Protest

[StephanieVanbryce]

Too Nasty?

By Ron Klain

Since Monday night’s debate among Democrats, much of the talk in political circles has been around just how pointed the exchanges were between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Were the exchanges – in which Obama criticized Clinton’s service on the Walmart Board, and Clinton questioned Obama’s association with a Chicago “slumlord” – too “intense and personal”? The question is being asked because many Democrats – who would be quite happy with either Clinton or Obama as the nominee – are concerned that harsh blows leveled in primary debates might damage the ultimate winner of the nomination. Are these two candidates advancing their own primary campaigns at the expense of the party’s shot at the presidency?

In a word: no.

That’s not to say that it is pleasant to watch the carnage.

When you take two fierce competitors, add the best-funded and most-talented research, polling and consulting teams in recent memory – and mix in the rhetorically gifted John Edwards – you have three well-armed, well-equipped political powers on stage at the debates, capable of inflicting great damage on any political opponent, including one another.

Nonetheless, Democrats overly concerned about the impact that the sharp exchanges might have on the party’s general election prospects have less to worry about than they fear.

History teaches us that even when primary opponents inflict hard shots, the “victim” of those attacks – once he (or she) secures the nomination – is little worse for the wear. Most infamously, George H.W. Bush assailed Ronald Reagan’s economic plan as “voodoo economics” in 1980. Reagan went on to defeat Bush in the primaries, choose him for his running mate, and then win the general election in a landslide.

During the 1992 primaries, Bill Clinton withstood a withering assault from Paul Tsongas, who called Clinton the “pander bear” – and worse. Tsongas’ harsh attacks did not prevent Clinton from winning that election. Equally strong barbs were thrown at Al Gore by primary opponent Bill Bradley, and by John McCain at George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries (not to mention hard shots going the other way, too). But these primary campaign attacks didn’t prevent Gore from winning the popular vote, nor Bush from winning the electoral college.

For better or worse, the candidates would have to hurl much fiercer attacks than they did on Monday night before the Clinton-Obama-Edwards exchanges get anywhere near as hot as some other winning candidates have endured.

Far from inflicting damage, these exchanges can serve as an inoculation against damage in the general election campaign. Every patient is familiar with the idea that you protect yourself from an ailment later by exposing yourself – via a vaccination – to a little bit of the disease now. The same is true for political attacks. Nothing that was said at the South Carolina debate will go unsaid in the October debates when one of those Democrats is the party’s nominee. Better to have the voters exposed to these issues now, and have the candidates address them in the warm and friendly confines of the primary electorate than have them emerge as new attacks in the harsher and graver venue of the general election.

Moreover, there is something about the ability to throw – and absorb – a punch that is a legitimate part of what voters should be looking for in a candidate. If a candidate for president can’t overcome a shot from a fellow Democrat, then how can he or she overcome the sort of attacks and adversity that befall any president in the Oval Office? And if a presidential candidate can’t dish out some hits effectively, how can he or she win the presidency, or stand up for the United States in the world?

Today’s rigorous presidential campaigns are essentially trials-by-fire, modern-day Arthurian battles: the candidate cannot take the office unless it is won, and it cannot be won except by combat.

So watch the presidential candidate debates – in both parties – and know that the shots being taken by one partisan at his or her fellow party member are nothing compared to what is coming in the fall. Or, to quote the immortal words of Friedrich Nietzsche – and, more recently, Kanye West – “what does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/too-nasty/