Obama is a classy gentlemen, and his first instinct when confronted with Rovian-Bushian-McCainian gutter politics is a kind of "more in sadness than in anger" bemusement and a dutiful repetition of why Americans are sick of that kind of politics and are looking for more substance at a time with our nation, and many voters' lives, are in a really precarious shape.
But that won't do because Obama's rebuttal isn't colorful or pointed enough to penetrate the very heavily right-biased media filter that lies between him (or any Democrat) and the low information, minimally politically engaged voters whose preferences are driving the fickle polls and whose votes will decide the election.
But Obama also, really wants to win, and knows how much we have to have a profound change of choice. He is also capable of righteous anger.
He needs to start defining the terms of the cable news back and forth that is all that many voters see of this campaign, and coming up with simple, doggedly repeated, HARD-EDGED lines of attack. The press and the public -- which both harbor doubts about whether Democrats are "tough" enough to win in the new politics of the 24/7 cable age -- will respect him for it. These hard-edged messages should come not from spokespeople but from Obama and Biden themselves.
- McCain/Palin want to win for McCain/Palin and the special interest lobbyists who run their campaign. They don't want to talk about issues, because they know their policies don't help average Americans.
- McCain and Palin don't tell the truth. Telling lies is not only morally wrong, it is terrible for our country. That's how Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld got us into Iraq.
- It's understandable why Karl Rove and the Washington lobbyists who run the McCain/Palin feel they need to tell lies, because the truth is that neither one is a reformer. In his 26 years in Congress McCain has always been cozy with Beltway lobbyists, and his campaign is run by them. Sarah Palin's claims about the Bridge to Nowhere and opposition to earmarks are outright lies, and she repeats them because the McCain/Palin campaign managers don't trust your ability to tell facts from lies.
4. McCain/Palin don't tell the truth about taxes, either -- in fact the Obama/Biden Plan CUTS taxes for 95 percent of American families, and cuts taxes for far more people than the McCain plan.
The Washington lobbyists who run their campaign are telling them to tell lies, counting on you not to figure it out. They know they couldn't win in a campaign on the issues.
"Enough." It's time to tell the truth, it's time to take this country back from the lobbyists and the spin merchants.
PS: I don't intend this as a chicken-littlish, "Obama must do this or he will lose" diary. I think Obama already is getting, and will get more, sharper-edged as the M-P people go ever sleazier. Obama has street-fighting capacities as well as statemanlike ones. But his election, we can't afford to lose by failing to appreciate the visceral and anti-intellectual atmosphere in which the decisive bloc of American voters makes up its mind. Republicans are good at understanding that (and bad at everthing else, especially governing. But Obama has to learn to dominate in that atmosphere too.