Sometimes, the Democratic National Committee helps Democrats. Take, for example, chairman Howard Dean’s recent remark that he’d “like the other 350 [superdelegates who haven’t committed] to say who they’re for at some point between now and the first of July so we don’t have to take this into the convention.” The blood bath has to end eventually, and July 1 is as good a deadline as any. But often the DNC isn’t so constructive. Like today. Noting that John McCain is set to appear on Letterman this evening, the party has chosen to launch a series of anti-McCain web ads called “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches.” They are painful.

The three spots adhere to a rigid structure. The first frame displays portraits of presidential favorites George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy on a blue background; “Hail to the Chief” plays on the soundtrack. Next are back-to-back clips of Roosevelt and Kennedy–Democrats, mind you–delivering their most famous bon mots: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in FDR’s plummy tones and “Ask not what your country can do for you…” in JFK’s reedy bark. Cut to video of McCain misspeaking (“I’m a proud liberal…conservative Republican) followed by an unrelated if similarly dunderheaded George W. Bush gaffe (“recruiterments”). Cue a riotous, Three’s Company-style laugh track.

Presumably, the party’s intention is to further cement the link between Bush and McCain–both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have labeled McCain’s Iraq stance “Bush/McCain foreign policy”–by “proving” that McCain, like Bush, is prone to malapropisms, misstatements and other verbal mistakes. But the “Bushisms” strategy is not only ineffective–it has the potential to backfire. As Matt Bai wrote recently,

if your gaffe goes directly to the main argument you are trying to make about yourself with the electorate, or if it substantiates the most relevant thing that your rival would have us believe about you, then it has the potential to become a serious problem. If, on the other hand, you do something completely idiotic that is tangential to what voters most hope or fear about you, then you tend to get a pass.

Back in 2000 and 2004, “strategery” and such reinforced voters’ doubts (rivals’ hints) that Bush wasn’t smart enough to occupy the Oval Office. That’s why it stuck. But no one thinks–or, until now, wanted us to think–that McCain’s main flaw was a tied tongue. Which is why the DNC’s ads are so incompetent. Two of them (included after the jump) repurpose clips that have already gone viral because they show McCain doing things that either contradict his core argument or substantiate what his opponents say about him–and instead force them into this bogus Bushisms framework. The first catches the Arizona senator mistakenly claiming that Iran is training al Qaeda in Iraq; the second shows him singing “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” It’s as if the DNC’s video team was given the raw materials for two good spots–one pushing the “McCain is a warmonger” meme, the other illustrating that he’s not the foreign policy expert he pretends to be–and chose to go in a different, more stupider direction instead. And the third ad (above) is even worse. The “liberal conservative” slip does indeed “substantiate the most relevant thing that [a] rival would have us believe about” McCain–if that rival were a right winger. But for Independents and centrist Democrats, the Freudian implication–i.e., that McCain, underneath it all, is more liberal than he’s at liberty to say–is a plus, not a minus. Foot, meet gun.

How to interpret such idiocy? As a misguided trial balloon for the general election, I think. It seems, for starters, that some party insiders–like much of the rest of America–are assuming that Obama will win the nomination. Why else would they release an ad designed to contrast inarticulate Republican boobs (Bush, McCain) with their silver-tongued Democratic rivals (Kennedy, Roosevelt). Clinton, of course, isn’t known for her eloquence. But I’m afraid that calling a Republican a poor speaker isn’t a winning plan. Obama already has a lock on the “great speeches” vote; he needs to win over the folks who think great speeches mask a lack of substance. Something tells me they won’t take kindly to Democratic “elitists” mocking McCain’s misstatements. After all, voters got an earful of Bush’s “strategery” in 2000 and 2004–and they elected him anyway.

Back to the drawing board.

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