WASHINGTON — On a website he calls ExposeObama.com, Floyd G. Brown, the producer of the Willie Horton ad that helped defeat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, is preparing an encore.
Brown is raising money for a series of ads that he says will show Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to be out of touch on an issue of fundamental concern to voters: violent crime. One spot already making the rounds on the Internet attacks the presumptive Democratic nominee for opposing a bill while he was a state legislator that would have extended the death penalty to gang-related murders.
"When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. . . . Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" the ad asks.
Though in this presidential race crime has taken a back seat to the war in Iraq and the economy, some Republicans think Obama is vulnerable on the issue -- and they hope to inject it into the campaign.
Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona have some sharply different views on crime, but in truth, the president has little to do with day-to-day law enforcement. The vast amount of crime-fighting in the U.S. is done at the state and local level. Moreover, the rate of violent crime nationally has been declining for more than a decade.
Critics say the issue of crime is used primarily to exploit voter fears and stir up prejudices. Richard Nixon's pledge during the 1968 campaign to restore "law and order" was viewed as a subtle appeal to white racial prejudice. The Willie Horton ad that made GOP consultant Brown famous focused on a black Massachusetts felon who raped a woman while on weekend furlough from prison. Dukakis was governor at the time and supported the program.
"Presidents don't deal with crimes. Governors and mayors deal with crimes," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Boston's Northeastern University. "These are relatively fringe issues for presidents. Yet they certainly resonate when it comes to the electorate."
Brown is counting on that resonance. "There are many, many different votes that Barack Obama has taken over the course of his state Senate career that are going to show him to be absolutely missing in action when it comes to the question of controlling violent crime," Brown asserted in an interview.
He added: "If he thinks it is not a significant issue, then he should talk to Michael Dukakis."
