Below is a diary about...pandering. Or how I think Obama should change the way he uses TV. It is extremely long. If you want to read it all, copy and paste it into a document, please, rather than hassling me about the length.
Versions of this were published a few days ago on Open Left. If you don't like Open Left, or if you're anti-Chicken Little, then don't read it. But Stoller and Bowers have called for adjustments in the campaign. Joe Trippi urgently called for changes here today, in a diary that scrolled off.
Nate Silver ("Poblano") at 538 published an analysis that fits in with this pretty well, I think.
This diary has to do with countering the shakeup in the election wrought by the Repubs' VP choice of SP. As each day goes by, we're seeing bad poll news. (Although I would point you at some very good news from Iowa, and that gives me hope.)
As each day goes by, if the polls don't turn around, the entire Obama campaign (of which we are a part) has to ask itself: can we keep doing what we've been doing?
This was the year the Democrats mastered "rapid response". But since Housegate faded from the news, we seem to have been thrown onto a smoke-filled battlefield on which issue debates don't seem to matter as much as they really should.
The McCain campaign has embraced a strategy of unrestricted warfare - bald-faced lies across the board. The blogs I read have responded with as much energy (and vitriol) as they can muster. Even more shocking, a majority of normally fence-sitting pundits, anchors and talking heads have come out in agreement with DKos, TPM, Huff Po, Crooks and Liars, etc.
But there are traps. First off, the voters who have been swayed by the SP phenomenon seem to be shrugging off the accusations of lying, taking a "plague on both your houses" attitude. Second, those pundits will not stand with us against poll numbers favorable to McCain for more than a few more days. If the poll numbers don't shift back by the time the first debate has been polled, they will accept the "new reality" and desert.
We might have reached a point in this campaign where 30-second spots are not going to do a damn thing, even targeted, unless they are full-out negative.
Third, in this irrational environment, I believe it's going to be pretty easy for John McCain to stay on his bicycle during the debates. The hope that Barack will "nail him" or force him into a gaffe as big as Housegate - well, it's a hope, but I'm not willing to depend on it. Barack will have to go on the attack, and coming in at that angle, he might end up looking "mean".
You say you don't care...but you should. Kerry's best day was after the first debate in 2004, and it was because Bush looked "mean." The debates are a television event. Their effect follows a television logic. Kerry "won" every debate, after all.
Fourth - this is about the famous low information or stupid voters that a lot of you guys get off on hating on. Better stop that. We can all agree that campaigns like this and governments like this are not what the country needs. But Barack has to deal with people who vote, let's say, based on impressions they get from TV.
Even according to Kos' poll, there aren't that many undecided voters left. The shift in the polls is still fluid - but it is hardening. It doesn't do any good to say these people will deserve what they get if McCain wins. Suppose they are childlike, suppose they do vote based on whims and impressions. Do you have children? What do you do when they act like this? Scream and yell and threaten?
Good luck with that.
Although this diary will print out at about 10 pages, it is not written in an academic style. It is written is impressionistic, slangy language. I am constantly shifting back and forth between viewpoints that are grounded in ordinary reality, and viewpoints that are grounded in TV reality, which I also call sitcom logic or just TV logic.
Since I'm talking about stereotypes and prejudices as things we must deal with - not just condemn - I end up reaching for words and using formulas that can easily be mistaken for racist or sexist language. Look, racism and sexism exist. Nowhere do I advocate buying into them. But if you look at voters as viewers, then you have to cater to their prejudices. Also, in order to sink McCain and his running mate, I'm OK with fighting dirty. But sneaky-dirty works better than just spitting on their shoes.
Finally: I'm undoubtedly wrong about many things. If you're looking for points to disagree with, they're on every page. But the overall thrust of the argument is based on sound principles of programming - TV, that is. Pick me to pieces all you want, but what is to be decided is this: can Obama make major adjustments to his campaign style in order to meet the challenge? If he can, then I believe this is the general direction. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube with regard to the Repubs VP and her effect. But you can open up a much larger tube. They didn't know what effect she would have. They think they have lucked out. But maybe they have freed up Obama to be Obama in a way that can still win this election by a lot, which is what we need.
