The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.[1][2] The present name for the strategy has been associated with British former prime minister Boris Johnson’s political strategist Lynton Crosby.
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While he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote a column for the 3 March 2013 edition of The Telegraph in which he described the “dead cat” as a piece of Australian political strategy about what to do in a situation in which the argument is being lost and “the facts are overwhelmingly against you”.[3][4]
To understand what has happened in Europe in the last week, we must borrow from the rich and fruity vocabulary of Australian political analysis. Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as “throwing a dead cat on the table, mate”.
That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!”; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.[3]
Johnson employed the Australian Lynton Crosby as his campaign manager during the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, leading to press speculation that he was the “Australian friend” in the story.[5][4]
Rodwell notes the term later finding a place in media coverage of the “outrageous pronouncements” made by Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and his later presidential transition in the United States.[6]
I was reading a poli sci thesis that analyzed Trump’s campaign strategy the other day, said that that one unusual aspect was that Trump really kept “campaigning” without any break even once entering office.
If one can categorize essentially the entire length of Trump’s political campaign as consisting of a series of uses of dead cat strategy, it does kinda drive home the degree to which he’d like to avoid normal discussion about his policy. That is, he doesn’t use it merely as a one-off to distract from a particular politically-dangerous-to-you and unpopular topic. It’s a never-ending series of dead cats showing up on the table.