The Human Valium... Barack Obama’s strategy of calm is provoking his rival into fatal errors

[RedEarth]

Barack Obama’s strategy of calm is provoking his rival into fatal errors

Andrew Sullivan

His calm is almost unnatural. I’ve been following Barack Obama closely now for two years and I’ve never seen him or even heard of him losing his temper. The worst I’ve seen was a little irritation at a fund-raiser a year and a half ago where some volunteers backstage were making so much noise that he couldn’t think straight. There was a little edge in his voice as he asked them to quieten down.

During some of the tensest moments in the primary campaign, he would sometimes go into a hotel room alone for a few minutes, compose himself and then come back out. Hillary Clinton cried in public. Bill Clinton got red in the face and made some borderline racist remarks. John McCain picked Sarah Palin, called Obama Britney Spears, suspended his campaign in the middle of a financial panic, unveiled a completely loopy mortgage bailout scheme on live television last week and explodes on cue like a microwaved bag of popcorn.

Obama? He lollops along with a calm smile and a physical fluency that is hard to mock or copy. If he were a boxer, he’d be the kind who keeps moving but hangs back. He waits for his opponents to take a swing, ducks and comes back into the game. He sticks to a game plan and rarely deviates. And he waits for his opponent to make an error. Watching his autumn fight with McCain reminds me of the Wile E Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. Every elaborate attempt to blow Obama up leaves his opponents with sooty faces and a trail of smoke rising from the tops of their heads.

.......

McCain never seemed to learn from the Clintons’ misjudgment of their rival. A key element of Obama’s strategy is classic rope-a-dope. He gets his opponents to splutter with irritation as “that one”, as McCain contemptuously described Obama in last Tuesday’s debate, glides towards them in the polls. He does his thing, raises masses of money, keeps his staff in perfect order and focuses on issues and themes. He can segue from the inspirational agent of change of the spring to the reassuring conventional pol of the autumn without anyone really noticing the seams. That takes political skill. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article4925049.ece

[willing dwarf]

1. I believe George Washington had a similar unflappable quality

[Orrex]

6. The corporate media never let him speak during primetime, though

Lousy bastards!

[codjh9]

2. Yeah, I think it IS helping his campaign. Still waiting for MCain to REALLY blow up and make an

even BIGGER fool out of himself. :^)

[Cresent City Kid]

3. Not enough "o's" in smooooooth to decribe Obama

[elocs]

4. Maintaining his poise and self control while sticking to his game plan are important

contrary to what we so often read here that, "Obama needs to do this" or "Obama needs to do that". I think he knows what he is doing and he has done very well so far. He certainly does not need thousands of unofficial advisors who believe they know what is best for him to do. My god, look how far he has come to simply win the nomination to actually be leading in this race 3 weeks before the election. Incredible!

[dgibby]

5. Rope-a-dope! (literally, in McCain's case)!

[Duke Newcombe]

7. Barack...so laid back, he walks on his shoulderblades. n/t

[Hekate]

8. Wonderful analysis. I like this part too...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article4925049.ece

<snip> Obama rarely directly attacks. He subtly baits. His most brilliant rope-a-dope of the entire campaign was against Bill Clinton in the spring. In a newspaper interview, Obama cited Ronald Reagan as the last transformational president. He didn’t mention Clinton. The former president was offended by being implicitly dissed, took the bait and unleashed a series of unwise public scoffs at the young Democrat, culminating in a dismissal of Obama as another Jesse Jackson. Suddenly, black Democrats abandoned Clinton’s wife, and the Clintons’ base collapsed. Obama merely stepped out of the way as the Clintons self-destructed. He didn’t just end their campaign; he helped to bury their reputation.

And that’s exactly how Obama has handled McCain. Instead of attacking him frontally, he got in his head and provoked him into error. It’s easier with McCain than with the Clintons, because McCain is more volatile and more easily provoked. And so Obama cruised through August, picking a conventional running mate and punching his foreign-policy-credentials card with trips to Iraq and Europe. McCain’s response? He put out an ad equating the son of a poor single mother who made it to become president of the Harvard Law Review, a University of Chicago professor and the first black nominee for president with . . . Paris Hilton, whose only accomplishments are being born into immense wealth and making an internet porn tape.

When that didn’t work, and an unfazed Obama ran a flawless convention, calmed the Clintons and delivered one of the best acceptance speeches in modern times, McCain blew himself up with the Palin pick. His one sure-fire advantage – experience – was thrown away. His real base – independent voters and the media – was first wowed and then woke up. And as Palin became a national and international joke, as her ratings plummeted and as she lost her debate to Joe Biden (quite hard to do, given Biden’s capacity for verbal diarrhoea), McCain got even crankier and more unstable.

Then the financial crisis hit and a desperate McCain decided to seize the moment. Again, Obama did little but stay calm. <snip>