What Obama forgot: It’s All About The Narrative.

Earlier this week, I wrote about what Obama must do to regain the advantage in the race. I said that he should put out a new ad that takes the fight to McCain and challenges him on his core qualities. Well, its clear that the campaign reads this blog because they followed my advice and within a day came out with an ad which does just that: take on his maverick-ness.

But the question is: Is it enough? It’s not clear enough to me that it is.

Right now the campaign has become battle of character. That’s all the Republicans have to run on and, with the “sex ed for kindergarteners” ad and the “lipstick on a pig” issue they are running with it as far as it will take them. Its a very smart strategy. When Obama responds, as he must, to these ridiculous attacks by saying McCain is shameless and has no character, he eventually comes up against the brick wall that is John McCain’s story. A man who has been tortured in the name of the country can say pretty much anything and keep his character intact. And, my feeling is that, so far, Obama’s responses -- the ad and the “enough is enough!” comments today – have done nothing to change the terms of the fight in any fundamental way.

And this got me thinking: Obama used to have character issues as part of his campaign. In January, he promised to run a new kind of race. Unfortunately, over the summer, the persona the public fell in love with over the course of the primaries disappeared. For my money, what Obama forgot is that a race is all about creating a compelling narrative and sticking to it. It was always a vague narrative, but the bits that shown through were compelling: the possibilities of moving past partisan divisions, running a race that was more willing to challenge conventional liberal thinking, and that held the promise of moving to a new place in race relations. But then the campaign changed. David Brooks takes it from here:

...over the course of the spring, Obama’s campaign got less weird. The crucial pivot came when he failed to seize on McCain’s offer to do a series of joint town-hall meetings across the country. Those meetings would have elevated the race and shown that Obama is willing to take risks in order to truly change the way things are done.

Instead, Obama’s speeches became more conventional, more policy-specific and more orthodox. His Denver acceptance speech was different from his Iowa speeches. It was more traditionally anti-Republican and pro-Democratic.

Brooks is right. The town-hall meetings would have been truly new and potentially transformative. Not doing them Obama showed that his message of changing the system was at least partially hollow. Obama had started to tell a story about where the country could go and how it could get there (though it needed to be fleshed out a lot). But then he threw the story out. At that moment, he laid the groundwork that has given McCain the opening of the last two weeks.

The thing is, I can understand why threw it out. The story he was telling was new and unfamiliar – Bipartisanship?? Moving “beyond” race?? Talking to our enemies in a post 9-11 world?? Were these things possible or just fantasies? To tell the story fully was to really break with the past in a radical way and embrace a new and uncertain future. The story (like Obama) doesn’t fit into the country’s known categories. When Reagan declared that it was “Morning in America,” he, too, told a story of where the country could go (an interesting article that doesn't quite get it right is here):



This ad was one of familiar images that the country had of itself – of hard-working families, marriage, etc. – AND it connected with the image people had of Reagan, an image formed over decades as a movie star and politician. People believed that message coming from Reagan. But, the same can’t be said for Obama. No one knew what a future with Obama would feel like. What he had to do from the beginning, and what he never did, was SHOW people what change meant. Without a track record, without any actual examples to point to, he needed to use his campaign’s actions as the example of change. This is what the town-hall meetings could have helped accomplish.

So, can he regain the narrative again? Probably not in a significant way -- there’s just not enough time. Though – a happy thought, just in case I’m giving the impression all is lost -- I still think he can regain the advantage and win. Now, since he can’t change his own narrative, what he has to do is tear down the other guy’s narrative. This is what he’s been trying to do for the last few days. Tough, he may even have to go farther and goad McCain into sinking to lower and lower depths and hope that at some point McCain just goes too far. It could happen. These guys are shameless and could easily overstep themselves -- McCain’s reputation as a man of honor can work both ways. If it works, then issues are all that’s left, and the campaign will be fought on his turf.