Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Obama and the "Conservative Freak Show"   [Byron York]

At the Politico, Jonathan Martin has written a piece suggesting that Barack Obama is unprepared for the attacks that will come his way from the right; in Martin's words, Obama is "not sufficiently aware of the danger that exists from the conservative Freak Show that did as much to beat John Kerry as George W. Bush did in 2004."  The Freak Show, which Martin calls "the Drudge-Limbaugh-Fox News axis," is, if I remember correctly, a term coined by Politico editor John Harris and Time's Mark Halperin in the book The Way to Win.  The idea is that the right-wing Republican attackers have mastered dirty politics in a way that Democrats haven't.

A significant part of Martin's point is based on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth experience from 2004.  It is a commonplace to dismiss them as a key part of the Freak Show attack on Kerry, but I covered the Swift Boaters from pretty much their public beginning, and the thing that gave them legitimacy was they were Kerry's fellow officers, they were with him in Vietnam, and they were in a position to know about his service.  They came out, in public and by name, and made their charges.  After spending a lot of time looking into it, I thought some of those charges had merit and others didn't.  In any event, the Swift Boat allegations were an entirely legitimate matter of press inquiry.  By Freak Show reckoning, however, the Swift Boaters have become shorthand for smear.  

In any event, I don't see what is accomplished by calling this stuff, or, to take another example, the brouhaha about Michelle Obama's "proud of my country" comment, a Freak Show.  And if you're worried about people saying unkind things about Barack Obama, it would be a good idea to stay away from the Clinton campaign and its surrogates for the next few weeks.

02/20 04:17 PMShare