The Debatable Land

Campaign Books

The first book-length accounts of the campaign will be out shortly. Ian Leslie's book To Be President arrived this morning and my friend Mike Crowley's "graphic diary" (drawings by Dan Goldman) of the campaign is also published this month. It will, I'm sure, be entertaining even if, unaccountably, I haven't received a copy yet...

The Media Campaign

Ouch!

The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, “I saw someone on cable say this. . . .”

Actually, I think that's a little unfair on Politico, but there's something to this nonetheless. Politico and Halperin and plenty of others have every incentive in the world to come up with fresh, counter-intuitive, let's-throw-this-against-the-wall-and-see-what-happens analysis; hence a political campaign might best be advised to do everything it can to ignore all this froth and sound and hubbub.

You mean Africa is, like, a continent?

You betcha! According to Fox News' Carl Cameron Sarah Palin wasn't aware of this. Nor, he says, could she name the countries that signed NAFTA. Clue: there are only three. This latter problem alone must, one supposes, have horrified the campaign (though of course they only had themselves to blame), the former something that though hard to believe (surely!) you can't do very much about. Of course, self-interest abounds here: McCain's advisors have every incentive to pin the blame upon Palin. But still...

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru says it's rather more likely that Palin didn't appreciate that South Africa was, you know, a country not just the bottom bit of Africa. That would still be startling, of course, but more plausible.

Election Night Liveblog

Jon Snow Tries to Get Me To Hope for a McCain Miracle

Channel 4 News' anchor, Jon Snow, has just been talking about how electing Barack Obama means "America has come of constitutional age". Yes, really. Apparently none of those previous elections were legitimate. Now of course Snow's program tilts even further to the left than the BBC so you might expect him to say something like this. But there will, alas, be much more of this sort of nonsense.

Now in one sense, it's clear what Snow means: after all, there are many people who do not expect to agree with Obama politically who appreciate, nonetheless, that his victory is a splendid and significant moment in American history. But Snow's smugness, indeed his condescension, is another matter altogether. It's rather as though there exists the presumption that the millions of Americans voting for John McCain today can only be motivated by their fear - conscious or not - of a black man becoming President. Alternatively, it's like taking the kids to the zoo so they can see those strange Americans. Look, some of them have opposable thumbs!

Over at the Confabulum, James Poulos has a fine post reminding one that it is important to reject this tripe.

It’s impossible (for me) to doubt that whatever happens, either today or over the next four or eight years, Obama will be much better for America culturally than politically. But it’s ridiculous to hold Obama’s election over the heads of those who would dare to vote against him: taking away every nonwhite kid’s shot at true self-esteem! HOW DARE YOU?!?! etc. And indeed, I’ve heard it put this way — not just a matter of inspiring black kids (which of course is an awesome idea that all of us should be more involved in), but "hispanic, native American…"... People who won’t vote for Obama because they disagree with him aren’t shattering anyone’s dreams. If that’s what politics has become in this country — you annihilated my future! – then we really do need a long collective night in the drunk tank.

Still, don't expect this view to prevail in much of the foreign media, particularly the left-wing overseas press.

As Goes Guam, So Goes the Nation

The results from Guam are in and seem to indicate good times for two parties. That's to say the Democrats have turned things around in the Pacific, winning nearly 62% of the vote (did Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy also include Guam?). More importantly, as Dave Weigel reveals, Bob Barr's 97 votes constitute a "mini-surge" in support for the Libertarian Party. For the GOP, good news is harder to find. Even on Guam.

Election Open Thread

So, readers, how has your election day been so far? What are you seeing out there? Cool stuff? Depressing revelations? Reassuring experiences? You can email me here. Also, I'm pondering a marathon live-blog tonight. Good idea or not?

The Big Dog Gets On Board

An early start for Democratic volunteers in the Buckeye State. A friend emails to report:

Woke up this morning at 4am with my cell phone ringing and Bill Clinton's voice on the other end, "Wake up Ohio volunteer, this is Bill Clinton, the last Democratic President, telling you to get out of bed and go win this thing for the next Democratic President Barack Obama.". Great on many levels.

In Which Your Humble Blogger Hazards a Reckless Prediction

You will see that I'm sticking my neck out and suggesting Barack Hussein Obama could be the next President of the United States. I thought about honouring Missouri's reputation as a bell-weather and putting that in his column. Or, to put it another way, I think Obama will win at least one of Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina. Of those, I'm obviously more confident about taking a punt on NC. What do you guys think?

