Obama won for a reason. Republicans and other conservatives don't like to hear that, they prefer to say it is because voters are stupid or were tricked, but the truth is Obama won for a reason, he did something right, or at least better than McCain. The fact that he sits in the White House shows that. He appealed to some need the voters had and offered a better solution than his rival.

It does us no good to deny this, to speak of "stupid" or "deceived" voters and dismiss his victory. Even if we assume the voters are foolish*, these voters are the same voters we need to win over if we hope to regain office. So asking why he won is a necessary step in regaining power. Simply dismissing his victory is a sure fire way to remain in the wilderness. Just ask the Democrats who dismissed Reagan's victories as the result of "stupid" voters. Or who dismissed Bush's victories as "nothing but an appeal to religious bigotry and racism". You can see how well that went for Kerry.

You need to understand why your opponent won, and to work that information into your own campaign.

Now, this is not to say we should adopt a "Democrat Lite" position. As I argued in my last post "Some Confirmation", as well as in "Winning By Losing? Not A Chance!" and "Need to Change Direction?", if we do nothing but offer a watered down version of the Democrat position, then they will win. After all, if two parties both endorse the same philosophy, then the more consistent will always win. And if we adopt a big government position, then the Democrats will be the more consistent party, and victorious.

No, we should not take the Obama platform to heart, nor adopt the Democrat platform. Then again, Obama didn't really run on a platform, at least not an explicit one. As I argued in "The Candidate as Inkblot" and "So, what is "change"?", his position was sufficiently vague that he ran an effectively platform-free campaign. He promised to pursue some general goals, but even those were so loosely worded that almost anything could be made to fit his promises.

So, if it is not the platform we should examine, then what is there to explain Obama's victory? And what should we take away from it?

The first of the two reasons for Obama's victory came to me while reading a review of an old disaster film. I came across this line:

The other thing about disaster movies in general – and this certainly applies to The High And The Mighty – is that they are absolutely unironic. This is another quality that I find growing on me with the passing of time. I dunno, maybe I’m getting soft, or maybe just old; but these days I get more and more exasperated with the way that so many contemporary films insist upon letting the audience know that they’re in on the joke, even if there’s not really any joke there to start with. There’s something refreshing, in contrast, in the completely straight-faced melodramatics of your average disaster movie. It may not be great drama – okay, it isn’t great drama – but by God, they mean it; and if we laugh, rather than thrill or sob, in the face of the personal travails of our various characters, it is, I hope, with real affection.

And that made me realize what we are missing in politics, authenticity. Or maybe sincerity. Our politicians, like the rest of our culture, have become "post modern". They share the cynicism we all feel about politics. They admit they are politicians, and politicians are untrustworthy, and so they winkingly, ironically, offer promises, knowing perfectly well they will never fulfill them, and we don't expect them to. Our politics, like our culture, has become self-referential and jaded. We expect nothing of politicians and the politicians in turn tell us to expect little of them.

But Obama gave the appearance of breaking this mold. Honest or not, accurate or not, the image he managed to push through the media, and the one many average voters received, was of an idealist, maybe even slightly naive, outsider who was not like the politicians around him. A man who truly believed he could fix things, who would bring real change.

On the other hand, McCain, emphasizing his experience, sometimes gave the impression of being the ultimate cynical insider. Yes, he made some stump speeches about big ideas, but his actions belied his words. Having spent years as a "maverick" fighting against conservative principles, he could not posture as the champion of conservatism believably. Nor did he act as if he were sincere. His firing of Gramm, his about face on the financial crisis, his back and forth concerning whether he would debate, and so on gave him the appearance of a man cynically changing position to suit the polls. When compared to Obama, it was not an inspiring image.

The second reason Obama won is related to this. And it is a lesson he learned, ironically, from Republicans, who have since forgotten it.

For decades the Democrats were the party of doom and gloom. You have to go back to JFK to find an optimistic Democrat. Every one of his successors, even if they had some positive, upbeat schemes, were, on the whole, of the "sky is falling" school of politics, emphasizing crises and decrying the many evils besetting modern society. The perfect example has to be Jimmy Carter, whose response to the energy crisis was to tell us to put on sweaters and expect things to get worse (see "Memories of Jimmy").

The Republicans, on the other hand, became the party of optimism. Not optimism based on government solutions, but optimistic faith in man. Reagan made huge wins by promising that simply removing barriers would allow ordinary citizens to make everything better. He argued that the Soviets, while an "evil empire" and a real threat, would inevitably lose. Reagan was the exact opposite of Democrat doom and gloom.

And that pattern persisted until Obama. There was a single exception, Clinton's second term. While Clinton initially won on a doom and gloom platform ("I feel your pain"), he only won because Bush had so badly upset his base with his back and forth on conservative principles, coupled with his failure to live up to his promises on taxes. Any Democrat could have defeated him handily. On the other hand, during his second campaign, Clinton realized the weakness of his depressing platform. He had lost congress to an optimistic Republican insurgency, and he worried he would not survive his reelection bid. He didn't need to worry, as Dole was hardly a Reagan clone. However, it did show that Democrats could run on upbeat platforms.

But that lesson was lost on the next two contenders. Gore, as he has continued to do ever since 2000, is nothing but a modern day, secular, hellfire-and-brimstone preacher from the Church of Environmentalism. He sometimes branches out to rail about Bush's supposed lies, or the way "he played on our fears", but by and large Gore has always run on a platform on impending disaster. Similarly Kerry ran on nothing but predictions of disaster in Iraq and at home. Against both Bush presented an upbeat, positive message, and, despite the lukewarm feelings most of his base had toward him, Bush won both races.

