Strength

I have been watching Sen. Obama during his weeks of adversity.

He has what we need--a transformative national vision, a commitment to a new and unifying politics, and to a long-needed truth in governance and international relations.

He needs to transcend other characteristics.

There is a prickliness--a sense of insult or of hurt that, having given an honest message, the message has been distorted--a certain wounded defeatism.

He must rise above this and be strong.

This is the vulnerability of a man long without a father.

When a man is raised under such circumstances, they sometimes become their own father-- accompanied by the grandiosity, limitlessness, precociousness, and willingness to quickly fill in gaps with apparent consistencies that is characteristic of a persona adopted in childhood, too large and too soon--i.e., Bill Clinton.

They too can become the agent of the genuine, intelligent, and heartfelt ideals of their mother, passed on, rightly, as the intelligent and humane truth of the world, but not buttressed by the daily measuring and inevitable confrontation of those ideals that can come from the presence of a father; the tensile strength and resilience that causes those ideals to energetically endure in the face of challenge.

Obama has recently shown an underlying hurt and lethargy in reaction to the politics of fear and attack--what has been reported by some as "boredom."

To win--and more important, to reach the goals that he has set out for himself--he must turn away from such disappointed reactions.

He must put forward his energy and strength in the face of distortion to bring the nation to a realization of what matters most at this time.

When he shows such disappointment in reaction to such events, he shows that he cannot stand up to the distortion that will inevitably come, and that he must overcome to reach the point of national transformation.

Barack: There is no place in this campaign for disappointment, wounded defense and hurt. You are taking on the gigantic task of changing the minds of the American people, including those diverted, suspicious thoughts that will inevitably rise from the restraining bonds of our collective past--and, as you know, will be encouraged to do so.

Now is the time for strength--strength of purpose and strength of commitment. Bring people to an image of what can be established and created beyond the trivial, momentary excitement of attack politics. Do not be drawn into the minutiae of a ground war, or into a position of withdrawn and injured hopelessness. A hint of this creates the image of someone who is playing the old game, by the old rules.

You've made this clear in your stump speech: This is your moment. Now--Fully step into it. Bring people to fully realize what they can have, with full energy, commitment, strength and belief: A nation committed to truth in its relation to the people of this and other nations, to the unity of this country rather than to tactical and self-serving division, and to the interests of the many, rather than the few.

Shorter Wall Street Journal

Today's WSJ:

Sen. Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race relations last month seemed to put the controversial remarks of his former pastor behind him. But three weeks later, there is evidence of lingering damage.

"It has not been defused," says David Parker, a North Carolina Democratic Party official and unpledged superdelegate. He says his worries about Republicans questioning Sen. Obama's patriotism prompted him to raise the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s remarks in conversations with both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

Shorter WSJ: We're afraid the damage is passing, but we'll do our best to try to keep it going.

The Speech

The speech that Obama will give today on race will likely be the most crucial one of his political career. Up until the questions raised about Wright, Obama had instilled a powerful and resilient enthusiasm in the American electorate, standing fast against virtually every line of attack from the Clinton camp. It was only the vivid clips of Wright's impassioned statements from the pulpit, and a line of questions that have arisen in association with those remarks, that has caused some of those who had been most supportive of Obama campaign some pause and reconsideration.

The questions are of two types. The group of explicit questions are now well-known. Given Obama's 20 year membership at the church, does he endorse the views of Wright? If not, why did he remain a member, or did he not raise objections to Wright's more inflammatory positions before this date?

The implicit and unspoken questions are themselves more inflammatory, and uncover more deep-seated discomforts and fissures that many Americans still experience regarding race. Those who have embraced a new message of change are vulnerable to triggers of fear and doubt. The most primitive triggers, as we have seen throughout history, move electorates most effectively, despite the intellectual justifications that may ride along the top of such reactions.

Those who hear the Wright clips have a chain of unspoken associations that can be described as follows: Obama brought a message of change and hope to American politics that was embodied by his calm, measured and honest judgment, juxtaposed with the distortions of the previous Administration. Obama offered not only a new view of American politics, but a new paradigm of race--of post-racial politics--as a part of this message of change.

