By Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart
Party veterans are concerned that the campaign could get dirty too early on, potentially damaging the Democratic Party. Hillary's colleague in the Senate, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, even chastised the former president on the phone, saying that Clinton, as an elder statesman, should change his tone and stop attacking Obama, who carries the hopes of millions of Democrats. On Monday, Kennedy was slated to endorse Barack following the Illinois senator's landslide Sunday victory over Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Senator Patrick Leahy, the influential chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said angrily: "These cheap shots are beneath the dignity of a former president."
But Bill Clinton isn't allowing himself to be reined in that easily. Like many other veterans of political campaigns, he is familiar with the research of psychologist Drew Westen, who demonstrated that emotions, not the issues, are what decide elections. Westen is convinced that to succeed, a candidate must be able to stimulate both positive and negative emotions -- in other words, affection and hatred.
Destroying the Niceness Myth
Westen has a low opinion of polite restraint as a campaign tactic. He writes that it is a widespread myth among Democrats that negative campaigning -- attacking a rival's integrity -- is unethical, ineffective and, if practiced by an adversary, better left unanswered.
This sort of reasoning makes someone like Bill Clinton prick up his ears. When he met Westen for the first time at a Democratic Party convention, Clinton was already familiar with -- and an admirer of -- Westen's theories. A few months later, Westen received a call on his mobile phone while he was sitting in a Starbucks in Atlanta.
The friendly female voice on the other end asked Westen if he was available to speak with the former president of the United States. It was Bill Clinton, who immediately picked up their last conversation where it had left off. He wanted to learn about Westen's theories, Clinton said. For the next 30 minutes, Westen, walking back and forth on the street in front of the Starbucks, explained the essence of his message. Westen told Clinton that when a political candidate discusses his opponent, he must be willing to say the things that the public already thinks -- but hasn't yet dared to express.
Fighting Back
Obama is now facing off against two Clintons. He recently complained: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes." But complaining doesn't produce votes. When it comes down to it, an election campaign is a test of endurance for a young candidate.
Obama has trouble countering this style of campaigning, especially when his mantra is change -- and when he is the candidate arguing for an end to partisan bickering, not its revival.
Hillary Clinton's mantra, on the other hand, is experience. She touts herself as the person who can manage America, Inc. "I'm a problem solver," she tells potential voters.
Clinton's and Obama's different messages call for different campaign styles. For the ambassador of change, it is critical that he remain clean, that he avoid the trivialities of issues politics and steer clear of dirty tricks. A certain level of elegance and sophistication is practically expected of Obama. Beach volleyball is no contact sport, and it's a game where there are no fouls.
The chief operating officer, on the other hand, has to be hands-on. Perseverance and cunning are his specialty, and the ability to play rough is practically a job requirement.
Obama tends to come across as weak when defending himself against the Clintons' attacks. Of course, he denies any connections to shady businessmen in Chicago, saying that as a young attorney he spent all of five hours working as part his law firm's legal team for the slum landlord who now faces trial.
His response to Clinton's slum landlord comment is about as aggressive as Obama has been willing to get, so far at least. "I don't want to spend the next year, or the next four years, refighting the same fights we had in the 1990s," he said in a campaign ad. He was referring to the polarizing Clinton years, which he doesn't want to see repeated.
Flowers versus Howitzers
But these rhetorical digs are like loading a gun with flowers -- a poor match for the Clinton artillery. One of Clinton's more serious charges against Obama is that he used drugs. Interestingly, during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was also accused of using drugs, that is, smoking a joint in his student days. In the end, Clinton made himself a laughing stock when he explained that although he did smoke marijuana, he didn't inhale.
To avoid similar embarrassment, Obama freely admitted to drug use in his youth early on in the campaign. In his autobiography, he wrote that as a lonely teenager, he, like so many black adolescents, was on the road to becoming a junkie. He admitted to using hashish and, when he could afford it, even cocaine. He also wrote that the only reason that he didn't try heroin was because he couldn't stand the dealer.
By admitting to his teenage drug use, Obama literally handed the Clinton team the ammunition it is now using against him. Bill Shaheen, the co-chair of Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire, was the first to bring up Obama's earlier misstep. Shaheen feigned concern for the Democrats' prospects by saying: "The Republicans could ask: Did you ever give out drugs to other people? Or did you sell drugs?" Shaheen was promptly fired for his crafty remarks, and Clinton had to apologize to Obama.
But Clinton campaign strategist Penn even knows how to score points after the game is over. When he appeared on a TV talk show after the Shaheen scandal, Penn insisted: "We don't want to blow the whole issue of cocaine use out of proportion." Someone in the audience promptly yelled: "That's exactly what you're doing."
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