The Parties Who Cried Wolf

I knew when the RNC started with that RezkoJudgement.com site we were going to be in for a tit-for-tat exchange of YouTube videos that go back and forth attacking each candidate with non-contextual soundbites and quotes and innuendo.

It took only one day. The DNC released a press statement this morning directing people to the this Youtube video. The video contains some overgeneralized and superficial factoids designed to link john McCain and ‘evil lobbyists’ who have represented the interests of America’s enemies.

This is not news. John McCain’s campaign staff being heavy with lobbyists is old news. A month ago, I wrote a post called “GOP Human Landmine” about the problems McCain and the Republican parties problems finding high level party members without ties to the K Street lobbying firms. I’m not a big fan of what lobbying has become in Washington. The K Street Project phenomenon, frankly, scares the hell out of me.

The problem I have with this aspect of both party’s national committee’s efforts to use the Internet and sites like YouTube to tear down each other’s candidates are two fold.

First, like Aesop’s fable, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, all this superficial soundbite noise will result in people just shutting down. This kind of broadside attack, without real details or context, make it almost impossible for individuals to understand its relative importance in the grand scheme of things. Are these factoids a last jab at a problem that McCain’s campaign is already addressing or is this new information that has far reaching implications for the future? It’s impossible to tell from the context of a YouTube.com video’s page. The more this tactic is used, the more inured voters will become and when the RNC or DNC want to communicate something of real relevance the voters will give it a glance and move on.

Secondly, this kind of generalized video cuts both ways. It’s not a well researched piece of journalism or even a detailed glimpse of the inner workings of a campaign. Its a trigger word heavy collection of short sharp sentences without context. I am not going to debate the individual merits of these online campaign ads but just watching this one raises questions in my mind.

Here is the script:

John McCain says he’ll take on lobbyists.
But, his inner circle is full of lobbyists:
Charlie Black, Chief Campaign Advisor
Doug Goodyear, Convention CEO
Tom Loeffler, National Co-Chair
Rick Davis, Campaign Manager
Randy Scheunemann, Top Foreign Policy Advisor
And who have they represented?
Anti-Western Political Parties…
Mob-Connected Russian Oligarchs…
The Saudi Royal Family…
Companies doing business in Iran…
The Brutal Myanmar Junta…
…and some of history’s Most Brutal Tyrants.

John McCain and His Lobbyist Friends: The Wrong Choice for America’s Future

This reminds me of those elementary school tests with two columns of words or names and the student must draw lines connecting each word on the left with its mate on the right. The YouTube page does not contain anything to help the viewer establish a context such as the fact that it was Doug Goodyear’s firm that represented Myanmar’s government.

The DNC’s press statement does include more context information but 99.9% of the voting population will never see that. As of noon today, June 6th, the DNC website has yet to include this press release. If you have a PR Newswire account you can see it there.

The main thing that bothers me about this ad is that it fails to point out that these people mentioned are individuals but the criticism is aimed at the companies for which they work. I don’t think any of these lobbyists are Boy Scouts, thats not how people rise to the top of their profession in that industry. But I also don’t think its fair to imply that these guys all were involved in the domestic activities of their foreign customers. If what they have done is so horrible then it behooves the Democratic leadership in Congress to use its regulatory and legislative power to make those activities illegal.