There could hardly be a more fundamental difference between the two candidates for the Democratic nomination.
Having witnessed from close range the stunning effectiveness of the Republican machine at shaving just enough votes in key places in many recent campaign cycles, the Clintons set out to use their hard-won savvy. Arguably comfortable with their data and their sense of how the trends would develop they set out confidently atop a well-tuned campaign machine with a distinctive message implicit in the Senator’s campaign for the nomination. It ran something along the lines: The Republican old boy network can’t attack the patriotism of a female U.S. Senator who voted to support Bush’s Iraq mission.
Yes, it would take work. Still, the country was in a mood to reverse course, the political pendulum was swinging back, and the attacks that had been launched during President Clinton’s term in office had cemented Hillary’s celebrity, as demonstrated by her success running for the Senate in a “new” home state. Now, having carefully orchestrated her voting record and honed her campaigning and rhetorical skills in the interim, (and make no mistake about it, the skill-set needed to campaign effectively is distinct from what’s needed to actually be President,) the Senator Clinton could take back the White House.
The Clintons are campaigning with the Rove tactical toolset, targeting whatever gives them leverage within specific groups to shave a few points off their opponent(s) in carefully selected spots, trying to apply just enough pressure to energize specific voters, while the Obama vision of “strength through unity” dictates reliance on an appeal to selflessness, turning on voters who have not been engaged, and a reliance on the intelligence of the voters to consider the issues we must confront, like it or not.
Spotlight on Sound-bites
And now, as Andrew Sullivan has been documenting insightfully for months, those differences are being tested, and the soundness of the forecasts has come to dominate the limelight. The Obama message, which critics have derided via sound-bites combat, is at once both complex and simple, and judging by recent history that’s a real gamble. Why craft policy papers and present your stand on the issues in nuanced ways? Simple talking points are what has won elections, after all.
Why? Because Obama has faith in Americans. He has worked alongside the men and women who did not complete college. He understands that it’s not indicative of their intelligence, that there are brilliant thinkers scattered throughout rural and urban areas of the U.S., that it’s possible to talk to people who have had different opportunities without deprecating their wisdom. In other words, he knows that data-analysis and statistics which refer to groups of voters inevitably diminish the richness of those individuals.
Senator Clinton has recently suggested, for example, that other journalists refer to an Associated Press story including, “how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” Most of those ‘uneducated’ white voters are capable of hearing the underlying text, and being insulted at the implication that their support is linked to their educational level in a sort of class-based oppression that’s familiar to them, but not welcome. Visit any Union hall, or construction site, and you will find that most know who among their “peers” is conversant with the subtleties of any major issue, that there are on-site pundits without college degrees who garner more respect than most of the talking heads and media experts. No, not everybody agrees with them, the differences are present, but that’s just the point: differences ARE present, and Senator Clinton arrogantly lumps all of them together as though none will notice.
Obama’s experience
Senator Obama, having spent more time in the last 35 years associating with less-educated people, respects the diversity and intelligence of the people he has met. He knows college and grad school afforded him opportunities denied many who don’t get that experience, and that while it’s not unusual for folks to gravitate to the familiar it’s foolish to underestimate individuals based solely, for instance, on their level of education.
Sullivan cites an event filled with predominantly black donors and activists, when Obama recounted how a supporter greeted him at the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s march on Selma.“That was a great celebration of African-American history,” the supporter said.
To which Obama immediately responded: “No, no, no, no, no. That was not a great celebration of African-American history. That was a celebration of American history.”
Barack Obama’s vision of a country increasingly united can be likened to the recognition that while copper is a soft metal which can become brittle, and zinc is also brittle, mixing them yields: brass (which is stronger than either separately) - or that while hydrogen and oxygen are prone to combustion, they can be combined into something entirely different that can even be used to quench fire. Each element has a purpose and place of its own, yet alloys have yielded some of the most interesting, durable, and useful discoveries in human history.
What will the voters believe in?
So, we watch the man who seeks to restore our strength by creating an alloy of people test his vision of unity against the proven tactics of divide and conquer. He trusts the voters to think, to act for the good of the whole, to respond in ways that resonate with patriotism that once rallied the nation to put a man on the moon. Can Obama’s demonstrated regard for the value of individuals result in the unified strength of his vision? Time will tell; but there can be no doubt now that the country and the world will be well-served by any and all who prefer creating synergistic coalitions over isolation, ruinous conflicts that squander both lives and resources, or self-serving personal agendas.
DIGG it!
obamesque
President Bush was wrong about the reasons we should invade Iraq, he was wrong when he said “Mission Accomplished,” and he is wrong to try to handcuff his successor’s choices, evidently being as unfamiliar with the realities of being a lame duck as he is with the concept of negotiation. Having only lately thought to try his hand at diplomacy instead of sabre-rattling and misinterpreting intelligence data, he lacks the experience, and hence the credibility, to comment on the rectitude of this long-practiced method, let alone to liken any modern statesman to those who appeased Adolph Hitler.