I haven’t been spending much time picking apart campaign ads in this election, because I know enough about what I don’t know about that I don’t want to pretend to be factcheck.org. But in his newest ad, John McCain has come into Tuned In’s house, as the kids say, attacking Barack Obama on pop culture.
Again, I’ll leave the analysis of the ad’s claims about energy policy to Factcheck—who says they’re false—and just look at the semiotics of that opening few seconds, which, as Michael Scherer writes elsewhere at time.com, is becoming a major thrust of the McCain argument. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” the female voiceover intones, intercutting footage of the massive Berlin crowd chanting “O-bam-A!” with the pop of flashbulbs and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton:
* There are a lot of celebrities out there. Why those two? The message: sure, he may draw a big crowd. But he’s a lightweight. He’s famous for doing nothing. (Actually, I’d argue that conclusion about Britney, who, whatever else you can say about her, worked insanely on her career since she was a child.) Oh, yeah—and he’s a girl.
* Seriously, why not contrast him with some male celebrities? (A McCain spokesman did compare Obama with Tom Cruise in a statement, but Maverick didn’t make the cut in the TV ad.) It may say something about the attack: that it wants to question Obama’s masculinity, in connection with the ad’s overt attack on his leadership. Or it says something about our culture: right now, the celebs most mercilessly mocked in the tabloids and blogs—Spears, Hilton, the Olsen twins, Lindsay Lohan, etc.—are mainly women. (Spencer Pratt? Maybe not the most recognizable figure to McCain’s target demo.)
* All this, by the way, is coming from the guy with this endorsement.
* As I noted back when he made the Berlin speech, the “O-bam-A!” chant was something opposition ad makers were likely to try to make hay out of.
Both candidates, it looks like, are accepting Obama’s stardom and watercooler factor as a premise of this campaign. Obama is trying to ride it without alienating voters, as indicated by his moving his convention speech to an outdoor Denver stadium. McCain, on the other hand, has decided to try to turn it into a negative—so that when voters see Obama exciting a crowd (at, say, a certain event in Denver), they’ll see Britney Spears at the VMAs. (Obama would rather they see Bono: that is, a figure who’s charismatic and able to bring down a house, yes, but also inspirational and substantive.)
At heart, the celebrity attack is a variation on the theme: “He’s not one of us.” (A liability the Obama campaign has tried to counter with soft-media appearances for Access Hollywood, Us and People; i.e., the “Stars—they’re just like us!” approach.) The larger insinuation here is, yes, Obama is a huge media figure, but therefore he’s remote from you; he doesn’t know how you live.
I’m going to wade a little out of my depth here, but here’s where I get skeptical of this strategy. (This is a good point to disclose that I’m an Obama voter.) Many of the attacks against Obama—not just from McCain but from surrogates and Internet anonymice—have been “not one of us” attacks. But they’re different kinds of “not one of us” angles, and they even contradict one another. That is…
* He’s a celebrity! Therefore, he’s vapid, he’s an empty suit, he looks good on TV but there’s not enough going on upstairs. But…
* He’s an elitist! He’s got too much going on upstairs! He’s an ivory-tower egghead! (Something no one has ever accused Paris Hilton of.) He eats arugula, or something! He’s effete, snobby and wimpy! But…
* He’s a scary secret-Muslim black radical! (To be fair, these smears are not an official McCain campaign message, but they’re a big part of the anti-Obama narrative regardless.) He’s married to Angela Davis and was probably brainwashed in a madrassa somewhere!
You can make Obama into Britney Spears, or John Kerry, or Malcolm X. I’m not sure you can make him into all three at the same time. (Is there a template in American culture for an Ivy-league-snob, black-militant, out-of-control former Mouseketeer?) Sure there is some overlap between one aspect of one attack and another, but overall, it’s a scattershot way of attacking. (Compare this with the elitist-windsurfer attacks against John Kerry, which however unfair, were consistent and clearly, immediately effective.) And if you’re choosing among all the possible ways to “other” Obama, is this really the most devastating argument against an opponent: “He’s just sooooo popular! He thinks he’s all that!”
But the dominant forces in the McCain campaign have decided that their best chance, right now, is to try to turn an Obama strength into a weakness: perhaps to appeal to the kind of people who see the Yes We Can video and feel looked down upon by the cool kids, perhaps to get the Obama campaign to shift gears away from roof-raising spectacles, perhaps to tamp down the “Obama is a celebrity” buzz in the media by suddenly making that seem like an attack.
[Update: Or, to get Machiavellian here, is it to get dozens of TV news shows to replay the ad and focus on the “celebrity angle,” meanwhile airing for free and without comment the energy attack in the last half of the ad, which Factcheck determined to be false?]
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has responded with an ad that knocks McCain for taking “the low road”:
In this corner, contempt for Obama’s celebrity; in that corner, contempt for McCain’s tactics. If your opponent tries to make you Britney Spears, you try to make him into the paparrazzi.