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For a moment, forget one or both of the races that Barack Obama was born into — even though the brilliant spine of his campaign strategy is to never let that happen.
Consider that this ephemeral, egotistical person of no visible achievement since his college days ended a quarter-century ago had the chutzpah to write 2 autobiographies — aren’t I something? — before reaching his mid-40s.
In Biblical days, this would have been called a miracle. In our time, it represents knife-slick marketing, or, more plainly, fooling the intimidated peasants not once but twice.
Make no mistake that intimidation and subtlety are the gleaming twin towers of this odd, but winning, campaign, which appears to be sitting astride a foundation of philosophical feathers. Since graduation, the guy has been exclusively dedicated to selling himself rather than producing. Instead of making a difference, he has been fully focused on making useful connections guaranteed to grease his jump onto the next square.
Not even airheaded Madonna had the gall to try what Mr. Obama pulled off twice with publishers even though by any objective barometer she owns a superior resume.
Three Celebrities for a Common Reason
This week’s shrewd John McCain commercial — that charged the decidedly unaccomplished Mr. Obama, like our gal pals Britney and Paris, is only famous for being famous — has generated so much heat nationwide that it is now ranked as the master stroke of the McCain campaign.
But for unadulterated cleverness, the Obama team considerably outshines Mr. McCain’s handlers because they have conceived the first foolproof campaign strategy in American history.
Although bombast traditionally gets the credit, subtle tactics cooked up in a backroom, far from view, usually form the mainspring behind winning political campaigns.
To create their unique recipe for victory, the Obama handlers started with two extraordinarily advantageous ingredients — an ostensibly erudite, handsome, charismatic, youngish man whose No. 1 talent was that he was half-black and could pass for black. His No. 2 talent was that the other half of him was white.
In unison, the Obama handlers hollered “Jackpot.” This was like marrying 2 gorgeous women on the same day, surpassing the Gold Rush of ‘49. Luck doesn’t grow any taller.
The first 50 percent of their strategy was now set — they had the first criticism-resistant Presidential candidate in history because both liberals and conservatives know that criticizing a liberal black politician is tantamount to setting your mother on fire.
Filling in the Blank, Literally
For the other 50 percent of their campaign strategy, the Obama handlers had to do no more than conduct a cursory study of the candidate’s employment history.
It was obvious even to the slowest member of the team that Mr. Obama more closely resembles a cloud than a flesh-and-blood politician. Now you see him, now you don’t.
Admittedly, the candidate hasn’t done any more than a kindergartener in his political life. Don’t panic. That is not as bad as it may look. Sure, he doesn’t have any accomplishments to boast about, but, even better, that means he also doesn’t have any baggage to hide. Clearly, he was no Rev. Al or Rev. Jesse who, separately and between them, shlep enough embarrassing baggage that the line would stretch from Culver City to Baghdad.
For the next 2 hours, the Obama handlers kept circling the room, grinning and slapping each other on the back over their stunning good fortune.
Channeling the way they believed God must have felt, working free-form, after designing Adam and Eve, they bragged that 2 centuries after George Washington and 1 1/2 centuries after Frankenstein, they had created The First Perfect Presidential Candidate in American History. Nobody could touch him, and if any foolish person dared, he would instantly be branded a “bigot” by the Obama camp, with the aid of the rooting-hard liberal media.
Touting a candidate known around West Los Angeles as He Who Is Without Sin, the Obama team proclaimed that no patriotic American could criticize their guy for 2 reasons —
• He was a black liberal, meaning that criticism for any perceived shortcoming would be out-of-bounds, illegal, immoral and, best of all, racist.
• Being a man of no admitted accomplishments, he could not be criticized for what he had done earlier in his life because he had not done anything.
One more piece remained to be set.
Just putting their guy on a podium, sitting him up straight, and acting like a traveling medicine show was, of course, insufficient. It would be like putting a ball team on the field. They couldn’t just stand there. They needed direction. They had to do something. They had to be wound up.
Here they did not have to be original. The overt core strategy would resemble the Sharpton and Jackson suicide missions of earlier years, “Vote for me because I am black.” Standing alone, such a stark statement has limited shelf life. A smart aleck is bound to notice, and that could blow everything.
When the Mental Motors Whirred
Now the Obama thinking grew juicier. How do you sell a candidate who has nothing to sell except his race. Simple, they concluded. Have him sell his race while saying he was not.
In other contexts, say sausage or baseball, this would be known as a pre-emptive strike.
Since any discussion involving a liberal and his race is not only sui generisbut guaranteed to turn explosive, this concept perfectly suited the devious purposes of the Obama handlers.
Best of all, the sycophantic media could be counted on to lead the cheers for the Good Guy while maintaining a steady drumbeat of “bigot, bigot,” anytime He Who Is Without Sin drew the thinnest criticism,
Here is how the key tactic would work:
Depending on the rhythms of the Obama campaign, the candidate periodically, and seemingly randomly, slip in an apparent reference about how the other side is mistreating him because, by golly, he is of a certain race. While it was an ongoing strategy, the candidate would only have to make the acerbic accusation several times because their friends in the media would keep the issue breathing for weeks.
You know. The way your kid sister used to cry “He hit me, he hit me,” even though you were next door at the time.
Proof? That Is for Sissies
This being politics, no evidence, much less proof, is required. As he has for 25 years, the empty suit that is Mr. Obama knows he just has to lift his pinkie finger about race, and immediately journalists line up shoulder to shoulder, surround him, heartily defend him, even though the more sensible ones know all along that the candidate is making it up, sneakily trying to get a rise out of the other side.
Always works. Notice that the candidate is hyper-careful in his speeches when it comes to tense. He does not let himself get trapped. He does not outright charge his rival, or his rival’s aides with making racial remarks because they have not been made. Instead, with inflammatory cleverness designed to intimidate, he says, “This is what they will do,” “this is what they traditionally do,” “this is what Republicans have done in the past.”
That way, you see, the candidate derives voluminous benefits from his hideous, demonstrably untrue, accusations, and he never is responsible for proof.
Your mother never promised you life could be this good.
The day after Mr. Obama is elected, his self-congratulatory handlers will pack all of his racial inflammations into a wheelbarrow, shlep them over to Arlington National Cemetery, and give them a proper military hero’s burial.
Performing Surgery on His Language
For its smooth-surfaced, acrobatic rhetoric, the following 80 words may rate a position at the head of the coffin.
As a master manipulator of language, notice how the candidate collects his most incendiary accusations under one umbrella and puts all of them into play without claiming any of them are true. That, friends, is the payoff.
Read each sentence slowly. The candidate quietly confesses to the close reader that none of this has happened. His justification for saying bringing up the faux charges (besides all of the favorable publicity it will generate) is that by golly, gee whillickers, it could happen, I betcha, I betcha.
Here is Mr. Obama hurling one of his loaded racial accusations:
“The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?”
