So rather than attack Bush, Kerry focused on defining himself. The Democratic National Convention was a model of civility and positive focus. The Republican National Convention, on the other hand, was a full-throated assault on Kerry. I don't need to remind you how it all turned out.
Why is Obama-as-alternative failing? First, it ignores Bush. The reason people want a Democrat is that they deem Bush a failure. By letting the race become a referendum on Obama, Bush recedes in voters' minds. McCain's ad blaming Obama for high gas prices was preposterous, but you can see why he ran it. The media are covering Obama as if he's already president. So what's that Obama guy done about high gas prices, anyway? Let's vote the bum out and give McCain a shot!
Second, negative ads work better than positive ads. In focus groups, voters insist they hate negative ads, because that sounds virtuous. Yet studies show the negative advertisements are the ones they remember.
To go on the attack, Obama doesn't need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done. All he needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait. The Arizona senator wants voters to see him as a maverick who never changes positions for political reasons. One ad touts the way he bucked Bush on the environment. It doesn't mention that McCain has abandoned the climate-change bill he co-sponsored, demanded wider drilling and a gas-tax holiday that would undermine the goal of burning less fossil fuel, and started raking in huge sums from oil companies.
McCain has de-emphasized or reversed nearly every position that set him apart from Bush, most notably the tax cuts for the rich that are the heart of Bush's economic program. To prove his partisan bona fides during the primary, he boasted that "I did everything I could to get [Bush] elected and reelected." And when an interviewer suggested that McCain was different from Bush, the senator replied, "No. No. I -- the fact is that I'm different, but the fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush." Why haven't we seen these words in television ads?
Obama's strategy seems predicated on convincing voters that they really, really like the inexperienced black guy with the foreign-sounding name. Convincing them not to vote for the other guy, the one who embraces the least popular president in modern history, sounds like a better bet to me.
