Obama’s secret

Stephen Hayes, writing in the WSJ, suggests that Republicans ignore the power of Obama’s rhetoric at their own peril. And he nails Obama’s special gift:

Mr. Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates.

Now, if you’re Mickey Kaus, you believe that Obama using his quiet way of speaking to cover up and hiding his way-too-left tendencies.

I agree with Kaus—the heuristic cues about Obama’s way-leftiness are obvious to those people who are tuned in to political code, which is a tiny fraction of the electorate. Millions and millions of entranced and besotted fans, however, get deceived, plain and simple.

And that makes me deeply unhappy about Barack Obama’s expected candidacy: unlike Reagan, to whom he is being favorably compared, he is being fundamentally dishonest with the vast majority of potential voters.

The job of his opponent will be to dismantle Obama’s pleasingly vague idealism with a relentless barrage of detailed, specific questions on policy—and particularly on the “dumb” Iraq war (his signature issue) and what he, as president, would do about Iraq on Day One, Day Two, Day Three, etc.