You Want Stupid? I'm Your Man

Barack Obama should get down on his knees and thank God for Robert Novak, the unsubstantiated-rumor-spreading columnist who will write anything to claim a scoop. For, it seems to me, the Prince of Journalistic Darkness just helped save Obama's butt.

The timing of Novak's latest recklessness could not have been more ideal for Obama, or worse for Hillary Clinton. But to Obama's credit, it was his own exploitation of Novak's recklessness that was the real butt-saver.

Last week, at the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, the Illinois senator went and committed the same clarity-mangling contortions on the complex issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants that the New York senator had just previously committed, to her considerable woe. Already trailing Clinton by a wide margin in Iowa, things suddenly looked even worse for Obama. The media were all abuzz about his public humiliation by CNN's Blitzkrieg Wolfman, and having to issue post-debate press releases full of defensive explanations is the most counterproductive use of a candidate's time.

That Thursday night, it looked bleak for Obama. Really bleak. So two mornings later I foolishly wrote a piece equally full of political prediction -- always a risky business of the first magnitude. Titled "Bye-Bye, Obama," it speculated "Whether ... out of naiveté or just plain intellectual stubbornness, the senator hurt himself badly, and perhaps even mortally." I then further self-impaled by saying Obama's misstep "screamed a campaign-ending, George Romney 'brainwashed' moment." In effect, I declared it all over for Barack.

But little did I know that that same morning Robert Novak would be just as reckless. In the New York Post -- a laughable rag I'm not in the habit of scanning before arching my fingers over this keyboard early each day -- Novak had inadvertently penned a reprieve for Obama in the form of unsubstantiated scuttlebutt.

"Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton," wrote the lugubrious Novak, "are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama."

That one line -- and don't you love it?; "agents," like some nefarious, anthropomorphic fog right out of "Casablanca" -- changed the topic and shifted the buzz within the media, and within a nanosecond. Drivers licenses? Illegal immigrants? Obama's humiliation? Poof. Gone. Now, suddenly, the talking heads and scandal-adoring scribblers had something else to chew on.

The dud of a bombshell saved Obama's butt -- and he played the distraction exceptionally.

The commentariat -- uniformly, from what I could tell -- was perplexed at Obama's personal engagement of the substance-lacking scandal. He should let surrogates and aides address it, they chided, and not lower himself into the cesspool of ignominious doings.

But, by putting his own face on the dust-up, the senator cranked it into a whirlwind. He knew exactly what he was doing -- no amateur, this Obama -- and he couldn't have done it better or to greater effect.

His personal intervention added fuel to the subject-changing news cycle, and what's more, his comments reinforced not only his own sagging message about Hillary as "a creature of a discredited Washington establishment" up to its old tricks, but fortuitously piggybacked on John Edwards' gloomy admonitions about our "corrupt political system," now spearheaded on the left, says Edwards, by you-know-who.

The upshot of all this? Barack Obama is now in a neck-and-neck contest with Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Consequently she's been cornered into a head-to-head strategy -- a prospect almost unimaginable before and especially immediately after the Las Vegas debate.

Obama's was one of the slickest tactical pivots I've ever witnessed -- and writing him off a week ago was one of the dumbest things I've ever done.

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... to support p m carpenter's ocassionally stupid commentary -- and thank you!

Comments

[mars]

This is exactly what the Republicans, like Novak, wanted. Doesn't anyone question the media anymore or realize they are always poised to keep a Republican in office?

[epppie]

Take it a step further. The media - and the Republicans - would like nothing better than to keep us alternately thrilled and dismayed by the ongoing Hillary - Obama kabuki, just so long as we are kept constantly distracted from relatively genuine candidates, such as Edwards and Kucinich and Dodd.

I keep hoping, no doubt very naively, that the Democratic grassroots will step up in Iowa and send both Hillary and Obama crashing to political oblivion.

[L. Fleming]

You leave out one possibility: maybe Obama is more than a political computer calculating how best to position himself. Maybe he was truly angry at Novak's disgusting use of unfounded rumors.

Or maybe Obama didn't want to end up like John Kerry, who didn't do so well by not "dignifiying" the Swift Boat lies with a response. Lots of voters seem to have thought that since Kerry wouldn't defend himself, maybe the Swifties accusations were true.

If Obama is defending himself, then that makes him more electable in my view. I'm tired of Democrats who, when attacked by Republican hitmen, just curl up in the fetal position and whine "please stop hitting me."

[Wil Burns]

Each time we hear a talk radio Nazi say "She can't win," it means they're afraid of her.
Talk radio whores are saying great things about Obama, which should make you wonder.
Why would a facsist bastard say nice things about Obama?

I have nothing bad to say about Obama.
If Obama wins - whoever wins the Democratic nomination, I'm behind him/her all the way.

But seriously, between the Black guy with two years experience
and the only team to win back-to-back presidential campaigns since FDR,
(the team that beat war hero Bush and war hero Dole),

...who do you think the super-racist GOP wants to run against?

(Some call that "Hillary worship."
Looks like common sense to me.)

[paradoctor]

I second L. Fleming's approval of Obama's refusing to ignore a fake scandal. It's a pity that he has to confront such petty tactics, but the alternative is being swift-boated.