hot-air balloons bursting in air

I see that the McCain campaign finally caught up to my Obama criticism—that Obama is running a celebrity-marketing campaign rather than a political campaign—which I leveled starting back in January and extended into February and extended much further into the year, till I got tired of repeating the same thing over and over again.

In January, I wrote:

The way Barack Obama is being covered by the media and the blogosphere, he’s not a political candidate anymore—he’s a celebrity. He doesn’t have political followers—he’s got fans. He doesn’t have a political platform—he’s got a one-word slogan—”change” [which works, 'cause "change is good," just like Nissan says, right?]. He makes narcissists feel so good about themselves.

Jeff Jarvis quoted me here. He went on to make a salient point [e.a.]:

I am reminded unfortunately of the scene from The Candidate in which Robert Redford sits in back of his car mouthing the words he’s been delivering in random order. …

I am also reminded of the final scene, in which the victorious Redford asks, “What do we do now?”

I have no doubt that Barack Obama is a decent, smart, and well-meaning politician. But don’t forget that he is a politician. And I fear that turning yourself into a slogan is an essentially cynical political act. Since the start of his campaign, except for a brief period in the middle, he has lacked the courage to be specific in his oratory.

Yesterday, when Jarvis made a similar point—that selling yourself as a celebrity makes you look presumptuous to some (while it makes you look presidential to others)—he was attacked (as, among other things, a racist) by his commenters.

Ho hum.

Let’s unpack the “debate,” shall we?

Rich Lowry quotes the shrewdest take that I’ve seen so far on McCain’s new line of attack—and it indicates that the McCainiacs have had their puffed-up target it their sights for a long time; they were simply waiting for the right moment to strike [e.a.]:

Musings from a shrewd friend on the latest turn in the race (quoting roughly): “The Berlin speech was overreach. This is the moment we were waiting for Obama—to over-step. No candidate has ever acted in this fashion. No one has ever campaigned in front of foreigners. He’s showing hubris and contempt for the rest of us in how he considers America fundamentally broken and he’s the solution. Messianism is usually a quality you don’t want in a president. This was always the soft underbelly of his candidacy. They’ve gotten too caught up in their own story. What always does in a celebrity? Overexposure.

Indeed. But it’s not only a question of Obama being overexposed. That has been obvious for a long time, as Gawker noted:

The thing that undergirds the notion of Obama-as-Celebrity rather than Obama-as-President is his campaign’s track record of promiscuously selling the candidate (consciously and subliminally) to every possible marketing and demographic niche and via every marketing and publicity channel.

The selling of Barack Obama started with Oprah, when Obama told the Talk Show Goddess: “Oprah, you’re my girl, suggesting that if indeed he decided to run for president, he would announce it on her show [rather than on, say, Meet the Press? How come? ---ed.].

During Obama’s primary fight with Hillary Clinton, the campaign to let Americans get to know Obama continued with him being anointed by the Kennedy clan, and went on to feature appearances with him dancing with Ellen

and chatting up the ladies of The View,

And so on and so on.

Recently, it has continued with his family sitting for reporters from Access Hollywood, with one-on-one interviews with Larry King, with photo shoots for People,

with the selling of Michelle as Jackie O, and on and on into the celebrity-marketing universe.

Indeed Bonnie Fuller of tabloid-editing fame just praised Obama early this week for his campaign’s outreach to the celebrity-worshipping audience [e.a.].

It’s official. The Obamas are just like us. With their latest PR move — being photographed as a family for this week’s People magazine cover story titled “The Obamas At Home” — it’s apparent that Team Obama has a clear and clever presidential marketing strategy: present Michelle and Barack as the beloved Brangelina of the political world.

Like every in-demand A-list couple who concedes to allowing a peek behind the curtain, the Obamas insist this will be the “first and last” up-close and personal look at them as a family. What they don’t admit to is that this was a carefully orchestrated, well-thought-out brand presentation. And it isn’t actually the first highly personal look at the photogenic family. No, it’s the culmination of a publicity campaign designed to take advantage of the couple’s charisma and Hollywood-worthy good looks. Team Obama is using popular mass-media vehicles such as People, Us Weekly, “The View,” “Access Hollywood” and “The Colbert Report” to familiarize the American public with the candidate and his wife, and to dispel myths about the couple, in a far more aggressive way than has ever been done before in a presidential election.

Of course in America we’ve been selling presidents as long as we’ve had presidents. Politicians have always had to sell themselves, and in many eras they’ve had a boisterous, rude press and public to contend with.

It just hasn’t happened in recent memory, so it seems new (and newly nasty) to us. That, or we’re not paying attention. Or we really are Amusing Ourselves to Death (though I prefer to think that we’re Simply Amusing Ourselves for Distraction, which is why, um, infotainment rules).

Anyhow: I don’t dispute the need for presidential candidates to sell themselves to us. Most of us are not paying attention to politics; we’re too busily engaged in the drama of our own lives. I do take issue with a candidate who shamelessly sells himself in one breath and shamelessly denies it in the next breath (and who shows a familiarity with the hustler’s art—which he admires).

And, by the way, I think the McCain attacks will work to sow doubt about Obama. The attacks will get some people to question their love affair with Barack and perhaps to look a little deeper into what Obama says under withering questioning by the MSM.

It may lead people to places they don’t necessarily want to go, noting, as John Dickerson did, that Obama is very slippery on the issues [e.a.].

Obama’s take on the surge also tells us how he processes information about Iraq. This has direct bearing on how he shapes his policy for the country today. The same choices are in play—will military tactics or withdrawal get the Iraqis to make political progress? If Obama was wrong about the tactical gains that would be made by the new strategy and wrong about how the Iraqi political leaders would react, can his larger theory about how Iraqis will respond to a troop pullout remain intact? Perhaps, but he has the burden of explanation. Does he elide contradictions, claim they’re irrelevant, and generally spin? In his interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, he suggested that he’d always said the surge would decrease violence in Iraq. That’s not just spin. It’s not true. At the time Bush announced the surge, Obama said: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

The surge that Obama opposed had two parts to it: an increase in troops and a bet on a new military strategy. Obama opposed the additional troops; he also opposed a host of other new tactics Gen. Petraeus tried, arguing they would not lead to political improvement. Even if you agree with the argument that the additional brigades didn’t change much in Iraq on their own, you still have to account for whether the overall Petraeus strategy shift worked to assist the positive developments among Sunnis and Sadr’s Shiite militia. Obama suggests the military had almost no role in the Anbar Awakening and the decision by Sadr’s militia to stand down—that the two sets of events merely happened “at the same time.” Military leaders think they had a role in bringing about these improvements. (This might be a bigger dis of the brass than his conflict with them over a timeline for withdrawal.) What did he learn on his trip that suggests he’s right and the generals are wrong? Did nothing on the trip shade his view?

In case you’ve forgotten—and I wouldn’t blame you if you have, because it seems like it was eons ago—that’s the climate in which Dana Milbank wrote his devastating takedown of Obama in the WaPo.

As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama’s biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.

Drawing to a close now, let’s go back to Rich Lowry’s correspondent. He concluded his excellent analysis thus:

The question now is whether Dana Milbank is the bird leaving the wire and every other bird in the press follows him or not. If this narrative sets in, Obama might have to move up his VP announcement to change the story.”