Before Barack Obama had even reached American soil again after his overseas trip, the McCain campaign had arguably the most insipid campaign commercial of the year, arguing that Obama blew off wounded U.S. troops: “[H]e made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” We now know, of course, that the campaign was blatantly lying. (That said, the lie seems to have taken its toll.)
Nevertheless, what would have happened if Obama had, as McCain later suggested, blown off the Pentagon’s demands and visited the wounded troops as part of his campaign excursion. Business Week’s David Kiley reports, the McCain campaign was prepared for that contingency, too.
What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was…wait for it…using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents — a lie.
This is what some people are calling the Hannity strategy. Right wing nut-muffin Sean Hannity employs a slick strategy of repeating canards very quickly over and over, day in and day out, which aren’t challenged by his TV co-host Alan Colmes or by any of his radio listeners. By relentlessly repeating falsehoods day after day, the theory goes, it becomes embedded in the media.
I haven’t heard anyone actually call this the “Hannity strategy”; it sounds more like traditional Republican efforts to “catapult” the propaganda.
Noting the Business Week report, John Cole added:
And the media, willing accomplices, stenographers until the end, sit by and assist the McCain campaign (who, by the way, ACTUALLY ARE USING THE WOUNDED TROOPS AS A WEAPON with this line of attack, as noted in the comments).
For nearly a week, news outlets promoted McCain’s ad and speculated about Obama’s non-existent “snub,” just long enough for voters to hear about it (and for it to have an effect on public opinion). Eventually, a couple of outlets bothered to note that McCain’s attack was, you know, false.
But imagine if it had gone the other way. Let’s say Obama had told the Pentagon to shove it, he showed up at Landstuhl, spent time with wounded U.S. troops, and the McCain campaign had launched its Plan B — condemning Obama for using the troops as campaign props.
It’s obviously just a guess, but my hunch is, the week would have unfolded the exact same way. The McCain campaign would have run its ad, the media would have picked up the “Obama exploits the troops” attack, and we would have had day after day of “debate” about whether Obama can be commander-in-chief if he recklessly blows off Pentagon rules in the midst of a campaign swing.
In other words, it didn’t matter which path Obama took — smear artists were prepared either way.