McCain Camp Pounces on Lipstick Remarks With Time-Honored Tactics

Sept. 10, 2008— -- It was just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, at a campaign event in a Lebanon, Va., high school gymnasium, when Barack Obama uttered remarks that would become famous within hours.

"That's not change," the Illinois senator said. "That's just calling something the same thing, something different. But you know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

About 364 miles away, in Arlington, Va., McCain campaign staffers were watching Obama on a satellite feed into the "war room" at the campaign's national headquarters. Within minutes, they rushed into a meeting to decide how to respond to what they saw as a huge opening. In less than an hour, they called a conference call with reporters. The McCain staff swung into offensive mode.

It was a classic case of a candidate providing an opening -- a slip of the tongue, a careless comment or just a remark open to interpretation, or distortion. The opposing candidate's team pounced on the slip, unleashing a rapid and furious counterattack that quickly dominated the news cycle. In this age of 24-hour news and Internet blogging, no attack goes unanswered for long. No comment uncommented on.

The response was delegated to the so-called "Truth Squad," headed by former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, which was formed Tuesday.

"Sen. Obama … uttered what I can only deem to be disgraceful comments comparing our vice presidential nominee, Gov. Palin, to a pig," Swift said. "Sen. Obama owes Gov. Palin an apology."

An Obama campaign spokeswoman fired back. The McCain campaign, she said, was engaging in "a pathetic attempt to play the gender card."

Early this morning, the McCain campaign posted a Web video called "Lipstick" that all but labeled Obama a sexist.

Obama fired back, insisting he was not referring to Palin or her joke at the convention that "the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull" is lipstick.

"What their campaign has done this morning is the same game that makes people sick and tired about politics in this country," Obama said, addressing a crowd today in Norfolk, Va.

Kevin Madden, an adviser to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, said Obama had no choice but to fight back. But the furious McCain attack had knocked him off message, forcing him to play defense.

"What the McCain camp did was take it as an opportunity to disrupt Barack Obama's message," Madden said. "He's not talking about the economy today. He's not talking about health care. Instead, he is trying to explain away a verbal gaffe. And that is one more day or 48 hours of him not talking about the issues voters want him to talk about."

The accusations of sexism were directed at women voters, particularly Hillary Clinton supporters whom both sides are targeting.

"This gaffe fits a critique of Barack Obama, which is that he has been insensitive to Hillary Clinton voters, that he hasn't connected to a lot of women voters," Madden said. "And what happens when you have a gaffe like that, it fits a bigger narrative and that bigger narrative takes control."

The McCain camp hopes that the remarks will have deeper ramifications, spiraling away from Obama to damage his appeal to women.

Of course, both Democrats and Republicans are always ready to pounce on any perceived opening provided by the opposition.

This summer, the McCain campaign ran a TV ad attacking Obama for referring to Iran as a "tiny" country that "doesn't pose a serious threat" to the United States. But the ad failed to mention the context of Obama's remarks, where he went on to compare Iran to the Soviet Union and made the point that the United States still had diplomatic relations with the Russians.

Earlier this year, Obama repeatedly criticized McCain for what Obama's team characterized as his wanting to wage war in Iraq for 100 years.

But what McCain actually said was that he was open to a long-term U.S. military presence Iraq, with the disclaimer: "as long as there were no American casualties."

In a heated political campaign, as in war, the truth is often the first casualty.