A different political playbook (or: what Barack Obama learned from Harrison Ford.)
Kari Chisholm
The traditional political playbook works like this:
If you have a friend who gets in trouble, immediately distance yourself. Suggest loudly that you never really knew him. Back away quietly, back away loudly, whatever you do, back away -- and fast. Distance, deny, dispute, distract.
Of course, that never seems to work. The voters (and the media) see it for what it is. And they often punish the politico for a) lying, b) disloyalty, and c) treating them like they're stupid.
I don't normally turn to blockbuster summer movies for political advice, but in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger (based on the Tom Clancy novel), Harrison Ford's character Jack Ryan gives the fictional president some advice about how to handle a revelation about a good friend:
And that's exactly how Barack Obama handled the dust-up about his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He rejected the words, but embraced the man. He didn't just embrace him, he explained how he was family.
In the end, this will be a minor episode in the history of this presidential campaign - but for me, it's one more sign that Senator Obama is playing with an entirely different political playbook. It's a different kind of politics.
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1:04 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
Nice coverage in the O. For the NY Times and WSJ, below the fold. The 5 year anniversary of the war is pushing it off of the top of the fold coverage.
1:14 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
It may be a minor moment in the campaign, but I think it will come to be seen as a watershed moment in Presidential politics. It truly was a remarkable speech, unfortunately for its complete departure from consultant-tested response themes as much as its stirring rhetoric.
1:17 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
"As imperfect as he may be, he is like family to me."
I'd say that sounds pretty Presidential.
1:18 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
Kari C, This is what I want to hear, people around our age want to hear (casting a wide net, friends) and it's how we all speak to one another in political discourse.
I want to hear the truth as much as possible. I want my cynicism to continue to be chipped away by a person who isn't trying to charm me, but talk to me. Many of our worlds don't spin on one-liners, but true conversation that makes an impact on how we work or live one day to the next.
More importantly, pretending issues will go away by watching American Idol or The Biggest Loser (my fave) serves to further separate us by more lines than just race. And you know, I don't care if Obama doesn't get the old white man - old white woman - whoever the media wants to call out and stereotype - vote. I want the people who have run to register, who have woken from their political slumber to vote, who feel hope again. We are the ones who hold the future, we are.
1:35 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
Kari,
This is not a minor episode in the campaign, but a seminal moment. For many who liked his rhetoric, but questioned his personal substance, this provides it. In each campaign there is a point where the ulitmate winner is truly tested and has to overcome a potentially damning test. This is the moment for Barack.
For American history, I believe that this speech will become one that will be taught in schools decades from now.
For the right wing wackos this will be the battle that they will keep fighting. It will not go away, but will hopefully not win any new converts to their cause.
1:37 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
You may very well be right, John.
Mar 19, '08
Nice find on the Harrison Ford clip. Did you dig that up on your own? Good stuff. How about Harrison Ford for president.
By the way, Obama's speech made YouTube history by getting 1.2 million views in 24 hours.
Mar 19, '08
Excellent! It's a test of character and a test of values. This is what emerges for me. What matters in life are human relationships.All of them. We value them, and we care for them, across the boundaries of race, belief, ethnicity, generation, and ideology. I wonder if that is something our culture might begin to understand and practice, in religion and politics, in commerce, and in civic life. Obama loves the man who loved him, and still outgrows and rejects his angry set of responses to a wounded past. Many people, myself included, reported they cried during this speech. Something about the common ground of our humanity. Maybe even the art of politics could be practice from this rooted place.
2:36 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
Of course, Donald Moffat (the President in the movie Ford's giving his advice to) is a totally unprincipled jerk who Ford ends up in a showdown with at the end of the film, so I think you only want to take this movie advice thing so far...
2:47 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
I can't help finding a certain irony that a progressive website is looking to Jack Ryan for moral example. I mean, Tom Clancy? Seriously?
Mar 19, '08
This topic is BO echo chamber at its finest.
Obama exposed himself as just another bullshit artist. If you think this speech will end this issue, you are wishfully thinking.
His "explanation" was an idiotic exercise in moral equivalence. Wrights anti-American rantings revealed a virulent hatred of America. Accusing the US government of trying to exterminate blacks using the HIV virus? That is not only off-the-charts wing nut, it basiclly reveals that he believes America is the same as Nazi Germany.
And Obama says: "yes, well, my white grandma once told me she was nerous around black people and I still love her."
Okay then.....
Obama is just a bullshit artist. A pretty good one, but bullshit nonetheless. And that speech revealed it more than anything he has done up til now, even though the chorus will try to convince us all otherwise.
3:15 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
I believe that Barack Obama's speech was truly a seminal moment in our country for both political and racial discourse.
I'm sorry you, whoever you are, feel it was not genuine. But I'd feel worse without this hunch that you'd feel the same way no matter what he said yesterday...
Mar 19, '08
So, Observer, since you are more astute than those who would believe the message from Obama, who are you supporting/advocating as the best person to lead the nation as the next president??
3:22 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
yeah, observer's right! After all, our government would never give black soldiers syphillis intentionally, or other soldiers LSD and not tell them, or bring cocaine into the country using the CIA, or prevent blood tests for AIDS because it might get expensive, or sterilize and basically throw away mentally challenged folks. Never!!
3:26 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
Or target people for assassination.
Mar 19, '08
Whew, thank God "Observer" threw his 2 cents into the discussion. I was beginning to think that Obama fellow was making sense. Thanks for straightening me out. Now I can go back to celebrating the fifth anniversary of our unprovoked and unnecessary invasion of a sovereign nation.
Mar 19, '08
sigh The cliché of all clichés, 'anti-American sentiments.'
10:23 p.m.
Mar 19, '08
on Anderson Cooper tonight (it was on the tv right in front of me at the gym while i was on the elliptical; i had no choice but to watch!), Obama said he thinks his campaign had gotten complacent and "conventional" with Ohio & Texas. as unfortunate as this incident might be, he almost seemed to welcome it as a reminder of what makes his campaign work. i hope so. the last time he got taken down a notch was New Hampshire; Hillary has not recovered yet.
2:22 a.m.
Mar 20, '08
Nice find on the Harrison Ford clip. Did you dig that up on your own? Good stuff.
Yup! Actually, it's one of my favorite scenes ever -- and I thought of it immediately as I heard Obama embrace Wright as a member of his family (while rejecting and denouncing his words.)
Took a bit to track down the clip, but it's all me.
11:17 a.m.
Mar 20, '08
I'm encouraged to see that Bill O'Reilly, Rich Lowry in the National Review, and the WSJ all gave a positive review to the speech.
Not like our resident idiot conservative blowhard, David Reinhardt.
Is it really that hard for the O to find a conservative columnist who doesn't just parrot the RNC talking points?
11:43 a.m.
Mar 20, '08
I wrote an LTE to the O and cc'd Reinhard this morning saying that it took some gall for him to call someone who spent six years in the Marines and Navy "anti-American" and he wrote back whining that saying "God damn America" sounded "anti-American" to him.
Of course, he left off the part about the racism and American exceptionalism that Wright was condemning America for, but I reminded him.