Barack Obama, May 6:
"The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it’s what kind of campaign we will run."
(Originally posted at Near Earth Object)
I noted this when Obama gave his victory speech in North Carolina, as it was a line that blew away a lot of the fog in my head from the past couple of months. Democrats are so jittery about the GOP’s previous success with getting into the heads of Al Gore and John Kerry, and developing false narratives to paint them as unacceptable leaders, that many simply assume that Obama would fall victim to the same malicious exercises in definition. We use up a lot of breath, ink, and airtime tensely bracing ourselves for the attack we know is coming, already assuming our presumptively-presumptive nominee will be felled by it.
So previous campaigns have followed the rulebook for Democrats: be vaguely populist without being totally xenophobic, be pro-security without being militaristic, try to make nice with all your core constituencies without seeming too beholden to them, hold your breath, and hope not too many people want to have a beer with the other guy. In short, be inoffensive, and hope it’s all over soon.
But I’m betting that Obama is right. One way to reword Obama’s sentiment would be to say that Democrats can no longer be content to try and weather a campaign framed by the other side. Instead, we write a new rulebook and we sell that book to the American electorate. We go all-in betting that they will want a campaign played on our field, with our rules: a campaign based on "issues," of course, but truly, one based on reality, relevance, and sincerity of intention. I even believe there’s a chance that John McCain may want to play on that field himself (more than I can say for his party’s attack machine, of which we’re all so terrified, to the point of babbling incoherence).
I’m not (entirely) naive. Obama could run a flawless campaign on these principals - and he will certainly not run a flawless campaign - and still lose . But if he does run that crazy, idealistic, hope-filled campaign (and possibly brings McCain with him, at least part way), we will at least have started on the right path. We’ll have made the waters a little less muddy and made the stakes a little more clear. Surely, it’s better to be in the White House when you want to make the world a better place, but it can - and must - start with the campaign that gets you there.
It’s about the kind of campaign we will run.