GOP's celeb-Obama message gains traction Carrie Budoff Brown

GOP's celeb-Obama message gains traction Carrie Budoff Brown
Thu Jul 31, 5:33 AM ET



Barack Obama’s critics laid down the foundations of the strategy
months ago: The Republican National Committee started the “Audacity
Watch” back in April, and Karl Rove later fueled the attack by
describing the first-term Illinois senator as “coolly arrogant.”

It wasn’t until the last week, however, that the narrative of Obama as
a president-in-waiting – and perhaps getting impatient in that waiting
- began reverberating beyond the e-mail inboxes of Washington
operatives and journalists.

Perhaps one of the clearest indications emerged Tuesday from the world
of late-night comedy, when David Letterman offered his “Top Ten Signs
Barack Obama is Overconfident.” The examples included Obama proposing
to change the name of Oklahoma to “Oklobama,” and measuring his head
for Mount Rushmore.

“When Letterman is doing ‘Top Ten’ lists about something, it has
officially entered the public consciousness,” said Dan Schnur, a
political analyst with the University of Southern California and the
communications director in John McCain’s 2000 campaign. “And it
usually stays there for a long, long time.”

Following a nine-day, eight-country tour that carried the ambition and
stagecraft of a presidential state visit, Obama has found himself in
an unusual position: the *** of jokes.

Jon Stewart teased that the presumptive Democratic nominee traveled to
Israel to visit his birthplace at Bethlehem’s Manger Square. New York
Times columnist Maureen Dowd amplified the McCain campaign’s private
nickname for Obama (“The One”).

And the snickers about Obama’s perceived smugness may have a very real
political impact as McCain launched its most forceful effort yet to
define him negatively. It released a TV ad Wednesday describing Obama
as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” comparable to Paris Hilton
and Britney Spears, stars who are famous for attitude rather than
accomplishments.

The harsher treatment from comedians and columnists – coupled with the
shift by McCain from attacking on policy to character issues –
underscores the fine line that Obama is walking between confident and
cocky. Once at pains to present himself as presidential, Obama now
faces criticism for doing it too well.

“I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in
any way different from what Senator McCain or a lot of presidential
candidates have done in the past,” Obama said Sunday, speaking about
his trip at a conference of minority journalists. “Now, I admit we did
it really well. But that shouldn't be a strike against me.”

Obama and his supporters dismissed the line of attack as the latest
desperate missive from a foundering Republican campaign.

Bloggers at the Huffington Post launched a backlash to the backlash
against Obama’s overseas trip, arguing in part that he wouldn’t face
such criticism of acting premature if he were white. Separately, the
Obama campaign pushed back hard at journalists who used a report,
which detailed Obama’s move to assemble a transition team, to describe
him as presumptuous by pointing to an interview in which McCain had
owned up to the same thing.



Some Democratic operatives described the narrative as a Beltway
creation, the pastime of journalists looking to keep the presidential
race competitive.

"Self-absorbed press speculation,” concluded consultant Bob Shrum, the
chief strategist during John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Most
Americans are not paying the slightest bit of attention to this.”

Mark Mellman, a pollster for Kerry, said Obama acted the same when he
was struggling last year against Clinton.

“The only people who are making him seem inevitable are the
commentariat,” Mellman said. “He seemed this confident and self
possessed when he was down 30 points to Hillary Clinton. He is a
confident and self possessed person.”

Republicans have long tried to turn his assuredness into a
shortcoming. National party operatives began sending e-mails to
reporters in the spring detailing some of Obama’s bolder moves,
including using a faux presidential seal at a policy roundtable. The
RNC rolled the headlines onto one site, “Barack Obama Audacity Watch,”
that it unveiled Wednesday.

The McCain campaign piled on with its “Celeb” ad, which juxtaposed
Obama’s speech to 200,000 people in Berlin with photos of Spears and
Hilton.

“Do the American people want to elect the world’s biggest celebrity or
do they want to elect an American hero?” asked Steve Schmidt, one of
McCain’s top aides, on a conference call.

They stayed personal later in the day when responding to Obama’s
suggestion at a Missouri town hall meeting that Republicans would use
his unusual name and his race to paint him as a risky choice.

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most
celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and
hysteria,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

By later Wednesday, the Obama campaign responded within hours to the
“Celeb” ad with one of its own, accusing McCain of taking the “low
road” and “practicing the politics of the past.”

Responding to questions from reporters about McCain's ad, Obama said:
“I do notice that he doesn’t seem to have anything to say very
positive about himself.”

The strategy has very real potential dangers for Team McCain. Obama’s
unmistakable charisma and his campaign’s deft brand of stagecraft have
created an often lopsided contrast with McCain’s sometimes painful-to-
watch public events. As presidents as diverse as Ronald Reagan and
John Kennedy showed, Americans do like a touch of celebrity in their
commander in chief; though not too much.

Obama’s steely sense of self-confidence, even destiny, is also one of
the traits his supporters like most and which could, as the fall
campaign heats up, be one of the qualities that help him make the
sale.

But the slippery slope for Obama is allowing a McCain campaign that is
searching for a consistent theme with which to attack him to latch on
to a way of making him seem alien to ordinary Americans. Douglas
Schoen, a Democratic pollster, argued that Obama was not yet in a
danger zone, but he needed to pay heed to the gathering storm.

“My sense is that all of those attacks individually are frankly not
particularly potent, but taken together, they are creating a narrative
about Obama that is not helpful,” said Schoen, who worked on President
Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. “It is a warning sign for
Obama that he’s got to get back on the trail and make the case that
there is a real contrast.”



Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC.


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