Listen Up, You Billionaires!

Let's say you're a billionaire. You have strong political views. You want to make an impact in presidential politics. So you form a super PAC, and strategists start coming for your money. But not just any strategists — strategists still feeling wounded that the anti-Barack Obama campaign ad they designed in 2008 was rejected by Republican presidential candidate John McCain as too negative. (Warning: No one has worse political judgment than a consultant trying to revive his rejected idea.)

Let's say you ask these strategists to show you how you could make a big impact for $10 million, and they put together a campaign advertising proposal that says, "Our plan is to do exactly what McCain would not let us do." Let's say the plan is so racially incendiary that someone leaks it to The New York Times. Within hours, Mitt Romney repudiates it. You — the billionaire — see your name splashed across the nation's news sites, giving much of the country its first impression of you. Your children rush to defend your reputation. Customers want to boycott the firm you founded, and your son has new political opposition in his efforts to renovate a beloved landmark.

Question: What do you say to your strategists? "Thanks, PR geniuses. Millions of people who never heard my name before now think I'm a racist. What do I owe you?"

This story is so outsize that it could only come from a super PAC, whose great contribution to American political entertainment is to encourage billionaires (many of whom cannot detect when they've left their zone of expertise) to enter a high-stakes, super-specialized arena and do crazy things — subject only to the approval of people they are paying.

The plan to run a high-profile media campaign linking Obama to the incendiary comments of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright is not just an offensive idea. (One ad previewed on Page 39 of the 54-page proposal shows photos of Obama with "his mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright," followed by a video clip of the Rev. Wright preaching, "Not God bless America, God damn America." That's followed by a frame with the language, "Know how Obama's worldview was shaped, and you'll know what has gone so terribly wrong.") The ad campaign is also so politically dangerous that it could only have been concocted by extremist strategists trying to get the money of a boss with little political savvy.

Here are five reasons the campaign would be disastrous for the Republican Party:

1) The ads would be seen as racist, despite the laughable plan of having "an extremely literate conservative African-American" in the "spokesperson group." ("Gee, Martha, I thought it was racist at first.

2) The ads would be tied to the Republican Party and hurt Republican candidates, especially the Romney campaign — knocking them off their message, forcing them into days of disavowals. "I am not a racist" is not a message you want to spend a lot of time on during the home stretch.

3) They would be too provocative to be effective. The message is too far outside the already wide boundaries of our coarsening political culture. When you want to take things to the gutter — as many TV programmers know — you have to do it in stages. If you make your material more sensational only one unit at a time, people enjoy the sensation without taking too much offense. If you drop too many levels too fast, people get disgusted.

4) People already know Obama. The image the strategists want to create of Obama is too far removed from voters' experience of him. Against the advice of several members of his National Security Council, Obama made the risky decision to order the hit on Osama bin Laden. You're going to try to tie him to a crazy preacher who said America deserved 9/11? It would be credible only to those who already believe it.

5) People generally like Obama, even many who don't think he's doing a good job. When someone you like is attacked, especially if you think it's unfair and over the top, you stand up for him. The highest approval numbers of Bill Clinton's presidency came when the Republicans impeached him.

Listen up, billionaires! You want to make a difference in presidential politics? Keep your $10 million. That just proves you're not serious. Commit $100 million over multiple election cycles. Hire the best talent you can find; do some deep research; fund a lot of trials; and try to prove that you can make an impact in campaigns with positive advertising. That would be a difference worth making. This negative advertising you're paying for — it makes no difference; it keeps us stuck right where we are.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at tomrosshirt@gmail.com. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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