標題:Tips for Obama: no poetry, promise to defeat evil
By Edward Luce
Published: August 22 2008 19:18 | Last updated: August 22 2008 19:18
At the civil forum on faith last week, Barack Obama was asked whether evil
existed and, if so, whether we should “ignore it, contain it, negotiate with
it or defeat it?”
The Democratic presidential nominee gave a nuanced answer that suggested that
evil “should be confronted” but that we should have “some humility” in
doing so “because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the
claim that we were trying to confront evil”.
John McCain’s answer was: “Defeat it.” Although the Republican nominee
followed up with his trademark promise to follow Osama bin Laden “to the
gates of hell”, all that anybody will recall is that Mr McCain answered the
question in two plain words. And that Mr Obama did not. The same pattern was
repeated when they were both asked when human life begins. “At conception,”
said Mr McCain. “This, that, the other, and every other Tuesday,” said Mr
Obama (OK, that was a paraphrase).
Leaving aside whether these are remotely appropriate questions for
campaigning politicians (this is America, remember), most thoughtful people
would prefer Mr Obama’s calibrated musings on matters of such complexity.
But as Adlai Stevenson, the perennial Democratic presidential candidate, once
quipped after being told that thinking people were supporting him: “Yes, but
I need to win a majority.” He never did.
At next week’s Democratic convention in Denver, which promises to be the
grandest convention since John F. Kennedy pipped Mr Stevenson to the
nomination in 1960, Mr Obama will have his biggest opportunity so far to
silence those who doubt his ability to speak in simple declarative sentences
to ordinary voters. It is an opportunity he must not flunk.
Mindful of what happened to the Hamlet-esque candidacies of Al Gore and John
Kerry, even some of Mr Obama’s strongest supporters are beginning to doubt
whether he can. Take this, not untypical, offering from Margery Eagan, a
self-confessed “Obama cheerleader”, in Friday’s Boston Herald: “I wish he
’d save nuance and sanctimony for senior seminars; give America some
straight answers; crack some jokes at his own high-horse expense; convince me
he’s up to this . . . That’s what McCain’s done lately. It’s working.”
The auguries are mixed. By choosing to move his acceptance speech in Denver
next Thursday from the convention hall to the Invesco stadium, because the
latter can accommodate 75,000 people, Mr Obama has signalled that he plans to
deliver one of his Berlin specials. Some Democrats believe that another
mellifluous, highly oratorical Obama address to a mass adoring rally is
precisely what will turn off the blue-collar voter.
As Bill Galston, a veteran of Democratic campaigns, puts it: “If Obama’s
speech scores high on artistry and aesthetics, then we have a problem,
Houston.” Better for Mr Obama to swallow his instincts and model himself on
George W. Bush, whose constant repetition of simple themes – short on
artistry and sometimes even grammar – broke through to the average voter.
“George W. announced his candidacy with a list of four or five promises of
what he would do as president,” says Mr Galston. “Eighteen months later he
was still repeating the same list in the same words.”
In his struggle to portray himself as empathetic to middle-class Americans’
needs, Mr Obama may be tempted to believe that Mr McCain has already done
some of his work for him. By failing to recall, in an interview on Thursday,
how many houses he owned and then asking his staff to check on it, Mr McCain
presented his opponent with something of a windfall. The correct answer was “
none” because all eight of the McCain properties are in the name of his
wealthy wife, Cindy.
But such windfalls do not come often. And given most people’s low
expectations for his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in
Minneapolis the following week, all Mr McCain will need to do is give a clear
address having avoided falling over on the way to the podium. Beating low
expectations is another Bush speciality. Exceeding high ones, as Mr Obama
must do, is a more serious challenge altogether.
Here is a simple outline of what Mr Obama should do. Many people doubt
whether he can emulate Bill Clinton’s ability to persuade voters that he can
“feel their pain”. Such people are now being told by the McCain campaign
that Mr Obama is an “arugula [rocket]-eating, pointy-headed professor type”
who lives in a “frickin mansion”.
Mr Obama should therefore do what quiche-eating Ivy-League types are not
supposed to do and display some real anger. He should postpone until the
presidential inauguration next January any more suggestion that “we are the
ones – the ones we have been waiting for” and remind people in simple terms
of who he is and then link it with what he intends to do. He must spell out
again and again that he was raised by a single mother who relied on food
stamps.
He should contrast this with Mr McCain’s privileged background as the son
and grandson of admirals and the spouse of a woman worth more than $100m. And
he should promise to defeat evil. That always goes down well. Then he should
get up the next day and do the same thing all over again. And again. Until we
are all saying it in our sleep.
The writer is the FT’s Washington bureau chief
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78142d82-7065-11dd-b514-0000779fd18c.html
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