Hillary's Final Cards to Play: The Wimp Factor and Showing Osama

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

BARACK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON, HORSERACE

Hillary runs an ad that includes an image of Osama bin Laden; Obama's spokesman calls that "playing the politics of fear."

You may recall that about two weeks ago, I mentioned I had heard secondhand that Hillary had two "bombs" to drop on Obama, and they were expected to hit the news between the debate and primary day.

I heard this the Wednesday after Obama's bitter "cling" comments, which he made on a Monday. I suppose it's possible Hillary's people knew about the comments, and expected them to break after the debate, but the Huffington Post reported it on Friday afternoon.

I admit, I expected a bit more, something like video of Obama nodding in the background of one of Jeremiah Wright's speeches. But if there were two bombs or plays by Team Hillary, here's what I think they may have been.

1. Refuting the Wimp Factor: Team Hillary probably figured that they could go after Obama in the debate, and if he complained (a near-certainty), play the whiner/wimp card. It turned out that Gibson and Stephanopolous asked tough questions, and Obama's people complained loudly, giving her the window to declare, "when the going gets tough, you can't run away." This would all but guarantee that Obama would have to start denouncing her in harsher terms, which (presumably) makes him sound less like the Hope/Change Messiah and more like just another politician, stuck wrestling in the mud.

As the old saying goes, "you get dirty and the pig likes it."

2. The Osama ad. After the 2004 election, I had a chance to talk about the Bush-Cheney advertising with that campaign's ad master, Alex Castellanos. He noted that the objections from the Democrats to Bush using any image or reference to 9/11 was entirely predictable, and in fact desired by the GOP side. He told me that the howls of outrage told voters that the Democrats wanted to declare the issue of terrorism, the number one concern of voters, off-limits to discussion for the duration of the campaign. When one side wants to talk about a key issue and the other side doesn't, the voters notice.

There is nothing to the Osama image in Hillary's ad other than, 'terrorism is one of the great challenges a president must face.' Team Obama screaming that showing his face ipso facto represents "the politics of fear" suggests that they furiously object to reminding voters that terrorism is an issue.

By the way, the wimp factor gets invigorated when Obama backs out of another debate.

04/22 10:15 AM Share