Obama's Swiftboat Complex

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.