Rove live!

Karl Rove is a genius

For those who don't know, Rove is the man who masterminded George W. Bush's two successful election campaigns. An election campaign is like running a massive corporation in the middle of a competitive price war. But even more stressful. So Rove knows what he's doing. One of his most famous strategies was to attack the opposition's strength. Make their strength their weakness. It's a good strategy because it can be very disheartening to an opponent.

Here's how I would attack the current presidential and vice-presidential candidates:

John McCain
His strength is experience. So I'd attack him for being old. Too old. Out of touch. Possibly senile. Unable to adapt quickly to today's fast, changing world. Retire, old man. You've put up a good long fight. Now let the next generation take on your banner.
On this front: the website Things Younger Than McCain has been running for a fair while.

Barack Obama
His strength is his rhetoric and charisma. He makes people want to believe. So that's the target. I'd say he was all talk. Has never backed up his words with action. Has never had to make the tough decisions he talks about. He's spent so much time learning how to write and speak that he never learned how to do it tough like the Average American (aka Joe Sixpack). He's elitist, and he wants to tell you how to live your life because he thinks you're too stupid to do it yourself.
On this front: This from Rove himself: "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone."*

Sarah Palin
Her clear strength is her appeal to voters. They see her as one of them. The target is identified, but it's tough to attack because your audience considers her to be like them. So if you attack her, you run the risk of attacking them. So far the attacks on her daughter for getting pregnant have backfired. So you say she's too much like the everyday person. She doesn't have the experience to run the country or represent America internationally. She isn't educated or knowledgable enough to deal with the massive intellectual stress of the job
On this front: So far, anything that Sarah Palin could have been attacked with... has already been thrown at her. Comedians saying she would be gang-raped, blogs saying she lied about her son's parentage, she's had affairs, abused government power, skits depicting her as stupid and slutty. Yeah, it's been a pretty shameful time for a lot of otherwise open-minded people.

Joe Biden
Clearly his strength is his experience. He's there to add some experience and "old white guy-ness" to Obama's campaign. I'd attack the outworking of his experience. What has he used it for? And I'd latch onto the series of mistakes he's been making in his speeches and debates. He's old. Forgetful. Can't remember which policy went where, when. Struggles to keep up with recent events.
On this front: There have been a few articles about his tendency to say stupid or sometimes lightly rascist things, but nothing terribly damaging so far.

So far this campaign
I would say the Democrats are doing a better job of attacking their opponents than the Republicans are. That said, I am seeing the news only from an Australian perspective. We've got one strongly left-wing newspaper organisation, and one centre-right. So we get more news attacking Palin and McCain than the other way round. And on the internet the sites I read tend to attack Palin (with amazing sexualised ferocity, given Democrats' usual stance on women's rights and feminism) and McCain. That's why I try to read a few different sites from a fairly wide spectrum.

*Hee hee hee, that quote was followed on Rove's wikipedia page by an unintentionally hilarious aside - "This set off wide spread scrutiny since there is no record that Obama is or was ever a member of a country club or has been involved in such." Heh heh heh nice work, dumbass! You can consider the point... completely missed.