This is the breaking point. If Obama decides to stay the course and run an issues and arguments-based campaign to the end, then I hope like hell I'm wrong. But I'm sticking my neck out today in a good cause because other bloggers, whose judgment about these things is respected - Bowers, Trippi, Nate Silver - have suggested that the Obama campaign needs to re-evaluate the situation.
Kerry was too stiff to cross the emotional barrier, too cerebral to win at irrational politics. Obama has the capability to blow even McCain's Jesse Ventura imitation out of the water.
But he has to go on TV to do it, because the force multiplier of being on TV, in comparison to 30-second spots, is like a hurricane vs. a sneeze.
OK - that's the end of the introduction. This is dedicated to Fred Silverman (he's still alive!).
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THE OBAMATHON (published Sept. 11)
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The Repub VP choice represented a sort of admission by that party that the issues-based campaign was a loser. But that choice has changed the dynamics of the race.
Every day since the day after Invesco, waves of attacks have been aimed at SP. Josh Marshall is apoplectic, and a wing of the punditry too, because the attacks are justified responses to open lies.
The thing is, her abuses of power are forgivable, and the lying marked down as accidental, IF you are strongly impelled to defend SP. Remarks by voters in Lebanon OH expressed this kind of allegiance over and above any issue. The famous "stupid voters" can attach themselves to SP's image-on-TV easily.
In addition, the Republicans are laying down a barrage of artillery support for SP, in a way that precisely takes advantage of lessons learned by Democrats about rapid response. The wolf ad, the sex ed ad, the "he called her a pig" flap - it's like a kind of video game. It takes too long for the guns of the blogs and the papers to burn through particular lies and outrageous accusations. After a day or two the Republicans just sort of leave the point moot - in the meantime, the acrimony has made a few more people feel that both sides are equally "mean". So in this context, rapid response doesn't make you a counterpuncher. It is the Repubs who are just jabbing, jabbing, and when the response comes, they just fade back and launch another attack from another angle.
Obama has been thrown into a difficult position because of something I will call sitcom logic.
Let's stipulate that there's a group of voters that don't take their civic duties seriously - people who seem capable of voting against their own rational interests in favor of some kind of Gemeinschaft or Gemutlichkeit of race or gender. We can be kinder and say that America has produced a lot of people who have allowed their lives to trick them into working like crazy, really for little reward. When they get home they want to eat and watch TV. They don't want to be upset. If they feel positively about something, it's expressed irrationally because of the way the news is presented. If they feel negatively about something, they could end up "just not liking" someone whose programs would benefit them.
The full extent of the culture of marriage and family has been denied to many of these people. As a substitute, they have television shows, not all of which are sitcoms, but which develop TV personae, images and characters, according to a certain logic. Remember, sitcoms themselves were an "advance" in television toward the presentation of "real" people.
The point is leverage. If you can get a demographic to identify with a TV character, their opinion can be influenced with greater intensity and greater coverage than ad campaigns can achieve. "Attraction is better than promotion."
Americans rely, not on individual shows, but on this general way of evaluating what acceptable behavior is. Ad campaigns can be hung one after another on a solid character that resonates with a public.
SP is being asked to be such a character. Actually, she is only being asked to be herself. She's a ditz - but there are millions of women who will forgive her misstatements because they get "smacked down" for things they say or do. She obviously went off on a trooper and then on his boss in an administratively klutzy way - but she did it for her sister. Her daughter's pregnancy was the real tipoff. While Democrats were hoping that would upset the fundies! SP picked up sympathy for ALL of it.
Women will be pulled to SP by the power of group identification the way blacks were eventually pulled in by Obama. They couldn't pass it up. Although I think women will prove much less of a bloc vote, the danger to Obama is clear.
I know this is an irrational argument. In fact it's not an argument at all, but a description of feelings. On the topic of argument, though, consider this problem in sitcom logic. On television, things are different than they are in real life. In real life, many women are dependent on men. But on sitcoms, women are much more independent, and on TV in general. On TV, women seldom have to wait their turn to speak. And as for arguing - nobody can out-argue a female main character, above all not a male main character. The very attempt invites disaster. In sitcoms, men who throw their weight around end up being made fun of and humiliated.
