Barack Obama’s campaign style: Go negative, stay clean

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Politico:

If the catchphrase weren’t already taken, you could call Barack Obama’s signature style of negative politics “leading from behind.”

But as the president’s reelection team begins in earnest to attack Mitt Romney, Obama faces one of the most difficult tests of his political career: to tear down Romney without getting a single smudge of dirt on his own shirtfront — a trick he has performed deftly in previous races.

The attacks on Romney — described Sunday by White House counselor David Plouffe as a man with “no core” — represent the White House expectation that he will be the Republican nominee and an early attempt to build a contrast between his character and Obama’s. Democrats hope to wound the appealing, relatively moderate Romney at a moment when he is trying to build true rapport with the electorate by disqualifying him in the eyes of key swing voters and convincing them that Obama is the only one they can trust.

The early salvos are also familiar moves in a strategy that has worked in each of the four federal campaigns Obama has run: disqualifying character attacks from aides or outsiders, executed brutally as Obama himself floats above the fray.

“It’s a lot like his foreign policy — leading from behind but with a high body count,” said a Republican who held a top position in the 2008 presidential race. “Rarely is Obama himself the tip of the spear in an attack. He’s much more likely to let liberal allies and the media initiate the attack and keep it alive.”

Attack politics, of course, are more the norm than the outlier in American politics. But while slash-and-burn attacks typically damage both candidates — see, for instance, George Bush’s low approval numbers when he was reelected — Obama has so far pulled off the difficult trick of remaining broadly personally popular even as Americans are unhappy with some of his policies and with the direction of the country, and taking little blame for tough tactics.

The former Illinois senator’s career is littered with the husks of fallen candidates, and at the core of every major race he’s won is a personal contrast — though his aides protest, more credibly in some cases than others, that they had little to do with it. His primary and general election campaigns in 2004 featured candidates undone by divorce filings. His 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton was one long, high-concept assault on her credibility, under a brilliant banner that contained an unstated contrast: “Change You Can Believe In.” In the general election, a barrage of negative advertising added to aides’ — but never Obama’s — jabs at an “erratic” John McCain.

And while George Washington may be the last successful American politician to win the White House without going sharply negative, few have managed to to attack with the stealth Obama has displayed, leaving in his wake bitter rivals who felt their complaints of foul play were falling on deaf ears as Obama moved forward not just as victor, but as avatar of a new politics of hope.

“David Axelrod has always been skillful at creeping into your room in the middle of the night and slicing out your heart, somehow without leaving behind a single fingerprint or drop of blood that ties him or his candidate to the crime,” said Obama biographer David Mendell of Obama’s top political aide.
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It's the Chicago way...