Barack Obama, "False Hopes" and Mark Penn

Dum spiro spero

The consultancy advice offered by Senator Hillary Clinton's most senior strategic communications advisors has been costly and has offered a return on investment which is as uninspiring as it ignores the lessons of history. In this context, a concerted argument concerning ''false hopes'' ostensibly offered by Senator Obama has been advanced by some of the messaging ''experts" here in Washington for many months. A commenter writing at TPM under the sobriquet of DirkVA addresses this critique eloquently with correct invocation of the revolutionary example recently offered by South Carolina and Virginia. The voters of those states offer an example of what lies within the realm of possibility for the states of Texas and Ohio on March 4th:

"Obama got more Republican votes in the primarys that were open then even some of the Republicans running. It looks like the Republicans asked their sheep to vote for Obama because he will be easier to beat than Clinton in November."

First, the Republican discipline you assume there would require party virtues of focus and secrecy that are almost unexampled in history. Do Republicans deserve such credit, especially in the great numbers you refer to? Sheep are not usually so shrewd. Wouldn't someone have let slip the organization of such a vast conspiracy?
Do you completely disdain the possibility that a certain proportion of these people whom you breezily dismiss may have been behaving as free citizens and voting for the candidate they considered to be the best person for the office?

"It has given Obama a false sense of hope."

Have you learned nothing in this campaign? There is no such thing as a "false sense of hope." There is false security, false confidence, and self-deception (of which we've seen a remarkable display, in a camp not Obama's). But hope, which Shakespeare called inherent to the human and St. Paul even more influentially classed as one of the three supreme virtues, is symptomatic of the healthy psyche and, to the lasting glory of our species, was vividly displayed among noble survivors of Nazi camps -- whose prospects, you will surely agree, were worse than even you imagine for Obama's candidacy. (That spirit is, with exquisite fittingness, preserved in the motto of the recently crucial South Carolina: "Dum spiro spero.") The bitter attack on hope from the Clinton campaign has been a sorry spectacle and has been indispensible to their defeat.

Implying a demonization of Republicans, simply as Republicans, by assuming that they can't respond to an inspiring new appeal that didn't exist when they, or their parents, signed onto the GOP is no way to create a majority for any candidate.
Posted by DirkVA February 24, 2008 3:39 AM Reply Permalink