{"id":3113,"date":"2008-11-03T21:48:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/11\/03\/the-importance-of-temperment\/"},"modified":"2008-11-03T21:48:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:48:40","slug":"the-importance-of-temperment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/11\/03\/the-importance-of-temperment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Temperment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum is amused by a historical comparison<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

THEN AND NOW….In 2004, everyone complained that John Kerry was an old-media plodder who didn’t react quickly enough to conservative attacks. What a dunce! In 2008, everyone is praising Barack Obama for keeping his composure and not letting conservative attacks knock him off his message. What a cool customer!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It depends a little on which part of 2008 you’re talking about, of course. If you troll through the recent archives of liberal political blogs, you won’t have any trouble finding dozens of posts wailing and moaning about the fact that Obama wasn’t being aggressive enough in going after McCain on some point or another.<\/p>\n

Everyone’s on board with the “cool customer” thing because it seems to be working. If McCain manages to pull off an improbable victory, expect to see the “should’ve attacked more” thing resurface.<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting, though, that I’m not sure how much choice Obama really had in this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m not saying that the “cool customer” approach is a put-on, or anything crazy like that– from all reports, Obama’s campaign style is an accurate reflection of his personality.<\/p>\n

The fact is, though, that a more aggressive, attacking style would’ve been awfully risky, given the racial dynamic in this campaign. Going on the offensive too much would risk appearing Angry. With the Republicans taking great pains to remind everyone that Obama is Black, that slides very quickly into “Angry Black Man,” which is not a good place to be, if you’re a candidate for national office. <\/p>\n

John Kerry probably could’ve made some gains in 2004 by hitting back faster and harder. Sad though it is to say, I think Obama would’ve been taking a major risk had he gone that route. It might’ve worked, but then again, it might well have played right into the slimy politics perfected by Atwater and Rove. There have been a lot of creepy racist undertones to the Republican campaign this year, but that stuff has been muted because Obama didn’t give them anything to hang the worst stereotypes on. Attempts to paint him as a dangerous radical fail (outside of the squalid racist segments of the population) because he’s so damn calm and unflappable.<\/p>\n

But think how ugly this whole thing could’ve gotten if he had tried to fight fire with fire (as some in the blogosphere were calling for at various points in the campaign).<\/p>\n

So yes, by all means, let’s applaud Obama’s natural temperment, and the relatively classy path he’s chosen to take with his campaign. But let’s not ignore the fact that his choices were somewhat more constrained than those available to a white candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum is amused by a historical comparison: THEN AND NOW….In 2004, everyone complained that John Kerry was an old-media plodder who didn’t react quickly enough to conservative attacks. What a dunce! In 2008, everyone is praising Barack Obama for keeping his composure and not letting conservative attacks knock him off his message. What a… Continue reading The Importance of Temperment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}