Brown defined DeWine first

Cleveland Plain Dealer

As Ohio's intensely fought Senate race comes to a close, one of its great lingering mysteries is why Republican Sen. Mike DeWine chose to ignore a basic principle of campaign strategy: Define your opponent before he defines himself.

From the start of his battle against Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, DeWine and his team said they fully expected the election to be close. And from the start, DeWine was well positioned to strike pre-emptively. He had more money than Brown. And polls showed voters weren't nearly as familiar with Brown as they were with him.

Yet, inexplicably, DeWine waited until Oct. 27 to release the sort of television ad that might have succeeded in painting an overarching negative portrait of his rival that would stick in voters' guts and serve as a basis for subsequent ads.

...Way back last summer, as soon as DeWine began running predictable ads criticizing Brown's votes on national security, the state Democratic Party financed a blistering ad attacking DeWine. Using video images of DeWine looking confused and clueless, the ad cast DeWine as a frighteningly out-of-touch politician who'd been asleep at the switch in the Senate.

Brown built steadily on the theme throughout the fall, accusing DeWine of missing numerous meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee and unthinkingly going along with all sorts of Bush administration mistakes: incorrect assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal, tax cuts that helped the rich more than the middle class, trade agreements that cost Ohioans jobs and a prescription drug bill too generous to drug companies at the expense of seniors.

And that wasn't all. Brown cast DeWine not merely as clueless, but also as spineless. In Brown's portrayal, DeWine was a limp figure hopelessly in the pockets of people stronger than himself - President Bush, pharmaceutical executives, oil company execs and so on.

Meanwhile, Brown was portraying himself as an outspoken, empathetic politician who would have the guts to fight for ordinary Ohioans in the Senate.

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11/05/2006 / Permalink / (all tags)