The International House of Bacon

As some of you know, I occasionally blog over at Heretical Ideas, a team blog that an old friend of mine, Tom, has blogged at for a number of years. In partial response to my Obama posts here, he wrote a piece about tactics and the campaign that’s worth your time to read.

To boil down the argument he’s making as I understand it, my position that the more substantive voting bloc should be bothered by Obama’s (at that point) nondescript campaign isn’t really a good one, largely due to the flaws in the primary system and partly because it’s the only way he can say consistent with his self-portrayal as an outsider.

I don’t really disagree with that in theory - I do know why Obama’s run the campaign like he has, and it’s obviously worked for him so far. With that said, there’s something to be said about the essential bait and switch he’s pulling as well, and campaigning on active deception may be a good tactic in a primary candidacy where the scrutiny can be distributed among numerous candidates, but at some point the chickens have to come home to roost.

I’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of time thus far pointing out how that veneer is fading away quickly, where what he says simply fails to match up with what he does. It doesn’t end there, though: He’s hyper-partisan when he claims to be above politics, he’s barely bipartisan when it would allegedly matter most even though he claims an ability to reach across the aisle, etc - when Obama is reaching out to these disenchanted voters by attempting to appeal to them through these sorts of high-minded ideals that he can’t even reach, what happens when the truth comes out?

The problem is compounded by the way Obama phrases issues. Stephen Hayes over at The Wall Street Journal does a great job demonstrating this:

His rhetorical gimmick is simple. When he addresses a contentious issue, Mr. Obama almost always begins his answer with a respectful nod in the direction of the view he is rejecting — a line or two that suggests he understands or perhaps even sympathizes with the concerns of a conservative.

At Cornell College on Dec. 5, for example, a student asked Mr. Obama how his administration would view the Second Amendment. He replied: “There’s a Supreme Court case that’s going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I’ve got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably — it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That’s what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that’s a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families.”

Then came the pivot:

“Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community . . . So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don’t think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out — what are you doing?”

In conclusion:

“There is a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun traffic that is killing kids on our streets. The argument I have with the NRA is not whether people have the right to bear arms. The problem is they believe any constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don’t think that’s how most lawful firearms owners think.”

Hayes compares it to the perception of Reagan, but I don’t know if that’s accurate - Obama’s setting up where he wants you to believe his position is - in this case, a respect of the the second amendment - but, in reality, doesn’t really buy into the rights wholesale. When you read Obama’s speeches like this, you see it happen time and time again, and it works great - even I’ve been hoodwinked once or twice by the slight of hand. At what point, however, does someone who’s thinking A but realizing B act on that disconnect.

I think this is where the “policy geeks” should be very concerned. If you’re a policy geek for Obama, it’s because you buy into what he wants to do, or at least think he’ll do it better than the alternatives. Right now, the reason your horse is leading the pack is not because Obama’s got those positions, however - it’s because his rhetorical flourish is exciting people who don’t know about his economic plans or may think he’s actually strong on gun rights. McCain isn’t going to let that slide if he’s a smart campaigner, and I believe he is. If you’re inspired by Obama as a bipartisan reformer, are you going to buy into the bill of goods that Obama can’t reach when that comes out, or the solid and well-known record of McCain that can be easily demonstrated.

When you hitch your apple wagon to a star, there’s a really good chance you’ll get burned. At this point, it might be too late for the policy geeks with Obama.