Wright now evokes the inchoate fears associated with the old political paradigm--of incendiary conflict rather than unity. In this case, in an odd and uncanny echo of the self-restricting responses that occurred in the run up to the Iraq war, many now hear in Wright's statements a warning that support of Obama may lead them to be viewed as unpatriotic; deeper still is the unspoken fear that Obama may be like the "old" rather than the "new"--with all of the unstated uneasiness that Obama supporters have celebrated the divestment of as a part of his message of transformation and change.

These underlying emotional doubts, precisely because they are impulsive rather than fully considered, can have considerable power--unless they are themselves calmly, clearly, and fully addressed at both the explicit and implicit levels.

One, of course, may attend a house of worship of any denomination, often for a lifetime, in which they do not fully embrace all of the enthusiasms of the Pastor, Reverend, or other religious leader of the church. Such intense enthusiasms are often issued from the pulpit among many denominations--think of your own house of worship, for example--and are often viewed by the congregation as the specific preoccupations of the Pastor, products of differing generations of life experience, those of one who has been fully immersed in the work, issues and expressions of that time.

Congregants do not typically attend a chruch simply because of a specific attachment to these particular preoccupations of the Pastor--they seek the spiritual and communal fellowship of others, and recognize the difference between generations in the experience of spirituality, struggle, and life, much as many congregants do in making distinctions between the positions of church elders, often steeped in an earlier set of issues, and their own spiritual positions, values and needs. A house of worship is a community, and as in any community, members vary and understand that they vary by differing life experiences, and recognize that these generational variations do not reflect the core issues of theological belief shared by congregants.

You can probably see this in your own religious community--or, indeed, in any community of belief. The hard core adherents. The old fighters. The blind followers. Those who come for largely social reasons. We understand such variance in a community, and yet often continue to attend because it *is* a community that represents the variants of time and humanity, yet brings us together because of, and to discuss, a set of shared beliefs and commitments.

To succeed in his speech today, Obama will need to make clear those principles of shared belief. He will have to help those who are new to understanding the generational struggles of those who fought for spirit in the face of intense racial hatred, how the product of such struggle differs from those who have emerged today, from different experiences--that, just as the spirituality of the Protestants who arrived in fervid protest on our shores to escape religious tyranny differs in rhetoric and form from that of today's Protestants, all forms of belief are reflective of such struggles and change.

He will need to do so in the manner that has brought so many in enthusiasm to his campaign--and that both signifies and heralds such change--with the unifying clarity and honesty that will allow him to describe this spiritual world, etched and co-existing, like all such worlds, like the rings of a tree, with a history of struggle, growth and change--and his place within it.

With such a presentation, that his own views should differ from those of Wright should not be surprising to any member of a thinking community.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Re: How Obama Can Win and Win Strong, March 8

Obama tonight in Jackson, MS, via CBS News:

“When in the midst of a campaign you decide to throw the kitchen sink at your opponent because you’re behind,” he said, “and your campaign starts leaking photographs of me when I’m traveling overseas wearing the native clothes of those folks to make people afraid, and then you run an ad talking about who’s going to answer the phone at three in the morning, an ad straight out of the Republican playbook, that’s not real change.”

He named it as "kitchen sink" politics, anchored it to Republican tactics--and it contrasted with a vision of change for the nation's future.

See it on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/03/08/BB

You can read the original post delineating this approach, "How Obama Can Win and Win Strong", from March 8, here.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

How Obama Can Win and Win Strong

I am aware of the delegate math.

I know that, unless the Clinton team runs roughshod with regard to superdelegates, the numbers are unassailable.

However, for Obama to not only win, but to win strong, and thus to be in the best position for the general, he must step outside of the box created when Clinton tactics were applied to his own admirable stance.

By declaring himself the candidate of the new politics, putting the politics of Rove et al. aside for a politics of honesty, straight-forward decency, and strength, he has putatively left the field open for Clinton et al. to lob innuendo after innuendo. If he responds, he is in violation of his commitment to the new; if he continues with his current path of non-response, he will be taken down by a series of attacks, that however false or fantastic, will eventually raises doubts in the mind of the electorate as to the validity of his new politics, and will, in the great viscera of the electorate, so responsive and so easily changed, appear "weak."

If he attacks, it is said, he betrays himself; if he continues on the same path, he is whittled down by rumor and insinuation.

