The “Me Too” Approach to Campaigning

03/30/2008

Paul Munnis


One purpose of a political campaign is to exercise the candidates on the issues and see what they are made of. Thus they are examined on the issues of the times such as health-care policy, foreign policy, education policy, business policy, regulatory policy, and military policy to name just a few. Each quiz provides another piece to a jigsaw puzzle that provides a mosaic of the candidate and how good they would be for the country in comparison to the other candidate.

That is what is going on in the Democratic Party right now, candidate differentiation, and the responses are starting to show some real problems with our system of choosing a candidate to represent our Party as well as candidate differences.

One problem we see is that in early primaries and caucus States a candidate is selected and delegates are bound to them as a result. Yet later, as more becomes known about the candidate voters say in effect: “I was wrong and now I wouldn’t vote for that person if my life depended on it.” In other words: with more knowledge comes a change of support. The caucus and primary votes become meaningless and are no longer representative of the voters.

Another problem that we see is candidates who have no depth to a position that is worthy of announcing to the public and so they just plagiarize the other candidates’ position by saying: “Me Too.”

Saying that has the effect of making the candidates equal instead of permitting them to be differentiated on the basis of the quality of their thinking. Yet we depend upon that differentiation in order to choose our candidate as the “best” person for the job. Saying “Me Too,” is an interesting political tactic but it tells us little about the candidate, or does it?

Barrack Obama is being cast as the “Me Too Candidate” in some Democratic circles while Hillary is seen as the creative thinker whose ideas hold up to examination and scrutiny.

On subjects ranging from health care to the economy and from personal matters of race and religion we have seen Obama without a good answer and then suddenly he comes up with “Me too,” when he is put into juxtaposition to Hillary Clinton’s position. For example just recently when the controversy over Rev. Wright surfaced Obama said he would stay with his pastor because he loved the sinner but disdained the sin of racism which Rev. Wright exhibited. Hillary said: “If it was me I’d have left that church.” The minister meantime retired and Obama, seeing the press coverage that Hillary’s answer was getting said: “Me too. I would have walked if he hadn’t retired.” Republicans call that flip-flopping.

On the economic plan for dealing with the housing crisis Obama had a plan, Hillary had a plan. When the NY Times compared them and pointed out the defects in the Obama plan, he gave a speech in NYC that said his plan was now the same as Hillary’s. In other words: “Me Too.”

There are lots more examples but Obama seems to have two problems. First he appears not to be a creative thinker, he relies on other people to do his thinking then he gravitates towards the consensus opinion. Second, his staff, which will form much of his Washington team, are not creating original and quality policy positions for him to run his campaign on.

Obama lovers will want to deny this editorial and dismiss it but I think they need to start scrutinizing Obama with the same intensity they bring to calling for Hillary to retire from the political contest. As more becomes known about Obama a willingness to vote for a man who has positioned himself as the candidate of change and then is devoid of what change means becomes problematic. Especially when the president of the United States often needs to run counter to public opinion doing the hard things demanded by the office in both public and domestic policy. The media can paint an issue any color they want and the president is stuck with that color even as he must choose and act on his decisions defending them in arrears of his action.

Hillary should persist because as more is known about character of the candidates the more that Democrats may become happy that they didn’t burn their bridges. It’s still about getting the best candidate to represent the Democratic Party and the contest isn’t over until the Democratic Convention in Denver in August. I think we need that period to see more of what these candidates are made of.

In the meantime those who say that McCain is busy campaigning and isn’t opposed by Democrats are doing poor service to our Party. That is the job of DNCC – to bring opposition to the GOP candidates. Let the DNCC get to work and do their job and stop demanding that the not yet chosen candidates do it for them.

When Howard Dean prodded Hillary to retire the other day he was off-base. His argument is that the prolonged contest is failing to combat McCain. I say nonsense. Millions of people clearly see the differences between McCain and the Democratic position especially with McCain painting himself as a Bush clone. It is the job of Democrats to choose among Hillary and Obama right now even as people are choosing between Democrats and the GOP. So far, McCain is being brushed off as just a neo-con clone of G.W. Bush. McCain is trying to differentiate himself from G.W. Bush and if he fails he will lose the election. In a sense the GOP has the same problems that Democrats have. They need differentiation too. So far McCain is the GOP choice because he’s the only choice. That is not true for Democrats. We still have a choice and it’s falling on the Super delegates to manifest that choice as we start to know more about the candidates.

Our Democratic candidate differences are starting to show, the Super delegates may have to make the pick and not use popular vote as a representative sample because many of the delegates were awarded at the start of the process when little was known about the candidates except for their campaign jingles. Now, after a few months on the campaign trail they are starting to exhibit real differences and one of them is creative thinking vs “Me Too-ism!”

If you want “change,” then be patient enough to weigh the candidates and pick the best one for the job. That is what elections are all about. I have not yet chosen Obama or Clinton or McCain to vote for in November. It’s just starting to get interesting for Hillary Clinton has her problems too and some of them are her baggage from prior years in Washington and some of it is claims to fame not entirely justified by the facts. I need to compare these two candidates more.