Obama's Good Fortune

Commenting on this post, a very astute reader makes these excellent points:

Two more thoughts on timing 1) Obama is the luckiest loser in history.  Had he won the House race vs. Bobby Rush in 02 he'd probably be lost in Jesse Jackson Jr's shadow and relegated to a life of obscurity.  2) The key to Obama winning was Michigan and Forida being stripped [of their delegates].  Had they voted on or before February 5th he'd have been toast. Thank you Debbie Dingell.

I don't know about "life of obscurity" but, yes, it's much more difficult to see how Obama could have launched a Presidential campaign after just two terms in the House of Representatives. If he had been in the House would he have been asked to give the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention? Perhaps, but maybe not. And absent that...

Buckeye Skullduggery!

Meanwhile, super-secret Democratic operative "Josh Lyman" emails this update from Ohio:

Calls are being made to some of our voters in Toledo warning voters of long lines at the polls and if they wanted to vote over the phone by expressing their preference on the key pad they can.

In anticipation of an Obama victory...

Some thoughts on the campaign in advance of the last day of voting tomorrow...

Timing matters and, as any sports coach will tell you, it can't be taught. You have it or, alas, you don't. The same might be said for good fortune. That's to say, success in political campaigns rarely has a monocausal explanation. Hindsight permits one to assemble the jigsaw and see how it all made sense, but that's a far cry from presuming that it was inevitable that this kind of puzzle could only be put together this way.

Nonetheless, the genius of the Obama campaign - and, I assume, the candidate himself - was recognising that a confluence of events over which he had no control himself had created conditions for a presidential run that were unlikely to reoccur in such favourable circumstances as in 2008.

Political campaigns happen in particular places at particular times. That is, the factors that helped Obama win in 2008 did not exist in 2000 (even if he had been a Senator at the time) and may not do so in 2012 or 2016. This was his moment. Who was he running to succeed and who was he running to beat? Both matter.

The impact of George W Bush's problematic Presidency - war, natural disaster, financial crisis - was felt in both parties. On the GOP side of the aisle it poisoned the Republican party's brand; on the Democratic side of affairs, it persuaded liberals that desperate times required desperate measures. The case for "change" rested in large part upon the previous administration's inadequacies. But the scale of those setbacks also permitted voters to ask what "change" really meant and, having done that, consider which candidate seemed most likely to deliver a fresh start for the United States.

In one sense that was Hillary Clinton. A female Commander-in-Chief would clearly represent something new and fresh in American political history. And putting a Clinton back in the White House would be one way of wiping the Bush years from the country's collective memory, making them appear an awkward and unwelcome inter-ruption to a dozen - and maybe 16! - years of Clintonian prosperity. Let the good times roll again.

Except they weren't all good times. And Hillary's surname would, in the end, be a problem not the solution. Could a Clinton really offer real change? Only possibly. And wouldn't electing Hillary reopen wounds best left to mend in peace? In the end and in a sense, wouldn't choosing Hillary be a backward looking notion for a country that likes to think its natural gaze looks to the horizon?

Of course, this theory depended upon there being an alternative to Hillary who could trump the card she used to win the "change" trick. John Edwards? A failed retread and, in any case a white man likely to be defeated by Hillary's army of  women marching-towards-history. Edwards could not but be vulnerable to the gender-card. Not his fault; nor Hillary's for playing it. That's the nature of these elections.

And then Obama entered the race. Suddenly, the calculations were rather different. Electing a white woman might normally be considered quite daring. But it seemed, well, rather vanilla when compared to the excitement suggested by the idea of an African-American president. Hillary no longer had control of the Change narrative. Her glass-ceiling was good, but not quite high or tough enough.

Freshness helped too. Obama's not been around long enough for everyone to have become bored by him. Or, to put it another way, a culture that craves new sensations - and new stars - in almost every other sphere is also unlikely to suppose that decades of experience in public life constitute the best preparation for the Presidency. For some voters anyway, Obama's novelty has been a bonus, not a blemish. At least, neither Clinton nor McCain has made hay with his lack of years in the national spotlight. But even if they had, it would have been a simple matter for Obama to remind the electorate that this election concerned the future, not the past.

