Obama and the Art of Political Self-Defense
March 9th, 2008 Posted in Hillary, ObamaDick Morris has a new bit about the need for Obama to attack Hillary via surrogates. I don’t entirely agree, although I made a similar call in this post.
Here’s the difference: if the Obama campaign were to bring up Norman Hsu (or Whitewater for that matter), it should only do so to compare Rezko-attacks on him with Republican Hsu-attacks on her. Obama’s message shouldn’t be that he buys into these attacks, but that she should know better about Rezko from experience. This need not sound whiny: just say that one is as flimsy as the other: “Don’t Hsu me, don’t Whitewater me.” This isn’t a correlate of Clinton’s “don’t Ken Starr me” tactic because it a) rejects Republican attacks on one’s opponent as a means to rejecting hers against you and b) focuses on the opponent’s history of vulnerability to Republicans, not one’s own. That vulnerability has large implications in the general election.
The Obama campaign accomplishes a few things here: it allows Obama to continue to maintain his integrity, which is more important than winning elections and what fuels his movement anway; avoids alienating the many Democrats who were disgusted by the anti-Clinton pogrom; highlights Clinton’s vulnerability in the general election and even post-election if she were to win; doesn’t broach the inconsistency of having to argue that Rezko style attacks don’t have merit while Hsu or Whitewater attacks do; and yet … it still reminds everyone of the ethical lapses of the Clintons.
Defending your opponent’s character can be the best way to create doubt about it.
