One of the enduring mysteries of this presidential campaign has been the uneasy doubt expressed by a few on the left about Barack Obama's overtures to many on the right. Their doubt is shrouded by suspicion as well: If Obama isn't actually in bed with Reagan Republicanism, he at least wants to be. The "proof" of this speculation -- the cynical contortion of what Obama objectively said of Reaganism into something he didn't say -- was, as we know, happily propagated by the internal opposition.
Nevertheless the doubt is indeed mysterious, if not downright puzzling. It overlooks not only Obama's far-from-conservative campaign positions and his nearly pristine liberal record in the U.S. Senate, but most of all the commonsensical political need to build, expand and even create coalitions.
Probably the most exemplary forerunner of Obama's bridge-building strategy was that of FDR's in his first presidential campaign. The left has forgotten, it would seem, that this original New Dealer, this great Keynesian, this almost singular procreator of the modern welfare state campaigned on the ineluctable wisdom of maintaining a balanced budget.
Yet whatever the leftie doubters believe today, there is no doubt that Obama's strategy of accommodation and inclusiveness is taking a painful toll on the opposition's ranks. Those he is peeling off from Republican regularity -- "Obamacans," the Illinois senator calls them -- are, as Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times wrote yesterday, "part of a striking phenomenon this campaign season."
"They are blurring -- for now, at least -- the red-blue lines that have colored the nation's politics for the last several years." Said one interviewee in the L.A. Times article, titled "They're Republican red, and true blue to Obama": "I don't feel like Obama is condemning me for being a Republican."
And that, my friends, as John McCain would say, is less the result of any ideological accommodation than, simply, of brilliant politics.
Being a relative newcomer on the national stage, Obama not only saw the opportunity to frame himself before the opposition could, he possessed the foresight to actually do so. Most pols throughout a prolonged and contentious primary season pander exclusively to their base. Obama indeed kept one partisan eye open, but he cast the other on those he would need in the general, and he has done it with unparalleled finesse.
The list of celebrity converts is already long and growing. "Susan Eisenhower, a GOP business consultant and granddaughter of President Eisenhower, has endorsed the Democratic hopeful" and "Colin L. Powell ... has hinted he may do so as well." Former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee has signed on, and even McCain's media strategist, Mark McKinnon, "says he will continue to back the Arizona senator but will step aside rather than work against Obama."
Naturally these notables, having smelled the extreme likelihood of an Obama presidency, could just be blowing with the wind. Partisanship means little when you're in the market for future favors. Hence it was the less notable interviewed in Barabak's L.A. Times piece who were of more intriguing interest. Such as Johanna Schneider -- "a former GOP staffer on Capitol Hill" -- who, "convinced that fellow Republicans have lost their way," said, "I just feel this is a tremendous opportunity to open politics up to a new generation. And I believe that Barack Obama is a genuine transformational candidate."
What's overlooked by the doubters is that Ms. Schneider's attitude did not just materialize out of some vague, "empty," pointless sense of hope, as some of the doubters' instigators would self-interestedly have you believe. It was, rather, carefully and brilliantly cultivated. And, given enough cultivation, it could change the face of partisan alignments for a generation to come and ensure the dominance of progressive politics.
The realignment's essential key is that Obama has not only framed himself, but that he's engaged in systematically reframing American interests.
"Very rarely do you hear me talking about my opponents without giving them some credit for having good intentions and being decent people," as U.S. News & World Report quoted Obama, cited in Barabak's piece. "There's nothing uniquely Democratic about a respect for civil liberties. There's nothing uniquely Democratic about believing in a foreign policy of restraint.... A lot of the virtues I talk about are virtues that are deeply embedded in the Republican Party," as they are in the Democratic.
Just as -- when stripped of their partisan rigidity -- is "repealing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy" or even "expanding the government's role in healthcare"; once, that is, it's shown that these are measures founded, after all, in the traditional American ideal of community.
In effect, Obama is merely encouraging the "others" to look past how their daddies and granddaddies may have voted, and therefore why they began voting as they did. He is merely encouraging them to look deeper, to identify their and our common interests, and recognize that those interests come with no inherent partisan label.
Obama's considered strategy should be no mystery. It's just smart politics, and of vast realignment potential.