Defining Obama for America

The first rule of politics, they say, is to define yourself and your opponent before he gets to define himself and define you.

Right now, you can’t be too happy if you are a Democrat.

Day after day, Barack Obama is being defined as a liberal, elitist, corrupt, racist-hugging radical. Bitterquiddick, Reskorama, Wrightology. It just goes on and on.

And what is John McCain doing? According to Jennifer Rubin at New York Observer McCain is touring the backcountry.

While Obama was fending off stories about his flag pin and his wife’s comment that she had never been proud of America, McCain was reveling in nostalgia over his family’s military service and the sacrifices he made in service of “a cause greater than [himself].”



While Obama deals with question after question about his spotlight-dwelling mentor Reverend Wright, McCain introduced us to his salt-of-the-earth English teacher who, McCain says, influenced his character and values. The implicit message is that the other guy has Wright’s invective and McCain has Mr. Ravenel’s honor code.

Don’t worry, Rubin continues. Eventually McCain will have to talk about foreclosures, health care, and education: The Issues.

She’s wrong, of course. RIght now, McCain is running around defining himself to ordinary voters that aren’t too politically active. As he defines himself, he contrasts himself with his opponent and defines his opponent.

And once you have defined yourself and defined your opponent for the voters it becomes very difficult to change their first impression. That’s the second law of politics.

It can’t hurt that McCain really is a crusty old white guy who believes in character and values. And Obama is not, as he maintains, the candidate of “unity” and “change” but a Sixties retread on domestic policy and a 1930s retread on foreign policy, as Thomas Sowell writes.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things ’” using the mantra of “change” endlessly ’” the cold fact is that virtually everything has says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Sowell tells the story of baseball player Paul Waner making his 3,000th hit. The fielder didn’t handle the ball cleanly, so Waner asked the scorer to record the hit as an error.

One day America will elect a black president, reckons Sowell. Let’s make sure he’s a good one.