The tragic death of Bill Gwatney at the hands of a distraught man should not be seen as an isolated incident resulting from a completely innocuous sequence of events but as the logical result of the Machiavellian right’s systematic manipulation of the general public to blame the liberals in general and democrats in particular for all the country’s woe.

Completely ignoring the fact that, for the last eight years, they’ve successfully run this nation into the ground.

If you’ve lost your job, it has nothing to do with  catastrophic economic policies of the Bush regime, it’s because those heinous liberals have been secretly undermining the foundations of the economy by demanding worker’s rights! If oil prices are high, it’s entirely because those heathen tree-huggers won’t let our patriotic oil corporations, those paragons of civic-mindedness, to drill for oil in ANWR or offshore and has nothing to do with a catastrophic war in the middle-east against one oil-producing country and the idiotic sanctions against another.

The right-wing hate machine has been industriously feeding the seeds of tragedy for years. Of course, tragedies like this have nothing to do with their demented vitriol. After all, they only speak the truth against the evil, unpatriotic liberal media.

For weeks - months - Obama has dominated the media like an omnipresent figure at the background of everything. When McCain complains that the media is biased to Obama, he’s got a point. For starters, an old, balding white guy who’s been a fixture of Washington for years is just less interesting than a young, handsome african-american with a gift for public speaking…

…so he probably does have a point about Obama being a “celebrity”.

But the flip side of the coin is audience burnout. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but now quite a few in the mainstream talk about a public burnout on Obama. Obama, Obama, Obama - all hours of the day. It gets wearisome for anyone who isn’t a die-hard Obamaniac. 

Unfortunately, this burnout couldn’t come at a worst time for Barack - at least that’s what I think. McCain has been industriously trying to define Obama on his own terms. With people so worn on Obama, I think it actually makes them more receptive than usual to McCain’s accusations. You know, just for variety. 

And Obama simply HAS to hit back at McCain over those accusations or risk being “Kerry-ised” - finding himself defined as a leftist rock-star or something, like something out of the 60’s. Just where McCain would like it, really. I’m pretty sure he’d be able to muster some spectacular explosions if he could envisage Obama as a pot-tripping hippy icon fresh from Woodstock and some anti-war demonstration.

Now with audiences burned out, Obama is pretty much caught between hitting back and cooling off - he’s cooling it off on a weeklong vacation, but that’s just one of two unpalatable options. The other being burning out his audiences more, weakening his message and having them tune out or tune in on another. 

To be fair, taking a break is probably the least unpalatable of the two options. But it does mean that McCain has an additional 7 days to try and force him into a tough corner. I guess it will all depend on how much hay McCain makes while the sun shines. 

It’s been fashionable to compare the elegant, eloquent Obama campaign to McCain’s apparently bumbling, stumbling advertising, pandering and roundhouse gaffes. It’s also fashionable to propose that the panacea to Obama’s current travails is to present concrete, detailed policy positions. By contrasting himself to the bumbling McCain and demonstrating his intellectual and personal gravitas, so the story goes, Obama can counter the Republican’s clumsy, offensive swipes at him.

That’s a big mistake.

Over the past few days, the Huffington Post has had a couple of interesting posts concerning the Republican’s advertising tactics: E-mailing, swarms of ‘flailing’ attack ads, and (and I think this is the most telling of all) simple keyword messaging.

I think the last one sums things up pretty well. It has nothing to do with people “not paying attention” or not being discerning enough. It’s actually a well known science in marketing circles, particularly e-marketing circles, that certain words can subtly influence a reader’s/listener’s/viewer’s attitudes. It’s a  game of putting people in a frame of mind where they’re open to suggestion regarding a particular subject and setting them up to agree with you. Sure, you might be able to dodge a few such questions, but as the average joe goes about his daily life, juggling job, family and relaxation, how much time does he have to listen? How much time does he have to “inform himself”.

It’s a conceit bordering on intellectual arrogance by an unfortunately large section of the left to assume that the reason people don’t pay attention is because they don’t care or that they’re too stupid or lazy to listen, learn and think for themselves - face it, not everyone has the time to peruse the verbose verbiage of politics, let alone educate themselves in the way economics works. The vast masses of the people instead rely on gut instinct and common sense to arrive at a decision, and long explanations be damned. Professor level economists, four-star generals and global policy strategists can barely agree with each other over their own theories and tactics, what more Joe Average who’s just trying to put a meal on his table and take the kids to Disney World once year.

