October 10, 2008
A New Kind of Wolf
There they go again. John McCain says opposition researchers are wolves "air-dropped" to prey on his helpless vice presidential nominee. Barack Obama spent the better part of a year demanding a "new kind of politics," swearing off "personal attacks" and insisting his considerable research operation was entirely policy-oriented. Not to be outdone, the press wants some credit for the "stupid pet tricks that characterize presidential campaigns"; John Harris and Jim VandeHei write:
"Reporters complain about the lack of spontaneity in politics. Then we punish spontaneity by ensuring that any impolitic comment gets played and replayed, often simplified and distorted in each replaying—usually accompanied with disapproving analysis about a candidate's lack of discipline and inability to stay on message."
Everyone wants a new kind of politics. Ladies and gentlemen, here it is.
Research is more prominent than ever in the presidential campaign. Every day we can count on a slew of new youtube videos, document scans, memos, and of course conference calls to complain about them. And for every new piece of research two more surface to debunk and counterattack. Campaigns and journalists alike struggle to explain them all. Everyone reports, everyone decides.
Joshua Green wrote about an "evolutionary leap" in the "cloak-and-dagger world of opposition research" in 2004. At the time, the leap was to include attorneys and more experienced staffers for research. Four years later, we have seen open-sourced research, an organization dedicated to researching and attacking 527 donors, and ridicule of a presidential campaign for not conducting enough research.
In the spirit of political research's rapid growth, this blog will feature a weekly look at OR's mechanics and uses. We will discuss its mechanics within different campaigns as well as reports on its use. Questions and comments are encouraged; we will do our best to answer them, with the exception of client and/or proprietary data.
New kind of politics? New kind of research.
Posted on October 10 at 07:30 AM