Dear Barack: Obummer

Dear Barack,

Obummer!

I guess I was a tad premature in counting out Hillary. In my own defense, I'd just come from Texas, and everyone seemed totally juiced for you. But the other side went negative, and managed to guilt trip the press in the bargain. Bottom line: a much longer fight for the nomination.

My advice is this: stop going negative. Hillary gets enough abuse from the misogynists who pass as pundits. Kill her with kindness. In the short term, you'll take some hits. That's the way of the modern media whore: whoever says the meanest thing, gets the biggest font. But if you (or your proxies) continue to hit back, you're consenting to make the thing a brawl, a spectacle. And you're sacrificing what makes you distinct from most politicians -- that refusal to turn politics into a brutal zero sum game.

With your indulgence, let me offer an alternative. The next time Hillary levels a broadside, whip this sucker out:

"The folks with the cameras and microphones would love for me to lash back at Senator Clinton. A fight does wonders for their ratings. But I'm not going to lash out at Senator Clinton. And neither should my supporters.

Let me remind you why I'm in this race: to stop the Bush/McCain political machine. A machine that has driven this nation into a foolish war, a misguided occupation, and a recession. A machine that seeks to retain its power not by seeking to solve our common problems but by appealing to our fear and greed.

As many of you know, last week Senator McCain drove his Straight Talk Express to the White House to receive the endorsement of George W. Bush.

Just a few days earlier, a panel of economic experts converged on the capitol to deliver the kind of Straight Talk that John McCain doesn't want you to hear.

The panel told a congressional committee that the war and occupation of Iraq could wind up costing American taxpayers three trillion dollars. Three trillion dollars. This is the same war and occupation we were told was going to pay for itself. The same war and occupation that has been funded by a massive federal deficit. The same war and occupation that John McCain is ready to prolong, he assures us, for 'a hundred years' if necessary.

Here's some more Straight Talk John McCain doesn't want you to hear. It's more like Straight Math, really. With the taxpayer money we spend each day on this occupation, we could do enroll 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or pay for a year of college for 160,000 low-income students, or pay the annual salaries of 14,000 more police officers. And that's just one day, people. The $3 trillion we'll eventually spend in Iraq would have been enough, according to these experts, to stabilize Social Security for decades.

The most astonishing aspect of all this is the fact that the Bush administration and its congressional enablers cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans with our troops on the ground. John McCain showed the integrity to oppose those cuts initially. He now supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's how it works in George Bush and John McCain's America: the citizens forced to sacrifice are those who can least afford to -- the working poor, the young, the sick, and especially those who serve in our military.

So if you folks in the press corps want a real fight, that's the one I'll be waging for the next six months. It has nothing to do with political scare tactics and fake scandals. It's a fight for our children's future, for a reclamation of our decency as a people, for the very soul of this nation."

Let your rage be precise and righteous.

Your (still) unpaid advisor,

Steve Almond

Comments

[Googleplex]

I don't think people realize how many punches are being pulled by the Obama camp. There is such a legacy of scandals with the Clintons that it is hard to keep track of them. I'm not talking about any of BIll's sex scandals. Those are sleazy, but they have no place in the current campaign. I'm talking about the multiple criminal involments in Hillary's campaign finances, sabotaging good people to place freinds into government jobs, and a multitude of horendous conflict of interest money systems from the Arkansas days.


Why does everyone know who Tony Rezco is, but far fewer people know who Peter Paul is?


Obama has made some unfortunate negative remarks, and I think that he should stray away from that, but for the most part, his campain can very easliy claim taking the high road over Clinton's efforts.

[tbone99]

Good idea - he stays true to himself ( of his projected image anyway) and he reminds the voters what its all about - taking out Bush thus taking on McCain as well.

[frustratedinohio]

He doesn't have enough experience in this kind of situation to make the right choice. She has baited him into showing that he's human and inexperienced. That doesn't make her evil, it makes her an experienced politician. If he wants to use his philosophy, he should become a preacher.

[SShaw490]

It think that's exactly right. I don't know if Obama would have a tactical advantage by staying positive, but he'd know that, win or lose, he did it his way. And he can certainly answer charges - for example, the unconscionable editing of Susan Rice's words from Tucker a few days ago; twisting what she said into what the Clinton/McCain campaigns now claim to be an admission that Obama isn't ready for a national security crisis. It was terrible. But rather than attack Hillary in return, Obama should issue a press release with the original conversation (in which she simply pointed out that nobody has EXPERIENCE being president until they're president), along with the lies from the Clinton/McCain campaigns, and I'd make the point - If Clinton and McCain can't tell the truth about the words someone said on national TV, can you trust them to tell the truth about matters of world-wide importance?

