TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Obama Needs A Trump Card: Here It Is

ADVERTISEMENT

JOE O'NEILL

Tribune Columnist

Published: May 9, 2008

Nobody asked, but that never deters. If I'm advising Barack Obama, here's the memo to his handlers:

As long as delegates are the currency that counts, the race remains yours to lose. But being in a response mode, playing it safe and having plenty of money is not a winning strategy. Schedule a meeting to fine-tune where necessary and revamp where mandatory. Then do a sequel. It's that serious.

Better late than never. Obama's denunciation of that self-promoting, irreverent foghorn, Jeremiah Wright, as well as the myriad of stupid, race-baiting tripe he has bellowed was, needless to say, long overdue. Now emphasize to Obama that he can on occasion step out of well-modulated character enough to actually SHOW anger – not just voice it.

Your guy remains, of course, the candidate of "hope" and "change." But it's not as if those themes haven't been recycled before. It's just that they've not been this relevant since the Great Depression.

The quintessential challenge: Making those words viscerally resonate as something other than dismissible rhetoric – AKA "mere words." Obama, as everyone knows, has already clinched the 2008 Orator's Cup.

He needs to mix in more concrete – the only way he can ultimately separate himself from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. It would leave him much less vulnerable to their "inexperience" indictments.

Remember, any Democrat can rail against corporate greed and the plight of the nonrich. That, however, only reaffirms Obama as a better-packaged Michael Dukakis. And any candidate can run against "special interests" and "threats" to America. But what is your candidate UNIQUELY qualified to emphasize beyond soaring abstractions?

Hand-wringing over lost factory jobs and scapegoating NAFTA doesn't cut it for the majority who understand globalization. Frankly, technological progress and innovation – not outsourcing – is the main reason for the decline in manufacturing jobs. And a health care plan that is not different enough from Clinton's doesn't qualify either.

Try this: After reminders about judgment and who actually voted to authorize a catastrophic war, advocate a paradigm shift in FOREIGN POLICY. Just don't say "paradigm," because it sounds, well, elitist to you know who.

This focus differentiates Obama from McCain and gets him distance from those inevitably losing, head-to-head match-ups over who can better protect Americans. Such scenarios are sure losers: the nitty-gritty of pre-ordained, troop-drawdown schedules that might not jibe with reality on the ground can only make him look like an Ivy League micro-manager – not commander-in-chief material. Then there's the unkindest juxtaposition of them all: a battle-tested patriot vs. the well-intentioned social worker. Who would you choose? FOREIGN POLICY, however, is the bridge you need.

As for Clinton, don't let her convert her mistaken, lemming-like Iraq vote into some sort of ironically perverse positive. A re-thought FOREIGN POLICY, one that boldly asks where America fits – including, most notably, the Middle East – in a world where too many countries revile us, paints Clinton into the disingenuous, zero-sum (Iranian) "obliteration" corner she deserves. She and her disaffected generals.
It also reminds voters that while McCain patriotically took one for the team, he still sees the world through a Vietnam prison cell. His Cold War blinders convince him that maintaining troops in Germany and Japan, for example, is still a good idea and keeping Taiwan as a Chinese trip-wire makes as much sense as treating Israel as the 51st state. (OK, for pragmatic political reasons, nuance this reference – but the point is: no blank check for Israel. In fact, make the case that we expect a deal between Israel and Syria to get done – and we hold enough leverage to make it happen.)

Obama should remind the electorate that he will, indeed, meet with real friends, erstwhile friends and adversaries – and won't fear negotiating any more than Harry Truman did with "Uncle" Joe Stalin or Richard Nixon did with Mao Zedong. A meeting is not a de facto validation of another's position on anything, but it is a reaffirmation of the principle that ours isn't the only perspective that matters. And, yes, that includes the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Amadinejad.

And while Clinton prattles on about gas-tax holiday gimmicks and Lincoln-Douglas debates on flatbed trucks, Obama can make the case that Cuba is the first place he'd start the FOREIGN POLICY overhaul. And that, to be sure, includes the counter-productive economic embargo. Sure, it will upset the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and some other family-feud zealots in South Florida and Jersey City. So what? The rest of the country and the rest of the world would applaud.

Moreover, such an issue would provide Obama with another forum to help rally a Democratic Party that must produce a bigger majority in Congress to make meaningful progress. Especially where Cuba – and the Helms-Burton Act – is involved.

Even though the usual exile suspects will shriek in choleric rage, Obama will get much more credit than criticism. Let's face it; change is coming anyhow. But it will show some Obamian guts, and it will be seen as the right thing for all the right reasons: morally, economically (especially in Florida) and geopolitically.

It will be a signal to the rest of the world that this isn't business as usual any more coming out of Washington.

What all this does is reinforce Obama's argument that this election, while thematically about "hope" and "change," is fundamentally about judgment – not seniority. America's FOREIGN POLICY – in the good name of continuity – can no longer continue as an ad hoc extension of the way business has largely been done since the Cold War.

And a couple more points to sum up. Since there's ample precedent, to say the least, for other candidates changing their minds on policies, have Obama change one of his own stands. Have him do a 180 on his muddled-at-best stance on capital gains. This is a net loser.
Leave the rate at 15 percent. Please. About 100 million Americans are invested, directly or indirectly in the stock market. About 20 percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less than $50,000. And there's a causal relationship between increased capital-gains taxes and decreased federal revenues. This isn't even a good pander point.

And don't worry about losing Main Street credibility by acknowledging the obvious. The U.S. is an investment economy, which isn't some liberal affliction. Because the net result is jobs, jobs, jobs.
Get Obama started right now playing the FOREIGN POLICY trump card, which gives heft to "hope" and ballast to "change." Call it "America's ENLIGHTENED Self-Interest," which not-so-subtly incorporates all facets of national security. That is: our economy, our way of life and our literal lives.

And get some of your more formidable surrogates out there. Whether it's a Tony Lake, Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, or Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, or Bill Richardson, the globally-savvy Hispanic governor of New Mexico who's looking more and more like a vice presidential running mate.

Obama's opponents – as well as the media – love to associate him with the Jeremiah Wrights and the Tony Rezkos. Fire back with people who count.

Joe O'Neill is a Tampa writer who can be contacted at www.opinionstogoonline.com or moesez@aol.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT