Commentary - Chris Stirewalt: Republicans try to turn Obama against the image of himself

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - W hatever dark arts Democrats believe Karl Rove has practiced, his greatest legacy to the penny loafer Machiavellis who populate the Republican Party is the unstinting use of bracketing.

That’s the idea that you never give your opponent a clean shot at an issue or a theme.  Whether it’s a protest, a television spot, or a competing press conference earlier in the news cycle, you place your opponent’s push for positive press inside a bracket of negativity.

Both parties do it, but the GOP has elevated it into an art form.

Students of Rove’s electoral alchemy, notably the bald bulldog running John McCain’s day-to-day operations, Steve Schmidt, were taught that everything needs a bracket.

When Barack Obama was floating a new energy policy that backed away from his opposition to offshore drilling, there were young Republicans outside the event handing out tire gauges mocking Obama for having said we could save as much oil as we could pump offshore if we all inflated our tires.

The Democrats have done plenty of bracketing too.

When McCain fired up Harley riders, Obama’s folks talked about McCain’s vote against a bill that would have made Harley the government’s sole supplier of motorcycles.

Or when McCain went to the Ohio town where the shipper DHL is about to purge its payroll, Obama’s camp got off a few shots about how McCain’s campaign manager advised the company.

But as John Kerry found out in 2004, the Republicans bracket with particular glee.

When Kerry would show up to speak on poverty and job losses in the Rust Belt, there would be a gaggle of GOPers — including a kid dressed up like a dolphin — outside the hall chanting the name of his yacht, the Scaramouche. (He was a rougish character from 19th century European theater, if you must know.)

Even if the press doesn’t bite, it’s hard for a brittle campaigner like Kerry to stay on message when being taunted every day by khaki-clad kids chanting “When I say scara, you say mouche! Scara… Mouche!”

But aside from rattling the candidate, the desired effect is a Pavlovian response in reporters and voters. When Kerry said he empathized with the poor, people thought of his big yacht with the silly, French name. The positive became a negative.

Since Republicans have invested so much in the tactic in the past, it’s logical that they would be the ones to take it to the next level.

And when Barack Obama is bathed in warm light and the cheers of 70,000 adoring fans in Denver two weeks from tonight, he’ll be bracketed with more precision than the NCAA basketball tournament.

And the Republicans have already done the draw.

There was plenty of insincere outrage when McCain’s team compared Obama to America’s favorite seamy starlets, Britney and Paris.

But there’s no question that, over the past two weeks, the idea of Obama being more style than substance has taken hold.

Plenty of people thought this would be the first issue-oriented, serious campaign since before someone at the Athenian agora said Pericles was soft on Sparta. Those folks were probably already Obama voters and don’t matter electorally anymore. 

What does matter for a candidate with as much going against him as McCain (age, a smile that threatens to crack his face, a dismal Republican brand, a penchant for verbal misfires, and a party base that found itself in a shotgun wedding with its nominee) is dispelling the myth that grew around Obama during the Democratic primaries.

An irascible 71-year-old can’t run against a charismatic healer whose ascent alone could redeem the nation, or as Michael Knox Beran called him “Barack Obama, shaman.”

Obama’s team, repeating the error of Democrats past, took the bait and not only responded to McCain’s small TV buy and silly Internet ads, they did ads of their own to try to brand McCain as a celebrity himself.

I’m sure the McCain team wishes that were so, but worse for Obama is that his spot, along with Paris’ own Web retort, turned what was essentially a stunt into two weeks of discussion and television programming.

Even if Obama’s speech at the Denver Broncos’ stadium is a 99-yard touchdown run, the Pavlovian response will kick in and some swing voters will think celebrity, not leader.

Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner.

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