Taking the high road by politicians and “...not dignifying that with an answer” doesn’t work anymore. Not when someone gets it stuck in their head that what some radio talk show host said is true–or thinks is true. Too late to unring the bell as lawyers say. A prejudicial answer ‘slips’ out during court testimony? Oops. Which is the beauty of a smear. You don’t have to prove it—you just have to put it out there.And so it goes in this election with Obama. Not only does he have to overcome a lot of like-minded people who aren’t ready for him to be president, he’s also got to fight the minions of the right who ignore the shortcomings of their own candidates while they attack him.
Continuing his heavy use of the internet as marketing weapon in an attempt to counter this onslaught, Obama created Fightthesmears.com, which lists specific allegations about his wife and includes other unproven claims about him. I like having one location where I can go to see accusations answered by a candidate. Sometimes a story breaks claiming one candidate made certain remarks, so you watch the news later to see if they responded to the story. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Where do you go to find out?
While this might help overcome some of the ‘They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true’ mindset, let me also play devil’s advocate for a sec: These are politicians we talking about—people don’t trust any of them. Obama’s likability factor notwithstanding. (Name the last politician you trusted.) Secondly, does this waste time better spent by candidates if they‘re constantly in a defensive mode rather than focusing on the issues of the day?
Tags: Fight The Smears
1 comment:
Seriously - regardless of your political affiliation, you have to believe that Obama is going to wipe the floor with McCain when it comes to marketing. This is brilliant. I love it. As soon as I get a moment, I'm totally going to inject this into a blog post I was already writing about the two candidates' web sites.
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