Clinton's current strength is her ability to attack, however true the nature and content of the attacks. Obama must turn this very behavior into its own negative. To do so, Obama must relentlessly name what she is doing and anchor it--calling for an "end to the era of 'kitchen sink' politics, i.e.:

"It's about time that we left the era of "kitchen sink" politics, of distortion and insinuation, behind us. We have all seen it before this--a period where it was often difficult to tell falsehood, rumor, and misinformation from truth. It was this type of politics that contributed to a war in which we have lost the best of our national treasure, our nation's men and women. It is this type of politics that our opponents not so long ago decried. And it is this type of politics that, more than anything else, signals weakness--the inability to base one's statements and actions on the firm ground of truth, on our collective and honest dedication to the construction of a new and positive future--and instead, on a retreat into the politics of personal destruction.

It's time to take out the dirty dishes; It's time to empty the kitchen sink. After an era where it was often difficult to distinguish fantasy from truth, it's time to put that era behind us, to base our future efforts on a strong and honest desire to build a new and better future."

What Obama can create is his own "There you go again" moment--one that will both define Clinton (after all, someone has to do it), and at the same time place the Clinton camp in their very own box, of their own making: A box where any attack will be immediately associated in the voter's mind, and will be accompanied by a roll of the voter's eyes, as another example of Clinton's "kitchen sink" politics; of the chaotic, inconsistent, contradictory and frantic willingness to say or do anything to be elected, be it the changing of one's personality, tone, degree of honesty--or one's degree of tolerance or gusto for the politics of personal destruction.

Without a single attack, this demonstrates the nature of the Clinton camp: in a moment of crisis, and in danger of loss, rather than respond with strength, principle and authority, they throw the "kitchen sink" at the issue, abandoning principles and frantically strewing innuendo as they do so.

With powerful moral force, it names exactly what the Clinton camp is doing, and anchors it both to the politics of the past Administration, and to the very political tactics that Clinton herself has denounced and disavowed. In addition, it provides direct evidence--thus far, the only direct evidence--of how a Clinton Administration would likely govern in times of chaos, crisis, and other "3 a.m. moments" (thus disempowering her already shaky claims to superior foreign policy judgment): With a "kitchen sink" approach of tumultuous, changing, disorganized and contradictory attack, rather than with consistent purpose and moral authority.

Obama must persistently name what the Clinton camp is doing rather than complain--and he must then link it to the very essence of an old politics that has been lived through by all of us, and denigrated by most over the past 8 years.

Thus named, and thus defined, Obama can then invite Clinton up to the higher ground--to a debate based on policy and principle--or she can choose to stay in the box that she and her camp have created.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Après lui, le déluge

The kitchen sink runneth over.

The fact that many would fall prey to such a desperate, Rovian grab-bag of distortion and misrepresentation brings home a truth that, now more than ever, must be recognized--a truth about us.

As long as we remain susceptible to negative campaigning--as long as we allow inchoate fear and primitive doubt to overwhelm our capacity to understand and check the facts--we will get the winners we deserve--namely, those who win ugly.

Democracy takes more than participation--a goal we have yet to achieve--it also takes a willingness to apply thought over fear.

We have been trained to respond to fear appeals aimed at the pursuit of electoral success very well over the past 7 years--and at this point, we should begin to become inured to them. In plain speaking: we should wise up.

The Clinton camp has discovered a formula that, at least in the days of its brief burst of novelty, has worked. We can expect a deluge of such tactics in the coming weeks.

However, despite a sink that will likely fill to bursting--paired, of course, with the conciliatory words that are meant to justify and allow further attacks--we now have time to adjust and evaluate.

We can and should do so.

A campaign that wins in adversity by the use of distortion and fear will govern in adversity in the same manner.

Note, as a single example, today's report by the CBC that Canadian Prime Minister Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, was indeed the source the leak of supposed quotes regarding NAFTA--and that Clinton's team had also allegedly told Harper to "take her NAFTA concerns with a grain of salt."

This is the true "red phone" lesson, one that we should remember over the coming weeks. Overcome vague appeals to fear and unproven distortion. In the slowly receding shadow of these past two terms, pursue reality. In the face of appeals to induced doubt, unproven "experience", and dark insinuation, tenaciously learn--and vote--the facts.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Inside The Kitchen Sink

From the NYT:

After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum.

