US election: Most vicious election campaign

As he bids to be president, Barack Obama is feeling the force of the mighty Republican propaganda machine. TV and radio hosts, authors and well-funded lobby groups have joined forces in a sophisticated and aggressive smear campaign.

The Republican war room in Denver looked harmless. It was on a busy road in a neighbourhood of modest motels and petrol stations. Only a handmade sign, emblazoned with an arrow and the words 'John McCain', pointed the way.

But looks can be deceiving. More than two dozen Republican staffers were camped in Denver last week, spearheading the latest assaults on Barack Obama who was addressing the Democratic convention nearby. 'We came here to piss the Democrats off,' said one Republican aide with a grin.

They have largely succeeded. Each day new adverts have hammered a relentless drumbeat of negativity, painting Obama as too liberal, too inexperienced and practically a danger to America's future. Leading lights of the Republican universe have paraded in front of the cameras in a disciplined display of party message-making. A typical performance came from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. 'There are still a lot of serious questions about Barack Obama's preparedness to lead the country,' Giuliani said, before stepping aside to showcase the latest ad on a huge flat-screen TV.

The ad attacked Obama as being so ignorant of foreign affairs that he was virtually a security threat himself. It touched on scare issues such as Islamic terrorism and Iranian nukes. Then it represented Obama's positions on national security as naive and weak. 'These are contrast ads,' Giuliani said afterwards. 'And both sides do them.'

That is only half-true. Democrats do launch attack ads and campaign negatively but no one does it like the Republican party. Under a succession of dark geniuses, the party has perfected the black art of negative campaigning. It has created the most effective attack machine in the Western world, with the sole purpose of destroying opponents and winning elections. For opponents it is a source of shock, misery and more than a little envy. Its tentacles stretch from the McCain campaign into the murky corners of talk radio, the internet and shadowy groups willing to use any outlandish smear.

Now that machine is focused with laser-like intensity on Obama. The clamour is loud and shrill: Obama is vain, inexperienced, liberal and dangerous. It is backed by a clandestine chorus whispering that he has a secretive Islamic past and it uses racially loaded language. It is also only going to get louder. This week, as McCain and the Republicans gather for their party convention in the Minnesota city of St Paul, the noise will become deafening. It has one purpose - to keep the White House in Republican hands at all costs and against the odds.

The current mastermind of the Republican attack machine is known as the Bullet. He is Steve Schmidt, a protégé of Bush's guru, Karl Rove. Nicknamed for his results as much as his bald head, he made his name as commander of the war room that wiped out Democrat John Kerry in 2004. Brought in to shake things up in July, Schmidt imposed discipline on a disorganised campaign. He dissuaded McCain from his off-the-cuff chats with reporters, and honed the focus solely on making Obama unelectable.

Schmidt works on the principles of repeating simple messages loudly and often. Ads attack Obama as a 'celebrity' or a faux-messiah. By doing so they hope to turn Obama's greatest strength - his ability to inspire - into a fatal flaw. That is backed up by another line: that Obama is simply not fit to be president. NotReady08 is the name of a website set up by the campaign. The language can be harsh. 'We are in the hunt for the White House. Barack Obama is going to have to step up with more than a smart tongue, snappy words and a nice suit,' said Maryland Republican politician Michael Steele.

The campaign will happily twist words. In the ad that Giuliani showed, Obama was hit for referring to the 'tiny' threat from a nuclear Iran. In reality Obama had been pointing out that the problem of Iran was '... tiny compared to the Soviet Union'. Others have interspersed footage of the Democrat candidate with images of Britney Spears. One jokey advert painted him as a Moses-type figure capable of parting the Red Sea. Mocking his message of 'hope' and 'change', radio host Rush Limbaugh has taken to referring on-air to Obama as simply 'the Messiah'.

The attack dogs will eagerly embrace formerly hated targets. All last week Republicans lauded the achievements and brilliance of Hillary Clinton, seeking to exploit divisions in the Democratic Party. It has rounded up former Clinton supporters who now back McCain and paraded them like captured prisoners of war. '[McCain] really does admire and respect her and honours the campaign that she ran,' said Carly Fiorina, a top McCain adviser. Those are astonishing words from a senior figure in a party which spent two decades demonising Clinton as a left-wing uber-feminist. But that is the key to the success of the Republican attack machine: the past does not exist. What matters is what works now. Democrats know more of the same is coming. 'This is going to be the most vicious campaign we have ever faced,' said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's former campaign chairman.

Schmidt and his public operations are merely the visible tip of the machine. But the most aggressive ads are not made by the McCain campaign. They are made by so-called '527 groups' - named for a clause in the tax laws - that cannot officially be linked to any campaign. They are privately financed and exist outside the campaigns, like some sort of 'black ops' off the CIA budget. Democrats have been helped by 527 groups too, though Obama has tried to clamp down on their activities. But Republicans have found them to be highly effective. The Swift Boat campaign that raised questions about Kerry's Vietnam service in the 2004 campaign was a 527. It was financed largely by Texan billionaire Harold Simmons. Simmons has now donated £1.5m to a 527 group called the American Issues Project. The AIP last week brought out the most negative ad in the campaign so far. It linked Obama to Bill Ayers, a former radical with the Weather Underground Organisation, which planted bombs in the 1960s. Ayers, now an academic, once sat on the board of an anti-poverty group alongside Obama and they have other minor connections. The ad, however, used the imagery of 9/11 to paint Obama as being friends with terrorists. Many more AIP ads will be in the works.

Who are the attack dogs?
Sean Hannity

No one makes Fox News's claim to be 'fair and balanced' more patently ridiculous than Hannity. The conservative talk show host is as right-wing as they come and a highly effective cipher for Republican propaganda. He co-hosts his show with liberal Alan Colmes, but Colmes is reduced to the role of whipping boy rather than an alternative point of view. Hannity has championed the work of Jerome Corsi.

Jerome Corsi

Corsi makes a living out of writing muckraking books that appear to favour polemic over accuracy. The Cleveland native first took aim at John Kerry, penning a tome called Unfit for Command. But his greatest 'success' has been The Obama Nation. It has become a New York Times bestseller with its slanderous take on Obama's life and politics. Say the title quickly and it turns into 'abomination'. Corsi probably thinks this is funny.

Rush Limbaugh

A colossus of US conservatism, his radio show is heard by millions across the country. His rants espouse a deeply conservative point of view that believes global warming does not exist and terrorists lurk behind every corner. He frequently makes an issue of Barack Obama's race - but asked his listeners to back Obama in the Democratic race in what he called Operation Chaos as part of a strategy to keep the campaign as split as possible.

Glenn Beck

Conservative radio and television host and self-styled critic of political correctness. Once said of radical film-maker Michael Moore, 'I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire someone to do it. No, I think I could.' Recently asked an American pastor on air: 'Is Barack Obama the Antichrist?' Has also written two bestselling books: An Inconvenient Book and The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland.

Steve Schmidt

Known as 'the Bullet' for his bald pate and hardball tactics, Schmidt is the new mastermind of John McCain's attack strategy. He is ruthlessly disciplined and likes to operate behind the scenes. He is also very effective, helping to destroy John Kerry in 2004 and getting Arnold Schwarzenegger re-elected as governor of California in 2006. Unusually for a campaign professional, he is said to loathe Washington DC and prefers his home near the famously liberal city of San Francisco.

Full article - The Observer