Politico is reporting that the Obama campaign has adopted a "wait and see" strategy regarding Palin: no direct attacks.
I am in awe of the campaign team, but I am confident this is a big mistake.
There are, broadly speaking, three strategies to respond to what we have to admit -- if we are reality-based -- is a true cultural phenomenon in Palin.
First, we can "wait and see." That's the current strategy.
Second, we can slash and burn and go after the eight or nine Palin attack lines set out by many others on this site and others (Independence Party, Troopergate, Library Censorship, you know the rest).
Third, we can keep it simple and focus on something that redounds against McCain himself and not just Palin: I refer to the Bridge to Nowhere lie.
I strongly favor option three. It is a very easy narrative to tell in the press and to the public. "McCain sold Palin as a reformer who turned down the Bridge to Nowhere. But the central argument for why he chose her is a fraud. Her claim to fame is a lie. She supported the Bridge to Nowhere. And not only that, she went to the town that would benefit and gave the same seemingly populist type of a speech she gave to the Republican delegates, saying that in her eyes their town was not "nowhere" and that they deserved that bridge. She even posed with a T-shirt mocking those who opposed the bridge. Only when the bridge became a laughingstock that would damage her national ambitions did she switch sides. That's a breath of fresh air? Hardly, it's the same rancid flip-flop politics that McCain himself now practices."
We can, in short, begin a meme like the unfair (but successful) Al Gore = a "serial exaggerator" meme that worked for the repubs in 2000. But it will be fair this time against Palin. For a solid week, we focus on the fact that she lied about her central claim to fame. Just like the seven-houses story, every response to McCain-Palin involving a questionable assertion by them should be met with: "This lie is not surprising coming from the same campaign that repeated a lie to 37 million people after it had already been fact-checked and exposed as a lie beforehand."
We later can layer on her misleading claims like "putting the plane up for sale on E-Bay," when in fact the state did not sell the plane on E-Bay but just tried to do so.
Troopergate is a bit complex and at its core Palin seems to have been lying to cover-up a genuine concern about a creepy brother-in-law with a gun. If we use, it we introduce it as another "lie." Let the AK press follow the substance of that, though--they've done well with it--and see where that goes. The mayor stuff is all two-bit precisely because that job is two-bit. But people get that intuitively.
The Repubs -- and Hillary, to her credit -- knew how to follow one attack line at a time for a week or two.
Isn't this better than a pure "wait and see"?
UPDATE: Many of you are satisfied with wait-and-see. In a sense, I am relieved, but let me make one counter-argument.
There is a narrow window in which to define a new political personality. "Palin lies" might not stick later, especially if the National Enquirer goes with the adultery crap that will only generate more sympathy for her and crowd out all other attack lines. If we can get in the "liar" line right now, before others outside the campaign's control contribute potentially sexist or privacy-invading memes, we benefit.