So Hillary retreated to the bunker marked Policy. Ordinarily this too might have been a sensible move and perhaps it was, this time, also necessary. But of course this time, the most important policy issue for Democratic primary voters was the War in Iraq. And by late 2006, Hillary found herself on the wrong side of that argument. More crucially, Obama was in synch with the mood of the electorate. As far as primary voters were concerned (in the beginning and, of course in the end too), Hillary's greater experience (itself a slippery proposition) was counterfeited by her misjudging the greatest policy issue of the day.

Consequently the argument shifted to "Who can beat the Republicans?" Here again, Obama benefited from the Bushian shambles. Had the stars been less obviously aligned in the Democrats' favour, some voters might have been less prepared to take a chance on the young, black guy. The pot odds made the gamble worthwhile.

As did the match-up. It is far from clear that the GOP has any grounds for regretting their eventual, if reluctant, decision to select John McCain. It is possible, perhaps, that Mitt Romney might have handled the financial crisis more effectively, but finding a Romney path to victory remains a tricky business even if he might just have managed to be the policy reformer the GOP needed. Someone to play Sarkozy to Bush's Chirac or Major to Thatcher.

The problem with McCain, however, was that his story, like Hillary's, was trumped by the possibilities suggested by Obama's. Again, novelty matters. The political class had walked the McCain course before. However unfairly, there was a reluctance on the part of the media to treat his 2008 campaign as though it were 2000 all over again. And of course for the media, McCain was a more compelling character as a scrappy, running-against-his-party outsider in 2000 than he was in what was perceived to be his 2008 hug-the-base incarnation. Now, however, he was yesterday's news.

And, alas, McCain was running on his character and biography as much as his opponent. The McCain campaign never managed to settle on its core message. Were Americans voting for a war hero, a wise and experienced leader, a reformer with a record or an unpredictable maverick? It was never quite clear. Or rather, at different moments any one of these might be the message of the day and never mind that they were not necessarily complementary messages.

If all Obama had to offer was a nice story then logic demanded that McCain's own biography be considered equally irrelevant. If wisdom and judgment were the idea of the day, then a way had to be found of squaring McCain being "right" on the surge in Iraq with his having been, in most voters' minds, "wrong" in 2002 and 2003. And wasn't the "wisdom and experience" strategy undermined by the "maverick" line of argument? Mavericks, by definition, are unpredictable and hot-headed.

We should remember that McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, reckless and ill-vetted though it was, did not come out of thin air. It came because the campaign was failing. Palin was the long-shot gamble that might, with luck, change the game. For a few days it looked as though it would work. Alas, then the interviews began and McCain's judgement - the stuff his life of service was supposed to have given him - was fatally compromised.

The Palin pick was the result, however, of Obama's success. And again Obama's relatively skinny  record helped him. He was, if not quite a blank canvass then a candidate onto whom voters of all colours and persuasions could project their own ideas. Throughout the campaign Obama's coolness, his steadyness, his calm created an air about the candidate that seemed to say to voters "Make of him what you will". In one sense, rather remarkably, Obama has been in the spotlight for two years and we still don't necessarily really know as much about him as we might expect to in these circumstances.

Hence, the feverish ravings of some on the right. They looked at Obama and saw a radical. A Chicago hustler who palled around with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. A Marxist even and, obviously, a terrorist-coddler.

But most people didn't see Obama this way. Some, for sure, have swooned thinking the candidate rather too super-impressive. But rather more people have seen Obama as, yes, a law professor from one of the finest schools in the country. He doesn't look like a radical. He doesn't, I think, walk like a radical. And he sure as hell doesn't talk like a radical.

Remember too that there was a time when folk wondered if Obama could really enthuse the black vote. Back then, Hillary Clinton was winning 30 to 40% of the African-American vote and the question was "Is Obama black enough?" That's to say, it was only when black people started voting for him that it became obvious he was a black nationalist. Fishy stuff.

Still, let's not pretend that Obama's ability to be all things to all men (a quality that is, if not vital, certainly extremely useful) is not helped by the particulars of his story. It isn't merely that he doesn't speak in anger or from grievance, or that he's not from the ghetto - though these factors certainly help him.

