Let Obama Be Obama

The Obama campaign is humming along, but not nearly the kind of operation one should expect from him and an incredibly talented group of advisors.  Mike Lux offers a good take on it from someone outside of the Illinois

The great mystery of the Obama campaign so far is when they have such a unique and compelling candidate with such a fresh voice, why are they running such a conventional wisdom campaign? From their issue positions to their debate strategy to their day to day tactical positioning, they have run a campaign that keeps neatly within the lines of the campaign lane they’ve picked out to drive in. Every time he does a policy speech it fits within the outlines of Democracy policy establishment conventional wisdom. Every ad they do feels just like all of the usual political ads you see on TV. The strangest thing to me is that the kind of campaign they are running feels exactly like the others I’ve seen before.It’s the politics that is broken, upper middle income-oriented, tired of partisan bickering campaign that Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley all chose to run.

And that spells out my biggest disappointment. I backed or voted for all those guys and thought Obama had the talent to not run that kind of boring campaign.

Josh Marshall interviews Markos on Obama’s campaign and similar sentiments are expressed

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_DgjezbTWFI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The campaign’s outreach online has been both incredible on the organizing level, and absolutely horrible in setting the agenda.  IN terms of allowing supporters to go out and build up their own organizing efforts–doing what Dean thought he was doing and Karl Rove actually did do–the campaign has done things I don’t think much of the blogs understand fully.  The discussion is below the radar of most of them because it isn’t the large bloggers pushing the conversation which I think is an innovation that is remarkable.

However, when blogs set the agenda and there isn’t the discussion being had there, it’s a problem. Josh Orton mentioned in the video left the campaign and largely blogger outreach is non-existent since then. Josh was very helpful and understood how to reach out to blogs and keep them up on what was going on.  The story appears to be that Josh wanted to push online outreach more in that way while Rospars wants to concentrate on the organizing. The problem to me seems to be they aren’t mutually exclusive and keeping someone in the position Josh was filling was essential to a second part of what should be a balanced net operation that both innovated over the blogcentric strategy, but paid attention to the agenda setting on blogs

And tied to this is just the recent hire of a rapid response person which is exactly what such a blog outreach person effectively does.  It’s the same kind of problem.

Some of the criticisms of Obama are a bit sillier than others.  For example, the overstated expectations about him in debate weren’t born out by the 2004 race. He’s capable, but the short form answers don’t lend themselves to his strengths. In other cases, some claim he can simply change the debate by opening his mouth–that’s generally not as true as most think–remember he was talking about lead in toys long before the current problems and crickets were heard.
The argument over McClurkin and the Gospel Tour is a distraction–probably from the Clinton camp. Any Democratic candidate who has significant black minister support has people who say the same things. Many white preachers are the same.  In fact, some of Clinton’s supporters believe similar things.  Building bridges between communities takes dealing with differing view points, and certainly Obama doesn’t agree with McClurkin on the issue and attends a church that is welcoming to gays and lesbians himself.
The worst thing is the campaign has effectively neutered Obama with caution and
boriinnnggggg.  There are several issues he should lead on–and ones that would take back the momentum with progressive base voters.  He’s done well on voter suppression.  He hasn’t done well on FISA where it took days to get a statement together that should have been easy to make for a Con Law Instructor. He’s still not entirely clear on telecom amnesty which should be a non-starter for any Democrat.  He has taken agonizing time figuring out how he’d vote on various war related bills.

In 2004, that wasn’t Obama.  He wasn’t some wild eyed progressive quote machine, but he took strong stands and did it forthrightly and quickly.  Now, every pronouncement is awaiting a detailed policy response vetted to be bland and uninteresting.

Part of it appears to be an effort to discipline the message and another part is simply the painstaking inability to move quickly of a larger campaign operation.  But message discipline shouldn’t hold hostage the basic campaign strategy which is to be the different kind of politics–that is one that should be off the cuff and honest–not the cautious, overly word smythed crap that is like the Clinton campaign.

When he has done best contrasting himself on issues, it has been on issues such as being willing to talk to anyone while Hillary tried to paint him as naive. It so happens that 60% of the Democratic Party agree with Barack yet the campaign seems to think that was a problem.  It wasn’t a problem, it was an opportunity, and the type they haven’t taken enough advantage.

Bogging the campaign down in the traditional model of caution loses the appeal of Barack Obama.  People like him because he talks to them plainly and understandably.  His best commercial ever was still the introductory commercial in 2004 where he is standing leaning against a desk and says, “Hello, my name is Barack Obama…”

The effectiveness was he was a guy who was obviously smart and easy to understand.  Pushing the language of Washington in carefully worded statements is exactly the playing field he should not be on.