Mockery and politics

August 7, 5:28 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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I posted a video yesterday of Barack Obama mocking the Republican response to his suggestion that individuals should properly inflate automobile tires to save gasoline.  Obama followed up today with another stab at John McCain:

A reader last week suggested Obama would do well to read some of John Kennedy's campaign speeches as great examples of the effective use of mockery in a political campaign.

This is a fairly new tactic on the Obama campaign's part, but it's standard fare for Republican campaigns.  Never shy about trotting out the most sleazy and absurd charges, Republicans were successful enough in 2000 and 2004 to paint Al Gore as the guy who claimed to invent the Internet and John Kerry as a windsurfing Francophile.  Hey, they won those elections and you don't argue with success, right?

The McCain campaign has clearly adopted the old tried and true Republican strategy of mockery (witness all the "celebrity" ads, the tire gauge comments, even statements about Obama's food and beverage choices), while the Obama camp has seemed more focused on creating a self-defined profile of their candidate. 

But the national polls have tightened and the consensus is that McCain's tactics may have done some damage.  And we're now seeing Barack Obama beginning to mock John McCain.

There's a place for mockery in a political campaign, an arrow in the quiver of tools to in the all important task of defining your rival.  But the McCain barbs are shot wildly and are too subjective to do lasting damage.  The McCain ads look more like defensive, junior high school level name calling and the media is now commenting that the McCain campaign risks becoming viewed as pathetic and juvenile.  (Note to the McCain campaign:  When you mock Obama one day by sending out tire pressure gauges and the next day admit that proper tire inflation is a good idea, you look like a joke.)

Obama's use of mockery, on the other hand, is issue related and more objective.  He's picked a subject (the tire pressure issue - I know, it's sounds ridiculous that tire pressure has become an issue at all) that allows him to be specific in his charge;  the Republicans don't even listen to expert's advice and later have to concede they were wrong.  But the use of derision can go to far and there's a point when a candidate can sound too strident, too sneering, too negative. 

Given the stakes in this election, both candidates would do well to consider when they are approaching that point.