McCain’s Missing KO Punch

John McCain probably won last night’s debate on points, but he needed a knockout…and did not get it.

His proposal to help homeowners by buying their mortgages was well articulated.  He also scored well on entitlements and, as always, emerged ahead on foreign policy.

However, Obama dodged & weaved his way out of trouble.

McCain failed to rebut patently absurd claims – like Obama’s claim to favor nuclear power, his “plan” to cut taxes on 95% of Americans, and his charge that McCain would shower CEOs with new tax breaks.

Incredibly, McCain even let Obama get away with lamenting the high deficit.  He needed to say, “Let me get this straight.  You want to raise spending and give everyone a tax cut, but you won’t increase the deficit?  Where does the money come from?”  He needed to explain that Obama would hike taxes on practically everyone, that the Democrat’s spending plans require a huge tax increase or a major rise in the deficit.

Watching McCain fail to pin Obama down was like watching Sonny Liston try to catch Mohammed Ali.

He pulled his punches, letting Obama off gently with lines like, “You said you would not raise taxes in a bad economy.  Well, it is bad.”  He should have made the case that Obama’s tax program would transform a crisis into a catastrophe.

He let opportunity after opportunity slip through his fingers.

McCain scored nicely by tying Obama to Fannie Mae, campaign contributions & all, but he failed to identify adequately with the popular anger at Wall Street and did nothing to reduce his own connection in the public mind with the Bush bailout.

On national security, he did a good job of showing how well prepared he was and scored well with his remark that there is no time for on-the-job training.  His explanation of his Afghan & Pakistan policies was excellent, while Obama’s repetition of his old Iraq argument seemed out of date & rote.

However, national security will not win the election.  McCain needed to win on the economy…and he did not.

Perhaps his biggest failure was not hanging Bill Ayers around Obama’s neck.  By not mentioning the terrorist’s name, he undermines the efforts of his own campaign to make Ayers an issue.  By avoiding the topic last night, he seemed to be saying that it is not a real issue.

McCain needed to punch through on two issues:  Taxes and values:  How Obama’s policies will crush the economy and how Obama’s core beliefs are far outside the mainstream.  He landed many blows last night, but Obama managed to brush them off.

McCain entered the debate 9 points down in the Gallup & Rasmussen polls.  His performance will not even start to close the gap.

Negative Campaigning Is Good For America

Political Assaults Help Uncover Politicians’’ Flaws for the Voters

If there is one Darwinian adaptation that the American people have made to modern times, it is the ability to sift through a wide variety of claims and to determine for themselves which are specious & which are accurate.  We realize that the days during which we could trust any one media outlet or candidate to give us the full story are long over (if they ever existed in the first place).  We realize that truth is a synthesis of the various claims made by the left & the right – the Democrats & Republicans – and the incumbents & the challengers.

Voters see negative advertising as another form of information.  They so distrust politicians that they want to see their opponents tear them down so they can get at the truth.  In fact, voter attitudes toward politicians are akin to their opinions of criminal defendants.  (They could be forgiven for confusing the two.)  Just as juries want a prosecutor who tears the defendant apart & punches holes in his alibi, so they want a political candidate to run ads exposing his opponent.

Of course, negative ads do not always work.  Sometimes they backfire big time.  Therefore, when a candidate runs a negative ad, he takes his life, career, and reputation in his/her hands.  If the ad turns out not to be true and an alert opponent jumps on him/her & runs a rebuttal ad exposing its inaccuracies, he/she can lose the election in a heartbeat.

Voters have a skilled “baloney detector” embedded in their consciousness.  They know that politicians who have proclaimed their own honesty have ended up in prison, while others who say, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” have broken their solemn vows & jacked up rates anyway.  Therefore, they watch all television with suspicion.  To succeed, nega­tive ads must work overtime to get in under the detector.

Negative ads must emphasize fairness & accuracy, even at the price of having less overt impact.  To work, negative ads must be believable.  To accuse an opponent of being soft on child molesters will not work.  It lacks credibility.  One can not ask voters to believe such ill of an opponent that he deserves not only defeat, but also imprisonment.  However, to say that he puts his perception of constitutional rights ahead of convicting child molesters does work.

Paint a picture.  Negatives must be thematic.  John McCain, in the current campaign, is too scattershot, one day hitting Barack Obama for his Chicago political connections and then accusing him of vapid celebrity the next.  It is only when the negative campaign paints a consistent picture that it can work.

Some political consultants, including most Republicans, treat positive advertisements like the overture before the show begins, marking time until the real campaign starts & the negatives begin to hit.  That is wrong.  Positive ads that explain a program, develop a theme, or spell out hot button issues are still the most effective communications in politics, but negative ads work & have their place.  They are how the voters find truth in a morass of claims & counterclaims.  With much of the media oriented toward the left or the right, negative ads are often the only way voters can penetrate the claims of the various campaigns & get the facts.

Voters always tell pollsters that they hate negative ads, but politicians continue to run them.  That is because the same polls show that they work.  In a world with flawed politicians, we need negative ads.  Otherwise, we will not know candidates’ defects until it is too late.