[EdUgel]

Almond,

Great post. You blog as well as you write books. If only this could happen. If only it would work. As I have thought for some time now, you are the man.

[dadumdee]

Obama should respond to Clinton's charges directly. She's such a hypocrite that it would be easy. 3 am phone call? Show how's she's been wrong on foreign affairs, unstable in her personal manner, over aggresive against him as a democratic ally, distorts the truth, fear-mongerer, and has no experience with that sort of phone call. Canada/NAFTA? Point out her camp's role in the process, the fact that they were the ones who did what they accused him of, and show how she knew this yet still put out a fake news report commercial on the radio. Then use Bill Clintons words against her, you know, the ones about using fear vs. hope, etc.

[StephenDedalus82]

There never was any difference between Obama and any other cutthroat politician. He's from Chicago for god's sake. The difference was the media let him get away with this "new politics" nonsense until it stopped. It's pretty easy to pretend to be above it all when nobody is allowed to attack you.

So Obama supporters, what rationale do you have to offer for his candidacy now that he's doing the exact same negative campaigning he has been whining about throughout this entire process? He's a good-looking freshman Senator with a nice voice? Well?

[Independent voter]

I would like to see Senator Obama maintain the high road.

Unfortunately clintons have dragged this race into the toilet where they live.

If clintons continue to lie, distort, smear, slander as they love to do and the press, which is terrified of the clintons, let the lies go unchallenged, then Senator Obama must respond.

The people in Ohio prove that lies work, slander sells.

[Missmn]

I think that that high road is the way he needs to go, and that he needs to stick to his message without getting negative.

In order to do that, he needs to bring the people who were on the fringe back into the fold. And to do that, he needs to talk about fear in the right way. Just as Obama supporters do not like being dismissed as cult followers, people who are afraid don't like to be told that they are wrong for feeling fear or acting out of it. He's running on a platform of change and for most people, change is scary. He needs to acknowledge that and speak to it - which he can do in that inoffensively intellectual way that he is a master of. If he does that, then he will be able to continue being the voice of reason on the war, the economy and social issues.

[messy]

That sounds principled and nice, but it's suicidal. Dukakis did that, and he lost. Kerry did that, and he lost.
No, it won't work.

[Researchguy66]

This compaison is absurd. Obama is so much better than Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, even John Kerry said so.

[Grunty1]

Obama will have to go into a balancing act between responding to the wild charges, or else he will be portrayed as a wuss and we ALL know what this country does with unfair reports: clings to them live a drowning man would a log...

[AndriaSmith]

I like what you're fighting for Steve. You're great.

[independentrepublicrat]

The media are shameful. Why are talking bobble heads and bumbling bloggers equating firm, direct campaigning with going negative?...because it benefits Billary and casts a shadow on Obama and the aforementioned idiots don't care that it is a distinction with a clear difference. Looks like silly season is over and the newsers have moved into stupid season.

Pressing an opponent to live up to her own words and release tax returns is not negative; it is in the best interest of the public to financially vet candidates before nominating them. Pressing a candidate to explain exactly what gives her her national security bona fides when she is flashing red phone adds is not going negative; it is a legitimate question on the policy and issues. Asking a candidate who claims to have a lifetime of presidential experience while lying that her opponent has done nothing more than give a speech in 2002 to explain in detail exactly what that presidential experience is, when & how it was garnered is not going negative; it is demanding transparency and honest discourse so that the public can make the most informed decision.

[Herrington]

Obama was blind sided by the right wing Canadian PM and his cohorts, Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts (dittoheads). The "AD" could not have gotten the job done by itself. The Canada story will play itself out as Canada rips Harper a new one over it. Harper has already appologized to Obama. Just keep it on the minds of the media. Obama need only add a comment here and there.

He can push back on Rush if he likes. Something like this. Its a free country, Republicans can cross over if they are in an open primary state, in fact I welcome them to do so, as I get significant support from centrist Republicans that I will need in November. But to encourage meddling in the primary of another party is not ethical, not freedom of speech, but gaming a system that was designed to be as fair and representative as possible to the wishes of the people.

Pushing back on Clinton directly will alienate an important core Democratic constituency, white females over 50 who believe themselves to be feminists. Most aren't of course, and I know because I live with a real one, a real one who is for what is good for an America in distress first and feminist causes second. Because without an America, feminism is a lost cause.

[poppaculture]

I, too, want Barack to remain presidential. I cannot believe the falsehoods and shit he and his wife have been put through --by a FELLOW DEMOCRAT. I expect him to get tough after the convention, he will have to do that against the Republican smear machine.

I just didn't expect him to get it from a Democrat.
I know, I know, it's good practice for October.
But I do think our Founding Fathers would be disappointed in the cynicism and innuendo that talk radio has fostered as "permissable discourse."

[tea in the harbor]

anybody there?