Fighting negative campaigns

It is now conventional wisdom that the election of 2012 in the US will be nasty, negative and not short. Negative campaigning, say the experts, works and so all sides will employ it, even when denying it in public. According to Dean Michael Mezey of DePaul University, "... what negative advertising does is get your supporters committed and excited. Those who are indifferent are so turned off that they are less likely to vote, as are people who are for the other candidate--so not only does it help you, but it depresses turnout. The ideal, rational goal is to turn out your most committed supporters and make sure nobody else turns out."

The recent asinine Supreme court decision on Citizen United which permits private money to be spent without any accountability has made a bad situation worse. So the facts are that in the short term negative campaigns using anonymous donor money are going to be the norm. The real issue is how to fight back in the short term?

According to the same experts, the following are a few traditional strategies for dealing with negative attacks:

·        Admit it before the attack even comes. Jerry Ford was candid about the fact that he had started dating wife Betty before her divorce from her first husband was final, and Jimmy Carter's campaign could not make an issue of it in the 1976 presidential race.

·        Attack the attack, criticizing your opponent for negative campaigning, or you can respond with negative information about the opponent or the attack tactics as well--what lawyers call discrediting the witness. This is what the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign did with Gennifer Flowers. If possible, get a blue-ribbon source to refute the attack.

·        Turn the attack into a positive. President Harry Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, had once been dumped from an economic advisory post by President Franklin Roosevelt. That could have been considered a negative among FDR supporters, but Acheson's disagreement with Roosevelt had been over devaluation of the dollar, which could have been played as a positive to sound-money advocates. 

·        Deflect it with humor. In 1988, Illinois Cook County Board President George Dunne was tainted by scandal when two women he had sexual relationships with were later hired for county jobs. Supporters defended him by arguing he was a widower and therefore single, stressing the jobs were extremely low-paying and not political plums, and marvelling that a man in his seventies could be involved with two women. Amazingly, this worked, as most of the media comments were jocular ones on the wow, what a man defense. Everyone had a good chuckle and the scandal disappeared.

·        Deflect it with sorrow. This is effective when the story is instinctively something that the public knows should have remained private, like the fact that the candidate's wife was pregnant when the couple married. Express your sorrow that the media or the opposition would bring up something so personal that is irrelevant to the campaign.

·        Stonewall citing higher motives. This seldom works because it makes the candidate look falsely pious. 

·        Admit the indiscretion and ask for forgiveness. Ask people to make their decision on more important issues. This is the strategy actor Hugh Grant employed to return to the public's good graces after he was caught with a prostitute.

·        Neither admit nor deny the allegation. Instead, release reams of pertinent information, financial documents, and other related items that are so difficult for the media and the public to wade through that they will forget the whole thing.

·        Deny the charge and demand proof. This works only if the charges actually are not true. Spiro Agnew did this and discovered that the media had rock-solid proof of his crimes.

·        Blame the media and demand they reveal the unidentified source. This seldom works, unless the voters in your district generally hate the media. Plus, it angers the media so that they go after your candidate with an even greater vigor.

·        Ignore it. If the charge is small or little-publicized, sometimes it will go away. 

Unfortunately in the present climate, none of these conventional strategies are likely to work especially in a presidential race in which each side has over $ 1 billion to spend. So how to approach this issue? What should the Obama campaign do and what should be its strategy to counter the oncoming mudslinging?

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that perhaps a more effective approach may be drawn from the medical profession when it confronts a possible contagion from a viral plague. Everyone knows it is coming, nobody is sure what type it is or how to contain it? So what do they do? People may recall the efforts of the CDC ( Center of Disease control) a few years back when there was a threat of contagion from “swine flu” and “Mad cow” disease. Their approach to tackling these threats to the country are very instructive and could well form the template for OCC ( Obama’s Chicago Center). (Some may say that the impending attacks from the right in the 2012 campaign may well be called the same names too.)

The first step that CDC took was to identify the various possible strains of the viruses threatening the country. OCC needs to do the same confronted with the impending negative onslaught. Is the focus of the virus going to be on “ he is a Muslim”, or “ he is a nice guy but out of his depth”, or his “ foreign affairs approach is naïve” or that his "economic policy is a failure"?

Once the viral strains were identified the CDC took steps to research and formulate remedies to counter these strains. OCC needs to do the same. In each case of a possible viral attack, they can formulate and compose a fitting reply. "Muslim". Not so says the Archbishop and other leaders of the church. "Naïve." He took us out of two wars, killed OBL, helped the Arab spring, got rid of the Libyan and Egyptian dictators, cornered Iran and restored American prestige around the world. "Out of his depth". He passed the most far reaching medical reform in a century, removed “don’t ask don’t tell”, ensured equal pay for women, had a record of achievements unsurpassed in five decades. "Economic policy a failure?" He saved the world from a great depression,  rescued the auto industry, Dow Jones is double what it was when he took over. For each possible viral attack, there is a now a remedy.

The next step that CDC took was to inoculate the public to the dangers of the viruses through public and private information. OCC needs to do the same. They must mobilize at all levels to counter the viral infections- be they the attempt to lower voter turnout, inflame social issues or spread lies through the snake oil salesmen so easily available for hire to the republicans.

CDC also was very vigilant in identifying the viruses in its initial stages. So must OCC. The moment a falsehood is spread in any regional or local market, they must take up cudgels and bludgeon them to death before they can go viral.

Finally, CDC  set out to identify the source of these viruses and take action. Thus cattle were culled, pigs were slaughtered and export of these meats banned. OCC needs to identify the source of these viral strains and to expose them. The wealthy donors hiding behind vaccous names like American Crossroads, Freedom Watch, all need to be made accountable by suing them in local courts of law. No radio or TV station should be permitted to air ads whose authors are anonymous. Donors to these shady groups need to be systematically confronted and the donees should not be allowed a pass in their interviews to the press. The courts should be challenged on all the major issues– perhaps a strip search , now permitted on the flimsiest of excuses , may help concentrate their minds as well, on what is required to preserve democracy in the country


There are strategies available. OCC only needs to act on them and not sit around bemoaning the state of the union and pundits need to stop wringing their hands at the vile nature of politics that they do so much to promote by trying to be objective.