McCain's Attacks On Obama's 'Celebrity'
Make An Asset More Problematic
By Athena Jones
August 14, 2008
First came the ad comparing Barack Obama to
Paris Hilton and Britney Spears
and calling him "the biggest celebrity in the world,"
against the backdrop of a huge crowd in Berlin. Then there was
the Web
spot that seemed to equate the Illinois senator with Jesus
and Moses -- also using his cheering fans for
a visual. And on TV, another commercial
asked whether the presumptive Democratic nominee's popularity
really meant he was prepared to "help your family."
Obama's campaign said John McCain's Paris-Britney
ad was representative of "the same old politics," but
nearly two weeks later, after decrying the commercial as "sophomoric,"
"negative" and "ridiculous," it put out its own
ad calling the Arizona senator "Washington's biggest
celebrity," complete with big-band music, clips of his appearances
on late-night talk shows and no fewer than six clips of the Republican
with President Bush.
It's hard to tell yet whether McCain's new approach is having
any effect on poll numbers during the pre-convention summer lull,
in which fewer people are paying attention to politics. Obama's
camp does not appear to be particularly worried about McCain's
attempts to define the first-term senator, a man who is still
unfamiliar to many voters.
Mike Paul, who advises corporate, government
and celebrity clients on public relations and reputation management,
said the McCain ads are problematic for Obama because he is less
known than his rival and has a shorter public record.
"The bottom line is that the positioning by the McCain campaign
of Obama as a celebrity is working," said Paul, who expects
McCain to continue this line of attack. "When you don't have
a lot of experience, it sticks. If you do have experience in a
lot of other areas, it doesn't stick."
But Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar
who focuses on the presidency, the news media and the political
culture of Washington, said that while using a candidate's strengths
against him may be a clever kind of political jujitsu, "celebrity"
is a silly notion on which to focus.
"There's no way that John McCain can run a campaign like
that for another nearly three months and get elected. This is
an August attack," Hess said. "It's silly for lots of
reasons. When is a candidate for president not a celebrity?"
Obama seems to agree, at least about the "silly" part.
"The fact that John McCain and Paris Hilton are engaged
in a spat I don't think is of prominent concern for the American
people," he said aboard his campaign plane last week. "I
think they want some real solutions to their problems, not chattering
between those two."
Obama still leads McCain in most national polls, but the campaign
plays down such data in planning its next move.
"If we based our campaign strategy and our campaign moves
on the polls, we would have dropped out of the race a year ago,"
spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "So that's not
where we've ever focused, and that's not where we will focus in
the months to come."
She said the senator would keep doing what he has been doing
in the face of McCain's attacks, and that means continuing to
host town hall meetings like the ones he has been holding for
weeks on issues such as energy and the economy. However, Psaki
said, the campaign won't shy away from larger rallies from time
to time.
And as for the massive event planned at Denver's Invesco Field
-- which seats more than 76,000 people -- on the last night of
the Democratic National Convention, the campaign says it is not
concerned about the size of the crowd playing into McCain's line
of attack.
"The night the nominee accepts the nomination is a historic
event under any circumstances, and we're confident that this year
will be the same," said Psaki.
But the huge crowd at Invesco could be a mixed bag for the campaign,
Paul said. The image of another audience of thousands will lend
credence to McCain's celebrity argument, turning Obama's stage
presence and oratorical abilities into, if not exactly a liability,
then at least less of an asset.
"'You've got to be kidding me. Half those people don't know
what he stands for,'" Paul said, imaging the McCain response.
"'They just want a signature from some rock star.'"
The Obama campaign, for its part, will seek to use the event
to send the message that America has united behind the Illinois
Democrat. And in the meantime, Obama's operatives have made moves
to turn the conversation back to the issue they see as front and
center in voters' minds: the economy. The campaign's latest
ad, set to begin airing today, paints McCain as an economic
disaster waiting to happen while slamming him for voting with
Bush "95 percent of the time."
Even if they aren't able to dislodge the celebrity narrative
from the cloud of chatter surrounding the race, the Obama campaign
still has a lot to gain from the large-scale events that have
become its hallmark. At each event, the campaign focuses on collecting
information from attendees -- especially the uncommitted, "just
curious" types -- in the hopes of converting undecideds into
supporters and volunteers.
"We have a game plan and a strategy here, and we're going
to continue to execute it. You know, we're not gonna be terribly
worried about what, you know, people sort of playing armchair
quarterback," campaign manager David Plouffe
told reporters on a conference call last week when asked about
hitting McCain hard in response to his ads. "If you're in
politics or you're in sport, you just have to know you're going
to get a lot of people who say, 'You should have called that play,
you should have called this play,' but we have a game plan and
a strategy. We're confident in it and we're going to execute it."
