In my political memory I don't recall having ever seen the mighty Republican Establishment so imposingly unnerved by one, rather scrawny potential opponent. It's like a run-up to the David-and-Goliath smackdown, only this time the dumb giant knows of the pebble's fatal sting.
The Establishment's, shall we say, "premortem" effort in defusing Barack Obama's crossover lethality has been endlessly amusing. For this is also the first time in memory it's been forced to play nice -- a most unnatural and disagreeable role for these chaps. Hence they're not very good at it. And it shows.
The latest installment of "What in God's name do we do?" comes from Peter Wehner, a former assistant to the White House's current and seemingly anonymous Republican occupant. Yesterday he wrote in the Washington Post what you might call a kind of stern, parental preview of the Establishment's coming tough-love strategy: "He may be enticing, dear laddies and lassies, but your brain on Obama will kill."
Wehner first went out of his way to identify with the potentially and haplessly wayward, a bit like the cops do in those classroom D.A.R.E. programs. He asks: "What is at the core of Obama's appeal?"
Well, the Illinois senator is a shiny bauble indeed, answers Wehner. He comes packed with "personal grace and dignity," not to mention he's "pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt" -- a not inconsiderable club that's becoming less exclusive by the day.
Third, says Wehner, "Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment." And that, of course, is both the problem and challenge for the GOP Establishment: How to foment disunity and despair, the twin pillars of Republican victories since the postwar era.
So, having played nice, having conceded the allure of a genuinely brighter morning in America, Wehner then reaches for his Taser, to stun the brotherly errant back into dismal reality and reassure the still-faithful. "The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal" ...
... Blah, blah, blah. You can fill in the predictable blanks from there, or keep reading Wehner, since he does it for you: "Whether we're talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts, the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the views of the special-interest groups on the left."
Coming to Wehner's aid, among others, is that Establishment factory of disunity, despair, division and resentment, the Republican National Committee, which "has emphasized a recent analysis suggesting that Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate last year." As I said, blah, blah, blah. It's merely punching the air.
For what Wehner & Co.'s analyses and feeble counterattacks utterly miss is that after seven indecent years of their ideological Goliath -- ruling like a Stalinist dogmatist on everything from the economy to foreign policy to science -- the American people are just plain sick of the whole left-right, Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative thing. Personally I'm not. I happen to thrive on it and enjoy counting ideological angels on pinheads with the best of them.
But Mr. Wehner and I aren't the broad electorate -- and it, quite frankly, simply no longer gives a damn. It just wants some reassurance that things will be all right, and that there's someone at the top who does give a damn, non-ideologically speaking.
Which means, by definition, inclusion. And inclusion Obama is delivering with powerful effect. As even the conservative Joe Scarborough of MSNBC fawns: "He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does]."
Neither did Bill Clinton in 1992. It was smart politics then, and it's smart politics now.
It's also winning politics, if that's your bag, and even much of the foreign press sees its wisdom. As Andrew Rawnsley of the British paper, The Observor, wrote yesterday: "Of all the candidates this Tuesday, he is potentially the most transformative president for a country thirsting for a change from political failure, poison and gridlock."
For progressives, the most satisfying outcome? Should Obama go all the way, he'd prove the RNC right -- and with an unstoppable mandate.
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to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. I beg your indulgence, but with a good and final push today we can wrap up this deplorable but quite necessary begging. Thank you so much -- P.M.