U.S. Elections 2008

News & Polls

24 July 2008
Surrogates' Off-Message Remarks Can Hurt Presidential Candidates

By Eric Green
Staff Writer

Washington – Ill-chosen comments by surrogates for 2008 presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have rocked both campaigns, political experts tell America.gov.

Remarks that conflict with or distract from the message candidates are trying to send voters are a recurring feature of the 2008 presidential race.

Especially hurtful to presidential hopefuls is the so-called "Kinsley gaffe," a term coined by journalist Michael Kinsley to describe situations in which the surrogates utter (sometimes inadvertently) what they privately believe to be true, and that quote becomes politically explosive.

One such Kinsley gaffe occurred when Charlie Black, a top strategist for presumed Republican nominee McCain, said June 23 that a terrorist attack on the United States would be a "big advantage" for his candidate. Political analysts agree that even though Black’s statement might be accurate, he should not have said it because no responsible citizen should predict such a horrible event, let alone predict politically capitalizing on it. McCain condemned his surrogate’s comments as untrue.

James Campbell, a political science professor from the University at Buffalo in New York, said the most egregious misspeak so far in the 2008 campaign was uttered by Obama’s wife, Michelle.

Campbell said Michelle Obama’s comment on February 18 that "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback" was an "early, but very memorable and egregious gaffe."

The comment gave some listeners the impression that she never had felt pride in America until her husband, now the presumed Democratic nominee, ran for president. (See "Presidential Spouses Play Important Role in American Politics.")

Tony Collings, a former CNN correspondent who now teaches communication studies at the University of Michigan, said one of the worst gaffes committed in the 2008 campaign was a statement by former Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power in March that Obama’s opponent in the Democratic primaries, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, was a "monster."

The remark cost Power her job as Obama’s adviser, "reflected badly on the Obama campaign and gained sympathy for Hillary," Collings said.

"NATION OF WHINERS"?

Campbell said McCain also was hurt by a statement from his economic adviser, former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, who in a July interview with the Washington Times referred to America’s economic slowdown as a "mental recession" and that the United States was a "nation of whiners." McCain disavowed the comments.

"There is probably a grain of truth in the public being whiners," said Campbell, "but they have plenty to complain about as well -- especially about fuel prices and their burden on the economy."

Collings said Gramm’s remarks did not qualify as a Kinsley gaffe "because what he said was not true. It was inaccurate." Collings said he believes the U.S. economy is in a "real recession, not a mental one."

Even more important, said Collings, was that "what Gramm said was politically unwise because it created the impression that he, as McCain's ‘economy guru,’ was out of touch with the pain that average Americans are feeling."

Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said Gramm’s comment about the economy reflected the former senator’s thinking that U.S. economic conditions are not as bad as "they’re being made out to be. Clearly, it was not a message the McCain campaign wanted to associate itself with."

THE ROLE OF SURROGATES

Campbell said surrogates -- individuals who speak on behalf of candidates to the public and the news media -- are useful because political candidates cannot be everywhere at once.

Surrogates tend to operate, he said, where they are "themselves politically popular and in nonbattleground states" where the vote for president is not expected to be close. They "can carry on the campaign and allow the candidate to focus" on more tightly contested states.

Collings said candidates use surrogates "partly because they want as many people out there as possible to repeat the candidate's basic messages, and the more people being interviewed, the more exposure of those views."

Candidates also can use surrogates to "talk about sensitive issues that the candidate himself does not want to be pinned down on, or as a trial balloon [experiment] to see if a view will gain public support," said Collings. He said that "if a view is found to be unpopular, the candidate can always distance himself from the surrogate and deny that what the surrogate said represents his views."

Abramowitz, whose new book The Engaged Public: Polarization and American Democracy, will be released in 2009, said he does not think U.S. voters "are paying that much attention" to what surrogates say, unless surrogates persist in making ill-advised statements.

He said that when gaffes occur, the presidential candidates should "immediately disassociate" themselves from what the surrogate said to "stop the bleeding as quickly as possible."

See also "Presidential Candidates' Foreign Policy Advisers a Diverse Group."

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