The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates.
Obama must answer Hillary's negative attacks and make counterpunches of his own to rock her back on her heels.
His holier-than-thou posture is fine for the opening stages of a campaign, but when your opponent starts throwing mud, you've got to answer.
Obama needs to enlist the likes of Ted Kennedy and his other supporters in making the case against Hillary.
After her victories in Texas and Ohio, Hillary is once again in play. Negatives about her matter. A full frontal assault on her integrity and on Bill's conflicts of interest (remember they have joint finances) will work and will stop the bleeding in the Obama campaign.
The Clintons would like nothing better than for Obama to remain passive, clinging to his desire to raise the tone of our politics.
It's already starting. A comment on this blog pointed to Samantha Power's "monster" comment as an example. That one doesn't count, however. Here's a fuller account of the context from Political Lore:In the interview she stated that Obama’s claim that he will have troops withdrawn from Iraq in 16 months is a best case scenario.
So essentially in the matter of several minutes Obama’s foreign policy advisor managed to undermine one of the centerpieces of his campaign, which was to redeploy combat troops in Iraq in the first 16 months of this Presidency.
Power admitted in an interview after her resignation from the campaign to being a “political rookie.” That description may better describe the real reason for Power’s resignation.It is obvious that Power was speaking from an essentially unfiltered position and actually was reflecting conversations that she has had with Obama, rather than herself spouting the lofty rhetoric Obama has made a staple on the campaign trail.
Obama has now indirectly addressed Power’s Iraq comments on the campaign trail by saying, “Don’t be confused, I will end the Iraq war in 2009.”
A note on this point from the Harvard Crimson:Earlier this month, retired four-star general Jack Keane, an advisor to Senator Clinton, made similar remarks to the New York Sun suggesting that Clinton would not immediately remove troops from Iraq either.
A good conclusion comes from Megan McArdle, who wrote this:
I think that the main problem was that Samantha Power was talking to the journalist from the Scotsman the way that journalists talk to other journalists. But of course, she isn't a journalist any more; she was the foreign policy advisor to a guy who wants us to make him the leader of the free world.
Anyway, Obama has now accused the Clinton campaign of trying to deceive people. I saw a morning talk show with the child-actor from the 3am Clinton add (which used stock footage from Getty images), who's now 18 and an Obama supporter. She called the ad "fearmongering." Good job to the Obama campaign for getting her on the air; it was an effective attack I thought. There'll be more where all this came from.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, let the late night jokes about McCain's age begin!
"The New York Times just reported that John McCain may be constitutionally barred from becoming president because he was born outside the United States in the Panama Canal Zone. When he heard this, McCain said, 'That's ridiculous. When I was born, there was no Panama Canal.'" --Conan O'Brien
"I think the world of John McCain. He looks like the kind of guy who still talks real loud on a long-distance phone call? 'What time is it where you are? What? Can you hear me?' ... He looks like the guy you are waiting for to stop gabbing with the teller. ... He looks like a guy who sits at his dinner tray and watches the 'Beltway Boys.' ... He looks like the relative who you get blank e-mails from. ... He looks like the guy whose wife forced him to go on a cruise. ... He looks like the guy you have to nudge when his name is called. ... He looks like a freelance crosswalk guard." --David Letterman
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