For months, any and all criticism Barack Obama directed at John McCain was about policy differences. It’s become one of the more dramatic differences between the two campaigns — McCain would go after Obama on personal issues (arrogance, patriotism, etc.), while Obama would go after McCain on substantive issues.
Yesterday, Obama’s team mixed it up a bit, and started pointing at least one of McCain’s more glaring character flaws.
In an apparent effort to regain the offensive, the Obama campaign launched a broad attack on McCain [yesterday], portraying him as reckless on foreign policy, a hot-head who’s too willing to use force and not willing enough to apprise himself of facts on the ground before urging military action.
On a conference call with reporters [yesterday afternoon]
, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice argued that there is “a pattern here of recklessness” when it comes to McCain’s approach to various national security issues. She pointed out that McCain reacted too quickly with “aggressive and bellicose” rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia crisis, and contrasted that with Obama’s measured response to the dust-up.
“There’s something to be said for letting facts drive judgment,” Rice said, also referring to McCain’s desire to target Iraq right after 9/11.
Richard Clarke, who was a top counter-terrorism official in the last three administrations, also weighed in on the call, slamming “quick-draw McCain,” calling him “reckless,” “trigger-happy” and “discredited.”
There’s no shortage of Dems arguing, “If only Obama would pursue (fill in the blank) narrative/line of attack, he’d stand a better chance.” And with that in mind, challenging McCain on his temperament is just one of many possible approaches for Dems to pursue.
That said, it’s one of my favorites.
It’s an encouraging sign, in a general sense, to see Obama’s team take on McCain on character in the first place. Yes, McCain is wrong about, well, pretty much every issue under the sun, but that’s not enough — voters don’t just consider issue positions. It’s just as important to consider how McCain thinks and how he’d lead. In this case, that means a would-be president who loses his cool, can’t be counted on in a crisis, and is overly inclined to use force.
More specifically, I think my friend A.L. is on the right track here.
Every Obama surrogate should be saying this stuff over and over again. And they should frame the issue not just as a matter of judgment, but as an extension of McCain’s general character and temperament. There’s all kinds of material to work with here, so it shouldn’t be hard. As I noted the other day, many of McCain’s Republican colleagues are on record saying that he doesn’t have the temperament to be president, that he’s a hothead with a hair-trigger temper. Those quotes and anecdotes are highly damaging and need to be repeated endlessly. Obama’s surrogates just aren’t doing their jobs until voters are hearing the words “hothead” and “trigger-happy” at least as often as they hear the word “celebrity” and are picturing Yosemite Sam every time they hear McCain talk.
The message needs to be “if you liked the Iraq War, you’re going to love a McCain presidency.” McCain has an “act first, think later” approach to foreign policy and it’s dangerous.
Greg Sargent added:
Will painting McCain as a hair-trigger hothead who’s catastrophically overeager to support the use of military force, and not willing enough to apprise himself of the facts before acting, prove effective in the face of a withering assault on Obama as weak and indecisive?
In one sense, the grand experiment at the heart of the Obama campaign is an effort to win the election by speaking to the voters like adults.
Agreed. I’ve said many times that Obama seems committed to treating the electorate like grown-ups, perhaps more than any candidate in recent memory. There’s an inherent risk in this, and we’ll see if it pays off.
But on the temperament question, my only concern is that there are so many narratives to pursue with McCain, it’s hard to know which to pick — and Dems can’t pick them all. McCain’s a flip-flopper. And a hothead. And he’s out of touch. And he’s a confused old man. And he’s an angry candidate running a desperately negative campaign. And he’s self-righteous. And he’s a hypocrite. And he’s given up on straight-talk
, preferring constant mendacity.
It’s obviously tough to choose
, since all of these narratives are true, but I think “Senator Hothead” certainly deserves its due.
