere else to go, and that they can either get behind a moderately pro-choice Republican candidate such as Brown, or stay home on Election Day and allow a Democrat obedient to NARAL Pro-Choice America to succeed Obama and nominate federal judges who will effectively make Roe v. Wade impossible to reverse. If social conservatives choose the former path, Brown will at least give a fair and open hearing to their concerns.  

As the 2016 GOP nominee, Brown could unify the party, settling the grudges and grievances that have beset Republicans for far too long.  He could appeal to the David Limbaughs and David Frums of the party, reestablishing the conservative-centrist coalition Reagan first brought together. Brown could well become the first Republican since Reagan to win “blue” regions of the country—and make hardcore Democrats blue in the process.

If Brown makes it to the White House, we could bear witness to the true resurgence of conservatism that George W. Bush’s 2000 election promised, but was unable to deliver. If I were a devoted Democrat, this thought would surely make me quiver.  

www.blogtalkradio.com/drtucker

The netroots is engaged in some spirited discussion about the lameness of Obama's responses to Palin. But the problem, and what I believe this video gets at, is that Democrats look at everything about negative politics through the prism of response rather than attack, defense rather than offense.

Michael Dukakis's failure to respond in 1988 has become something of a creation myth, spawning the legendary Clinton war room in 1992. Their job? Leave no attack unanswered.

Except the Clinton War Room was about something else too. Attack. Here's a legendary clip from the Clinton campaign documentary in which they plant a story about Bush 41 printing campaign signs in Brazil (you may need to go back to the end of the previous clip for context):

The Democrats were caught off-guard by the SBVT in 2004 because they learned wrong lessons from '88. Forcefully responding ("Bring. It. On.") was something of a meta-narrative for Kerry. But they forgot that response wasn't nearly enough, and done wrong, you can easily fall into traps your opponent carefully lays out. To control the agenda, you have to unleash new, original, unprovoked attacks.

The media favors new narratives. If your whole frame is simply responding to the other guy's narratives, he controls the agenda, not you.

The meta-narrative behind every Democratic campaign is "No more swiftboats." Obama seems obsessed with this. His acceptance speech was a paranoid rebuttal of McCain's attacks and a even a few non-attacks -- from Celeb to "Country First" (the subtext of which -- honestly, guys -- is more about McCain putting "party second" than about Obama).

Now, this isn't Ruffini saying don't respond. It's about responding firmly and with the facts, but never blowing your top and getting rattled. And it's about maintaining a 2-to-1 ratio of salable attacks to responses.

The problem with Kerry's response to Swiftboat wasn't just its initial timorousness. It's that the eventual response was so over-the-top that the median voter could conclude either that 1) Kerry was hiding something, and 2) even if the attacks were wrong, that the Vietnam narrative and Kerry's never-ending defense of it was so central to his candidacy that he was more interested in the past, not the future.

Kerry's hyperventilating response to the SBVT reinforced the wrong things about his candidacy. His famous $87 billion remark was actually a response to a Bush ad in West Virginia. His saying that he would have again voted for the use of force was a response to a Bush speech.

The most important thing about a good attack is not the attack itself. It's baiting your opponent to respond the way you want him to respond, because only the things that come out of his mouth will ultimately stick.

Obama seems to be falling into the trap of response-centrism. If only they could respond the right way, they figure, all will be well. But it won't be. Because the game they are playing is reactive. Instead of changing the subject off Palin by launching some explosive new attack on McCain, all they do is respond, respond, respond. And the story, day after day, is Democratic Presidential nominee responds to Republican Vice Presidential nominee. The optics of that stink for them.

In an upcoming post, I'll explain which kinds of attack work, and which don't.