Your article points to your insight as a potential strategist and tactician. If you ask me, I think you could serve the Obama well as their campaign ad maker.

All the studies of political messaging show that the best method is to combine attack and positive.

And the very best way to attack is to let the candidate himself do it - ie you use McCain, not Obama, to attack McCain - use his own quotes against him - and then end the ad with your own candidate's positive message.

But attacks work. Lab studies have shown that. People who were shown negative ads said they didn't like then and discounted them, but then subtle follow up questions showed how well they had actually worked.

Negativity in campaigning is intensely powerful: far more than positive. The reason is the amygdala - emotive force is far greater than rational. So you have to have negativity in your campaign - you have to destroy the other candidate - and then have the positives to complete the deal.

I assume Axelrod of all people must know that - his main job is going to be to convince Obama of it.

This would be a better ad for someone like moveon.org to make than the Obama campaign. a strong point of his appeal to voters is his ability and desire to stay about the negative fray and truely change the tone of things. i think it better to let a surrogate get in the muck and throw the dirt. even if it is true!