The question on everybody’s mind is this: Polls show voters want to vote for a Democrat by a sizeable margin. So why isn’t Barack Obama way ahead in the polls right now?
With that question in mind, let’s consider the nature of the attacks that have been levelled at Obama in recent weeks. They’ve called Obama arrogant. They’ve called him presumptuous. They’ve called him narcicistic. They’ve called him vain. They’ve called him a phony, will no substance beneath his soaring rhetoric. They’ve called him a celebrity. They’ve mocked his supporters for thinking he’s “the messiah.” They’ve mocked him for thinking he’s “the one.” They’ve compared him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. They’ve said Obama cares more about winning an election than about winning a war. They’ve said he makes time to visit the gym, but doesn’t make time to visit wounded troops. They’ve accused Obama of being unwilling to admit his “mistakes” on foreign policy.
And that’s just in the mainstream media. In the second-tier media, Obama’s enemies say flat-out, as they have been for months, that he is unpatriotic, a self-serving political hack.
It reminds me of a rant I heard several months ago from ultra-conservative whacko pundit Jay Severin, who spent several minutes insisting over and over again on his New England-area radio show that Obama supporters are “losers.”
The message is clear: They’re saying that we Obama’s hard-core supporters are shallow, self-righteous, America-hating idealists who have nominated Obama because he makes us feel good by being black and by putting on a good show. To the swing voters, they’re saying that if you look closely, you can tell that his whole candidacy is one big sham.
Let’s review the facts. Obama grew up in a middle-class, single-parent household. He didn’t just make it into Columbia, he didn’t just make it to Harvard Law School: He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Unlike President George W. Bush, who relied on his family legacy to score plum admissions to an elite New England boarding school and later Yale; and unlike John McCain, whose admiral father gave him easy admission into the Naval Academy, where he placed near the bottom of his class — Obama excelled, not just as a student but as an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School. (Here’s a New York Times article I wish everyone would read about Obama’s years as a law professor.) Obama won election and re-election to the Illinois state Senate, rather than leapfrogging into national politics as many political hacks have a tendency to do. And then Obama managed to win election to the United States Senate, and finally the Democratic presidential primary, defeating the most powerful brand and the most prestigious minds in Democratic politics. Obama also wrote a thoughtful memoir that was very well written and very well reviewed before anybody knew anything about him other than that he’d been a successful law student at Harvard.
I’ve heard Obama speak in person twice, and I’ve had the privilege to speak with him for a few minutes. And I can tell you his “rhetoric” is as good as his enemies say it is. I honestly believe he’s a better, more skillful communicator than Bill Clinton was — probably as good if not better than Ronald Reagan.
In other words, all the hard evidence I’ve seen suggests that Obama is one of the most brilliant minds in American politics today. It’s also clear that Obama had plenty of opportunities to cash in on his brilliance and make a lot of money. But instead, he decided to go to Chicago and fight in the trenches of local politics — which isn’t easy, and it isn’t glamourous or sexy, and it doesn’t pay that well.
So why are Obama’s enemies attacking him for being a fraud, when it’s so utterly obvious that Obama is the real deal? It’s straight from the Rove playbook: Attack your enemy where he is strongest. They figure if they can take Obama’s greatest asset — his brilliance, his ability to communicate, his ability to succeed politically, his willingness to fight and sacrifice — and turn it into a weakness, then the rest of Obama’s appeal will come crashing down.
And they know they have a chance to win — a slim chance, but a real one — because most voters simply do not have the time to do the sort of research that’s necessary to feel like they really know him. So their minds are more open to the idea that he might not be what he seems.
It’s true that voters want a candidate who will push for a common-sense agenda along the lines of what Obama is proposing. Voters want American troops out of Iraq. Voters want health care that’s more affordable for individuals and businesses. Voters want global leadership on the issue of global warming. Voters want a fairer tax structure that doesn’t leave a ballooning debt for our children to repay. Voters want to see social security remain solvent. Voters want improvements in education.
But what they want more than anything is a President who inspires confidence. I wish I could say Bush’s low approval ratings reflect the country’s rejection of the Republican approach to public policy, but I believe it’s more accurate to say the country has rejected what Bush represents on a more visceral level. The American people sense that Bush is full of baloney. They know Bush is incompetent and corrupt. They know Bush doesn’t really understand the world. They know Bush can’t distinguish ideology from reality. They know Bush is a cocky bastard whose cockiness caught up with him when everything he fought for turned out to be a miserable failure.
What the American people want is the opposite of Bush: a leader they can trust to demonstrate world-class intelligence and a world-class temperment in tackling the awesome challenges that face this country. The key word is trust. Obama’s enemies sense that his greatest asset in this campaign is his ability to inspire trust in the American people — and that’s why his enemies are hell-bent on eroding that trust, on making us feel like Obama is far away, an elistist celebrity who thinks he’s the second coming of Christ and cares more about satisfying his own ego than about this country or its people.
Let’s be clear about what will happen if the Republican Party can pull this off: they will use this same disgusting tactic over and over again. If Obama can’t withstand the charge that he’s nothing but a phony, how will any other candidate hope to withstand that same charge, no matter what they say or how they say it?
The only way to fight back is by going on offense. It’s time to start evaluating John McCain. This is a man who thinks Czechoslovakia is still a country. This is a man who thinks Shiite Iran is training Sunni Al Qaida. This is a man who called Paston Rod Parsley a “spiritual guide.” This is a man who wants to send our volunteer soldiers to die in Iraq for no reason other than to salvage the Bush legacy and by extension the legacy of his failed Republican Party. This is a man who tried to block an effort to give our soldiers the benefits they deserve — an education, for example — when they return home from the battlefield. This is a man whose famous temper inspires strong words of warning from his Republican colleagues in the Senate. This is a man who scored points with the American people by condemning torture and then quietly signed off on a policy that allows the CIA to continue torturing. This is a man who thinks it’s a good idea to privatize the U.S. Postal Service — as if that were an idea worth discussing for even a split-second when the challenges we face are so dire.
McCain doesn’t have the courage of his convictions. He doesn’t value the lives of our soldiers. He doesn’t care about torture or the U.S. Constitution. He’s willing to let the poor suffer while the deficit blooms.
Bust most importantly, this is a man who said he was “proud” of his recent ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. John McCain and the Republican Party will lie to the American people about Barack Obama, and then they’ll lie about every other enemy they face, and in this way the Republicans will slowly but surely use their ugly lies to erase the United States of America and replace it with something that will make us sick to our stomachs — unless we’re willing to fight to save this country! If you think I’m being hyperbolic, you haven’t understood what’s been happening to this country since September 11, 2001.
George Bush has sent this country into a tailspin and John McCain will only intensify that tailspin. The general election is upon us and if we fall asleep at the switch and let the Republicans drive a wedge between us and Obama, we’ll pay for it for generations.
We can’t spend the next three months thanking McCain for his service. Obama can do that — but we can’t. For the good of this country and its people, we need to start laying into that rat bastard with every fiber of our being. As Obama says, now is the time. Now is the moment. It’s time to drive a wedge between the American people and John McCain.