Dr. J.'s Commentary: Controlling the Agenda

As I noted recently in a BF Short Take, he who controls the agenda wins elections. From FDR through Lyndon Johnson before he got trapped in Vietnam, the Democrats knew this very well, and except for the Eisenhower years, they won consistently. They did so by for the most part focusing on the substantive issues. Goldwater was the first modern Republican who recognized that one could never win by going after programs. What was needed was going after what paid for the programs -- taxes, and then separating the two in the public's mind. Lee Atwater added the first modern Republican fillip by beyond the tax rather than policy focus: attack the person directly and personally (as in "Willie Horton" and "Swift Boats").

Karl Rove added, or perfected, the Goebellesian Big Lie Technique (tell as big a lie as you can manage and tell it over and over again -- it will come to be accepted as truth by a significant number of people). He also added several other important elements to the basic strategy. 1) Attack your opponent's strengths and adopt them as your own if possible. 2) Create as many WMDs, Weapons of Mass Distraction, as you possibly can. Then get the political discussion focused on them rather than on the real issues. 3) Always deal with process -- e.g., "the Media are against us" -- rather than substance -- what to do about health insurance, global warming, the Iraq War, the economy.

And so we come to John McCain and Sarah Palin. They cannot possibly win on the issues and his campaign director, "Swift Boat Bullet" Steve Schmidt, a Rove disciple, knows this very well. He also knows how to get control of the agenda. Over the past couple of weeks, he has offered us a veritable textbook on how to do this, and so far he is succeeding.

A. There are many reasons for the choice of Sarah Palin as the Veep candidate. A major one, according to Max Blumenthal of The Nation, is the role played by the highly secretive, supremely reactionary Council on National Policy, the coordinating group for all of the nation's leading right-wing religious, economic, and political organizations, in arranging for her nomination. On Air America Radio on Sept. 6, 2008, Robert Kennedy, Jr. went so far as to say that a deal was made between the McCain campaign and the CNP: if Palin were picked, James Dobson, et al, who had previously been either neutral or anti-McCain, would come on board for him. Whatever the reasons behind it, the choice and the timing of its announcement were a brilliant stroke. It blew Obama and the Democrats right off the front pages and TV for the weekend. The subject was not only Palin herself, but also the whole controversy that immediately arose about whether or not she was/is "qualified." Not what her positions and policies are, but whether she is "qualified." A Weapon of Mass Distraction.

B. "Always attack; never defend." She is supremely unqualified, but that is beside the point. The McCain campaign made some little arguments that she is (Mayor of a small village, Governor of a state with an annual budget less than what Bush blows away on the War on Iraq in a month, lives in a state of which the far northwest corner, virtually uninhabited, is just 53 miles across the Bering Strait from the virtually uninhabited northeast corner of Russia). But mainly they used of lack of qualifications to organize an attack against Obama on what they claim are his lack of qualifications. A brilliant turning around, under the Always attack, Never defend doctrine.

C. Attack your opponent's strengths. And so McCain/Palin all of a sudden become about women's rights and "change." Many observers have given the lie to these claims, but the point for the Republicans is not whether they are true or false but that the discussion becomes not about the issues themselves but indeed whether or not their claims are true or false. "They are false. No they're not. Yes, they are," and so on and so forth. The issues themselves get submerged in the shouting.

D. Keep the debate focused on process: the role of the media, should "family issues" be part of the debate, is it "fair" that Palin is being investigated (making sure that what she is being investigated for is absolutely buried), and so on and so forth. Again, a WMD.

And so, how do Obama and the Democrats counterattack? Briefly, by first staying on the issues as the central focus of their campaign and second by cherry-picking the Atwater/Rove/Schmidt formula for what is both honest and will work. I am encouraged by the fact that the Obama campaign is following this formula more and more, although in certain areas they still have a ways to go.

1. Recognize that agenda control is key.

2. Continue to focus on substance rather than process: hammer away at the real issues and don't, for example, get sucked into debates over whether the media are "fair" or not. (They're not. According to the George Mason U. study, they're biased towards McCain, but that's besides the point.)

3. Always attack; never defend, oneself. Go after McCain's true record and his close connections with Bush for all the years the Republicans were in full power in Washington. Get beyond to "Washington is the problem" to "Republican Washington" is the problem. Continue to attack on the fact that top Republican lobbyists are draped all over the top of McCain's campaign. And one could try this: Experience is actually irrelevant, and the Bush Administration is the best illustration of this. Bush had virtually none, other a history of failure when he came to Washington from the weakest Governor's office in the 50 states. On the other hand, his closest advisors were Cheney and Rumsfeld, who had tons of experience. And look at the mess we're in now.

4. Attack your opponents' strengths. I have been going on about "attack on defense" for quite some time now. The Obama campaign has done some of this. They have to keep on doing it, more loudly as time goes on.

5. Finally, do something the Republicans are well known for: run on fear. Fear of the Republican Platform. It is a very scary document, and people should know about it. Also, it could tie up McCain (although not Palin) in some very interesting knots, such as its position on stem cell research.

These people are beatable. So far, the Obama people have had a very good plan in place both for winning the nomination and for, up to now, running the campaign. Palin could implode and so could McCain. But we don't need that to happen in order to win. The Obama campaign just has to follow the central Rove principle -- get control of the Agenda and you will win -- while using only the honest ways of getting it.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine TPJmagazine.us; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century.