I have to confess to two things right off the bat, before I get to the substance of the diary.
The first is that I did not read Arianna's "Moving to the middle is for losers". The reason is that the title said it all and I did not agree with the premise of the title to begin with (if the premise is wrong, the conclusions have no material relevance). I was annoyed by the utter mindlessness with which the left seemed to fall for this stupid McCampaign meme that the corporate media was priming the pump with.
The second is much more fun to confess: I have long been a fan of Rudyard Kipling in general and his If in great particular -- I love that poem: I love its style, its substance and its sheer quiet counsel (I fancy that I live by its premise :-)
So read both (just click on the links above) and follow me over the fold to see what Al Giardano has to say about all this, oh so beautifully...
Al Giordano's article starts off pretty innocuously enough:
Amanda Paulson of the Christian Science Monitor publishes a profile of Obama strategist David Axelrod today, but it's really more of a story about the power of staying on message and marching to one's own drummer:
I had gone over there as a result of following a link and I read that first sentence and thought that the link was misdirected! Then I read more :-)
Then, commenting on the utter lack of coherence to her argument in the two pieces (the one above and this one today), he says:
Fair enough, but she did title her first piece as a narrative about "moving to the middle." And what happened? The media added its own spin based on that (and her experience, having her message misinterpreted in the media, exactly parallels what has generated her misimpression, and that of others, that the candidate somehow has shifted toward the ideological center).
Fair enough, indeed. Then he has these two crucial 'graphs on Obama and the incoherent Obama-watchers:
Yet if we look at the Obama message from a year ago through to the present, most of the matters that many have framed as a move or a change in stances merely involve the reiterations of things the nominee has been saying all along - about faith-based initiatives, about the responsibilities of fatherhood, about getting out of Iraq "as carefully as we were careless going in," and especially about process: the openly stated shift from a politics of permanent partisan confrontation to one of reaching out to adversaries and, gasp, even forging compromises. All these things were basic to the Obama message before the Democratic primaries and caucuses began - and had so much to do with why he won the Iowa caucuses and most of the contests that followed - and all of those things have remained unchanged.
In that context, the nominee has not "moved to the middle," and even his vote last week on the compromise FISA bill did not surprise those that paid close attention to the Obama candidacy since last year or earlier. A guy who talks so much about his willingness to listen to rivals, to meet with shunned foreign leaders, to not demonize members of the opposition party, and to seek workable compromises in governance - at such open contrast with two decades of Bush-on-Clinton-on-Bush-II polarization - doesn't shock the careful observers when he does exactly what he's repeatedly said he would do.
This is what many of us who have followed Sen. Obama for a few years have been saying all along!
Then comes the punchline (ok, punch 'graph) of the essay:
The narrative is, in fact, inverted: Those that try to prod the Obama campaign to "not move to the middle" (and such advice pours out daily from friend and foe alike) are in fact asking him to move off his original message. And those that try to pressure him to do so with public threats or pronouncements that they've withdrawn, or will withdraw, support, would, if his campaign followed such advice, cause him to do exactly what they are claiming he shouldn't do: shift off his original message, capitulating to pressures. (Some just want him to bow to their pressure, it seems, which is fine until they claim that they oppose bowing to pressure in general.)
I cannot add any more to that, other than agreeing heartily. The finish is almost as beautiful as If itself:
To study the 2008 campaign is to receive an advanced course in how to keep one's head in a permanent media storm when all are losing theirs. For that's the main problem or weakness for aspiring leaders of today, on public and private stages, large and small. And best of all, this crash course is free to any and all of us that want to take that class.
Go over there, read the essay and some seriously good comments too ;-)