Nagourney has an
article in the NYT `Worries about GOP in Disarray` in which, inter alia, he says of McCain:   “Last
Sunday, he invited Mike Murphy, his longtime friend and political adviser, who
is not involved in this campaign, to his home in Virginia. There, Mr. Murphy reportedly gave him a
detailed and at times tough assessment of what Mr. McCain had done wrong.  Mr. Murphy urged him to tone down his attacks
on Mr. Obama and stop coming across as so angry.  He recommended that Mr. McCain concentrate on
running as a reform candidate to strip that issue from Mr. Obama, and to make
greater efforts to distance himself from Mr. Bush.”

It was interesting on Newshour last night to hear Mark Shiels pick up on it too.  Shiels asserted that Obama and McCain `loathe each other`.   I have to admit that I’d picked up that McCain really dislikes Obama and is contemptuous of him but I hadn’t realised it went so far as both of them loathing each other.   Shiels also noted something I’d already suspected, that if it’s McCain –v- Obama the campaign will be really, really nasty. 

Question:  how would McCain-Obama impact on each other?   I don’t  think for one moment over the course of the campaign McCain would be able to hold onto his cool - Obama would sometimes provoke the worst in him.   The big question though is how would Obama handle it?  

I read in one article reviewing Obama that his style is to listen to people, reason with them,  compromise with them if possible  but, once he decides that they’re too extreme and not open to reason, he dismisses hem and walks away from further discourse.  Apparently this sort of dynamic is what went on between him and McCain when they fell out over legislation they were working on.  But he can’t walk away from McCain in a campaign.    Is his dislike of McCain going to trip his wires and expose his weaknesses just as much as it will McCain’s?   What are those weaknesses?   He does tend to shoot from the hip sometimes in a way that backfires on him.

For me this primary has exposed Obama’s fundamental glaring weakness in terms of presidential aspiration:   his growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii means his value system & thinking isn’t deeply rooted in American culture.   It’s very clear he doesn’t innately think `American`:  he thinks `international`.  (I should also make the point that this same `weakness` is also the source of what would be a great strength in dealing with other countries and is what makes him so incredibly popular overseas.)

I understand this cultural difference very well having lived in three countries: England, Australia and America, some of my childhood spent in England.   The three countries may be rooted in common language, rule of law and democracy, but their cultures are very different.   I think there’s one thing that many Americans – and certainly heartland ones – can’t/don’t relate to, and that’s that fervent patriotism  is not universal.  

In Australia, for example, leading up to its bicentenary celebrations the prime minister spent a small fortune trying to inculculate patriotism into the populace.   Most Americans would think that extraordinary – and in the US it would be, given that it would be so unnecessary.    The crucial point is that here the PM actually thought it necessary – and also that very many tertiary educated Australians & progressives (and not a little of the media) found the whole thing repugnant.

A sidepoint here:  many people who’ve lived in different countries for any length of time, especially if they’ve grown up in different countries, don’t really relate to `patriotism`.   I, for one, am in fact slightly nervous of it unless it’s related to something innocuous like supporting one’s country’s team in  sport.  Those of us who’ve grown up or even just lived in different countries for any significant length of time think that most countries have wonderful things to recommend them and most have undesirable features working against them too.   Thus we can love the country we live in,  but not in the same way and to the same extent that people love the only country they’ve ever lived in.   I don’t, for instance, elevate `my` country above other people’s to the extent that probably most people do.    I don’t relate to dying for a country.   I would, however, put my life on the line for the rule of law, liberty, democracy &  to oppose certain obnoxious cultural values taking over my society’s liberal ones.   I would absolutely go out on a limb to defend universal healthcare, something I take for granted is an absolute prerequisite to a civilised advanced industrial nation;  I’ve checked and so would my friends.  Most, or at least many, Americans would think that weird, would they not?

Another example: Australians (and most other western societies) don’t turn a hair at the idea of ceding some sovereignty to international institutions and international law: what matters is whether or not it is good and necessary for sound purpose/moral reasons.    But watch Laura Ingraham being able instantly to incite outrage at the idea that Obama would subjugate America to the European Union - her words after Obama’s Oregon global warming comments.    That’s how she, and clearly many Americans, view signing on to international agreements that force you to give up something.  It is so easy for her to push that button.   She wouldn’t be able to push it here.

