One of the least remarked but possibly most significant developments of the 2008 campaign is that Barack Obama has found a way to make Republican smear campaigning counterproductive.  Other Democrats should take note.  Obama's strategy has been:

1.   Let them attack.

2.   Call them liars.

3.   Wait for the media to agree.

4.   Then attack them the same way.

The strategic point here is that this makes lying counterproductive for the one who goes first.  When Obama follows this strategy he can neutralize the gains made by the Republican smears by using ones of his own.  This equalizes the effects of the smears themselves.  But since Obama goes second, the McCain campaign suffers from the stigma of having been called liars by the media, and Obama's response is then seen as retaliation, which is not as bad.  So they both damage each other equally with the attacks, but McCain damages his own reputation more by going first.  Overall, Obama wins.

The key here has been Obama's willingness to hit below the belt, but only after McCain has done so and been called out on it.  After McCain's below-the-belt claim that Obama wanted to teach kindergartners about sex, Obama waited for the McCain-as-liar narrative to develop in the media, then he unleashed an equally below-the-belt attack implying that McCain was anti-immigrant, when McCain was actually pretty reasonable on that issue.  When Obama did this, his Hispanic support went up, and polls in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada in particular improved dramatically.  The McCain camp complained bitterly about that, but everyone had already decided that he was the liar, so no one listened to him.  That's the beauty of it.  Obama got a free pass because McCain's complaint's were discounted since he had been labeled as the liar.  However, Obama did back off when the media started to call him on it, and he timed it all well enough that the McCain-as-liar narrative remained intact. 

Of course, Obama was also smart enough to not even bother using this strategy after the economic crisis hit.  When your opponent takes out a gun and shoots himself in the foot, there's no need to fire back.  Going negative on your opponent when the country's falling apart and everyone's looking to you for leadership just isn't smart.  So Obama let McCain do it and McCain took the hit.

Some may question Obama's ethics for being willing to use smears in retaliation.  I sure don't.  If you want to have a fair fight, you can't allow cheating to go unpunished.  Kerry did that with the Swift Boat fiasco, and the result was that Republicans got rewarded for cheating, because their smears damaged Kerry and went unpunished.  Since they were getting rewarded for doing it, they kept doing it, and it worked.  Obama, on the other hand, realizes that if you make cheating counterproductive, people will stop doing it. 

I hope other Democrats adopt this strategy, because one of the most enjoyable aspects of this campaign has been watching the apoplectic rage of the McCain campaign at having this tactic turned against them.  They just can't believe what has happened to them, at how incredibly unfair it is that they're getting called out on their lies while Obama seems to get away with his.  They're being forced to run on substance and they just can't stand it, and don't know how to do it.  Also, another fun thing to watch has been McCain's responding to this by getting very indignant and declaring war on the media.  Now that's a really smart move in a presidential campaign. 

The bottom line is that Obama is like a chess player who sees ten moves ahead, and he's playing against people who range from guys who only see one or two moves ahead down to ones who don't even know that there's a chess game going on.  The Republicans haven't realized it yet, but Obama is just like Bill Clinton is that respect.  He's simply way better at this than they are.