We saw this during the Democratic Primary last year when Obama gave the now famous Race Speech in Philadelphia. The now forgotten Rev. Wright episode was in full development and Sean Hannity on Faux News thought he was putting Obama out of the race with the Rev. Wright video loops. And with most politicians of our generation Hannity would have been correct. But the Obama race speech changed the game because it turned the race issue from a liability into an asset. It signaled that Obama had figured out new answers to old deadlocks. It took awhile for the lessons of the Race Speech to really sink in, but by the Democratic Convention it had become clear that a major Obama speech had the potential to be a game changer.
We may now be seeing this aspect of the Obama Presidency demonstrated big time in the Mid-East. Go below the fold for more.
While most domestic pundits applauded Obama's Cairo speech because it offered an olive branch to the Muslim world, while refurbishing America's image in that part of the world, it also planted a vision for Arab-Israeli co-existence and re-planted the democracy seed.
Few of us would have expected a simple speech to light a fire under an intractable Iranian government. While it is obvious that the Iranian middle-class and it youthful allies are in the street today, perhaps, as a consequence of the Obama speech, I think the real effect of the speech was on the Iranian Interior Ministry and the country's clerical elite. I think it goaded them into a major mistake from which they may not recover.
As even the most casual reader of the FiveThirtyEight.com website now knows some statistical outcomes just don't make sense. During last year's primaries and national election, occasionally a renegade pollster would float an anomalous survey that showed an unlikely gain for some candidate or other. Very quickly the FiveThirtyEight.com site and several others would knock it down. The blogosphere would focus on the bogus pollster and blow up their credibility. Often within 24 hours the bad poll ended up harming the candidate it wanted to benefit.
It looks like this same thing may have happened in Iran as its Interior Ministry tried to peddle a 'landslide' for Ahmadinejad when record-setting turnout and impressionistic reports suggest a close contest at best for the incumbent.
A shrewd Minisryr bent on fixing an election should have released more realistic results pointing to close, nail-baiting election. Then in the endless recounts, they might have had a better chance pursuing a Bush V. Gore, or Norm Coleman type disenfranchisement campaign.
Instead the Ministry over-reached. It looks as though a non-statistics savvy politico looked over the situation and decided that an Ahmadinejad victory would not be enough. A landslide was called for. And instead they got a landfall.
It may be soon to make this conclusion stick, but it looks like a game-changing Obama speech may have been a causal factor.
To his credit, Netanyahu seems to have been the better student of the American campaign and its lessons. Like McCain he's giving the appearance of 'getting it,' while fighting a rear-guard action to undermine an Obama offensive.
If last year really is a template for an Obama effect on the Middle East, Netanyahu may have to learn to play a new game by new rules.