My point?   If a culture isn’t grounded in you, especially during your childhood,  you can very easily make gaffes when you’re having spontaneously to react under pressure, for the simple reason that you don’t intuitively share the same triggers of the audience you’re speaking to.

Obama’s adult American experence with Michelle has been spent for years mixing in African-American circles, in leftwing circles, and – I think this one’s crucial – being exposed to/aware of the plight of far more poverty than average Americans whose income level means they at least get by.    I suspect the Obamas genuinely haven’t, at least until now, processed the extent and depth to how different their experience is, and thus how alienating things they can say are to people who have had no such experience;  nor do they understand – (by `understand` I mean `naturally emote with`) more old fashioned people who have had totally different experiences – the traditional  heartland `American way`.   Hence Michelle’s `America is a mean country` is utterly understandable to left wing people, to African-Americans – anyone outside the economic mainstream – but downright objectionable to `ordinary`American folk who for years have been funding through their taxes foodstamps, affirmative action, overseas aid etc.

Thus Obama could say in his Oregon speech that Americans would have to get used to not eating so much without understanding that, if he wanted to say that, he needed to be far more thoughtful and explicit about what he meant and, more importantly, the limits to what he meant.

These really aren’t  points about what the Obamas can intellectually understand – it’s about how they naturally emote, intuit things, and thus express themselves.

It’s even more important where Barack's concerned because he’s the actual candidate.   I’m not sure how aware of it he himself is.   (Maybe this primary has actually had him having to think it all through.  But one wonders about that given the time constraints he’s under – the huge pressure and the exhaustion.)  

Also there are some things that Obama himself clearly doesn’t `get` - again, I’m sure it’s the culture thing.    I was depressed when I saw that he is still – he was doing it down in Florida just a couple of days ago – trying to equate his relationship with Wright to McCain’s acceptance of Hagee and Parsley’s endorsements.   It seems he still doesn’t get that for so many people across the heartland who haven’t shared his experience it is simply incomprehensible that he would stay in a church for twenty years where the pastor was preaching anti-Americanism, if he didn’t himself believe it;  crucially, they believe he should have been as outraged by it as they are.   Neither do they believe he could attend the church for twenty years and not know about it;  nor do they believe he never read the Church magazine that has incredibly radical stuff in it, lauding Farrakhan etc.

I can see it:  because he has those internationalist cultural roots from his childhood rather than American ones, it didn’t come up against his cultural trigger points when someone said some things about America that were outrageous – he just privately dismissed it as absurd and unimportant relative to things he does see as profoundly important:  the church’s wonderful charitable work.   The point is that Wright’s views weren’t treading on an innate and strongly fervent patriotism.    We all actually saw one of Obama’s trigger points – when Wright accused him of being just a politician – implying hypocrisy: that was when he hit the roof and denounced and rejected the man.

This isn’t an argument about the rights and wrongs of him attending the church:  it’s about how he himself processes the reactions to it.   I suspect that, because he’s won some primaries since it erupted, because he’s holding up in some polls, because he’s now denounced Wright, he thinks he’s on top of the argument and can remain on top of it in the general.

From the results of the primaries since Ohio, there are clearly many Americans who don’t care about this  as much as others they do care about.    The acid test though is going to be during the general, where all voting Americans are counted, and where these issues are going to be forefront across all media again, not just Fox News, because the GOP is going to make sure of that.  If they can’t get the MSM to agree that they should be, they’ll pay for them in ads.  It’s also a given it will come up again in debates and probably at the townhalls he’s agreed to do with McCain.

My concern is that Obama is still trying to equate McCain and the endorsements of Hagee/Parsley with Obama’s staying in the church for 20 years:  that demonstrates conclusively that he still doesn’t get it.   The two things bear no relationship.   Why doesn’t he get that?

So, as things stand, what’s going to matter most to most Americans in swingable states?   Iraq, healthcare, education, taxes, infrastructure (not to mention whose `solutions` do they believe in) or patriotism and experience?

Or, more simplistically, can Obama get McCain’s nastiness to erupt often enough and/or can McCain activate Obama’s `tin ear` more often? 

(And crucially, can someone in Obama’s inner circle work on his `ear`.   ;-)

By the way, please don’t infer from this that I’m suggesting Obama doesn’t love America, wouldn’t put its interest first, wouldn’t protect and defend America as a President should.   I’m simply arguing that he doesn’t intuitively process things in the way many Americans would expect him to and that this can sometimes get him into trouble.