Obama’s campaign has been so successful so far simply because it’s latched onto this simple fact. That’s why they’ve hammered “Change” into the ground. People think that the country is on the wrong track - that’s why we need to “Change”. What constitutes change is left open and, as far as winning is concerned, it doesn’t need to be completely filled out with the nuts and bolts of how it’s going to be accomplished. What’s more important is getting people to feel that what proposals DO come forth actually constitute “Change For The Better”. 

Unfortunately, it would seem that Obama’s campaign has fallen afoul of another old advertising axiom - message burnout. There’re only so many times an advertiser can repeat a message before it becomes old and stale. There will come a point where the message no longer resonates and even starts to result in negative returns - turning people away instead of bringing them in. That’s what the Obama campaign is currently facing. Obama needs to find a new push word.

And it would seem that McCain’s stolen a march on him - sort of. McCain’s own message - straight talk, honorable service - have been worn to stumps and, to his campaign’s credit, they seem to have recognized that. That’s probably what’s behind the dizzying array of attack ads that’s hitting Obama - the Obama campaign hasn’t yet regrouped around a fresh theme to push. By hitting Obama with a blizzard of ads to bat off, McCain has the initiative in the ad war by forcing Obama to react and, ultimately, force Obama into pushing an untenable theme. And it doesn’t matter that these attacks are aimless and without a central theme. Keywords, baby. Push a variety of themes and let the little hints stick in the public’s subconscious. The results are not a single devastating blast to the armor, but a roaring of waves wearing at Obama himself. 

Obama is the foundation - more than anything else, this election is about him. As much as people will say it’s about the issues, Presidential elections are always, to a greater or lesser extent, about the man. So that there is McCain’s strategy - hammer at Obama’s image with a dizzying array of ads on just about any topics. That way, if Obama successfully deflects one avenue of attack, the McCain campaign can easily shift to a different tack and hit him again. This might seem like a wasteful diversion of resources for the cash-strapped McCain campaign, but when you consider what I said earlier about the power of words, it makes a lot of sense - each negative impression of Obama that sticks in people’s minds is a win. Throw enough of them around and they begin to form a picture in people’s minds. Like Obama’s “Change”, no one really knows what it means, but everyone has their own idea.

It also has the advantage of being a flexible tactic. Instead of throwing all their chips into one roll of the dice, they spread them out and gamble that, despite their apparent advantages, the Obama campaign will prove to be another Wehrmacht - deadly efficient in the short term, catastrophically flawed in the long run and vulnerable to the kind of attritional warfare McCain is now employing - not resources, but the candidate himself.

This is going to be a long Summer.

Anyway, on to the post - in the TIME magazine’s tribute to Nelson Mandela, author Richard Stengel listed 8 lessons of leadership. No.2 was; lead from the front, but don’t leave your base behind. I can think of two ways where this can apply to Obama.

The first and most obvious is the implicit lesson of “dancing with those who brought you”. The far left has been seriously riled by Obama’s perceived moves to the center. In his excellent tribute, Stengel noted that after originally declaring that “prisoners cannot negotiate” and advocating armed struggle, Mandela initiated negotiations with the South African government on his own accord and began a campaign to persuade the ANC to go along. Obama should do the same and engage his outraged grassroots. Speak with them and bring them over with him. Only he’ll have to do it within the space of a few weeks, instead of months or years. And given the nature of the internet echo chamber, he’s in for an uphill battle. But it’s something he’ll have to do if he wants to clinch a historic landslide that will truly change America for a generation at least. If he fails to bring them over with him - and I truly believe that his decisions over FISA and his faith outreach are neither cynical ploys or sellouts to the left - then he’s going to inherit a divided base that will hobble any prospect of change and leave America where it is: a deeply divided nation without vision or purpose. 

The second part concerns his current international blitz. From Baghdad to Berlin, Obama is taking the world by storm - it would be a great pity then, if he gets the ground cut out from under him at home. Americans are concerned about domestic issues - the economy, the price of gas. International limelight is all well and good, but Obama should be careful that he doesn’t get labelled as a ‘foreign’ candidate (ok, he has already, but let’s not make it worse). The one way I could see for John McCain to turn what is shaping out into a campaign nightmare for him is to do a little bit of political jujitsu and convince voters that Obama is so rooted in the world that he would be a most untrustworthy guardian of America’s interests. He’s already halfway there anyway having worked hard to paint Obama as soft on terrorists et al.

