Obama's Most Unexploited Weakness

As the Obama campaign apoplectically tries to smear John McCain's outstanding record of public service, The Maverick has responded by running ads that inform the voters of unpleasant things they don't know about the Democratic nominee. I found it useful to hear about the Illinois sex-ed bill, although I thought the critical weakness it exposed was not that Obama had a perverted plan to teach sex-ed (I don't think he did), but rather that he didn't even know what was in the bill he supported, and was content to leave details to teachers. ("Does Barack Obama know what's in the legislation he supports?")

Nevertheless I feel that attack ads like these run a risk of alienating voters who may suspect that if they didn't hear about the sex-ed bill before, it probably wasn't important. But I also think that Obama has a weak spot voters know about but haven't gotten in focus: the Democratic primary campaign that won Obama his party's nomination. How did he do it? This is an important question for the McCain campaign and for voters, because if Obama is to be considered unworthy of election to the presidency (because of inexperience, bad judgment, or suspicious associations) then he should also be considered unworthy of the Democratic nomination. Correspondingly, if it is conceded that Obama was worthy of nomination, then it is also conceded that he is worthy to serve. For this reason Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama in the spring were more powerful than McCain's now, even when McCain raises the same issues, for the simple reason that Clinton was arguing that Obama did not even deserve to be nominated.

In that vein it should be noted that the attacks on Sarah Palin are extremely strong because they insist that the Governor of Alaska is not qualified even to be the Republican nominee. Responding that Obama is even less qualified does not return the volley unless the response states or strongly implies that the Democrats insulted the voters' intelligence in awarding Obama their party's nomination.

There is one imporant difference between Palin's nomination and Obama's that I have not yet heard mentioned. Palin did not campaign for the vice-presidential nomination: she was serving as governor of Alaska when McCain selected her as his choice of the right VP in a McCain administration. A first-term governor of Alaska would indeed have been rash to oppose John McCain and Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. But among all the crazy charges that have been thrown at Sarah Palin, nobody has tried that one.

Yet Barack Obama did decide to run for president when he had served hardly more than the first year of his first term in the U.S. Senate. Moreover in doing so he decided to oppose members of his own party--one in particular--whose records of public accomplishment and service far exceeded his. What did Barack Obama think about the presidency and its requirements when he picked himself as the best person to lead the Democratic ticket? And how did he bring it off?

Much has been said about Obama's "charisma" and the promise that he would Make History just by standing on a platform and running. One could observe that Obama has no charisma and that "First (race, gender, state of origin) Nominee" is material for the Guinness Book of World Records and not history (which Obama could have made as a legislator in the Senate if he was serious). But attributing Obama's success to charisma or Faking History gives the Democratic nominee far too much credit. This junior senator with no record of accomplishment, no signature issue, no wealth, no family, and no important political alliances needed a lot of help in gaining funding and legitimacy before he could make a credible run for the Democratic nomination. Those who possessed the fuel Obama needed could have told him to serve in the Senate before running for president--or destroyed him if he didn't. So why did so unsentimental a pol as Ted Kennedy support Barack Obama in 2008? Belief in reincarnation? Even supposing that Obama offered the promise of inaugurating a blissful postracial America, wouldn't Obama have done it better when he was ready, and with the whole Democratic Party behind him?

Why Obama in 2008? Why was it even thinkable?

There's no big secret behind this. Obama was useful to insiders as a tool to stop Hill and Bill from establishing a Clinton dynasty. Even Obama's appeal to his childish groupies was largely due to the fact that Hillary was too much of a real politician and therefore had "baggage," while Obama was a screen onto which they could project their fantasies, precisely because he wasn't real. But for the insiders in the Party and the media who got behind Obama, the Obama campaign was never about anything other than stopping Hillary Clinton. Because there was no other reason to support a rookie like Obama whose every policy idea came straight from the Democratic discount rack.

Now stopping Hillary Clinton may have been a good idea, or it may not have been. But what was definitely a bad idea, for America, was putting up a pawn to do the job. Because a pawn cannot serve as president. He doesn't have the independent base he needs, and Barack Obama wouldn't have it even he had served three years as governor of Hawaii and topped Sarah Palin in executive experience. A President Obama will be tied to the strings of all the backers, advisors, and media pundits who have maneuvered him into the position he is in. That's a prescription for one of the worst presidencies in history, no matter what Obama himself thinks or what he'd like to do.

That's why one of Obama's critical weaknesses is just the very fact that he is the Democratic nominee. The party and media power brokers nominated a facade. McCain's campaign should find more ways to remind the voters of that.