We're familiar with the post debate spin room, placard lead spokespersons careening from reporter to reporter. Increasingly, however, campaigns are finding more efficient ways to manipulate.
We're becoming accustomed to candidate web page's (re)interpretation of debates (A favorite of mine was Dodd's "Talk Clock" exposing disparate speaking times) but the practice seems to have stepped up a notch.
The Drexel Debate was not Hillary's best effort. After dominating the prior encounters Clinton's smooth sailing ran aground and fairly received a severe media lashing. Even FactCheck.org documented, at length, three questionable "bobs and weaves."
What is a well heeled campaign to do? Simple, fight back by extending the post-debate spin, often using video interpretations that infiltrate campaign coverage.
Certainly the Clinton campaign anticipated fireworks in the City of Brotherly Love. They lead the debate with video of Obama and Edwards pledging to take-the-high-road in their campaigns (since removed from the web). A little inoculation never hurts - tell folks how to interpret the piling-on.
Following the debate, they quickly posted "the politics of pile-on" (and were quick to take it down after the news cycle) suggesting that, as USA Today's Memmott and Lawarence describe, "a bunch of guys "piling on" a woman who is tough enough to take it."
The Obama camp, sensing some traction posted their debate excerpt: "Transparency." The battle was joined, the debate spin extended.
Finally, John Edwards--less high tech--posted "a graphic" highlighting points of disagreement with Hillary, framing her as the rightist alternative.
Breaking news: This is unfolding fast on the Web pages. Edwards posts a new video from the Philly debate on his web site, an eyewitness to flip-flops format. (Is that the music from Bush's 2004 Anti Kerry Windsurfing spot?)
What do all these efforts have in common: well financed efforts that frame the "debate-about-the-debates" in ways that trumps post-debate spin room commentary.
Of course there are no guarantees with post-debate spin. Hillary criticism continues unabated, the media weighing in on "playing the gender card." Post-debate spin after all is understood within the unfolding dialogue.
GOP's Framing Post Debate
The Fox hosted GOP debate from Florida the week before produced more post-debate response than campaign page reinterpretations. John McCain, who has been holding his own in the debates had arguable a less than stellar evening until his punch line "I was tied up at the time."
McCain's camp immediately ran a new ad in New Hampshire. The spot has it all; McCain's contrasting story and moral gravitas vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton.
