Why The GOP's Attempt To Swift-Boat Obama Will Fail

It looks like the radical right is gearing up its "Swift-Boat" attack machine for use against Obama (thanks for the link, JB):

Opponents of Sen. John Kerry proved in the 2004 election that voters are sensitive to suggestions that a candidate is not sufficiently patriotic. The Democratic presidential nominee's campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, even though he won multiple military honors and was lauded by his superiors.

The Swift Boat campaign started as a relatively small television ad buy that exploded into an issue that dogged Kerry for months. The Massachusetts senator has conceded since losing to President Bush that the campaign and his lackluster response to unsubstantiated allegations he considered unworthy of a reaction likely cost him the election. And the term even became part of the campaign lexicon -- swift boating.

Obama already is the subject of a shadowy smear campaign based on the Internet that falsely suggests he's a Muslim intent on destroying the United States. Obama is a Christian and has been fighting the e-mail hoax, which also claims he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, and he's been trying to correct the misinformation.

"Whenever I'm in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America," Obama frequently tells voters.

"I've been going to the same church for 20 years, praising Jesus," he adds.

The reason I don't think this will work against Obama is that Obama has not exactly held himself out as being particularly patriotic, and Swift-Boating works best when you take a strength of your opponent and lie about it in order to turn this strength into a weakness.

When it came to John Kerry, operatives working for Karl Rove were able to turn John Kerry -- a legitimate war hero -- into a lying traitor, and Rove did the same thing to John McCain during the 2000 GOP primaries when he spread the word -- through push polling -- that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. McCain and his wife had actually adopted a Bangladeshi-born child, but Rove was able to turn this very positive act by the McCains into something negative. As the Nazis used to say -- the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

That's the nature of Swift-Boating -- you take a strength of an opponent and you turn it against him. But as I mentioned above, Obama hasn't exactly held himself out as a hyper-patriotic person, so I just don't think the GOP's swift-boating attempt will work against him.