Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Jul 28, 2008 at 9:41 PM Pacific

Three ideas for the campaign

I know it might seem presumptuous to offer advice to a campaign that is currently ahead by as many as 8 points in the national tracking polls, but armchair campaign management is way too much fun, so here goes: a list three ideas that might prove useful for the Obama campaign.

In brief, they are:

1. Recognize that you already have all the presidential imagery you need, and start putting it on the air.
2. Feed the beast from time to time, but continue giving McCain the opportunity to self-destruct.
3. Start defining McCain by tying him to Bush in a Harry and Louise-style TV ad campaign

Details below.

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First: Recognize that you already have all the presidential imagery you need, and start putting it on the air.

Barack Obama's trip overseas was more successful than anybody could have ever imagined; it produced more presidential, commander-in-chief images of your candidate than Bush has had in the last six years combined. You cannot recreate the magic of the past week, nor do you need to.

Specifically, you don't need to do events like the one you had today with Wall Street and labor leaders. I understand the meeting was set up to look like a Cabinet meeting, and the intention was to produce more presidential imagery. It was probably scheduled before last week's trip, so you couldn't have known that by now you'd already have all the presidential images you need, but at this point, images like today's meeting fall far short of the high mark set last week -- and even if they didn't, they'd be superfluous.

So instead of trying to create new presidential images, use the ones you already have in web videos and television advertisements. Frank Rich was right when he said Barack Obama seemed like an acting president last week. To make that point, all you have to do is run the tape. Milk it for all its worth.

:: :: ::

Second: Feed the beast from time to time, but continue giving McCain the opportunity to self-destruct.

There's no doubt that despite the media's bias towards McCain, he's his own worst enemy, and it is a smart strategy to let him hang himself from his own rope. And it's also true that every time he goes on TV the odds are better than not that he's going to inflict some damage on his own campaign.

So you don't need drive every news cycle, but you should aim to stir things up at least once or twice a week by giving the media some fresh material to work with. Use the tried and true trick of the minimal ad buy, or once you have a Vice Presidential candidate, use him or her launch a serious missile volley every now and then towards McCain.

Create a bit of a commotion, enough to keep McCain off-stride and the base fired up. But don't overdo it. Continue giving them breathing room: the more the McCain campaign keeps on trotting their guy out there, the more likely it is that he's going to snap -- and when he finally does, it's going to be a big deal, perhaps even lights out.

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Third - Start defining McCain by tying him to Bush in a Harry and Louise-style TV ad campaign

Most of us on the left have bad memories of the Harry and Louise ads (featuring a couple sitting at a kitchen table talking about health care policy), but the reason why we hated those ads was because they were incredibly effective. You deployed them effectively during the primary on behalf of Barack Obama -- now is the time to use a similar style ad campaign against John McCain.

These ads can focus on any number of economic issues, but they should be oriented around driving two central messages: McCain = Bush = Stats quo, and that Barack Obama = Agent of Change. Done correctly, the imagery of these ads will make McCain seem out of touch.

Be creative with these ads -- come up with a some memorable hook like the 3AM line. Maybe it's a new set of names for the couple in the ad. But let the ad tell a story, a story about a family, and the disastrous impact that Bush-McCain policies will have, and how the change represented by Barack Obama will offer hope for renewed American greatness and economic strength.

I'm not saying to abandon other types of advertising; in fact, the kitchen table ads should be run in conjunction with ads featuring Barack Obama himself, both in images from his trip overseas, and also talking straight to camera and with voters about pocketbook issues.

So use the kitchen-table/Harry and Louise ads to define McCain as Bush/Status Quo/Out-of-Touch, and then use the rest of the ad rotation to simultaneously build up Barack Obama's strengths.