SP can lie, exaggerate, and play with her emotions in any argument. As long as the pace of new kerfuffles keeps up, she will be seen by some women as merely defending her dignity, that is, her logical right not to lose ANY argument with a man.
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Let's say that the stupid voters (and some others) are viewers of The Government Show, that comes on several times a day. They are not choosing an instrument to carry out a program. They are contracting a relationship. The president is the father - or mother - of a country. Consider successful sitcom fathers (the ones everybody else works around are more numerous) - Cosby, the father on Fresh Prince (who is still the butt of a lot of jokes).
Women dominate these situations. However, SP does have some of the characteristics of a typical sitcom ditz. Her voice grates. Her nickname - barracuda - goes to the fact that's she's a schemer. This is a recognizable character, and not a well liked one. Many women in big roles in sitcoms and in reality TV are talkative gladhanding schemers.
In effect, Obama and SP are now the main characters in a sitcom-like season of The Government Show. This season, the power of pundits and anchors to drive the news will be limited. It is a year of comeuppances. Hillary had hers, and the GOP VP losers had theirs. And the journos and TV talking heads that are now trying to hold SP's feet to the fire may have theirs. I think Chris Matthews has already demonstrated this. After Invesco he was talking about running against Specter. Now he sees a few days of bad polling and he's already tacking toward Audie Murphy.
In the sitcom world, Obama can be set opposite SP.
In this world, a positive image for black people, as long as they are reasonably well-intentioned, is recognized. Their "oppressed" status is recognized. That's why the TV president didn't have to wait long to be black.
The "oppressed" position of women is also compensated, partly as a function of the ethics of sitcom behavior, partly as a riposte to the perceived stereotypical weaknesses of women compared to men in daily life.
How can Obama muffle or cushion the shock of TV-SP? Within sitcom logic, she is challenging his authority. Everybody has been complaining that SP is just a VP choice, she's not matched up with Obama. But in TV logic, she is, because they are "minorities", they are "firsts", they are "change" in two versions.
McCain is nowhere in this situation. The people of America want him to be an icon, but they don't want to see his face. McCain will just try to backpedal during the debates. The Repubs remember that the worst scare they got in 2004 was after Bush was "mean" in the first debate. They'd love to have Obama come out combative in the debates. (Although that too could backfire on them.) Biden is nowhere. He and McCain are not main characters. McCain is like "the owner". SP will express McCain. McCain will echo SP. He's racking up points with women by staying out of her way and not correcting her or dominating her in any way.
Obama has to create a venue where he can do several things at once. He has to "come home" and confront ALL the attacks made on him at once. More than that, he can't "refute" them because in the TV world, argument is not a connected series of propositions leading logically to a conclusion. It is a form of battle.
Obama needs to be on television:
(1) for a long time. The effect of Invesco was like that of a star appearing to close the show. But people always want to get closer to stars, and bring them down to their level. The models are Leno and Letterman, because people see them all the time and they don't get tired of them. Every second Obama is live on TV is like a million 30-second spots.
(2) The point of these appearances does not have to be divorced completely from issues. It's going to be a talk show. Obama is the host. There will be videos, there will be music, there will be testimony, but instead of all this building up to Obama, he will be there throughout as host. There will be many opportunities to "hit" the keywords that are connected to issues - a woman's right to choose, creating jobs, making peace. But the issue references must come out of the flow of the show. They will be applause lines, but no lecturing.
(3) The Obamathon will not be difficult to get people to appear on. But since the whole purpose is to create a TV personality for Obama, we have to talk about the components of that personality.
3a) Obama must be happy. While I think he can't be the star he needs to be with his wife too much in evidence, I think his daughters could be big hits - they're so smart and funny and well-behaved. Further, it's obvious that Obama loves his daughters above all else. So if they're there, he's going to be relaxed and HAPPY. Happy is key.
3b) Obama must be happy EVEN THOUGH he is facing the failure of his hopes and possible defeat. That is, there's no point in putting on the usual "You bet your ass we're winning!" attitude. Ground-based politicians are never supposed to admit they're in trouble. But on the Obamathon, Obama should speak easily about the spirited challenge of McCain. The point is, his inner happiness must be shown to be so unshakable that he is not afraid of defeat (because everybody realizes now that he might get beat, why pretend?). This is important, because what TV voters hate more than anything is a President who goes on TV and tells you everything is screwed up, and who looks unhappy about it.