But in 2008 something changed. McCain tried to be upbeat, but allowed bad circumstances to panic him. Where Reagan would have taken Gramm's premise that the economy is basically sound and built them into a promise to allow the economy to recover by removing government roadblocks, McCain allowed some bad press to make him fire Gramm and begin his own doom saying.

On the other hand, Obama took the Reagan formula and stood it on its head. Unlike Reagan's promise that he would get government out of the way and allow man to reach his full potential, bringing untold success, Obama promised that he would make government bigger, a crutch to help support us all, a means to bring us all prosperity. In short, Obama took Reagan's unbounded faith in individuals and reshaped it into unbounded faith in the power of government.

But where he placed his faith did not matter so much as his tone. Confronted with a dour, vacillating McCain and a positive, upbeat Obama, the voters went for Obama. Now, granted, it was not that simple. Obama did from time to time slip off message, played up the doom and gloom, and the polls reflected this with some serious dips in his numbers. But, for the most part, Obama stuck to the "hope and change" line, kept a smile on his face, lived up to the promise of his clenched jaw, forward looking campaign poster**,  and won the election.

And that is the lesson we should draw from this last election. Positive and honest wins the race, insider politics as usual, cynicism and doom saying does not. We can point out problems, we can criticize politics as usual, we can even attack our opponents, but we must do so only to set up our own answers. Now, I do not say "answers" with thoughts of big government in minds, as do many supposed conservatives today. Instead, I want us to stop emphasizing all the problems, and instead start pushing for solutions, and by "solutions" I mean "individual rights". When someone accuses us of being "negative", we need to respond that we are not, we are positive, positive about the power of the individual. When they say we are only "against", we should say we are "for", for the common man. We need to recast the debate, away from what "programs" are right, and toward the big picture of whether we support more state or more individual freedom, and in the process we need to gush about freedom. We can from time to time mention the horrors of freedom's absence, but for the most part we need to follow Reagan and, instead of bemoaning freedom's absence, we need to paint glowing pictures of what will greet freedom's return.

That is how we win elections.

And that, at long last, brings me to my final point. Why Obama is now faltering.

Obama came to office with a set of projects he wished to enact. He also came with a lot of debts to pay off in congress if he hoped to get those projects enacted. He also came to office at the height of a crisis, or at least what was perceived as the high point of a crisis. So, the easiest approach for him, the path of least resistance, was to sell the public on the "crisis" aspect, and thus force through everything in a great rush.

However, "easy" is not always best. In this case the easy route ended up destroying all that carefully built image. From election day to day 100, Obama went from being Kennedy and Reagan, full of optimism and big plans, to Carter Mark II, full of malaise, crises and problems which just won't go away. Worse still, he seems to have learned all the wrong lessons, and now is trying to sell medical reform on the same "crisis" model, digging himself an even deeper hole, casting himself more and more as Carter's successor.

And that is why I think Obama is faltering. Even if he did not have a disillusioned base, upset over both his handling of Iraq, Afghanistan and our prisoners, and his "handouts to the rich" in the "bailout" bill, he would still be in trouble. The independents and cross over voters, as well as moderate Democrats, who supported him because they believed his promises of hope and change are not likely to remain his boosters for long, if he moved from hope and change to doom and gloom. Yet that seems precisely what he is doing.

So let that too be a lesson to Republicans. Doom and gloom may bring some very short term success, may allow for a few brief victories. But once you become the party associated with crises and bad news, you are not long for this world.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* The problem with calling voters "stupid" is that one has a tendency to start looking down on others, and adopting the more authoritarian views such an arrogant viewpoint entails. (See "Another Take on the WSJ Editorial", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2" and "The Citizen Dichotomy") Now, I did argue in "What We Deserve" and "A Reason to be Afraid" that voters have come to expect unrealistic things from politicians, but I am not saying voters are foolish, only that all of us have come to view government from an unrealistic perspective. We can be uniformly deluded without being foolish or stupid.

** I was criticized for saying Obama's poster looked like old Soviet propaganda art, but this quote shows why I thought so. The way it is staged, jaw firm and raised, looking forward to a bright future, it is the very image of all those optimistic posters used to shill for various five year plans. It was a very canny choice by Obama, as the iconography works well for him, giving him the role of positive, hopeful reformer. So, while some apparently thought I was being critical with my comment, far from it. I was impressed that he so cleverly hit the same notes as those old Soviet posters, and in just the right proportions.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT

I have to admit I noticed very little of Obama's cleverness while the campaign was taking place. For this I blame my somewhat insular perspective. Not only did I spend my time on line in very politically savvy environments, both right and left wing, but living in the DC area, I tend to be surrounded by people more intimately involved in politics than elsewhere.

What brought this home to me were the post-election surveys which showed that many voters did not even know who Billy Ayers was, and that many did not realize there was a significant controversy surrounding Rev. Wright. For someone who was surrounded daily with political materials this was shocking, to say the least. It was hard to believe how well the MSM had insulated Obama and protected his image among those who do not obsess over politics as most of those reading this do.

I am not sure how I will overcome this environmental disadvantage for the next election, but I am certain I will need to take some steps to make sure my highly politicized environment does not cause me to once again so poorly understand another election.