GOP Insiders Worry About McCain's Chances

McCain has promised that this election will not be a negative one.

However, he's already running the ad to the left, portraying Obama as a friend of America's enemies, and other GOP operatives are calling for a negative campaign as the only hope the Republicans have of avoiding Obama destroying McCain come November.

"I think we've got a world of problems," said one Republican strategist with extensive experience in presidential campaigns. He said this came home to him with a thud when he watched Obama and McCain give speeches last Tuesday, with the Democrat speaking before "20,000 screaming fans, while John McCain looked every bit of his 72 years" in a speech televised from New Orleans. This Republican cited the liberal blogger Atrios' description of McCain's speech with a green backdrop that made McCain "look like the cottage cheese in a lime Jell-O salad."

For McCain to stand a chance of winning, the operative contended, the campaign, the Republican National Committee, or an independent group will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama's credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity, the operative pointed out, which, he argued, may kill McCain's chances.

Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution points out McCain's problems:

"McCain continues to embrace Bush policies on the most important issues, relying on a reputation for independence and moderation that could be lost in the heat of battle with Obama and the Democrats.... At the end of this long interlude, the only rationale for his election that has emerged is that Obama cannot be trusted to lead the country at a time of great danger because he is too inexperienced, naïve, liberal, elitist, and out of touch with American values. 'Elect me because the other guy is worse.' Not much of an argument in the face of gale-force winds blowing against the Republican Party."

So this advert, which implies Obama is a friend of America's enemies, might just be the first in a long line of negative ads from McCain.

As Tom Mann has pointed out, McCain has given very few reasons as to why someone should positively want to elect him as president, so we can expect a deluge of reasons as to why people should not elect Obama.

And, as someone who has flip flopped on almost every issue one can think of, it should come as no surprise to anyone when McCain flip flops on negative campaigning and starts outright negative attacks on Obama.

This latest ad is simply the first in what I feel sure will be a long line of such attacks.

The difference between the two candidates couldn't be more stark as both speeches on the night Obama finally secured the Democratic nomination made abundantly clear. Obama inspires and electrifies crowds of over 20,000 people, while McCain speaks at what could be mistaken for a meeting at the local building society.

If it is McCain's plan to have "a campaign that is more akin to a discussion among friends than a bitter clash of ideological rivals" then he will lose. He simply lacks the charisma to take Obama on head to head.

So let's watch how long it takes him to flip flop on negative campaigning.

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Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, US election 2008, negative campaigning