Sit Back, Relax, Get Ready to Rumble

A campaign insider who declined to be identified for the same reason says McCain aides are studying a private, 52-page dossier, compiled for the aborted 2004 campaign of Illinois Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan (slated to be Obama's opponent until disclosure of some embarrassing records related to his divorce forced him to drop out). The dossier, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, brands Obama as "in favor of coddling sex abusers" and "shamefully soft on crime and drugs." It hits, for instance, Obama's vote in 2001 against a GOP-sponsored measure to toughen penalties against "gangbangers," pushed after a particularly brutal gang killing in Chicago. Charlie Black, McCain's top strategist, tells NEWSWEEK he had not personally reviewed the Ryan dossier, but saw no problem with using Obama's votes on justice issues in the Illinois Legislature. "What's wrong with that?" he says. (An Obama spokesman says the criticism in the dossier was "long ago debunked," and that the candidate "is supported today by law-enforcement officials across Illinois and the nation.")

McCain's top aides include some veterans of past Republican attack campaigns, like campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, who was in charge of rapid response for Bush-Cheney '04, and Black, whose experience goes all the way back to the campaigns of right-wing Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. John Weaver, McCain's former chief strategist who resigned from the campaign last summer but keeps ties to McCain, suggests that McCain could try to block low-road smears. "He could say, 'If any major donors or political operators do that, then you will be persona non grata in my administration'," says Weaver. But McCain himself has said that he will not "referee" between various independent groups who always want to have their say in presidential campaigns. (The model is the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who unfairly but effectively questioned John Kerry's war record in 2004.) Black tells NEWSWEEK McCain was powerless to stop the "527s," named after the provision of the tax code that covers political expenditures by nonprofits, from running attack ads on their own. "Look, there's nothing we can do about the 527s," says Black.

Another McCain adviser, who asked for anonymity discussing internal campaign strategy, bluntly warned: "It's going to be Swift Boat times five on both sides … The candidates will both do their best publicly to mute it. But in a close race, I don't see how to shut that down." Indeed, two of the most experienced attack artists are already gearing up. Floyd Brown, who produced the infamous "Willie Horton" commercial that used race and fear of crime to drive voters away from Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, produced an ad before the North Carolina primary accusing Obama of being soft on crime. He tells NEWSWEEK that Obama is "extremely vulnerable" to questioning about his ties to Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, who has been indicted for political corruption. (Obama is not linked to any wrongdoing.) Another target is former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, whose association with Obama will remind voters of bomb-throwing student radicals of the 1960s. "There's plenty of stuff out there," says Brown. "I'm kinda like in a candy store in this election."

Then there's David Bossie, already deep into a mudslinging campaign against Obama through a political organization called Citizens United. Bossie is planning a widespread DVD release of a documentary that will portray Obama as a "limousine, out-of-control leftist liberal … more liberal than [Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders, who is a socialist," Bossie tells NEWSWEEK. McCain has little leverage over Bossie, who has run ads attacking McCain as too liberal in the past.

It's possible that aiming low will backfire. In the recent special election for a solidly Republican House seat in Louisiana, the national GOP ran an ad tying the Democratic candidate, Don Cazayoux, to Obama and his allegedly "radical agenda." The Democrat won—taking away the seat from the Republicans for the first time in 33 years. The result was "a sharp wake-up call for Republicans," declared former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if the Republicans try to run an anti-Obama … anti-Reverend Wright campaign, they are simply going to fail," Gingrich wrote. "This model has already been tested with disastrous results."

Maybe so, but desperate times can call for desperate measures. With his huge Internet network of donors, Obama can raise much more money than McCain. The Republicans will need those independent expenditures to try to keep up, no matter how distasteful the attack ads they buy.

The last Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, dithered and failed to quickly strike back when he was attacked by the Swift Boat veterans. The Obama team says it will not make the same mistake. "You fight back aggressively and play jujitsu," says David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. Obama has a much more disciplined, focused team than Kerry, whose organization was prone to infighting and lacked strong leadership.

Obama has been fortunate in his senior advisers. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, combines big-picture idealism and Chicago School politics of hard knocks. Plouffe is sure and steady. Having managed the successful campaign to get the mercurial Bob Torricelli elected in New Jersey to the Senate in 1996, Plouffe impressed Democratic political gurus. In 1997, Steve Elmendorf, chief of staff to former House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, hired Plouffe as his deputy. "There are a lot of people in politics who are good strategists and there are a lot of people who are good managers," says Elmendorf. "There are not a lot of people who can do both, and David can do both." The genius of Axelrod and Plouffe was to combine astonishing (even to them) fund-raising potential on the Internet with grass-roots organizing. While Clinton was aiming for a knockout by sweeping Super Tuesday, Axelrod and Plouffe were methodically organizing a state-by-state, district-by-district strategy—including states that most political experts ignored. For example, Idaho: Obama won by 60 points and netted more delegates than Clinton took out of either Ohio or Pennsylvania.