I’d like to see Obama counter any move by Mr. McCain in this direction by emphasizing how tightly the US economy is tied to the world economy and how his engagement of the world ultimately benefits Americans back home. He should then point his finger at structural weaknesses in the US economy and socio-economic model that have been allowed to fester under Republican stewardship as the main cause for US economic hardship. In fact, I think he should do it regardless - in Asia, enthusiasm for Obama is tempered by fears of a protectionist Democratic White House and Republicans continue to bandy about free-trade models as the panacea to all the US’s economic woes while pointedly refusing to provide America with a working social development model to take advantage of it. (Markets are inherently unfair - the only way for the US to thrive in a free-market environment is to make it easier for individual Americans to compete; and that means social programs to maximize access to quality education and healthcare)

The other cog is Bill. Now Mr. Clinton is very much a wild card in the race. He can either be a massive force multiplier for Obama or a crushing double-edged sword. Still, voters remember that Mr. Clinton presided over 8 years of economic prosperity. That makes him qualified enough as a torchbearer for Mr. Obama back in the states while the candidate himself is on his global barnstorm. I’d think it would make a formidable pincer assault on McCain and the Republicans to have Mr. Clinton campaign on Obama’s behalf back in the states about the economy (it’s STILL the economy, stupid) while Obama wow’s the world with his charm and flair. Obama could cut Clinton loose for a few days to… just be Clinton. I don’t think the former president can operate in any other way.

I mentioned it in passing that Obama’s greatest challenge would be to hold his disparate coalition together long enough to win. As the campaign wears on, he’ll be forced into more concrete positions that will almost certainly alienate a portion of his current base.

That seems to be what’s going on right now with FISA and the faith outreach.

Tacking to the center would seem the safe route for any politician, but in Obama’s case, it may merely be one of two exceptionally risky routes to the Presidency. He’s inspired more excitement than any politician in a generation and he’s ridden the wave of that enthusiasm here to the cusp of victory. Now, however, he faces the excruciating dilemma of deciding which group of supporters is the largest slice of his pie.

The problem is simple - if he chooses to move to the center, he’ll alienate his supporters on the left. If he keeps to the left, he’ll hand McCain some easy pickings in the right-of-center.  Right now, he’s going the center path and it isn’t difficult to see why; the left is faced with a horrible choice - A liberal politician who’s pandering to the center, or a conservative politician pandering to the extreme right. It’s a no-brainer what their choice should be. The Obama campaign will do well to keep playing up the “close race” idea to keep these heartbroken idealists on board.

Still, it’s a risk. The time of reckoning is here for Obama - he’s now navigating out of the relatively secure niche he occupied during the primaries and trying to keep his primary coalition together while bringing in the votes he needs to win the general. Some pain is to be expected but just how his move to the center will effect his candidacy will remain a question the next month or so. That’s about when we can expect the signs of his new coalition to emerge and so find out if he’s gained or lost out in the realignment game.

Politics is about compromise. The more politically active you are, the more likely you are to be disappointed because the more active you are, the closer you hold your positions to you heart and the more convinced you are at the righteousness of your cause. The question for Obama now is whether his titanic coalition can survive contact with that harsh reality. By moving to the center, he’s once again forsaking the security of the familiar and embracing the terrifying, exhilarating uncertainty of hope.

So the comparisons aren’t flattering. Whatever. Barack Obama is indeed a once in a lifetime leader who’s able to inspire his followers to perform prodigies. He projects an air of visionary idealism, moving forth on a platform of inclusiveness. WE. US. OUR. Behind that, though, hums a precision machine of command and control. Where GOP discipline works in obvious ways - enforcement, coercion and the threat of being socially ostracized, one wonders about the extent of control the Obama machine exerts over its followers. Positive reinforcement is one of the key attributes of effective influence that can be effected on a person. While punishment and peer pressure are part of that mix, the power of positive reinforcement, coupled with a powerful social network are things that the Obama campaign appears to be exploiting in spades

