While recent months have witnessed Rove-like talking points against Obama coming from the Clinton campaign, ABC debate "moderators," and others in the mainstream media, there's nothing quite like seeing them boiled down to one column in the Wall Street Journal by the man himself. While following another diarist's link to Daniel Henninger's WSJ column announcing that Obama is the de facto nominee, I came across the column by Karl Rove from yesterday's WSJ entitled "Is Barack Obama Ready for Prime Time?"
It's worth studying Rove's points closely so we know exactly what we're up against, for in it he outlines the absurdities we'll be hearing ad infinitum between now and November 4. Here are a few key points:
Rove starts out by defining Obama's Pennsylvania loss in melodramatic terms:
After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. . . . His words wear especially thin when he was dealt a defeat like Tuesday's. Mr. Obama was routed despite outspending Hillary Clinton on television by almost 3-1.
This is followed with Rove's take on the demographic weaknesses exposed by the Pennsylvania results:
She did better – and he worse – than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. Mrs. Clinton won two of these four affluent suburban counties, home of the white-wine crowd Mr. Obama has depended on for victories before. . . . In the small town and rural "bitter" precincts, she clobbered him.
He also directly parrots the Clinton camp's talking points about the popular vote, and Michigan and Florida delegates (or are they parroting him?):
Mr. Obama could have more delegates, but she could have more popular votes. In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast. . . . Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.
So if anyone out there is still thinking that it's harsh to accuse the Clintons of being Rove-like, there's your evidence: almost the same words we hear out of Clinton surrogates on a daily basis!
Although Rove also describes the challenges facing Clinton, while treating Obama as the evident Democratic nominee, where the column really merits attention is its the second half, where he outlines the anti-Obama talking points that will carry Republicans into the fall:
And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. . . . Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. . . . Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. . . . He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.
Rove likes his point about Obama being like Adlai Stevenson so much that he repeats it as the article comes to an end:
But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.
While the most significant way that Barack Obama is like Adlai Stevenson is probably that they're both thin (and thoughtful), it does appear that Americans — the vast majority of whom have probably long forgotten, or perhaps have never even heard of, the losing democratic nominee from half a century ago — are about to get a crash (if distorted) history lesson courtesy of Rovian talking points, which we're bound to hear repeated out of many mouths many times over many months to come.
So there you have it: Obama is a do-nothing egghead senator only concerned with his own political future who whines about his treatment while engaging in old-style attacks that show he's a phony. (Rove's article of course also threw in the obligatory reference to Rev. Wright and other little snide asides, though I didn't quote all of them in order not to go beyond fair-use examples from a relatively short column. I recommend following the link and reading the original in full, since Rove manages to be subtle along with the hammer blows. His tactics bear study so we can inoculate ourselves fully against them.)
Can Obama weather all this?
Of course he can. Because he has strengths Stevenson never did, including genuine charisma, a grassroots movement behind him, and a netroots smart enough to stand up to Rovian talking points every time we hear them!