Well played, sir! Though in my defense, Dukakis did lose big, and Kerry lost a big and winnable election.
Dukakis got hammered day after day after day with bad PR and he did nothing. No response to the Boston Harbor stories, no response to the Pledge of Allegiance stories, no positive follow-up to the stupid tank helmet pictures. The same candidate who elbowed and clawed his way to the nomination somehow thought he could sit back and be nice, and an election victory would just rain down on him. :rolleyes:
Kerry let the Swift Boat crap go unanswered for days … weeks … ever. Maybe he thought it was old news because he’d long since re-made his friendships with the people who served with him (in the same unit, not just in the same war!). He should have turned this smear attempt back on the Bushes - “It’s established that I was in Viet Nam during the war. Where was George?”
The '92 Clinton campaign’s “strike (back) force” was not the only reason that Bill won that election, but it was important. He was running against an incumbent, for crying out loud. Did anyone in 1991 expect Bill Clinton to win in 1992? I sure didn’t - after his 1988 Keynote speech I thought he was too boring.
I don’t know if Dukakis could have won; he had a few issues outside of the fact that he felt he was simply entitled to the Presidency. Dukakis ran against the VP of a hugely popular sitting president, so it was almost like he was going up against an incumbent which is always tough. And at the time, things were going great for the Republicans in office - they’d just won the cold war, remember? Tough to beat that. He was hammered day after day after day with bad PR, not just false smears. There’s a huge difference between being seen as a looking silly driving around in a tank and being called a secret Muslim who hates America and gives terrorist gang signs to your baby mama.
Kerry was also such a mild candidate it was hard to get behind him. He was the Not Bush ™ candidate, which is tough to win against Bush himself, and no matter how much I and many others disliked Bush I need a little more to get fired up about than just voting for the guy who isn’t the one I dislike intensely. Sure, I voted for Kerry, but I didn’t raise money for him, campaign for him, or really do much more than simply give him my vote.
Clinton ran an insurgency against the incumbent Bush 1, but it was never once said that Clinton was just Bush 1 but better - he had a whole schtick going about being the new kid on the block, who was gonna change everything.
I too was surprised, but not because of Bush’s incumbency. I was sure there would be a Bimbo Eruption or two more than there were; stories of Clinton womanizing his way across the campaign trail were pretty rife. I thought Bill was gonna screw his own pooch, rather than loose to Bush, because Bush was so incredibly ineffectual as a president and because the economy was in the toilet and because Bush 1 hadn’t finished the job in Iraq. Remember the Doonsbury cartoon where Bush 1 was portrayed as a floating handbag? That was before the election, even.
I seriously doubt that addressing negative rumors made for victory, or defeat, in any of the campaigns you mentioned and in Obama’s case I think it’s simply giving credence and a louder voice to idiot rumors that are simply best ignored.
I’ve come around to believe that the “don’t dignify it with a response” strategy no longer works in the internet era. That may have once been effective as a means of preventing a rumor or a smear from gaining widespread attention, but now with all the tubes, everyone knows about everything, and it’s very common, no matter how absurd or baseless the accusation, for people to ask, “if it’s not true why doesn’t he deny it?”
Obama has a lot of smart, internet-savvy young people working for him who seem to understand that, as unfair as it might be, the internet cannot simply be ceded as a battleground.
You never see Lord Ashtar and Sean Connery at the same parties.
Obama’s best defense is as they say a good offense. I think it’s a show of strength and transparency that he is doing this. Loudly and clearly address all accusations, rumors and innuendo. Provide simple cite to disprove accusations.
Why is defending one’s good character an admission of guilt??
Cartooniverse
I am not so sure this is the case. There were plenty of discussions and articles taking (say) Swiftboat to task and it did not matter.
I think the difference here is what people are worried about. When things were good in 2000 people would focus on “lesser” issues and penalize Gore for Clinton’s philandering. In 2004 things were still just good enough that people cared about gay marriage and would bust a guy for “flip flopping” (which I find ironic since that could be leveled at McCain in a BIG way but seems not an issue now).
