Campaign Messages: Simple is Good

Ezra Klein of The American Prospect makes an important point that favors the Obama campaign in 2008.

In 2004, one of the early indicators of Kerry's eventual loss was that the Democrats never settled on a single line of attack against Bush. They switched jarringly between claims of incompetence ideology, obstinance, corruption, inexperience, and inattention. The Republicans, by contrast, just called Kerry a flip-flopper, over and again.
By contrast, this year it's the Democrats who settled early on a description for their opponent: McCain is running for Bush's third term. By contrast, in the past month, the McCain campaign has tried deriding Obama's candidacy as "just words," attacked him for inexperience, insisted he was untrustworthy, and as of this week, are trotting out "flip-flopper." The message changes on days ending in "y." Not a good sign for them.

Obama has stayed simple with his overall message too ("Change We Can Believe In") opponents Clinton and McCain have flailed around with different messages every week. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 over opponents who were too nuanced. Both Joe Six-Pack and the MSM got confused making GOP attacks ("liar" and "flip-flopper") more plausible.