corrente

McCain's campaign manager remembers facing one of Rove's smear campaigns:

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.
(Richard Davis in The Glob)

Now, my tendency is to castigate the Dems for continually bringing a knife to a gunfight (see back here) and reader comments. Others (seem to agree). So, Democrats, or at least some of them, need to learn to hit as hard and fast and low as Republicans do.

But Ezra at Pandagon has another perspective, and he could be right:

[In wrestling,] I need to hit [my opponent] where he's weak, not attempt to beat him where he's strong. It was the former strategy that people seemed to yearn for in my post about political civility. The Republicans are vicious and dirty and low and ruthless and we can beat them by being dirtier and lower and ruthless squared and vicious cubed. And though I exaggerate, that has been a recurrent theme in the election so far (see Dean, Howard). Democrats want someone who can fight really hard, someone who won't wimp out. But we've got that. Now it's time to start figuring out what style they should use.

In fairness, I think Sun Tzu would agree with Ezra. Readers?

UPDATE For people who came in late... I thought the readers did a great job in the comments section, so I thought I'd move it up so newcomers can add on, if they want. Also, here are alert reader TidyCat's comments re: Sun Tzu:

Sun Tzu says:

- It is best to thwart people by intelligent planning.

This would favor Ezra' approach. He also says:

- In battle, confrontation is done directly; victory is gained by surprise.

This might be construed to point to Lambert's style.

But I like this best:

- It is not advantageous to attack an enemy on a ground of contention; what is advantageous is to get there first.

Stake out the territory, ruthlessly frame the debate - that will help Kerry win.

One more to think about:

- Victory is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly