Silent But Deadly

How many rules of conventional attack ad wisdom does this Obama ad violate?
* Thou shall play dire-sounding music.
* Thou shall use sarcastic, doom-and-gloom narration.
* Thou shall directly rebut the content of thy opponent’s attacks (i.e. redistribution of wealth).
* Thou shall not be the least bit subtle.
* Thou shall use grainy mug shots of thy opponents.
* [...]

Grade School Gotcha

Psst, Governor Palin, about that job Senator McCain talked you into pursuin’. Yes, you get $75,000 per month for playin’ dress up. Yes, you get to avoid the America hatin,’ terrorist lovin’ blue states.
But you may have been misled by the McCain HR Director. Because if you win, you really [...]

Weapons of Mass Deflection (WMD)

Trailing candidates often try to deflect the charges that are hurting them by changing the subject. So with McCain palin’, McCain-Palin is deflecting charges about the economy by accusing Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.”
Palin’s pallin’ accusation refers to Bill Ayers, who was on the run in the 1970s after a bomb he [...]

Expertise By Osmosis

The McCain campaign has engaged in some creative logic over the last couple of months. But none has been more creative than it’s stubborn insistence on claiming that being Governor of Alaska constitutes meaningful foreign policy…because Alaska is close to Russia.
In the second segment of CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric’s interview of Governor [...]

Pig in a Poke

If you Google “lipstick on a pig,” but eliminate all sites that mention “Obama,” “McCain” or “Palin,” you get 174,000 hits. The phrase is featured in the Urban Dictionary and on cliché.com. It is used so often in corporate PowerPoint presentations that it probably earns you bonus Business Buzzword Bingo points.
To rush [...]

Failin’ On Palin’

As we’ve been saying for a long time, Senator McCain is doing a good job baiting Obama supporters to take shots at Palin on issues that, by the end of the exchange, make McCain look best. For example:

• McCain attacks Obama on experience. Obama supporters say “Palin has less.” Days of vigorous rebuttals [...]

On Pilin’ On Palin

There are so many message directions Obama could take on the whole Palin front. Troopergate. Experience. Earmark hypocrisy. Family demands. But sacrifice is the essence of strategy, so he should take a pass on all of those tempting messaging paths, so those issues don’t drown out his most compelling message [...]