Revitalizing Obama-Biden

It is high time the Obama campaign gets back to what it does best: engaging the imagination. Candidates who engage the imagination win victories; candidates who talk about facts and figures do not. In the spring, we had two great campaigns that gave us two narratives of promise: Hillary and the competence of women, and Obama's vision of inclusivity. Unfortunately, although Obama's acceptance speech was terrific for those of us who wanted to hear more about the substance underlying his campaign of hope, as emotional inspiration it fell flat. McCain, with his rhetoric of the maverick and his POW credentials, has always engaged the imagination, and everything about Palin, from her family issues to her gubernatorial lifestyle to her ethics violations, screams vividness. One cannot help but think about her, whether in admiration or morbid fascination or recoiling in horror.

You and I may be turned on by "cerebral," dear reader, but the American electorate is not. Bill Clinton's great gift is that regardless of his considerable intellect, nobody ever thinks of him as cerebral. Gore was considered brainy to the point of being hopelessly dry - the poor man couldn't help but focus on policies and substance. Now Obama keeps getting compared to Adlai Stevenson, and we all know how that worked out.

The Obama campaign doesn't know what to do about Palin. Engaging with her stories, her agenda, her lifestyle, is a mistake. If we don't know instinctively that she's not good for America, rational discussion isn't going to enlighten us. Our side needs its own energy, its own vividness, its own audacious hope.

So please, senator, give us some good stories! Give us characters we can relate to, whether that's your admirable self, your fascinating mom, the good people of America, or our own better selves. And please do it soon, and with passion.

For fractal9091, <user site="livejournal.com" user="the_eleven"

any other Magic players, and anyone even remotely interested in the current U.S. campaign: Politics: The Gathering.

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Whee!!! Thanks, fountaingirl!

Edit: More here!