Waiting for Obama to Sting Like A Bee

A Weekend of Skirmishing for Obama and Clinton - New York Times

The Obama camp is circling, jabbing, trying to lay a glove on Hillary Clinton. Looking for an angle of attack that will stick. Hillary's misstep in the recent debates have opened a very small chink in her armor. Obama is worrying at the chink, trying to put stress on it and turn it into a full borne crack.

Obama has shown that he can float like a butterfly. Now he's got to sting like a bee. I keep waiting for the gloves to come off. He's got to find a way to directly put into play the assumption of Hillary's experience and greater fitness for the Presidency. He needs to find a way to swiftboat that assumption. The republicans torpedoed the contrast of Kerry's aura of being a combat tested leader vs. Bush's questionable service record by directly questioning Kerry's service in Vietnam. They cast doubt on his bravery under fire, they ridiculed his actions after coming back from Nam and when they were through, Kerry's combat tested image had been wrecked and turned into a liability he had to angrily defend.

This is Obama's challenge and thus far he has either been unwilling or unable to find a way to question what I think is an implicit assumption that Hillary is more qualified because she was a first lady for 8 years. I mean that is clearly what her claim of "readiness to lead from
Day I" rests on. That being the wife of the President qualifies you to be the President. Obama has to knee cap that argument. His campaign strategy thus far has sought to answer the issue of experience by establishing his bona fides to lead vs. hers, an approach which implicitly validates her as being the more experienced leader.

His current angle of attack is better, basically asserting that she is more experienced at being a slick politician, adept at not giving a straight answer, an angle that opened up after the last debate. He's got her a little on the defensive, but he's got to go to the body on her, which I think means he's got to directly attack the assumption that she is more experienced because she was married to the President. He's got to make that seeming qualification seem almost meaningless. But doing so will mean he'll have to get his hands dirty. I'm not sure he's ready to go there.

But I think his problem is even a little bigger than that. I like Obama, but I don't feel like he has been very definitive about where he stands. I don't feel like I have any major policy positions that he champions that really help to define the guy. Its not enough to say why Hillary is not the one, he's got to say why he is. I'm waiting for him to find his center, the core of what his campaign means and what his presidency would be about. When he finds his center that defines and sets him apart from Hillary and the rest of the pack as well, then he will be on his way.

It's Not a Question of Experience

Do you need to know the name of Pakistan's leader to be a good president? - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Candidate Obama recently said that he would not hesitate to order a strike against Osama Bin Laden on Pakistani soil if he had credible, actionable intelligence. This was shortly after one of the televised debates where he indicated he would talk to foreign dictators, a position that brought him under fire from most of the other candidates. Seeking to show that he could be a strong leader, he made these comments about Pakistan. His opponents have spun his statements about meeting foreign leaders as an issue of whether or not he has the experience to be President. Hillary uses it to highlight her "experience", which she regards as a major element that makes her the superior candidate. She however mirrored his comments about striking against Bin Laden on Pakistan soil, not to be outdone.

But this is not about experience. And what Obama's campaign trail pandering statement, the spin efforts of his rivals and the "me too" response of Sen. Clinton betrays is not a lack of experience but of analysis.

The relationship with Pakistan and its role in the fight against the Osama terror network is a complicated one. Obama says he would strike against Osama there if we had actionable intelligence. Duh. So would the Bush administration and in fact they have hit targets on Pak soil in the past. But they have done so without acknowledging such strikes, preserving plausible deniability to leave Musharaf room to maneuver. You can bet U.S. Special Forces have an ongoing presence in the tribal areas outside of government control hunting Osama and his top leadership. But we don't advertise it in order to preserve the political relationship that facilitates that hunt.

The point is that there is a balance that must be struck in the war on terror and the different fronts in that war are connected. Actions taken on one front can have serious consequences on another. What made Obama's statement noteworthy was that it was "war" talk coming from a democrat and certainly not what the left wing of his party would say, not because it was indicative of some comprehensive world view. Hillary had to follow suit to avoid being painted into a lefty corner. But in both cases, the response indicates that they have not taken their analysis of the global war on terror and American tactics for fighting it far enough. They are hardly alone in this failing within the Democratic party. There are a variety of views represented within the Democratic party. In most cases, they all betray the same lack of a complete world view or analysis based thereon, and the party itself has no dominant consensus on Iraq or its geopolitical anti-terror strategy. The top candidates exemplify this weakness.