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MEDIA, SC VOTERS BRACE FOR UNPRECEDENTED SMEAR CAMPAIGN

While we spend the next three days waiting for New Hampshire voters to determine the Republican match-up that will play out in South Carolina on Jan. 19, voters are already anticipating the unprecedented barrage of nasty campaign tactics that will be coming down the pike from a certain Palmetto State political consultant. And the media are doing the same.In the above clip from a PBS special that aired Friday night, NOW host David Brancaccio examined the ugly events of the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary to find out if history will repeat itself over the next two weeks (and yes, that’s FITSNews editor Will Folks in that interview). A day later, the Boston Herald’s Holly Robichaud also summoned the primary of eight years ago as a warning of things to come:

Eight years ago Senator John McCain’s campaign was damaged terribly in South Carolina by a political consultant, Warren Tompkins, who resorted to negative push polls and anonymous attacks on the Senator. One such false claim was that the Senator had an illegitimate child.

Warren Tompkins is now a top advisor to Mitt Romney. New Hampshire and South Carolina voters can expect the same nasty attacks to be launched against McCain.

As a professional political consultant I can tell you that negative push polling is the worst form of slime out there. I have never and will never do one for any of my clients. No way. In fact an overwhelming majority of political consultants will not engage in such a sleazy tactic.

Is hiring Tompkins a poor management decision? Or is it a sign of utter desperation? Or is it a reflection of Mitt’s character?

Robichaud thinks this will be a preview of what will happen here starting next week. PBS also seemed to imply the same thing. But what happens in New Hampshire Tuesday will almost certainly determine the degree of such imminent malicious tactics from Tompkins and the Romney campaign — and it will establish their target.

If Romney wins the Granite State, then Tompkins will focus exclusively on Mike Huckabee in what will have become a two-man race between he and the former Arkansas governor. And his attacks will roughly be on par with those of 2000.

But if John McCain wins New Hampshire, then Romney will have met his Waterloo and will be on the outside looking in on a different bi-candidate campaign between Huckabee and McCain. In that scenario, Romney — who has enough personal cash to not drop out until the bitter end — will have nothing to lose by giving Tompkins millions of dollars to dump into an all-out, “by any means possible” assault of both candidates ; an unfortunate situation that would likely produce the most horrific smear campaign in U.S. political history. I’m not even sure there is anything dirty enough for me to say “that would seem tame by comparison.”

Don’t just take my word, however. Check out this 2004 piece (after the jump) from the Boston Globe written by McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis — who served the Arizona senator in the same role in 2000 — that serves as a pretty good primer for the next two weeks:

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The anatomy of a smear campaign

By Richard H. Davis | March 21, 2004

Every presidential campaign has its share of hard-ball political tactics, but nothing is more discomforting than a smear campaign. The deeply personal, usually anonymous allegations that make up a smear campaign are aimed at a candidate’s most precious asset: his reputation. The reason this blackest of the dark arts is likely to continue is simple: It often works.

The premise of any smear campaign rests on a central truth of politics: Most of us will vote for a candidate we like and respect, even if we don’t agree with him on every issue. But if you can cripple a voter’s basic trust in a candidate, you can probably turn his vote. The idea is to find some piece of personal information that is tawdry enough to raise doubts, repelling a candidate’s natural supporters.

All campaigns do extensive research into their opponent’s voting record and personal life. This so-called “oppo research” involves searching databases, combing through press clips, and asking questions of people who know (and preferably dislike) your opponent. It’s not hard to turn up something a candidate would rather not see on the front page of The Boston Globe.

It’s not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate’s political weakness.

Having run Senator John McCain’s campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn’t take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used “push polling” to suggest that McCain’s Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the “pollster” determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the “pollsters” asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that’s not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to “fellow South Carolinians” stating that McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.” It didn’t take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: “Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock.” Hand replied, “Wait a minute, that’s a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren’t any?”

Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But “if you’re responding, you’re losing.” Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.

We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads — a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.

The only way to stop the expected mud-slinging in 2004 is for both President Bush and Senator Kerry to publicly order their supporters not to go there. But if they do, their behavior would be the exception, not the rule.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Primary Season, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.