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August 25, 2008

Obama Will Lose If He Doesn't Attack

By Douglas Schoen

Make no mistake: Barack Obama is in trouble -- deep trouble. With the latest Reuters-Zogby poll showing Obama five points behind, John McCain has the edge and the Obama campaign is the one that appears unfocused, undisciplined and without a message.

Obama must make this election about someone other than Barack Obama and that someone is John McCain. Right now the election is a referendum on Obama -- a contest he has been steadily losing over the past few weeks.

Obama is losing the battle be cause McCain's negative ads have been effective. By comparing Obama to celebrities unflatteringly and by suggesting that he has, at the very least, a messianic streak to his personality, the McCain campaign is driving one of the messages that my research and that of others has shown to be his greatest weakness -- that he is not prepared and in some ways is not well- suited to be elected president.

McCain is on the attack, and Obama must fight back.

In the 1996 Clinton campaign, which I had helped run, virtually none of our commercials was positive -- they were almost all negative ads that not only attacked Bob Dole but also addressed what Bill Clinton had done and stood for. The answer in the 2008 campaign is to do what we did successfully in 1996: mount a sustained attack making McCain and the policies he has and does support the central issue in the campaign.

We also engaged in a guilt-by- association effort in 1996 that paid great dividends and should serve as a model for the Obama campaign as well. From day one, we systematically linked Dole to his politically toxic congressional colleague, Speaker Newt Gingrich, and we never abandoned this linkage.

Similarly, Obama should be doing what we did in 1996. In a fo cused, disciplined and sustained way, he must make this contest a referendum on the Bush-McCain policies plain and simple. The central mantra of the Obama candi dacy should be straightforward and unambiguous: After the abject failures of the last few years, the coun try can no longer afford four more years of Bush-McCain policies.

Specifically, with unemployment reaching 5.7 percent and the deficit reaching a record $490 billion, there was hardly a peep out of the Obama campaign. This was ridiculous, silly and flawed, and this must change, and change fast. Both Bush and McCain must be systematically blamed for all that is going wrong in America -- both domestically and internationally.

It ought to be obvious. It ought to be clear. George Bush has an approval rating that is close to 30 percent. Eighty-five percent of the electorate wants to go in a different direction. On foreign and domestic policy, McCain supports the basic policies of the Bush administration. He has tentatively and hesitantly distanced himself from Bush on is sues like immigration and the environment, but on issues like the war in Iraq, the economy and in particular tax policy, the McCain policies now virtually mirror the Bush policies or are more extreme.

Obama needs to make the case that the Bush-McCain policies have caused the economic downturn. Furthermore, Obama needs to speak directly to McCain's own flip-flops over the past eight years on issues like taxes, abortion, campaign finance, warrantless wiretappings and privatizing Social Se curity. Obama can't simply cede the character issue to McCain and must begin systematically attack ing McCain and exposing his weak nesses.

And finally, Obama can't let his temperament be called into question without doing the same about McCain. Republican leaders like Thad Cochran of Mississippi have said, "The thought of him being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

McCain called Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Pete Do menici of New Mexico names that newspapers wouldn't print. Think how voters will react if they get a clear sense of some of the things McCain has said and done -- from the point of view of his colleagues and peers in Congress.

So let's be clear. Unless Obama changes his approach and changes his message, he is likely to find himself on the short end of an election that people have believed for the longest time he couldn't lose. Unless he can do this before Labor Day, he will be in even worse trouble because recent history has suggested that he who is ahead on Labor Day wins on Election Day.

Obama has less than two weeks to turn his campaign around. The clock is ticking.

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