That deft and indirect manner in which Obama had dealt with the darkness had worked wonderfully for the first phase of the campaign. But now, clearly, it was time to develop a second approach for this new phase. Perhaps if that second approach had been ready and brought into the battle in the days before Ohio and Texas voted, the nomination process would already be successfully completed. But the Obama campaign was not ready, and besides, it did not recognize until the damage was done that what had worked so well before was no longer sufficient. Generals are always fighting the last war, and Obama and his strategists can certainly be forgiven for being a bit slow to alter a posture of proven success.
Commentators since March 4 have been widely discussing the supposed "dilemma" of the Obama campaign: should it just take this punishment, and show weakness, or should it get down in the mire with Hillary and lose its luster.
I have argued that Obama has a better choice that avoids both those pitfalls: in "Here's How Obama Should Fight Back," I say that Obama should fight back in a way that will be fully integrated with his overall message that the Old Politics is dark and corrupt and destructive and that he is offering a new kind of politics based on truth and honor and enlisting the best energies of the American people. (See
Although the commentators were presenting a false dilemma, there IS a dilemma: if Americans flocked to Obama, in part, because he gave assurance to Americans wanting to prevail over evil but not wanting to face it too squarely or to go to battle against it, how much of his appeal might Obama sacrifice if he now turns and speaks more directly about the darkness that his campaign promises to prevail against?
"When Hillary tries to change the rules in the middle of the game and be awarded the delegates from the disallowed Michigan and Florida primaries, Obama should do more than argue against it. He should say: "After seven years of a president who has violated the Constitution he took an oath to defend, and who has run roughshod over the rules that are supposed to maintain our precious system of checks and balances, does America need another president who shows so little respect for the rules everybody agreed to follow in this election process?"
Is that too strong? Are enough of the American people ready to hear such language? In his majors speeches, Obama has at least gestured indirectly toward such a truth, saying that America needs a president who knows the Constitution, and who RESPECTS the Constitution. But even with the emphasis on "respects," that is far more gentle on the ears of an apparently timid American people than talk of "a president who has violated the Constitution he took an oath to defend, and who has run roughshod over the rules that are supposed to maintain our precious system of checks and balances..."
(Likewise with Obama's glancing and gentle references to the Bushites' divisiveness, their making America hated around the world, their serving corporate power at the expense of the people, and other ways in which they've assaulted the political culture of America: Obama has subtly signaled that he sees the darkness, but does so almost parenthetically, while putting virtually all his emphasis on holding up the light.)
For many of us --perhaps even numbered in the millions-- strong language would be thrilling to hear. Over these past few years, when any of our leaders --Feingold or Conyers or Leahy or Dodd-- have spoken of the Bushite darkness in clear, strong language they've become our heroes, if only for a moment before the conspiracy of silence about the elephant in the room descends again, and the country goes on with its business as if the White House were occupied by a normal president instead of by the very kind of usurpatious power that our Founders warned us about.
But there's reason to doubt if there are ENOUGH of us who like to hear this dark truth spoken straight. And Obama does need to calibrate his degree of confrontation to achieve two tasks which may be in tension: first, to successfully turn the attacks on him against the attackers, leaving them discredited and the reasons why America needs Obama high-lighted; and second, to preserve what is hopeful and positive and reassuring about his offer to be a transformational leader for America.
Two hopeful points to make about this need for calibration:
**It is not necessary to make any hard-and-fast decision about how to pitch it. Between now and the Pennsylvania primary, Obama can try different levels of confrontation with his attackers, as well as different levels of vividness in describing the frightening aspects of the status quo he seeks to transform, and see how the electorate responds.
**And Obama has shown himself to be gifted at crafting messages that operate at different levels to achieve subtleties of impact. There are reasons to feel confident that he and his team could pull this off as well.
That is, unless there's something in Obama that disables him from the combat that has been foisted upon him by the way that dark forces are now coming at him. And if such combat is not within his impressive arrays of competency and talent, then he's not the president we need in 2009. For America's failure uo deal with this crisis as our Founders had intended has left the forces of evil largely intact, and a transformational president will not succeed without being able to go up against monsters and slay them. He will not succeed unless he's fully able to prevail over the ugly, the false, the destructive, and the unfair.
Let the battle begin. I relish the prospect.
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