You can make Obama into Britney Spears, or John Kerry, or Malcolm X. I’m not sure you can make him into all three at the same time. (Is there a template in American culture for an Ivy-league-snob, black-militant, out-of-control former Mouseketeer?) Sure there is some overlap between one aspect of one attack and another, but overall, it’s a scattershot way of attacking. (Compare this with the elitist-windsurfer attacks against John Kerry, which however unfair, were consistent and clearly, immediately effective.) And if you’re choosing among all the possible ways to “other” Obama, is this really the most devastating argument against an opponent: “He’s just sooooo popular! He thinks he’s all that!”
But the dominant forces in the McCain campaign have decided that their best chance, right now, is to try to turn an Obama strength into a weakness: perhaps to appeal to the kind of people who see the Yes We Can video and feel looked down upon by the cool kids, perhaps to get the Obama campaign to shift gears away from roof-raising spectacles, perhaps to tamp down the “Obama is a celebrity” buzz in the media by suddenly making that seem like an attack.
Obama as Britney?
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The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy
More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.