Let's see what has been tossed inside the kitchen sink:

-A vicious email smear campaign falsely portrays Obama as a Muslim. He has been a devout Christian for 20 years. The Clinton camp has the opportunity to firmly decry such tactics, or to sow the seeds of doubt. Clinton on 60 minutes: If he says that he is a Muslim "I'll take him at his word";

- A picture of Obama dressed in traditional Somali garb mysteriously arises and is splashed across the front page of the Drudge Report, designed, like the above, to inflame the most base and simplistic prejudices. Again, the Clinton campaign has the opportunity to refuse to use prejudice and stereotype to political advantage. Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed";

-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a Conservative. His Chief of Staff Ian Brodie leaks supposed minutes of statements by an Obama aide. The statement is not by the Obama aide, and the minutes were not taken by the Obama aide, they were taken by a Canadian official. Liberal Canadian parties vehemently protest the attempt by the Conservative Party to influence the U.S. election. The Clinton camp accepts this specious account as valid--and throws it in the kitchen sink as well;

-The Clinton camp, in Drudge-like fashion, insinuates dark misdoings regarding Antoin Rezko--despite the fact that there have been absolutely no allegations of wrongdoing by Obama--hoping perhaps that the mere association will stick--and despite the questions that have been raised about Clinton fundraising during the years of her own "experience";

-The Clinton campaign rolls out the hackneyed "red phone" advertisement, dating to Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign, to suggest that she, unlike Obama, has greater experience for such "3 A.M. moments". When asked to name a single crisis situation that she has actually had to deal with, she is unable to name one.

-Mark Penn, the Clinton campaign's chief strategist, in the weekend panic, emails the L.A. Times to state that he had "'no direct authority in the campaign,' describing himself as merely 'an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me.'"

This sink is filled with the type of fear-based politics that we have come to know so well over these past 8 years. It is fundamentally defensive, and is all-too-willing to use the familiar tools of dishonesty and distortion in pursuit of victory. It indicates how a Clinton Administration would respond to adversity--with a tactical fusillade of presentations, followed by distortion and attack.

It's time to clean the dishes. Don't allow yourself to be misled by misrepresentation, insinuation and division. Leave this kind of politics behind.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Fish on Obama and McCain in Today's NYT

Stanley Fish, in today's NYT, makes the argument that Obama will be "boxed in" by the position that he has taken on Iraq during the nomination process. By taking the position that the U.S. should withdraw, Fish argues, Obama will be inflexibly committed to a stance that will be set against McCain's ability to continue to endorse the surge if it succeeds, while being able to tack towards modifications as the situation changes on the ground.

This presupposes three assumptions:

1) That the current reduction in violence is due to the U.S. military/force multiplication effects of the surge alone--rather than to the belief among Iraqis that the surge is linked to increased participation by Iraqis, and, thereby, to imminent withdrawal of American forces;

2) That the American public wishes to remain in the war, when a majority of Americans have indicated that they favor a withdrawal plan;

3) That a commitment by McCain to the same policies followed by George W. Bush will have a positive "halo" effect, enhancing McCain's popularity, in an electorate that is reacting in ways never seen before against such policies.

The response for Obama is clear: we enhance the process (already begun) of returning Iraq to Iraqi hands, extracting ourselves from a war that we never should have begun. We act in response to the majority of the electorate, which favors withdrawal from a conflict based on specious premises, while actively and aggressively pursuing the war outside of Iraq. And we turn from the poorly sourced, ill-considered, and reactive policies and cronyism of the prior Administration to policies based on reason, strength, and honesty with the American people.

-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Clinton Compares Obama To Bush

From today's WP:

"We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," Clinton told students at George Washington University. "We cannot let that happen again. America has already taken that chance one time too many."

Obama, of course, is not Bush.

Whereas Bush is intellectually incurious, and views intellect and complexity with fear, masked by a reflexive and reductionistic contempt, Obama is intellectually curious, seeks out and embraces ideas, and is interested in their utility, rather than their conforming to a narrow and predetermined plan, and will bring this intellectual strength and ability to his policies.