No, he's not a Jesse Jackson figure. Then again, this is also 2008 not 1988 and America is a very different place these days. In retrospect, the Jeremiah Wright episode - and the manner in which Obama dealt with the controversy - was a turning point.  Sure, Obama attended his church but that hardly means he agrees with everything his pastor says: there must be millions of church-going Americans who find themselves at odds with their preacher from time to time. The significant element, however, was the contrast between two views of race in America: on the one hand you had Wright preaching the old time religion; on the other you had the candidate offering a different, mellower, more inclusive and respectful view.

Obviously, Obama's own life story played a large part in this, but, in retrospect, Wright did Obama a back-handed favour by demonstrating the differences between the two men and their views of America. How could Obama say "god damn America" when America had given his Kenyan father a chance? It didn't add up. And voters could see that. Obama's speech in Philadelphia - the most remarkable of the campaign - was a turning point. A turning point that reinforced the central message of his campaign: it is time to look to the future, time to recognise that politics must change to keep pace with a changing America.

No wonder the "decent" centre has been able to endorse Obama. It isn't merely that folk can feel good about themselves if they vote for Obama (though that's a part) it's that his presence as a candidate gives voters something they crave again: a reason to believe in the United States and that, whatever our policy differences, a bigger, better kind of politics lies ahead.

It's easy to forget that one of the things voters found attractive about George W Bush was the calm he was supposed to bring after the turmoil and hurly-burly of the Clinton years. That desire burns even more strongly after eight years of the Bush administration. Thoughtfulness and a measured approach are back in vogue. And what better way to draw a line beneath the past eight years than by endorsing a candidate who not only has these qualities but also, in physical, flesh-and-blood terms, offers a means by which to turn the page?

Still, I've been struck by how many people still presume that the United States won't vote for a black President. Everybody knows, as a friend put it to me recently, that America is an "irredeemably racist country." Well! I don't believe that, actually. Yes, it remains too difficult for minority candidates to win statewide offices, but change is afoot. It's 40 years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. That's 40 years of racists dying and an entire generation of schoolkids who learn that King was perhaps the greatest American of the 20th century. The Civil Rights movement is the idea in history classes across the country.

America is a much different place these days. And we'll discover tomorrow, I believe, just how much everything has changed. There'll be plenty time enough to disagree with the policies of an Obama administration, but it's worth taking a moment to reflect upon the import and symbolism of this election. Obama's shown that he has a natural sense of timing and, of course, the willingness to exploit every opportunity that comes his way. Now this is his moment. This is his time.

Concerned about Obama?

Via Yglesias, here's a charming leaflet from the Republican Jewish Committee that helps demonstrate just why the GOP deserves - even needs - to lose on Tuesday.

Nice touch too, that the photograph used shows Barack Obama speaking in Germany. Obviously Obama is, rather oddly, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain.

Equally obviously, it scarcely needs saying that Neville Chamberlain was not in fact to blame for the Holocaust.

First Amendment Principles

So, back from Dublin. As expected, the students heartily endorsed an Obama presidency. A shortage of McCain backers led to my speaking against the Democratic candidate. That meant standing up for, er, "angry apathy" (whatever that is) and, if pressed, a vote for Bob Barr. Rather like the staff at Reason, I suppose. But it was all good fun and grand indeed to be back in Trinity.

Blogging will be back on track over the weekend. Meanwhile, courtesy of ABC, here's Sarah Palin providing toda's reason for running like hell away from the McCain-Palin ticket.

If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

Astonishing. Or not, as the case may be.

New GOP Campaign Strategy: McCain More Than A Mere Man

Kudos to Frank Foer for alerting one to this priceless passage from David Gelernter's most recent article in the Weekly Standard:

Granting the importance of the topic, the difference in moral stature between presidential candidates has rarely been as enormous as it is today--not (or not only) because Obama's is so small but because McCain's is so large. There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity. But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik--a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness. If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue.

OK, we'll have to go away and think about it. Mr Gelernter concludes:

"Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart" (Psalm 24:3-4). Whether you like or dislike his politics, that is John McCain all over. If he wins this election, it will be a come-from-behind surprise. But in larger American terms, it will be no surprise at all.

I mean, Jesus. Really. Extraordinary.

UPDATE: Commenter JHB has a terrifying question. Terrifying, that is, if it were ever answered in the affirmative: "Now here's a challenge: do you think you could find someone who feels that way about Gordon Brown?"