Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Aug 17, 2008 at 9:22 AM Pacific

The Drama Queen

The Obama campaign has successfully raised doubts about John McCain's character when it comes to campaign tactics, but while that strategy softens up McCain for future attacks, it's not sufficient to move votes.

Without moving to the next stage of the narrative against McCain, the risk is that at a certain point people will say: "Yeah, McCain is an S.O.B., but he's my S.O.B."

Fortunately, the Obama campaign seems to understand this, and I expect they will in ways both subtle and direct begin raising doubts about McCain's character, expanding into different subjects such as his age (as it relates to his mental capacity), his temper, and his reflexive impulse towards confrontation.

The best way to go about such attacks is to raise them the context of a policy discussion, so the implications of the critique are clear. On the last point -- McCain's impulsive tendency towards conflict -- Andrew Sullivan absolutely nailed it yesterday. His formulation was the best I've seen so far in the campaign (emphasis added):

McCain:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

Not the invasion of Kuwait? Or the first Gulf War? Or the Afghan war? Or the second Iraq war? Or Darfur? Or Bosnia? Or 9/11? It's this kind of emotional hyperbole that should worry people about McCain in the White House. He's a drama queen on these issues. With a finger on the trigger.

For an added bonus, it works well with the whole ABBA thing (Dancing Queen)...

The Drama Queen

The Obama campaign has successfully raised doubts about John McCain's character when it comes to campaign tactics, but while that strategy softens up McCain for future attacks, it's not sufficient to move votes.

Without moving to the next stage of the narrative against McCain, the risk is that at a certain point people will say: "Yeah, McCain is an S.O.B., but he's my S.O.B."

Fortunately, the Obama campaign seems to understand this, and I expect they will in ways both subtle and direct begin raising doubts about McCain's character, expanding into different subjects such as his age (as it relates to his mental capacity), his temper, and his reflexive impulse towards confrontation.

The best way to go about such attacks is to raise them the context of a policy discussion, so the implications of the critique are clear. On the last point -- McCain's impulsive tendency towards conflict -- Andrew Sullivan absolutely nailed it yesterday. His formulation was the best I've seen so far in the campaign (emphasis added):

McCain:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

Not the invasion of Kuwait? Or the first Gulf War? Or the Afghan war? Or the second Iraq war? Or Darfur? Or Bosnia? Or 9/11? It's this kind of emotional hyperbole that should worry people about McCain in the White House. He's a drama queen on these issues. With a finger on the trigger.

For an added bonus, it works well with the whole ABBA thing (Dancing Queen)...