McCain's Attacks Miss the Mark

The McCain campaign has said the following things, or a close variant of them over the last few weeks:

Barack Obama doesn’t care if we lose a war or take unnecessary casualties in Iraq. He’s amoral on this issue.

Barack Obama doesn’t care about our wounded soldiers. He won’t visit them unless he can use them as props.

Barack Obama wants us to be under the thumb of foreign oil sheiks.

Barack Obama is selling America short to foreigners. He doesn’t want to talk to Americans. He’s undermining our President. He shouldn’t talk to foreigners.

Barack Obama is a scary, unknown quantity without a political pedigree.

Barack Obama is only a celebrity, like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

Barack Obama is a Black man who plays a dirty, lowdown race card from the bottom of the deck.

What’s really amazing is that the mainstream media continues to converse about these charges, pointing out that McCain’s attacks seem to be ‘striking a chord’ with the public. The evidence of this supposed success, despite a total lack of truth behind his charges, is that McCain remains relatively close to Obama in the polls. Apparently, only the abandonment of McCain by those who have backed him all along would prompt an examination of this lowball strategy.

I’d like to propose that McCain’s strategy has the potential to eventually result in exactly this kind of public abandonment. Once Obama’s campaign staff realizes that the 2008 election is actually about the economy (stupid), they will stop being defensive about their candidate and begin hammering McCain over his economic program of permanent tax cuts for the rich, ending the AMT, health care for those already covered, and more of the same deregulated financial shenanigans that have brought America to the shaky, shaky present day.

McCain’s problem is that he’s failed to give Americans the kind of narrative they need about him, first and foremost. Trust and a vision for more economically secure future, a President who inspires people that things will get better, these are qualities voters will be looking for come election day. Fear about the other guy only works when the status quo isn’t pretty horrible already. And right now, the status quo is unacceptable to most Americans. McCain hasn’t outlined how he’ll change it, or why voters should trust him to do it.

Assuming that the Obama campaign hasn’t forgotten the street smarts that got them where they are, they’ll soon be playing back McCain’s cheerleadering for the failed the Bush policies of the last eight years, over and over till November. The hypocrisy of the once-straight-talking McCain, seen over the past eight years sidling up to Bush, Cheney, Falwell, Hagee, and the Christian Coalition and promoting the tax cuts he once opposed should undercut both his positions and his appeal as a supposed maverick.

As long as Obama continues to offer an alternative to the way things are and doesn’t give too many voters a scare about his ability to handle the job, change and hope win over insider experience and the status quo. As long as Obama focuses on the economic concerns so many Americans are preoccupied with and convinces them that he’s got a chance of making things better, most voters will vote for their aspirations and their pocketbook.

If Obama’s campaign gets it in gear, we should soon be seeing more pictures of Cindy McCain’s fabulously expensive Sedona ranch, paired with her husband’s backing for tax cuts for the rich. Who knows, maybe there’ll be an odd shot of Paris Hilton thrown in for good measure. After all, her parents are big McCain contributors.