(TPJ 189)
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – April 20,
2008
Six weeks ago, in my column “TPJ 185:
Democratic Alchemy, Revisited,” I considered the substantive issues
that in my view (and in the view of many others) should be at the center of the
Democratic Party platform. I summarized them in what I call “The Ten
Commitments.” (I first referenced “The Ten Commitments” in a column that
ran in November 2005, TPJ 86.) “Substantive issues” are about “what to do, what we will do, when we win the election and take power.”
In this column I am considering elements of an Obama
Campaign Plan that come under the heading “process” elements, that is “how
should we go about campaigning,” “how do we present the issues and
ourselves,” “how do we respond,” “how do we best organize our material
and our presentations.” Some elements of my list have substantive
components, but they primarily deal with process as here defined. Some of
the recommendations/components are already being followed by the Obama
Campaign, at least in part. But this is a total package that I am
presenting here.
Please note that it is a single package designed to win both
the Democratic nomination and the general election. This single-track
approach, with which I strongly agree, is how the Obama people, currently at least, seem to be running their campaign. The Clintons
are running against Obama first, McCain, if at all, second. Obama is
running against McCain first, Clinton by occasional reference second (at least
until the final days of the Pennsylvania campaign, which was concluded after
this column was written but now well before you will have seen it).
1. Take
control of the agenda. This is the single most important process element
to consider. He who controls the agenda wins the election. The
Republicans have known this very well since the days of Nixon, but it was
Reagan/Bush I’s Lee “Willie Horton” Atwater and Bush
II’s Karl “Let’s Get the Gays” Rove that brought the strategy to its highest
level of “perfection.” If the agenda for the Democrats is the economy,
the War on Iraq, Bush, and health care, the Democrats win. If the agenda
is race, immigration, “patriotism” (as they define it), “liberals” and how bad
they are, “honoring our troops,” “victory,” and let’s not forget (and how could we, for the Clintons
won’t let us) Rev. Wright, the Republicans win.
2. Never
defend; always ----. Lee Atwater’s’ other major “contribution” to modern
political strategy was the tactic: “always attack, never defend.”
Democrats are always more nuanced than Republicans. They should be,
because Democrats recognize how complex both politics and governing really
are. (Reagan always tried to tell the American people how simple, how
black and white, everything was. Indeed, it was said of his simplistic
approach to reality: “simplicity is complexity misunderstood.”) And so
the first part of this rule of process is: “(Almost always) Never
Defend.” The second part is tri-partite. I. “Sometimes attack” (as
in the case of military policy where I have on these pages more than once
counseled “attack on defense” [see for example, my TPJ column 125 of that
title] which I am pleased to say Sen. Obama is doing). 2.
“Sometimes explain,” but never defensively, illustrated by Sen. Obama’s
treatment of the question “why did you stay in that congregation?” (when in 30,000-plus minutes of sermons there were perhaps
100 minutes of rhetoric that some describe as “anti-American,” as they would
describe some of Dr. Martin Luther King’s late-in-his-life rhetoric).
3. “Use certain critical moments in responding to go beyond the immediate
subject.” This of course Sen. Obama did with his magnificent speech on
race. But never, ever simply defend.
3. The role
of government (a “crossover” issue, of both process and substance). Republicans
just love the “big government” mallet. (One of the reasons why some folks
labeled Bill Clinton as a “Republican” President was because of his famous
statement in a State of the Union address that “the era of big government is
over.”) Well, the Republicans don’t really hate big government across the
board. When it comes to such matters as freedom of belief as to when life
begins, freedom of practice in such matters as in-born sexual identity, freedom
of choice in the matter of the use of potentially addictive drugs, and the
ability to, when the President says they need to, over-ride any and all
provisions of the Constitution that they don’t like, they are totally married
to the concept of big government. Personified by Grover “Drown it
in the bathtub” Norquist, they just don’t like big government when it comes to
national domestic spending, labor relations, and regulation of the “free
market” economy so that the government has something of a chance of working for
the benefit of folks other than those who hold and control capital. It
is, however, for us the Preamble to the Constitution that defines the role of
the Federal government: “We the people of
the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.” Sen. Obama could make great use of it in carrying
out task 1, taking control of the agenda.
4. “The problem is Washington;
government doesn’t work.” No, the problem is not “Washington”
in general, and the problem is not that “government doesn’t work.” The
problem is that under Republicans government is made not to work (except to do
those things that Republicans like to do. For example, under the Bush
administration the Federal government has been very effective in funneling
Federal funds to right-wing Christian religious organizations and to Cheney's
buddies in Halliburton and related companies.) People like Gingrich and
Bill Kristol love to blame all of our current problems on “big government” and
“bad government,” especially “since the 1960s.” They never point out that
in the 40 years since Nixon was elected President, Republicans have controlled
the White House for 28 of those years (70% of the time). For the other 12
years, there was the modern weakest Democratic President ever (Jimmy Carter)
and a Democrat who did not line up with his potential Congressional allies but
spent his time, when he wasn’t fending off self-induced impeachment and other
scandals and non-scandals to which he did not know how to respond,
“triangulating” those allies. Of course Bush II had a totally compliant
Congress for his first six years in office and for the last one-plus a
Democratic Congress which has not had much of a clue about how to use their
power. So it ain’t’ “government” or “Washington” that’s the
problem. It is “Republican-run government” and “Republican-controlled
Washington” that is.
5.
Likewise it is not unmodified “partisanship” that has taken over American
politics, especially since the Gingrich-led Republican takeover of
Congress in 1994. In the Congress it is Republican partisanship, as
exemplified by Gingrich and DeLay and Frist and contemporaneously Boehner and
McConnell (who has openly said that he will filibuster to death any legislative
proposal he doesn’t like). For the Georgites in the Executive Branch, it
is Rove’s desiderata of a “Permanent Republican Presidency” (see SJ/TPJ 176)
that has defined the political landscape: not dealing with issues but
establishing his Party permanently in power. Outside of the regime it has
been O’RHannibaugh and Coulter and their various clones (like Mary Matalin,
wife to the Clinton acolyte Jim Carville), and the way that they define the
issues that have made the political atmosphere so caustic. Recall that
Coulter (with whom I have dealt more than once on these pages) has defined
“liberals” as traitors. Under US law, the penalty for treason is
death. That is the atmosphere we are in reality dealing with, not some
unmodified “partisanship.”
6. Finally,
in my view the primacy of the Rule of Law in making our country so successful
in the 200-plus years since its founding should in my view be stressed.
Of all the sins that the Georgites have committed in their 7-plus years in
power, none has been more egregious than their constant assault on the rule of
the Law, encapsulated most recently by the release of the Yoo memo defining
Presidential power as without limit when the President declares it to be
without limit (The Progress Report, “TORTURE: The 'Blueprint That Led To Abu
Ghraib’ “April 7, 2008). While this argument should be used openly
against McCain/Bush, its implications in dealing with the Clintons, for whom
retroactively changing the Party’s nomination rules is essential if they are to
win the Democratic nomination, are obvious.
Process is secondary to substance in defining a political
party and a candidate. But in winning elections it is coequal. The
Obama Campaign is getting there, to be sure. I have just offered a few
more process suggestions that one might make, that are possibly useful for Sen.
Obama.