3c) It's crucial to show that Obama can "walk with kings yet keep the common touch". The whole Obama-as-elitist thing was a natural consequence of his newness. Obama first had to show he was up to the task. He had to win his wings, make his bones. But he did that almost too well. Going on TV for a long continuous stretch is the can't-miss antidote to accusations of elitism, because Obama is going to do all kinds of folksy things. Some woman from Kentucky will cook him up a mess of squirrel. He can love it, or he can gag - because it's going to be funny. It will be easy as hell for Obama to get laughs. All he has to do is be a dead game sport like Carson or Letterman when ordinary people come on the show to represent various places in the country, to represent various occupations.
3d) There are funny guests and there are "sympathy" guests. The point of funny guests is to allow Obama to be unbuttoned and down-home - like Arsenio with a brain. The funny guests' segment will focus on localities - it will be a small town smorgasbord. Nothing dramatic or wrenching.
But there will also be serious guests like the people who made the little speeches before Obama at Invesco - the ordinary people. They were an unexpected hit. People can talk movingly about their own problems - facing sickness without health care, trying to keep families together without a job, suffering inside because of relatives in the Army, etc.
And Obama will LISTEN. He's got to listen his skinny butt off. Hillary and Obama were always working this kind of story into their speeches - "the legless welder I met in Poughkeepsie" - and they always sounded really fake because they didn't give enough information. They were trying to humanize themselves, but since that was an unfamiliar task they didn't spend time on it.
On TV that is all you have - time to let the voice of suffering America be heard. And Obama just listens sympathetically. I mean, how hard will it be to find someone to put on that will end up crying to him for help? And Barack - if you feel moved - you can cry too, it's allowed.
But he won't just listen. He's got to be moved. In some cases he can answer these people by referring to something he wants to do when he's Prez. But in other cases - he must BE the Prez/King and ACT. He must give his own money away to these people (now Michelle can come out, because the money in a household belongs to the wife in TV logic and she's got to approve). He will fix it - and then we cut to some music, because the worst thing is to make a magnanimous gesture like that and then bask in it. He's got to get off stage after a blowoff like that.
3e) There are other aspects of the emotional deployment of Obama on TV. He has to be vulnerable. I don't mean the possibility of a "gaffe". The Obamathon is gaffe-proof as long as he doesn't make a huge one, because he's almost never going to be on stage BY HIMSELF. There's always going to be women on stage - some men, but lots of women, preferably older, like Claire McCaskill - and there's the audience. If he makes a goof, he gets called on it immediately, and he gets LAUGHED AT. That's important. If this can be scripted, fine, but everyone needs to understand that Barack is just like us, you can laugh at him when he goofs, and he will laugh too! This all goes back to the perceived imperturbability of Obama, and the durability of his happiness. Nothing makes him mad (other than injustice). He appreciates the fact that he has authority, and that if he calls for attention he's gonna get it - and he doesn't overuse this power. He's a father figure, but he's a nice father. He never gets angry.
Once this persona is established, HE CAN INVITE HIS OPPONENTS ON THE SHOW. This is virtually no-lose. Everybody, including TV voters, wants an end to party-related recriminations. Really piss the Repubs off. Do they dare? They'll probably just get their own show.
On television, Barack could pet a wolf. He could put lipstick on a real pig (with double-entendres out the ass), and then let them come out against that in high dudgeon. Mr. and Mrs. America want to laugh, folks. They want the Government Show to be happy sometimes, even through the gloom of recession.
3f) One more possibility - Obama can talk to people (maybe over the phone) who are not going to vote for him - even people who are not going to vote for him because he's black or because they think he's a Muslim. He can call these people. He can talk really nice to them. This could be set up to some extent. He doesn't have to convert the person - just talk to him. He can remonstrate gently - "Well, Bob, you know, you may not think much of my church, but I accepted Jesus as my personal savior a long time ago, Bob, I'm not just saying that. And it hurts me to hear you say you think I'm a Muslim, I mean, Bob, how would you feel? I read the Bible every night..." "Well, Jane, you know, this is something I can't do anything about. I mean, I can't change the color of my skin. But my mother was a white woman, you know, and I was raised by white people..."
