Does Obama Has Teeth To Scare Away His Detractors?

One note about politics that is true most of the time: Mudslinging works in politics. Negative campaigns bear fruits, sometimes ten-fold. The reason? Because politics is a game mainly of manipulation, and tarnishing your opponents credentials, especially when the graffiti doesn't seem to directly come from you, has its rewards. It serves to put more glitter to the other candidate. It's a first rule of first-class politics and it's never going away anytime soon. John Kerry was given an up close refresher course in this during the last Presidential elections in the swift boat scandal by the Bush team. Kerry first chose to ignore it because he thought like it wasn't a big deal but then it was soon inflated to become the main deal in misrepresenting his Vietnam clout. It also became the Bush's team springboard in aiming at Kerry military credentials. All the while, Bush appeared to be quiet or tried to shun such dirty politics as if it wasn't his team that was employing them. That's how an apt politician plays his game. Now the Obama team is increasingly finding itself on the defensive. And for a while, we wonder whether the Obama team has the gear and the mere gusto to deter a political storm unleashed by Clinton hurricane. Obama himself has not been battle-tested, but he had a test of how national mudslinging sounds last week when the Clinton team teased him with the David Geffen debacle. But then Obama fired back all too soon to an allegation that was baseless. In a way, the Clinton camp seemed to have gotten what they had come searching; a response and a quick one at that. Obama should have just ignored the allegation and moved on as if none existed. But in responding to the allegation, which naturally shouldn't have involved him, Obama acknowledged the crisis and confirmed that he was somehow involved. He fired back in kind, spewing mud to the Clinton camp. Whether this campaign strategy works for him remains to be seen...it never seemed to work for John Kerry though.