Senator Obama’s Theoretical Impasse

My argument is that Mr. Barack Obama is following a plan to become president that is both clear and consistent, which makes it possible to understand why he’s done what he’s done, as well as to predict what he’ll do next. If his plan to win the nomination succeeds, however, his plan to ‘transform’ America must fail, unless he makes a mid-course correction and runs on his theory and gives up trying to paint his Democratic opponent as a ‘monster,’ and bully her out of the race.   
 
Mr. Obama started out with his ‘hope’ message, his own political theory, essentially that an unusually likeable candidate can get elected president when Americans are widely dissatisfied with our current government, which may ‘heal’ divisions and allow Americans to feel good about ourselves.  By virtue of his popularity he can then direct legislation to those areas he cares about.

He compares himself to Ronald Reagan, seeing himself as attractive to all sides. He thinks that by staying likeable he’ll win a mandate.  He nurtures his likeability by never taking sides with one group over another. That’s why he can stand next to homophobes, can compliment Bush and Rumsfeld, Kennedy and Kerry, can have a bigoted pastor, and can associate with criminal slumlords. He doesn’t have to ‘agree’ with his friends, he likes everybody.  
 

He sees education as the equalizer and he thinks opportunities are open to those with the right education and skills. He sees himself as ‘transformative’ in that he had few advantages, but made a success of himself though his Harvard education and appealing personality, and that others will be motivated to follow his example. He claims he is the best example of his ‘hope’ message working.   
 
He was winning early adherents to his ‘vision,’ mainly from among those who are already educated and who’ve already achieved some success, but it seems he couldn’t win a majority of votes.  His message is unverifiable: it’s what he would accomplish, or could accomplish, not what he’s already accomplished. To fully test his theory he must first be elected president.
 
He’s factually non-traditional; he didn’t prepare himself for the job: he hasn’t been a governor, a high-ranking senator who made a name for himself passing landmark legislation, or an influential committee chairman.  

Instead he’s a self-made man who’s written two motivational books, arriving in DC less than three years ago as a personality, at which time he allegedly made the decision to run for the presidency.  He thinks his theory worked when he was in the Illinois senate, as he quickly amassed influential supporters and bragging rights, by avoiding taking sides and by hosting a regular poker game.  

He hasn’t called a meeting of his own Senate sub-committee, even though he might have tested himself there.  He’s had a different role in mind, which he believes he can fulfill only by staying out of the fray.  This explains why he didn’t take sides in the Illinois senate – by voting present on controversial legislation.  On one hand this is expedient, yet it fits his theory, to unite by example, by getting along with everyone.     
 
In sum, his opponents in the primary race had the more traditional qualifications and experiences, whereas he had a theory based on his own personal success story as told in his motivational books, and a record of getting ahead through getting along with most everybody.
 
Before he could, so to speak, test-drive his theory, he needed to beat all the others to the finish line. His main opposition was always Mrs. Hillary Clinton, who had already amassed a large group of supporters and financial contributions. She was not only well qualified, she was also a woman, a representative of another ‘legal minority group’ that also represents change and hope.   
 
Mrs. Clinton is a strong candidate for many reasons. She was part of the Clinton administration and had a front-row seat for the power decisions that were made in her husband’s presidency. She’s been an effective senator for more than a full term, and she’s passed bi-partisan legislation that helped real people.  She’s genuinely nice and people she works with like her. Much of the best talent from her husband’s administration admired her intelligence, passion, focus and stamina, and most endorsed her. She’s friends with retired military officers and diplomats, and she has close connections to serving military.    

She’s liked and respected by professionals and experts and in turn she’s able to appreciate their talents and intelligence.  She knows many world leaders and she’s well versed in the language of diplomacy and international relations. She started her run earlier than he and she has detailed her plans for the reforms and changes that are her priorities.  She was considered the front-runner even before anyone voted, as she was qualified, prepared, funded and had a rational and appealing platform.   

She could speak on any issue, with intelligence, thoughtfulness and detail, and debate with accuracy and acumen. She is a formidable obstacle to Mr. Obama’s ambition.   
 
She also has vulnerabilities. The media mainly disliked her and many in the media had tried to sabotage her candidacy, starting when she was still first lady, when some rightly suspected she might go into politics once her husband’s political career had ended.   

There were those in the Senate who didn’t want her to succeed for personal reasons, they felt disrespected by her husband’s administration and didn’t want her husband back in any position.

One example is John Kerry, who invited Mr. Obama to give the keynote speech at the 2004 convention, and who kept Mrs. Clinton from having any formal role in the convention, while allowing his wife a long and self-serving speech. Additionally, Mrs. Clinton, as the first woman to make a credible run for the presidency, receives the ‘envy’ any ‘outsider’ trying to break forbidden ground encounters.  As to the extent her sex would be an advantage, Mr. Obama also runs as ‘an outsider,’ but still a man.  
 