Everything works as long as it is sweet. And if anybody gets into the audience to attack him - well, you play that by ear, but he'd have everything going for him, and they can cut to a commercial while they hustle the guy out. You do have to control the images. Nobody in the audience can have cameras. Nobody.
Obama must demonstrate a willingness to admit mistakes. Surely with all the reversals in the real news, he can find one and say, they hoodwinked me, but they won't do it again. I said, Obama can't get angry. But he can get BRIEFLY righteously indignant against some really bad injustice suffered by an ordinary person. He can get sarcastic against something like "the Bush administration listening to all our phone calls". He can refer to these things lightly, and give a longer answer in a press release later. But lightly, lightly. The important thing is that his emotions don't come into play on his OWN behalf, but on behalf of us.
The ratings would be incredible.
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WHY SITCOM LOGIC DOES NOT FAVOR OBAMA, AND WHY THE OBAMATHON CAN CHANGE THIS:
BARACK, HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE US?
I see more clearly now that there's an important point I need to make, to clear up a confusion. I am not ADVOCATING that Obama make a sitcom out of the election contest. I am saying that the choice of SP did that, and the Obamathon is an attempt to get OUT OF the sitcom that we are now in. At the same time, I have to make the point that sitcom logic is the reason why things are not working as we expect them to - why Republican lies are not damaging them, why a segment of voters has suddenly shifted away from Obama, why rapid response and 30-second ads are not having much of an effect, etc.
The choice of SP has created a sitcom that is not favorable for Obama, because of certain aspects of sitcom logic. The Obamathon is an attempt to put Obama on TV in a way that breaks up the story arc of the sitcom we are in. (This sitcom is a televised-perception fact because Obama and SP have the highest Q rating (they are what people are paying attention to), as well as sharing a number of TV-categorical identifications: both "minorities", both "firsts", both "change".)
It is as if The Government Show has these two main characters at present: Obama and SP "work for the same company" (a workplace is a family: cp. the shows Taxi or Cheers). They are in competition for what amounts to the same job, since both cannot succeed. Other characters exist, but the axis of the story arc has to be how this black man will end up relating to this white woman.
Sitcoms are comedies of manners. In sitcoms, everyone has two social duties - which are also duties in real life, but the point is not everybody agrees, and in this respect sitcoms are educative. These duties are to be properly respectful of black people, and of women. Characters who are openly racist or sexist end up being the butt of jokes, are unhappy, and are always getting their comeuppance.
But having a black and a woman as main characters, in a situation where only one can succeed, is like a conflict of two duties. If the conflict matches Obama against SP directly, then people can take the position - all of this is in the imaginary, "feelings" part of decision-making - that the woman actually represents the greater change. Race prejudice comes into this as a matter of degree, rather than as an absolute. At the point where sitcom logic or duty crosses over into the real world - a voting choice must be made - people now have an excuse NOT to vote for Obama, without feeling that they are being personally racist.
This is why any residual overt racism in the Republican campaign is masked as criticism of Obama as "uppity" or "acting like he's a celebrity". This is important: the Republicans have proscribed actual racial slurs, but have apparently given permission for "uppity" to be used, indicating that they still want to play the elitist card, wrapped in the "celebrity" smear. This reinforces the TV impression of a disliked sitcom character, as opposed to SP-Laverne-Shirley-Rhoda-That Girl, etc., all decidedly not stuck-up. The tail they're trying to pin on Obama is that he is stuck-up.
In this installment of The Government Show, Obama could simply not get the job. This is the threat SP poses to Obama directly. Faced with a situation that seems to demand that they choose between the two, to like one better for the job, and to like one less, it could come down to Obama seeming too cool after his victory over Hillary. People might decide he doesn't deserve a second victory over a woman, especially if they can catch him being mean.
