If I were an Obama media consultant….

26 August 2008, 2220 EDT

I would run a series of ads called “Friends.” Each would begin with rapid cuts of McCain repeating his “My Friends” catchphrase. Then the screen would ominously fade to black, and the voice talent would read “Just who are McCain’s friends, anyway?” The first add would feature of lobbyists in his campaign. The second would feature “people who brought you the Iraq War.” The ads would conclude: “John McCain: his friends… are no friends of ours.” Rinse, lather, repeat.

It wouldn’t be hard to get plenty of clips. This is from one speech:

The strategy of course, is to create a negative association with McCain’s catchphrase… a phrase so ingrained he’ll never be able to abandon it.

I don’t have any advice for the McCain campaign. They’re doing their advertising right.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.