A lot of ground has been covered in the Presidential race since I posted three weeks ago. In fact, I would say this race is moving faster at this stage of the race than most other recent Presidential campaigns.
The big news, of course, was Obama’s foreign policy/Middle East trip. After looking like he had forgotten how to control overarching narratives and themes during the last few weeks, Obama seems to have found his bearing again. This week long trip proved once again that Obama understands how to effectively message compared to most Democrats. Oh, there were negative things about the trip too, so let us break it all down and see what comes out in the wash.
The Good
Obama’s trip accomplished three key things
1) Showed he could be the Commander in Chief, (i.e. negated the ‘lack of experience’ rap.)
2) Showed he had better foreign policy judgment than John McCain
3) Dominated media coverage
In the summer of ’04, John Kerry mentioned that most world leaders privately told him they wanted him to win the Presidency. Republicans poured a mountain sized amount of grief on top of Kerry for this ham-fisted attempt to show he was better at foreign policy than Bush.
But look at Obama. He actually went overseas to talk to foreign leaders publicly - none of this ‘they told me privately’ silliness. Everywhere he went he was warmly received, and better than that, Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, supported Obama’s troop pullout plan! Events in Afghanistan proved Obama’s position that we should focus on that country rather than Iraq.
As the week went on, the debate over the success of the escalation (that initially hurt Obama) ended up exposing McCain as a fraud, since he could not get his facts straight on Iraq and then continued to defend his mistakes, digging a deeper hole for himself. During the same time, Obama expertly and consistently made his case that the escalation had little to do with Iraq’s reduction in violence.
All these things combined, especially Maliki’s support of Obama’s Iraq plan, utterly destroys McCain’s position on Iraq, and certainly obliterates any rationale for staying in Iraq since the Iraqis do not even want us there. So McCain ended up looking like a fool, and Obama looked like the foreign policy expert.
Ultimately, the trip showed he can handle the job of President, dispelling the notion he does not have enough experience for the job.
Lastly, the media covered every move Obama made, and he made all the right moves. There is no better way to win over voters than to dominate the media coverage. As I mentioned in a previous post, the imagery could not be more different between Obama and McCain. Before, Al ‘Noble Peace Prize, former VP, and Oscar winner’ Gore endorsed Obama at a massive rally while McCain has to deal with the embarrassment of Clayton “rape is like the weather” Williams raising money for him. Now, Obama gave a fantastic speech in Berlin in front of 200,000 enthused Germans while McCain is at a German restaurant with 20 people eating cream puffs. That is the kind of narrative and imagery you cannot buy. If that happens a few more times, especially closer to the elections, its all over.
This trip, if the MSM picks up the right meme and Obama and progressives push the right narrative, will end up being the beginning of the end for McCain. Not overnight, but if the narrative Obama has set sticks - that he is qualified to be the CINC and that he has better judgment about defense/foreign policy issues –McCain’s whole rationale for his candidacy crumbles.
The Bad
There was only one concern I had with this trip.
1) Obama continued to move to the middle.
Obama’s highlighted policies, most specifically his Afghanistan plan, fit in with his move to the center. More pointedly, they signal his fear that America views him as an angry, black, radical Muslim who will terrorist fist jab his way into the White House. His FISA vote first showed it, and now his highlighting a ‘talk tough, but talk to everyone’ foreign policy further confirms it. The Republican assault on Obama as not being patriotic must be gaining traction, or else Obama would likely be taking a different tack.
As it is, while his FISA switch won no new votes, this overseas trip might, and certainly goes a long way to undercutting the ‘Obama is not a patriot’ line. I have no idea where Obama really stands on these issues now, and hopefully this is just a campaign trick to assuage gullible middle of the road voters. But it certainly looks more and more like Obama will only slightly shift things to the left, as he seems unwilling to stand and fight on the left over controversial issues.
He once glowingly referenced how Reagan changed the debate in this country and shifted us strongly to the right, primarily on the force of his rhetoric. He was correct. However, I do not see Obama making that same kind of impact. Obama misunderstands a key, but subtle difference. You have to move the center to you, not move to the center. Reagan did the former; Obama, so far, primarily does the latter. I hope my perception here is wrong, but I am not holding my breath.
Conclusion
Granted, the specifics of what Obama said on the trip will go unnoticed for the most part. Indeed, in the early part of the trip, which saw the initial showdown between Obama’s Middle East and foreign policies and McCain’s, polls show support for Obama dropping. Once the Berlin speech happened that all changed. Gallup and Rasmussen daily tracking polls show a big bump for Obama about two days after the Berlin speech. As I have said before, a moving speech converts more people than a prescriptive presentation. The fact that it came after he had started winning the policy battle was a double whammy.
The majority of folks will forget that Obama’s rhetoric on Afghanistan is basically the neo-conservative rhetoric on Iraq. What they will remember is that he acted and talked tough, while also more rationally and authoritatively than McCain and Republicans. And if it is one things Americans still love, it is tough guys running foreign policy. Additionally, Obama deftly added the notion of multi-lateralism in with his tough talk, a package that even the Bush administration is now mirroring in North Korea and even Iran! This further hoses McCain, since he has consistently opined about how we should not negotiate with Iran.
So Obama started to negate the experience question surrounding him, reaffirmed he makes better decisions of foreign policy, had two of his key platforms (getting out of Iraq and talking to Iran) endorsed by Iraq and tacitly President Bush, acted like a tough guy, and had the media covering his every move. Overall, a master stroke.