This gives us a good explanation for why the normal, and normally combative tools for political fight, battle, and opposition seem not to be working the way they should. Characters on sitcoms are either nice and likable and folksy - or they are ambitious and self-centered, the kind of people who make sarcastic remarks and embarrass the nice people. Sitcoms are not "dramatic"; they don't involve tragedy. The ambitious sitcom character is very likely to fall apart and cry if he doesn't get the thing he wants. But that only brings up the morally educative function of sitcoms. It's wrong to want something bad enough - on sitcoms anyway - to hurt other people in order to get it. Worse, people who attack other people are usually being set up for a comeuppance. The comeuppance, in which the niceness of nice characters is affirmed, is the closest thing to a dramatic reversal in a sitcom. The loser is supposed to learn the lesson that niceness is what wins, not meanness and over-competitiveness. Further, there's still a technically sexist aspect of sitcom logic - women are allowed to complain about being attacked, and about being patronized at the same time. We see this happening in pundit discussions. One pundit says that female candidates should not ask for special treatment - another pundit decries the fact that the first woman candidate (in a while) can't be treated politely (and if you're Dick Morris, you are both of these).
As for John McCain, I think the Republicans have been applying TV logic if not sitcom logic. McCain will try to withdraw into the background, quite literally because his face is a liability. The more McCain is on TV, the worse it is for him. There are not many more softball situations for him, no more acceptance speeches. He will try to make SP the visible face of his campaign. In the debates, he will not try to "score a knockout". He will just soft-pedal it, and show flashes of his genuine wit. If he is still ahead in the polls, he will be respectful to Obama.
I think they want Obama to come out smokin' in the debates. And I think Obama is likely to do that. But the issues-based campaign is over, in the sense that undecided voters might make their choices on image rather than issues. I'm not saying Obama shouldn't disagree with McCain - but to be honest, I don't think Obama has that much upside in the debates. Remember, the only time Kerry really looked like a winner was after the first debate with Bush - and that was because Bush came off as "mean".
In all three debates, Obama would do better to be nice.
SP, after her acceptance speech, focus-grouped as "mean" to quite a few women, and it was a turn-off. This was in reference to her sarcastic one-liners aimed at Obama. But while the Obamathon is an attempt to build Obama a TV personality that is much larger than the sitcom logic, SP is threatened within sitcom logic by meanness and by fake-ness.
People have noticed that something is going on with the way McCain presents himself with SP. They are not making SP a surrogate wife. Rather, McCain reinforces the respect-for-women meme by staying out of SP's way and not correcting her or dominating her in ANY way. (Correlatively, any audio of SP "receiving her instructions" or being dressed down in ANY way from McCain or an adviser will shake up her entire persona. Live by sitcom logic, die by it. A word to the wise on SP's campaign plane! No individual lie will change the way people see her - but ANY real evidence of SUBSERVIENCE might destroy her persona, and of course that's most of what she has. If SP can be shown to be a fake, she's done, but it can't be the result of an attack. She must walk into it.)
As for Joe - he cannot, must not "debate" SP. His problem is how to compliment her effectively without being patronizing. I'm serious. The issue-based campaign is over. This is because at his age, the only relationship he can have to SP is fatherly, or better, uncle-y (avuncular). The Republicans will set trap after trap for Joe to look patronizing. Truly, he should shake his head at her wonderfulness, and just repeat what he's done for women (VAWA ain't chopped liver.)
McCain has the same problem, but since he looks like he could be Joe's father, he literally is not a sitcom character at all - that is, in sitcom logic he represents the character of the big boss or owner who might raise an eyebrow from time to time, but who basically just supports the initiatives of the female lead, in this case SP. Other characters in the sitcom might threaten to tattle to the big boss, but the female has him wrapped around her finger. (No one ever said sitcoms were orthodox feminism.) Meanwhile, in reality, male voters will tend to accept SP as a surrogate for McCain himself, and the idea that she might become the actual president is one these voters will suppress.
As it is, that is what SP is poised to do to Obama. Make him look mean. Snarky is mean. Direct criticism of her is mean, and direct criticism of McCain is criticism of her.
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The Obamathon breaks up the black man - white woman sitcom story arc by recasting Barack. The way to cancel the sitcom is to put him in another kind of show. If Obama does the Obamathon talk show, SP and McCain are likely to put on their own show. But I don't think it will be as good.
