Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

Can a single phrase, taken out of context, derail a $1 billion election campaign?

It depends. And one of the things on which it depends is how consistently and how cleverly it is used by the the opposing campaign. There seems little doubt that if John Kerry could phone his 2003 self he would warn him about the "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" line. John McCain must daily regret saying that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong". But these lines could be used against those candidates is because they tapped into existing impressions of the them: Kerry as lacking in core principles and McCain as being someone more interested in national security issues than in the economy.

Could the Obama campaign have convinced America that McCain was unprincipled and unpatriotic? Could Bush have persuaded voters that Kerry was stupid? These were not the concerns that voters had about those candidates.

The question is does Obama's slip of the tongue reinforce or run counter to America's doubts about him? Does it make him seem elitist and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans? Maybe – though perhaps not in contrast to Mitt Romney. One way the Obama campaign could counter this is to talk more about his work as a 'community organizer' in Chicago. I am not actually sure what a community organizer does, but it sounds as though it might have involved understanding the concerns of ordinary people.

Does this slip make the President seem out of touch with the private sector – where most Americans make their career? It certainly could, and this one is definitely not an area in which he would want to contrast his background to Mitt Romney's. The Obama campaign has already tried to make an issue of Romney's business experience. It fell flat with voters, who see this as one of Romney's strengths, and was condemned by Democrats at every level of the party, with even President Clinton distancing himself from the remark. 

Barack Obama must be regretting the remark, but it is doubtful that a single slip will be the decider in this election.