When Republican operatives take to the pages of the nation's biggest newspapers to offer advice to Democratic candidates, a good rule of thumb is to do the opposite of whatever they say.
This morning, Michael Gerson, Bush's former lead speechwriter, is using his WaPo column to dispense advice to Sen. Obama. The way he sees it, Barack has made three big mistakes. Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
Obama's first major decision was his running mate. He could have reinforced a message of change and moderation with a Democratic governor who wins in a Republican state, or reached for history by selecting Hillary Clinton. But his choice came soon after Russia invaded Georgia, and the conventional wisdom demanded an old hand who knew his way around Tbilisi. When the Georgia crisis faded, Obama was left with a partisan, undisciplined, congressional liberal at his side. This has served to undermine Obama's message of change -- and has allowed Sarah Palin to pilfer a portion of that appeal.
Over the past 2 weeks, there has been one consistent complaint I've seen from Democrats about Biden. The problem, nearly everyone seems to agree, is that post-Palin Biden has virtually disappeared. Your VP pick is supposed to be, among other things, your attack dog, but for two weeks Biden was almost totally MIA. Given that, I'd love to know how precisely Biden's "partisan, undisciplined" nature has hurt Obama. If no one is paying attention to the guy, how is he undermining anything?
Moreover, if you believe Obama's own statements on the matter, Biden was a "governing pick," not a "campaigning pick." He trusts Biden's experience and judgement, and he wants him around to offer advice when they are sitting in the Oval Office. If that's true, then the events in Georgia had nothing to do with anything. And since Gerson doesn't actually provide any actual evidence to support his "Georgia made him do it" theory, well... why on earth should we believe him?
Obama's second decision concerned the tone and content of his convention. Here the Democratic conventional wisdom was nearly unanimous. Obama should shelve his highfalutin rhetoric and talk like a real Democrat. Go after McCain. Talk about "bread and butter" issues -- code words for class-warfare attacks on consumers of blinis and caviar.
Obama took this advice to the letter -- at the cost of his political identity. In his Denver speech, it seemed that every American home was on the auction block, every car stalled for lack of gasoline, every credit card bill past due, every worker treated like a Russian serf. And John McCain? He was out of touch, with flawed "judgment." His life devoted to serving oil companies and big corporations. And, by the way, he didn't have the courage to follow Osama bin Laden "to the cave where he lives." In obedience to the best Democratic advice, Obama managed to be conventional, bitter and graceless.
Responding to this is simple: if the convention backfired, why did we see a sizable bump in Obama's polling numbers by the end of the week? When something backfires, your numbers are supposed to go down.
Now Obama has made his third major campaign decision -- to finally get really tough on McCain. In response to attacks and dropping polls, the Democratic wisdom is once again nearly uniform: Democrats lose because they are not vicious enough. And once again, the Obama campaign has taken this advice without hesitation. "We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain's attacks, and we will take the fight to him," says Obama's campaign manager.
Obama feels provoked -- and he has been. There is no evidence that Obama supported explicit sex education for kindergarteners, as a McCain ad implied. Having already accused McCain of being a cowardly corporate tool who is disconnected from reality, escalation is not an easy task for Obama. But he has managed. In one recent commercial, McCain is clearly mocked for his age -- compared to a disco ball and a 10-pound cellphone. Another ad uses the word "dishonorable" next to a photo of McCain -- an attack from a candidate who has little practical familiarity with the cost of honor.
This one is also simple: It is not disrespectful or dishonorable to call a liar a liar. McCain's past history as a POW doesn't protect him from these charges if and when they are true. Just the reverse, in fact. When you've built your entire mythology around the idea of honor and then run a campaign that even Karl Rove warns is stretching the truth, honor is going to be where you are most vulnerable. And if pressed to guess, I'd say that's precisely why Rove took to FoxNews to publicly warn the McCain campaign. Rove's most famous tactic is to launch a full-frontal assault on an opponent's strength, working by any means necessary to neutralize it. Rove's first warning to McCain came right at the moment Obama took up this line of attack, and so I'm fairly certain that Rove knew precisely what was going on. If the "liar" tag sticks, McCain's honor is gone, meaning that Obama will have converted McCain's greatest strength into a weakness.
Bottom line? If Gerson says Obama should stop attacking McCain, its time to double down. If he says Obama needs to lay off the accusations that McCain is a liar, stay at it. For the first time in week's, Gerson's candidate is on the run, and now, all of a sudden he's concerned about the tone of the campaign? I mean, c'mon... we don't look that dumb, do we?
UPDATE: One other point before I head to sleep. And for once its a non-electoral one.
There are many ways to live an honorable life, and none of them are cost free. I'm not sure where this idea that only those who have suffered in a military context understand honor came from, but it needs to go away. History is full of honorable people who never once took up arms, and many of them have over the centuries been turned into religious icons [Note to email concern trolls: I am not writing about Obama here, so please don't start in with all the One Messiah ridiculousness. This is a nonelectoral point. Is that clear enough for you?].
But somehow over the past 8 years or so we as a nation seem to have forgotten that. Self-sacrifice in the military is of course an honorable thing, but it is not the only honorable thing one can do. No matter what path you choose in life, I promise you your honor will be tested. Living honorably is never easy. If it was, it wouldn't be something we honored, now would it?