I'm afraid that Barack won't want to do this. I'm not sure that coolness people pick up on - along with everything else exciting and good - isn't actually there. I think he has withdrawn a part of himself from this campaign; I think it's not so much that he needs to show emotion as: he has to find an emotion he can safely show.
What emotions? He can sympathize deeply - empathize and share pain. He can rejoice. He can be judicious, weigh problems, and give sober but forgiving and fatherly advice.
I'm talking about the Obamathon.
Obama needs to be on TV in a RELAXED SITUATION. Send surrogates to the rallies, and tell everybody to watch the Obamathon. Stop running around the country trying to be in every state at once. This is a real-world value too. The campaigns have become so physically hard as to make candidates more likely to make gaffes.
That means a telethon, or an hour-long show. Eight minutes on Letterman is no longer enough. And I want him on TV everyminute they can afford. I don't know why they couldn't sell commercials. And not just one hour. Every hour you can get. The ratings will tell you when it's wearing off.
Changing the sheer SCALE of the conflict could dare SP to try to outdraw Obama. (A show is "bigger" than a rally, even if there are fewer people.) But the Repub convention suggests that television production is not strong for them this year.
Obama must show that he can listen to ordinary people - almost at any length. This is something really good in the particular logic of The Government Show, because none of the Bushes can stand to do that, and McCain can't either. They barely manage to conceal their fear of ordinary people, or being stuck in an elevator with them. If SP is ever caught fussing at a maid in a hotel, she's toast. I believe she is overbearing and vindictive in real life, but it will be hard to make stick without a real-time example.
I think the specific antidote to Palin's femaleness is OLDER WOMEN who can be mother figures for Barack. Women in general are still willing to let the man take the center stage as long as it's clear that he is protected against acting like a typical MAN by older mothers who come forward to nudge him back into line from time to time. I don't think it would be a bad idea to have female Democratic leaders fulfilling this function. There has to be a constant emphasis on different parts of the country. Also, in doing this show you can tape segments and play them at any time. The show will still have its "live" value even if only a small part is actually live.
If the Repubs say it's pandering, you must be doing something right. Atrios was right when he said, they just want to piss us off. Well, this would piss them off. It's deliciously quasi-legal. But at this point I think their crazy attacks have inoculated everybody. They'll end up wanting their own telethon. Good luck with that. I don't think they can produce it.
The Obamathon can inoculate Obama against being called mean (= elitist, "uppity", "thinks he's better than you"). He will be what he is - the cynosure of the eyes of the Muses that surrounded him at his birth. The antidote for the overworked SP: OLDER MOTHERS. Older mother figures can license the "exercise of wisdom" on TV by Barack Obama.
He can move from "candidate to serve the people" to serving them, directly, in real time.
The audience will not be noisily partisan. If a negative figure appears, they must not erupt. They can loudly approve, but not jeer as on Springer...because that is mean.
Finally, Barack can speak. He can make speeches...sitting down if they're short. We all know it's his talent. He can open the show and close it...with a prayer. "all praise and honor to God..." Was he embarrassed saying that? I wanted him to say it every time.
Love is important. Obama sometimes says "Love you" after speeches. The Obamathon would allow him to talk about it in a safe controlled setting. The President is not the Head Bureaucrat. He is the father of the country. His potential authority is far greater than anything the theory of the unitary executive can dream up - as long as he appeals to the people in the right way.
For example, we know that Obama suffered when his mom died of cancer. He uses this to illustrate his commitment to health care. But his mother needs to be more present in the minds of viewers. We need to understand how he felt when she died. He needs to share some things, maybe not this, but something similar, with the audience. His backstory, his biography is good, but it's way too thin. People need to feel his story. If this can be produced as a video to be shown, that might work - but it could also be elicited by people he's talking to.
This is the bottom line. People might like SP - though it's entirely possible they won't like her for very long. Still, they might like her for two months.
But the country could still fall completely in love with Obama. He has to use his talent, not just his intelligence. But more than anything else, he needs to appear in a venue where he can express his great love, not for the flag, or the troops, or patriotism - but us. Obama can walk through the election and win the great victory we all want and need, but he must humble himself to adopt, however temporarily, our crazy culture. He can fuss at us to turn off the TV next year - but now he needs to show us how much he loves us, in all the ways described above.
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