In many ways, team Obama is the first socially networked campaign - while Dr. Paul’s campaign might have been just as viral, Obama, to his team’s credit, went one step beyond and built upon that to create, manage and maintain the grassroots they’ve tapped into. I’ve just started to wonder whether the level of control that team Obama actually exercises on the message that gets out of that grassroots might have reached an unhealthy level. This is most evident online - Obama has been running rings around his opponents in cyberspace. Look anywhere and you’re bound to run into something praising Obama. On social sites, he dominates. “Obamabots” are admirably controlled when contrasted with the general internet population (which, paradoxically leads to them being most easily identified - they’re the most reasonable sounding people on a board filled with childish flames), but they’re…EVERYWHERE. They’ll be defending their candidate on anti-obama sites, engaging the unconvinced and zealously hammering rumors and batting aside negative press.

I guess all is fair in love, war and politics. I just wonder how much of an effect his organization is effecting the message online. It would be interesting to find out just how many of these “Obamabots” are genuine grassroots supporters and how many are actually controlled by the campaign. Personally, I’d kill to have an army like that to command. If the Obama foot campaign is as effective as his net campaign, McCain doesn’t have a prayer.

Someone once said that Obama is “a political rorschach blot” - people see in him what they want to see. As the campaign goes along, however, Obama will not have the luxury of being everything to everyone. He’ll have to take positions that are unpopular to some and stake claims that trod on others’ toes. We’re seeing this with FISA - it isn’t popular with Obama’s fanbase on the net, yet the candidate is staking a position that runs contrary to popular wishes, probably calculating that those most vehemently opposed to the bill will vote for him anyway when faced with the specter of a John McCain presidency. I think most will forgive him this one - but there’ll be others. Other cases that will force him to choose where he wants to stand -firmly and unambiguously. He can’t do anything else, or he’ll lose votes for being too ambiguous, which will allow the “Obama is has no plans” crowd to pile on him.

On the other hand, this means that Obama’s biggest challenge in the days ahead won’t be defeating McCain - it’ll be preventing the Balkanization of his base.

No offense intended to Obama. I’ll have a bigger post up soon enough.

My guess would be that they’ll reach a face saving compromise over the seating of the delegates that would allow Clinton to gracefully concede and bow out with at least some of her dignity intact. Just what kind of agreement would be acceptable to Clinton is beyond me, but I’m not on the DNC.

Unlikely, but a man can dream, right?

I’m a little concerned about Obama, though. For starters, he seems to have a problem with some…uh…overenthusiastic men of the cloth. Rev. Michael Pfleger of Chicago dropped the latests holy hand grenade when he mocked Clinton before his mixed-race congregation, all but accusing her of feeling entitled because of who she is (hint - white). While I understand and share the good Reverend’s opinion of Hillary (I pretty much shit on her in this post), these sudden outbursts are becoming something of a characteristic of the Obama campaign. Makes you wonder why similar outbursts by right-wingnuts backing GOP candidates don’t get a similar level of play in the media. Maybe we just assume that they’re all a little batty anyway, but right now the coverage and these outbursts are making it rather harder for Obama to move that mountain Hillary has thrown up in his path.

Speaking of which, Hillary’s batty “disenfranchisement” argument has already borne some fruit in the form of a planned protest at the Democratic rules committee by her supporters. In spite of all the arguments forwarded as to WHY they don’t deserve to be seated, she’s struck an emotional nerve - like she intended, no doubt. It remains to be seen if Obama can withstand their assault and still take the White House. Really, Hillary’s “storming the gates” attitude towards winning the nomination may well kick up enough to give John McCain valuable ammunition to help define Obama, like he’s already trying to do. How Obama handles this attempted coup d’etat will be the first real test of his mettle.

I also wonder if Obama’s approach to taking on McCain is the correct one. They’ve so far been trying to paint McCain as an extension of Dubya’s term in office. I have to wonder how much that charge will stick. It’s the obvious track - if Obama can channel all that angst against Bush against McCain, he’s got a helluva big gun to point at his opponent. The trouble would be making that charge stick. McCain has a long-established reputation as an outsider and renegade and he’s been playing it careful with Bush’s endorsement. It would bejust peachy for Senator Obama to be able to dump 8 years of Bush onto McCain, but I do hope his team have a second track in case that charge turns out to be a damp squib.

As for McCain…well, he seems to be managing his juggling-glasses-while-balancing-on-a-beach-ball-with-one-toe act jus’ fine. But he hasn’t really had to dodge anything big yet.