The coming aura campaign by Obama
...The Democrats are trying to rerun the Carter disasters on energy policy and foreign policy. I guess they hope that votes and the world has forgotten the mess he made after 30 years have passed. Like a rerun from the Carter era people are already writing essays about the decline of the US in relation to the rest of the world.Barack Obama is going to run an aura campaign. As it has been from the start, it's going to be a speech candidacy, a rhetorical candidacy, a JFK candidacy, the promise of another Camelot.
Listen here to Barack describing what it's all about Monday in Indianapolis: "I believe that this election is bigger than me or John McCain or Hillary Clinton. It's bigger than the Democrats versus Republicans. It's about who we are as Americans." That's as big as it gets.
Will more than 50% of voters want a piece of this dream in November? Will the Rev. Wright specter be gone by then and the "bitter" remark forgiven? Sure. Why not?
By any measure, the country's mood is awful. Some of it is gas prices and some the mysterious mortgage and credit crisis (Barack knows how it happened: "We do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators").
Whenever Americans get glum near an election, it's a good bet that pitching their ideals at them will appeal, and thank heavens for that. FDR was an ideals candidate and so was Ronald shining-city-on-a-hill Reagan.
So long as the American mood sits in the dumpster, John McCain will have his hands full. The instinct of the McCain camp will be to compete for the unhappy white vote Hillary leaves behind with lurches toward Obama-like populism. That compulsion was already evident in the demagogic anti-Wall Street passages of his speech on the economy last month.
John McCain needs to find an Achilles heel in this opponent. It's there – not the Wright mess but Obama's dustup with Hillary Sunday on Iran, when he tagged her for "saber rattling" and "tough talk."
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, collector of centrifuges, makes Jeremiah Wright look like Little Bo Peep. Yet this Tuesday Barack Obama said he assumes the American people will see it is "not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies, like Roosevelt did, Kennedy did, and Truman did." In the here and now, a more apt name comes to mind: Jimmy Carter.
A grand Enemies Tour awaits President Obama – Iran's Ahmadinejad, Syria's Assad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, an al Qaeda "diplomat" from Osama bin Laden, Sudan's Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Burma's junta.
If John McCain can't talk the American people out of re-Carterizing themselves, what has he been preparing for all these years?
The Democrats are primarily responsible for the current energy shortage so they are flailing away at other to blame while making the situation worse. Their strangling of all forms of energy in hopes of higher prices is working. Look for them to redouble their effort while trying to avoid responsibility for the prices.
Look for Iran to humiliate Obama at an early opportunity if we are so unfortunate as to have him elected. The other enemies will get in line to do likewise.
Republicans need to drive up the negatives of the Democrat brand and they have little time to do so. There is much to work with, but we have a candidate who will not carry that message so others will have to step up.
Comments
Post a Comment