Whereas Bush is inflexible to the point of parody--and tragedy--making a virtue of failing to reexamine assumptions even when it is clear they are not working-- because cognitive rigidity is, for him, equated with strength, as opposed to the "weakness" of making distinctions--Obama has both firm convictions and the ability to advance and adapt those beliefs to changing circumstances. He has the ability to adapt on the basis of effectiveness and utility, rather than to react impulsively, to stand stubbornly still without any substantive basis, or to fail to adapt, based on fear.

Whereas Bush begins from a point of defensiveness, viewing much of the world in terms of those who need to be taken down a peg from their know-it-all-stance--the hallmark of a life of earlier resentments, imposed on the world of foreign policy--Obama operates from a position of engagement with people and with ideas. He wants to know; is capable of objective evaluation, and seeks to bring new voices into his dialogue, rather than deflecting them.

Whereas Bush has used advisers as a circle of wagons and a complexity filter, keeping criticism, real-world intricacies, and cognitive dissonance to a minimum, Obama appears to welcome advice, using advisers as a resources rather than as a shield.

And, whereas Bush connects with the resentments of the angry everyday man, who feels unfairly downtrodden by those that, in their intellectual and emotional confidence and passion, remind them of their own flaws and fears, and who resents those who might receive help, when they feel they have received none, is unlike Obama--who connects with the willingness to aspire rather than to the fear of it; to the hope of devoting the best of oneself to a community and nation rather than self-protectively dividing it; and to the desire to replace the primacy of tactics and cronyism in favor of shared principle and truth.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Forecasting the Swift Boating and Preparing A Response

A line that you are certain to hear repeatedly, voiced in the hushed, insinuating tone of negative advertising, in the days to come:

"The most liberal voting record in the Senate".

The Obama team has been deft and adept at countering such attacks. They should begin working on a response to this line now, given the visceral guilt/fear response that many still have to the word "liberal".

My suggestion: attach the response to the Bush record while redefining Obama's own stance in the very terms that have led to such enthusiasm, e.g.:

"I'd rather have someone who is actually concerned about providing health care for all who need it, to protecting those who work hard each day to have real job security, to have someone who will look out for you rather than my cousin Dick Cheney's friends in Washington, someone who won't bog our fine troops down in a senseless war in Iraq rather than fighting the real war on terror. We've seen what these guys have done. I'm proud of what I've done, proud of the stands that I've taken on Iraq when others would not. And I am ready to make the changes that we all know, we all have seen, need to be made."

That's a start.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman

Authenticity Betrayed

Notice the look in Clinton's eyes during the Kodak Theatre debate as she listens to Obama challenge her on the Use of Force resolution.

Watch carefully.

Note how hard she is working hard to suppress admiration. First, there is the moment of clear recognition of his facility at jousting, fighting, parrying--the momentary shocked surprise, followed by professional appreciation, a moment of enjoyment, and quick upon this, the icy millisecond of fear--after which, you can see her work--responsibly, this must be covered--to put her serious, skeptical, no-nonsense pose back in place.

She is enjoying him--a genuine response--and she has to fight to repress it.

It's a kind of tragic irony: It is that Hillary--the one that flickers and submerges in that moment, behind the one that has now been twisted into place to frantically wave and bellow through Super Tuesday--who offers the genuineness of spirit, comfort in her own skin, and basis for generating an authentic spirit of change that is now offered by Obama, and that the electorate is responding to.

It is possible to be both genuine and tactical. What this requires is the courage of one's convictions and the stable and consistent belief in self and one's purpose--that one knows who they are and what they believe, providing the foundation for action. Tactics can issue from this--as they do from Obama--but they are mobilized in the service of this firm belief and from this knowledge of self.

Self, itself, cannot be tactical.

Now, this reminds me of many things--of a woman who, inevitably, as we saw in Bernstein's excellent "A Woman in Charge", must ultimately be drawn to the combatant; of someone who constantly seeks to be free of the armor of self even as she, once again, somewhat wearily places it on; of a father who always had a stronger answer, who she could never quite please, and enjoyment and attachment that a child develops to such experiences, even as they seek, often for the rest of their lives to both satisfy and overcome it.

But you are not a Georgetown doctor and you may want something less clinical. So let's propose the following:

In such moments, she betrays the ironic truth--the proud speaker of Wellesley, still very much present beneath the armor, would likely be a follower of Obama--if events in New Haven had turned out slightly differently.


-Dr. Alan J. Lipman