Obama/McCain. How ugly will it get?

by Jay McDonough

 

The last gasp McCain offensive began over the weekend.  Unable to shift the focus from the economy (and good luck with that now - the Dow is below 10,000 as I write this), the McCain campaign made it clear it will work until election day portraying Barack Obama has dangerous, not like "us" and not to be trusted.  Sarah Palin began the offensive this weekend with her accusations Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists".  Bill Kristol, influential conservative columnist, is on record as recommending throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama.  An "anything goes" campaign.

It looks like the Obama camp is gearing up to go tit for tat with the McCain campaign, releasing a teaser ad highlighting John McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal.

    

A longer version of the ad will reportedly be released later today.  Ben Smith at Politico argues the Keating Five story will have more impact on the McCain campaign than the Ayers/Rezko/Wright and Obama associations.

A couple of quick thoughts on Keating and Ayers. First, Obama's campaign has been notably disciplined in not talking about Keating, so this rollout will perhaps have a bit more pop in the media than the Ayers story, which McCain started talking about a while ago, and which was raked over pretty thoroughly in the primary.

Second, Keating is a story both more and less damaging for McCain than the Ayers story for Obama.

More damaging because the story of McCain and Keating is not guilt by association; it's guilt by guilt. McCain's problem isn't that he knew Keating in activities unconnected to his wrongdoing; it's that Keating, in the course of his wrondoing, gave McCain money and tried, with a bit of success, to use him to influence regulators. It's also part of the case Obama's making that McCain has opposed necessarily financial regulations.

It was wishful thinking on McCain's part that the campaign could shift the emphasis from the economy, and watching the market this morning leaves no doubt that just isn't going to happen.  The attempts to portray Obama guilty by association seem superfluous and more evidence John McCain is out of touch with everday American's lives.  The Keating Five attack, however, directly ties John McCain to the current economic meltdown; a long held disdain for regulation, an elitist disregard for the rules of the game, and a long membership in the "good ole boys" club.

Comments

[sfHeath]

Why do you use the adverb "sadly" to describe the Obama campaign's attack? It seems to me that the rest of your post argues this may be an effective attack.

[Jay McDonough]

My initial feelings were disappointment the campaigns had now sunk so slow. It looks to be a dirty slugfest for here on out. And that's sad, I think.

But you're right. The use of "sadly" there was out of tone with the rest of the post and I've removed it.

Thanks for the input.