As a rule, Republicans appreciate the value in defining the Democratic presidential nominee, and the GOP is usually pretty good at it. In 2000, Al Gore, they said, was an “exaggerator.” This was not only effective, thanks to a quick embrace by the media, it was part of a narrative — when Gore takes credit for the successes of the ’90s, don’t believe him because he exaggerates.
In 2004, John Kerry, they said was a “flip-flopper.” This, too, was relatively effective, and was once again parroted by the media. And the narrative here was equally clear — in the first post-9/11 election, in a time of war, we don’t want someone who’s inconsistent.
Four years later, the effort to define Barack Obama is proving to be more difficult. The GOP has experimented with a few different memes, but they haven’t stuck yet. Some even contradict each other.
For months, Karl Rove & Co. has sought to characterize Obama as a dangerous outsider who we don’t really know and can’t trust. Everything about him, the argument goes, is “foreign.” The various far-right smears — about Obama’s religion, his family, his name, his patriotism — were all part of the same conservative frame.
More recently, Rove and his cohorts reversed course, and went with the opposite message: Obama isn’t a dangerous outsider anymore, now he’s an elite insider, hanging out “at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette.”
This week, Rove used his Wall Street Journal platform to push yet another meme: Obama the narcissist.
Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign….
The candidate’s self-centeredness has been on display before…. Mr. McCain will be helped if he uses Mr. Obama’s actions to paint his opponent as someone driven by an all-powerful instinct to look out only for himself.
Markos responded, “So now he’s a selfish, power-hungry, inexperienced American-hating country club elitist.”
It is, to put it mildly, a garbled message — which also happens to shift with some regularity.
Nevertheless, the McCain campaign seems to like this one:
McCAIN CAMPAIGN MEMO OUT THIS MORNING — Steve Schmidt, McCain 2008 Senior Advisor, writes on “Country First Vs. Self-Serving Partisanship”: “There has never been a time when Barack Obama has bucked the party line to lead on an issue of national importance…. We don’t need to trade Republican partisanship for Democratic partisanship. We need to put our country first and put our politics second. That is what John McCain has done his whole life, and that is what he will do as president.”
Most of this is pure nonsense, which is probably why it’s likely to be thrown on the same pile of discarded memes as the last few attacks.
First, Obama has taken the lead on plenty of issues of national importance. Indeed, just yesterday, Mitt Romney graciously acknowledged Obama’s leadership role in counter-proliferation and fuel efficiency.
Second, I’m not sure why Obama needs to reject Democratic ideas to prove himself, but if McCain thinks Obama is afraid to anger the Democratic base, maybe he should read some of our reactions to Obama’s stance on the FISA “compromise.” For that matter, while McCain 2.0 bucked the party line quite a bit, can anyone name three important issues on which McCain 3.0 — the one we see currently running for president — disagrees with the Republican Party?
And finally, as attack memes go, taking on a candidate as “self-serving” and “self-centered” strikes me as unusually weak. If Obama is “self-serving,” why has he spent his adult life in public service? Why did he pass up lucrative career tracks to become an underpaid community organizer? Isn’t this the opposite of “self-centeredness”?
What’s more, unlike the Gore and Kerry smears, this one doesn’t fit into any coherent narrative at all.
Keep searching, guys, you’re bound to come up with something eventually.