Mr. Obama also has vulnerabilities, outside those who want a traditional and prepared candidate, those who need to know exactly what their president plans to do and how he or she plans to do it. His refusal to take sides means maintaining controversial associations. He early lost some LGBT voters because he wouldn’t repudiate homophobes.
 
Here we arrive at Mr. Obama’s impasse. He made the decision that he couldn’t win on his theory, but had to run against Mrs. Clinton, by trying to decrease her popularity. In this way he’s used a different and conflicting theory – poker.
 
Mr. Obama is a poker player, and he ‘called’ his game when he warned her that he plays Chicago Smack Down. This is an aggressive method of poker where even weak hands are bid up such that the most audacious player has the advantage. You may have stronger cards than Mr. Obama, but if you play poker with him you’ll have to pay to find out.  It’s a ‘better’ win if one never shows one’s hand, by scaring the others into giving up.    
 
Mr. Obama plays this presidential primary like an aggressive game of Chicago Smack Down, the end game of which is to decrease Mrs. Clinton’s popularity and ‘bully’ her into giving up.  His ‘cards’ are anything he can spin to claim she lacks honesty and integrity, that she’ll do anything to win, or that she’ll sabotage the party for personal ambition.   

He mines her speech and those of anyone connected to her to find ‘evidence’ of his ‘claims,’ which he spins into ‘proof’ of her bad character.  He accuses her of made-up offenses and pretends to be her victim. The biased media feeds on his made-up outrage and reports on her negatively. While she campaigns on the issues (her criticisms are of his positions, or are corrections of his false claims), he campaigns on her ‘character,’ by calling her names and by accusing her of nefarious motives.  On the surface these claims are absurd, yet Mr. Obama plays every hand, however weak, and he bids them up to mammoth proportions.  
 
This method has served to incite hate against Mrs. Clinton, especially with his younger and predominately male supporters.  This “Hillary Hate’ was of course latent, given that she’s the first woman, there is media bias, and some in the senate hold a grudge against her husband.

It’s easily seen, on cable news networks that advertise erectile dysfunction cures, and from certain media columnists. These ‘information outlets’ feed on any unattractive claim or so-called ‘mistake’ she makes, while forgiving all to Mr. Obama.  Had he ‘closed the deal’ early on, there would likely be no media examination of his campaign strategy.   Yet even with media bias, Mrs. Clinton has run an appealing campaign and Mr. Obama has not been able to win enough delegates to end the race.  
 
He’s now in the process of being ‘exposed’ as a negative campaigner. His problem is that Mrs. Clinton has run an ethical campaign, based on emphasizing her own qualifications and plans and by responding to current crises. She compares herself with him on the basis of being the more experienced, more transparent candidate, and as more ‘vetted’ and thus the ‘tougher to beat’ candidate.  Strangely Mrs. Clinton has turned into the ‘hope’ candidate: she won’t sink to attacking his character, she’s cheerful and upbeat, and she isn’t letting herself be bullied.
 
If Mr. Obama manages to squeak a win through attacking her character he can’t become the ‘healer’ he aspires to be. Never having been a woman, he perhaps doesn’t know that women often experience working for promotion, learning everything, producing more, and maintaining solid working relations with peers, only to find that there is a glass ceiling and some less qualified man, who’d campaigned by making false claims about her that ‘played’ in a misogynistic culture, ‘win’s it. Maybe he can’t know how women recognize his Chicago Smack Down game. Chicago Smack Down isn’t novel to working women; we all know capable women who were pushed aside or run off by aggressively ambitious men.
 
There was a time I liked Mr. Obama, but I can now barely stand him; he evokes unpleasant memories.  When he gets away with sullying her by playing her victim, it’s like I’m being sullied, and I probably feel more upset than Mrs. Clinton, who has been, after all, through this kind of thing many times before. I feel angry and helpless while watching biased media jubilate while smearing her, and it’s depressing. Fortunately far from all men are aggressively ambitious and would ‘sell me out’ to get ahead of me in line.
 
So how will Mr. Obama unite the nation if more than fifty per cent of us have the capacity to see through his ‘inspiration’ to its campaigning base of deceit, aggression and misogyny? I see Mr. Obama as the ‘male’ candidate, running to stop some uppity girl from ‘sleeping her way to the top.’  I’d vote for him, but I suspect he’d have a pyrrhic victory, unable to unite, having won on a campaign of hate. Of course, once he got in he might steal her homework and hire her staff and advisors, and then be not nearly as good a president as she. One can hope.