I think when people are feeling they cannot fuel their car, they’ve lost their job (or are very worried about it) and their house is in foreclosure that “baby mamma” looks pretty pathetic. They are thinking if that is all you have to answer my concerns you have totally missed the boat. That works when people are comfortable, not so much when they worry about taking care of their family and want answers.
It all has a distinct feel of desperation and the other side is so devoid of meaningful answers that they resort to this crap. Further with Obama providing this website he need not “dignify” every bullshit accusation with an answer which can be spun in headlines. He can simply point to his website and say all the answers and debunking are there. If someone wants to debunk the debunkers go for it but of course they’ve got nothing.
For every smear there is a certain amount of truth (or half truth, whatever you prefer). Putting out an official reaction to smears may draw him into having to react to some things he doesn’t want to.
For example, no matter how many innacuracies (with no doubt purely evil intent) the Swift Boaters may have been associated with, there were some associated truths:
Kerry exaggerated his war record to some degree
He threw his medals over a fence
He dissed the other soldiers in a wholesale manner in his congressional testimony
He did not want to deal with those truths so he had to remain silent on the whole issue.
What is the truth (or half-truth) to all the internet accusations that Bush was behind 9-11? Surely there must be some core of truth to it. right? Or maybe your premise is wrong. Which is it?
What is the core of truth behind the Obama Muslim smears, or the “whitey” tape? What are you insinuating here?
Like what?
Cite?
So?
Do you have any evidence that he was not telling the truth as he understood it? Is it your opinion that soldiers should concela war crimes or lie about them under oath?
Kerry had no problem addressing any of those things and did so frequently. His mistake was that he ignored the patently absurd stuff because he didn’t want to give it media attention. That used to be SOP for politics. It’s no longer effective.
Eh? There is not even any half-truth to the “Obama is a Muslim” canard. Nor to “Obama is a Marxist.” Nor to “Obama is a racist.” There is nothing there he should be obliged to defend as distinct from refuting. Yet such lies persist.
As for Kerry, his war service was honorable and his anti-war service even more honorable and he should have responded to the Swiftvets on that basis.
OK… no maybe Obama isn’t a Marxist but I doubt he will run proudly on being the most Liberal member of the Senate nor is he a racist as far as I know but I hope he decides to run on his 20 year association with the Rev. Wright.
As for Kerry… you may be proud of his actions, this board may be proud of his actions but I still believe that he made an intelligent decision no to run proudly on those actions.
Obama’s “most liberal senator” ranking is an entire fiction, as is said ranking for anyone who happens to be at the head of the democratic ticket at the time. One can set one’s watch to the appearance of said rankings just as a frontrunner emerges. It is risible that people continue to refer to this ranking as if it is anything but a marketing tool.
My statement was wrong. Allow me to revise and extend … any smear worth the time and effort to refute has an element of truth to it. The really crazy stuff (I call them “Olbermans”) aren’t worth it.
The Whitey thing has some believability based on The Revs sermon, the congregations reactions and Mrs Obama’s own statement of her heretofore lack of pride in America.
On one hand, we’d be discussing President Kerry’s re-election strategy if he had struck back quickly and firmly to the swift boat crap.
On the other…
You can create smears & rumors faster than they can be refuted. If Obama misses one, he’s open to “Obama fails to refute ties to Alien Overlords”.
And…the swift response to the “whitey” charge makes me a bit nervous, because I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some grainy cell-phone video appears showing exactly that. Everybody has said something at some time that they fervently hope is never made public.
See, I think this is why they have to do it. Because, eventually, not dealing with it becomes evidence for it, and sure it seems like something that could be real, if you think that black people talk the way that street-pimp sources talk in 60’s detective novels written by white people.
I am wondering if they will debunk the blowjob guy. Until they do, there is a de-facto line of “believability” below which they won’t stray.
No, the “whitey” thing has no believability at all. Wright never said anything racist, nothing in Michelle Obama’s history remotely comports with the notion that she has ever even expressed a racist thought, much less gone on an ungrammatical rant aginst “whitey.”
The “proud of my country” thing is incredibly specious and would not equate to racism even if it was taken the way the right desperately wants it to be taken.
Indeed. Yet, based on your post #74, there are still some who will keep trying to revive such nonsense even after it has been discredited; which is why Obama’s new smear-debunking initiative is, apparently, necessary.
