On the question of aggressive tactics

Kathy G, a brand-new foul-mouthed fem-blogger on the scene (subbing for Ezra Klein), asks a question:

[W]hy aren't Democrats doing more to aggressively discredit the Republican candidates? It's essential that we shape the negative narratives about those bozos right now, before it's too late. Yet none of the operatives on our side seem to be doing that. Why is it that the Republicans always seem to be thinking and planning at least three steps ahead of the Democrats?

This provides me a great opportunity to post something I've wanted to share for some time. Murray Chotiner is the gnarled, amoral troll who taught Richard Nixon everything he knew about running campaigns and the art of political destruction. Before going into politics, he was a lawyer specializing in representing loan sharks. Conspiracy theorists have always found it suspicious that he died in a car crash during the Watergate investigation. It's always been my conviction that progressives need not be gnarled, amoral, nor trolls in order to learn some things about how to win from people like Chotiner, things that far from compromising ethics, represent instead a belated refusal to unilaterally disarm in the face of shrewder conservative tacticians—people like Murray Chotiner; and also the man who is very much his spiritual heir, Karl Rove. Some of this stuff is just basic lessons in martial maneuver.

And even if you disagree, certainly you would agree that progressives at least need to know how the gnarled, amoral trolls think, the better to defend against the dark arts.

Well, here's a glimpse into their playbook, which hasn't really changed since 1954, when Chotiner delivered a lecture to a campaign school for Republican state chairmen. The transcript was leaked, and Russell Baker described it in the New York Times. It's a fascinating historical document, but also an uncanny invitation to deja vu—for in his words are Rovism in a nutshell. One insight: while I've heard progressives arguing that people should hold their fire with critical articles and posts on opposing candidates until the general public is paying attention to the race, his advice is precisely the opposite; he agrees with Kathy G—define your opponents before they have a chance to define themselves.

And so, after the jump: Russell Baker's article, from May 13, 1956.

CHOTINER ADVISES G.O.P. HOW TO WIN

Candidates Told to Run Down Opponents Before the Race and to Limit Issues

By Russell Baker

Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 12—The first step toward attaining public office, according to Murray Chotiner, is: Tear down your opponent before you start to run.

This was the fundamental part fo a formula for successful political campaigning that was designed by Mr. Chotiner. He was campaign manager in 1952 for Richard M. Nixon, now Vice President.

Mr. Chotiner included this idea wiht scores of other pieces of advice for the present-day Republican campaigner in a speech that he delivered to the forty-eighty state chairmen at the Republican Naitonal Committee's campaign school here last September.

The press was barred from the meeting, so that Mr. Chotiner's advice to Republican candidates has been kept secret until today.

A transcript showed that he delivered an informal but comprehensive speech of some 12,000 words that covered a wide spectrum of political techniques. Its subject matter ranged from teh use of and defense against the "smear" to the art of using pink paper to suggest that an opponent had "leftish" political opinions.

The speech was illustrated with examples from the campaigns of Vice President Nixon and Senator William F. Knowland, Republican of California.

Mr Nixon's 1952 television rebuttal of Democrtic attacks on his private campaign fund was cited as a "classic" example "that will live in a all political history" of the art of answering dangerous political attack.

Mr. Chotiner's rule for such a situation was:

"...when you answer it, do so with an attack of your own against the opposition for having launched it in the first place."

Mr. Chotiner's remarkable success as a campaign manager for California Republicans brought him before the state chairmen last fall under the auspice of the Republican National Committee

More recently, he has figured indirectly in a Senate investigation of corruption in the procurement of military uniforms. For this reason he is expected to be excluded from any formal role with the national committee or in Mr. Nixon's campaign this year. [Ed.: Just as Karl Rove is expected to be excluded in any formal role in the 2008 campaign; but, like Chotiner in 1955, can hardly be expected to "retire."]

In his speech, whihc is still available to the party, Mr. Chotiner told the Republican leaders that the committee felt the "things I am about to give you" must necessarily "be used for each one of the campaigns in your state."

His first rule was that a good campaign must start at least a year before election day. "You need that time to deflate your opposition," Mr. Chotiner explained.

Some people, he noted, dislike the "deflation" approach and prefer "a constructive campaign."

"Like it or not," he argued, "the American people in many instances vote against a candidate, against a party, or against an issue, rather than for" candidates, parties, or issues.

Mr. Chotiner said that people liked "to feel taht they are selecting the candidate" who offered himself for the campaign.

It is "really simple" to give people this pleasure, he added.

"All you have to do is to get a number of poeple talking, "Now if we we can only get so-and-so to run for office." [Ed.: Like Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich's phony "draft" theatrics.]

This technique wasused to create a "popular demand" for Earl Warren to run for Governor of California in 1942, he said.

"I dont want," he added,"to leave the impression wiht you that Chief Justice Warren was any part fo that movement about helping ot have the people select him to run." Mr. Knowland, he said [Ed.: a far-right Republican senator; isn't it always the conservatives who are behind the deceptions?], headed an "informal movement...in which we had a number of people all ove rthe state saying, 'If we could only get Earl Warren to run for Governor.'"

Mr. Chotiner listed four attributes which every candidate should have to win. He hsould be "clean," "clear on teh issues," willing to wage a "fighting campaign," and "constructive," even "if he only picks out one thing that he is goign to advocate."

A handy way to impress people with a candidate's courage, he said, is to have him "get up in front of a meeting and say, 'I have been told that I must not talk about this subject, but I am goign to tell the people of our state just exactly what is going on.'"

"You will be amazed" at teh popular response to such a method, Mr. Chotiner told teh leaders. This technique was used effectively by Mr. Nixon in his 1950 Senate campaign he said. "In case after case," Mr. Chotiner recalled, "Dick Nixon told audiences, 'I have been advised not to talk about communism; but I am going to tell the people of California the truth....'"

A slogan, Mr. Chotiner believed, is hazardous because "the oppostion may twist it or turn it."

And although the candidate should be "clear" on teh issues, he should restrit himself to two "instead of trying to cover the entire waterfront."

As for campaign ethics, Mr. Chotiner said, "truth is the best weapon we can use." [Ed.: Nixonian to a T, advising candidates to tell the truth immediately after instructing them ("I have been advised not to talk about communism...) to lie"]

A "smear," he explained, is an attack on a candidate's personal life, members of his family or "things that do not go into the question" of his fitness. But it is not a "smear" to "point out the record of your opponent," he added. [Ed.: Like the time Chotiner put out an infamous "pink sheet" listing the time Nixon's senate candidate in 1950 voted the "Communist party line." Masters of moral rationalization, these conservatives.]

"Of course," he said, an attack "is always a smear, naturally, when it is directed to our own candidate." In this case, "you don't answer anything until you are convinced that the opposition has...completely saturated the field on the subject regarding your own candidate."

The attack might not have registered and a quick reply would help publicize it more widely. [Ed.: Terrible advice, I think. Just ask John "Swiftboat" Kerry. Call it an anachronism from the age before Internet.]

"But if you find that the attack has reached such proportion that it can no longer be avoided in any way whatsoever, when you answer it, do so with an attack of your own against the opposition for having launched it in the first place," he advised.

Once the reply is made, the candidate must be told "never to answer it again," he said. Thereafter, he counseled, have "your candidate at all times say, 'That subject has been answered. Let us go on to the next issue.'"

How I'd love to get a hold of this full 12,000-word speech. I think I'll drop Russell Baker a line.

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