celticlord2112
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
I would welcome your thoughts on the bigger picture, Celt, so let me rephrase the question from the position you have taken. What negative force will Barry personify in McCain, to draw the lines of good/bad? I don't think the same old crapola is going to be effective.
Obama has to demonize McCain's weaknesses and minimize McCain's strengths. That much is obvious--Campaign Strategy 101. McCain has to do the same thing with Obama.
McCain's biggest weakness is being identified both with the Congress and with the Bush administration--which are in a constant battle to see which branch of government will be most odious to the American people (as of today, the Congress "leads" that contest). Obama needs to press the argument that a McCain Presidency would be little more than a Bush third term. Additionally, he needs to portray McCain as part of a broken and lifeless Congress that does not represent the interests of the American electorate.
However, that is a double edged sword. "Congress" includes both Democrats and Republicans. If Congress is itself part of the problem, then Obama's erstwhile political allies in the Congress are part of the problem. I should note that Bill Clinton faced this same challenge in his first term in office, when he offended the Democratic leadership in Congress, forcing him to tack right and make his bones with Newt Gingrich and the Republican leadership--Bill Clinton's support of NAFTA was the most visible result of that alliance of necessity, although the surpluses Clinton enjoyed in the latter days of his Presidency also arose in part from the budget negotiations triggered by the Republican Contract with America--and it is not an overreach to say that Clinton won his second term by having successfully hi-jacked the Republican agenda and making it his own.
Obama can villify McCain as a multi-term senator and part of the Congressional "establishment"--and might even be successful in that characterization, McCain's reputation as a maverick notwithstanding--but so far he has shown none of the coalition-building, consensus-building skill Clinton possessed, and if he alienates the Democratic leadership in the Congress yet is successful in winning the Presidency, he lacks the political heft to reach across the aisle to work with the Republican minority to move legislation forward (if anything, the Republicans would seize every opportunity to magnify a split between the White House and the Congress, theorizing that such a split increases their chances to recapture one or both houses of Congress in 2010, and the White House in 2012).
The affiliation with Bush is safer in the long term but more a more difficult case to make. McCain's opposition to Bush policies are a matter of public record, and indeed the "surge" in Iraq--which even Obama dare not call a failure despite dark and dramatic predictions in the early days of the surge--has more of a McCain than Bush imprimatur on it. Yes, McCain voted for the war resolutions authorizing Bush to invade Iraq, but so did a good many leading Democrats, and if the Democrats in Congress are to be given a pass on that, then so too must McCain; McCain can plausibly take credit for the change in conditions in Iraq to one where discussing troop withdrawals is no longer an admission of defeat and a consignment of Iraq to chaos and civil war, while not shouldering an inordinate amount of blame for being in Iraq in the first place.
Obama also has to minimize McCain's experience edge--experience which transcends the political sphere. McCain's years as a POW in Vietnam are all the reference needed to demonstrate that McCain "gets" hardship and sacrifice; his military record after Vietnam shows him a capable, competent, leader. Obama's Harvard-cultivated urbanity and multicultural worldiness undercuts any claims he might make about growing up in hardship and privation. In this aspect, Obama took several dramatic steps backward in his response to McCain's "Paris Hilton" ad; his petulant and prissy reaction shows him to be thin-skinned in a manner which magnifies his lack of deep experience in any field of endeavor, be it politics, law, or community activism.
Pushing the argument of McCain's economic illiteracy is a non-starter--Obama has no credible foundation to make a claim of superior economic wisdom, and his economic policies are riddled with holes and question marks that open the door to a characterization as a classic "tax and spend" liberal. McCain has already taken a lot of the oxygen out of that story-line by admitting up front he is not an economic policy wonk.
Ironically, the difficulty Obama faces in dramatically characterizing McCain's deficits as a Presidential contender highlight a gaping hole in his "change" campaign strategy--no one, not even his own advisors, can state within 10 words or less what that "change" signifies. Obama lacks a Carville-like mastermind who can draw issues in dramatic relief ("it's the economy, stupid")--and his own speechifying on the topic tends to meander around without making any real points. Does anybody remember the closing lines of his "A More Perfect Union" speech? Does anybody recall the bulk of what he said just a few weeks ago in Berlin? His words sound good, but they lack staying power.
For all of his mellifluous tones and lofty oratory, he has yet to draw his campaign theme in clear, concise terms. JFK had "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Reagan had "Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." Obama overplayed his hand in Europe by not having a rhetorical flourish to match either "ich bin ein berliner" or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."--the grand stage demands the grand gesture, and Obama has yet to provide one.
America is a nation predicated upon hope for the future and faith in the capacity of man--for all this nation's sins and defects, that is our undeniable political heritage. While Americans are not averse to "change" in their politicians, our political history and culture show that we prefer to positive change over negative change--we want to move towards a positive and not away from a negative. So far, all Obama offers in the way of change is running away from the Bush legacy. If Obama can state with clarity to what goal he would have us run, his candidacy will be a strong one; absent that statement, his candidacy will remain unfocused, unguided, and more ego-driven than policy-driven.
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RE: Who is Barry going to hate? - 
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