Blame the media if you want Democrats, but if Obama cannot handle questions from ABC News, then he is in trouble when he faces actual political opponents. The President of Iran is a good bit tougher than Charlie Gibson.
Quick Rule of World Leadership: If you cannot take on George Stephanopoulos, then you are not ready for the job held by Truman, TRex, Lincoln, and Reagan. My Nana could have handled old George, who still looks like he is auditioning for the high school play, but Obama’s answers frequently mixed one part surly with two part incoherence while making George Stephanopoulos look like a tough questioner.
Generally, Western people want their leaders to be Rough Riders and Log Splitters with nicknames like the Gipper or the Iron Lady. We expect Elizabeth to ride to face the Invincible Spanish Armada until she shows it is not invincible and it is no longer an armada. Tonight Obama faced the very vincible Clinton machine and sank rapidly.
Words matter, Obama has told us.
I agree and words clobbered Obama tonight.
Clinton and the media were not the problem. He was the problem. Stars in politics perform best under pressure. Obama is the front runner to be President of the United States. Things get tough. That’s why I am glad I am not a politician, but Obama wants the job.
When the Victorians attacked people by chanting that one candidate was “James, James, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the state of Maine,” Obama fans must realize that politics gets nasty.
Under pressure, with tough and even unfair questions, the best debaters put the election away.
Reagan blew a debate and then, with his legacy on the line, swatted back his opponent easily in the next. When pressed about his age, he did not complain about age-ism or the unfairness of the bigoted question, but made us laugh by promising not to bring up his opponents youth and inexperience.
Tonight youth and experience were on display.
Obama could not get his own position on gun control right . . . or explain how being a professor in Constitution law, as he has frequently reminded us, why he suddenly has no clear opinion on a major constitutional issue now before the court.
Obama lost tonight in a way that points to devastation in the fall. As I said on February 15, the best time to be Obama politically has past. How can he not know his association with a terrorist, a man not sorry for bombing American sites in the sixties, would come up? How could he have no answer?
The worry about Senator Obama is that like William Jennings Bryan, another eloquent and likable young man from the Mid-West, his silver-tongue will fail under fire. In the case of Bryan, it was being outspent “16 to 1″ by the Republicans and being associating with radicalism that finished him. Obama has the money that Bryan never had, but he also may have more radical associations than Bryan.
In any case, he needs better answers.
Perhaps, the trouble is that Obama’s problems with the general electorate don’t matter to Democrat primary voters.
He may not be hurt now by radical associates, but he will be in the general. America needs a strong two party system. We need the “other party” to be mainstream enough to win. The Republican Party is tired . . . and under normal circumstances a few years in the wilderness would be good for the Party and good for the nation. Victoria’s England was helped by alternating rule between the “liberal” and “conservative” parties . . . which were both mainstream enough to be trusted with governance.
The brilliant Senator from Illinois, however, may not be politically moderate enough or experienced enough to win an election that should have been a landslide.
His remarks about small town America suggest that states like my beloved home state of West Virginia are off the table. How does a Democrat win without West Virginia?
His inability to deal with any of the issues that the fine people of West Virginia care about tonight was not just sad, it was humiliating. Senator Obama was tired and confusing in his answers. That is not the problem. Reagan recovered from a performance that was just as bad in that way. The problem for Obama is that what he actually believes, and the friends he actually has, may be acceptable in the very limited social network he has experienced, but are not mainstream enough to win a national election.
Discussion of debate tactics that miss this are useless in the long term. Nobody cares if a Reagan stumble, if he comes back. They would care if Reagan associated with terrorists, had a pastor who “damned America,” and did not react to any of it in ways they could understand. Reagan’s ideology, which a majority generally liked, stood him in a good stead.
I do not even mean by any of this to attack liberalism. My own views are far too eccentric to be electable! I do mean that parties win by centrist with an edge . . . just far enough to the right as Republicans (center-right) and just far enough to the left as Democrats.
The Republican Party which nominated some modern day Dante or Disreali would make me happy, but lose fifty states.
Parties don’t usually win by pandering to their base. Obama can only wish he was going to run against Senator Tom Coburn. He is not. Coburn would lose, big time, but if Obama ends up looking like the Coburn of the left, then he will lose . . . even in a Democrat year.
If the truth is that Senator Obama is very, very liberal, then he is unelectable just as Tom Coburn who is very, very conservative would be unelectable.
The problem for Senator Obama will not be one debate or tactics. He is too good a campaigner for that. His problem may be the truth about what he actually believes . . . and that is a political problem that no rhetoric can smooth out.
