Targeting the “Original Maverick”

(photo: WBEZ Chicago Public Radio | site)

Obama’s newish McSame style attack ad mocking McCain’s “original maverick” slogan is fairly good. As Ken Wheaton notes, all the time McCain had to spend trying to convince the GOP he was a loyal Republican, unfortunately produced a lot of pro-Bush statements on videotape. Also, I like the Rovian touch of attacking McCain’s strength: experience.

McCain is handling the game of reversing the “change” association considerably better than the Clintons did though (remember this disaster?). Perhaps Hillary advocates were on to something when they amusingly argued that the very weakness of Clinton’s arguments should give Democratic voters pause, as the Republicans would be much more ruthless or effective. That was an elastic argument in fact, as it was originally employed to justify Obama’s attacks on her, when she was still the frontrunner. True enough so far though.

Speaking of the former First Lady, she’s doing some damage control after a host of media reports this week that she’s still harboring bitter and vengeful feelings toward Obama (Bill’s painful non-endorsement endorsement didn’t help either).

But, even if she wasn’t nursing old resentments they’d still say that she was. The Republicans always saw the Clintons clearly enough as devious, mendacious, megalomaniacs. But Democrats have the intellectual baggage of fresh-blood betrayal to contend with. Not as easy to forgive typically.

There’s also just something more damaging about intensely competitive slash-and-burn tactics for personal gain in the party of liberal equalitarianism. It’s ironic that it’s the Republican party that typically has the smooth, polite, soft-promotion process for nomination, given their devotion to the merits of rugged individualism and rough-n-necessary inequality by course of competitive gain.