Did Obama 'Define' Romney?

Define being a polite word for swiftboating that is.

Because if he did, as the headline suggests, it is an image, that of obnoxious, privileged frat boy, that just doesn't go away. Some could argue it was an error of youth, and some could argue that whatever did take place back in 1965, is an insight into Romney's true essence.

Image of Romney Violently Cutting the Hair of a Gay Classmate Won't Go Away
Mark Karlin
11 May 2012

In early 2004, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote a commentary advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to define Bush early or be defeated. The title of the BuzzFlash opinion piece was, "BuzzFlash Message to John Kerry: It's the Golden Hour of Opportunity, Define Bush or Be Defined by Him. There is No Option 'B.'"

Kerrey apparently didn't read BuzzFlash, because he got "Swiftboated" early and never regained his footing.

With a large dollop of help from the Washington Post, the 2012 Obama campaign appears to be using the basic strategy that the GOP has successfully used for decades in presidential elections: bring out negative (or in the case of the Republicans, usually create) characteristics of your opponent and hammer them home early. Indeed, make the character issue so strong that many voters stop processing the issues.

The Post, as almost every reader of BuzzFlash knows by now, published a surprisingly detailed account of Mitt Romney's private high school record of homophobic harassment (although there were other elements to the story, but this was the lead and the major part of the article). A Chicago Tribune story on the Post report reveals the ripple impact of Romney's bullying as depicted in the image of its opening paragraph:

As a student at Cranbrook in 1965, Mitt Romney led a group of classmates in an attack on another student who was held down while Romney clipped off his long blonde hair with scissors, the Washington post reported today, quoting other students who participated in the incident.

The timing of the posting of the story online (Thursday morning), after President Obama announced his personal support for gay marriage on Wednesday afternoon, dealt a major challenge to the perception of Romney's character. It contrasted an Obama (who went out of his way to say that his being a Christian was a basis for his latest gay marriage position) on the side of embracing people versus Romney having an underlying hateful intolerance, undercutting the amiable "successful" guy in jeans image his campaign has cultivated.

BuzzFlash proposes a hypothesis here, just speculation, but it runs counter to the corporate mainstream media conventional wisdom that Biden made a gaffe in supporting gay marriage (as did Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) -- and that Obama was "forced into" his position.

We offer another theory: that the Obama and Romney campaigns knew about the article at least a couple of weeks ago (not many stories this politically hot remain secret in DC). The Obama campaign orchestrated a path toward the president's endorsement of gay marriage throwing up trial balloons with the statements of Biden and Duncan, and that when the WH learned that the WP article would be posted on Thursday rushed the planned Obama gay marriage "endorsement" to contrast it with the image of Romney's thuggish anti-gay forced haircut of a classmate.

BuzzFlash can only offer this as speculation, but if it's true, maybe the Democrats have learned the importance of defining their opponents early.

After all, if you want to know how effective this sequencing was, just look at the Romney campaign trying to run away from the Post story as quickly as possible. They say their candidate wants to talk about the economy.

The pro-bullying crowd is already a subset of Romney's base, and this searing and haunting image from his high school years is likely to turn off independents and Republican gays in a visceral way. It also energizes Obama's base, many of whom are disappointed in his progressive concessions as president.

We'd bet that most people who resented the school bullies don't buy that they stopped being bullies as they became adults.

Maybe Democratic presidential campaigns have finally gotten the message: define your opposition early, and keep reinforcing negative character traits. buzzflash