OBAMA'S CASTING CALL - July 4, 2008
 
 

American presidential politics is highly personal, and largely about narrative. A useful way to think about presidential election outcomes in the modern era is to picture the two candidates as characters in Hollywood action-suspense films. Are they take-charge? Do they get the girl at the end? Or are they ineffectual bumblers? Setting aside Reagan, who actually was a film star, in 1988 the Democrats set out to cast Michael Dukakis as Zorba the Greek. The Republicans turned him into Zorba the Clerk, and George Bush the elder won the election. Bush himself, however, was rather diffident and patrician, and went down in turn to good ole boy Bill Clinton. One-time fighter jock George Bush the younger beat nerdy Al Gore, and then beat John Kerry, another diffident patrician like his father.

 
Coming into the 2008 election, it is easy to paint a Hollywood-winner image for both candidates, and that is in large measure what each campaign will seek to do. The Republicans go into this election with practically everything against them – an unpopular president, an unpopular war, and a sagging economy. The one thing they have going for them is a presidential candidate, John McCain, whose Hollywood narrative writes itself. He is no kid fighter jock, but the tough old veteran pilot coming back to fly one last critical mission. His 'straight talk' persona plays to type; we expect this guy to speak his mind.

 
Barack Obama is black. Such is the continuing power of race that blackness in itself gives him a Hollywood narrative. His actual personal background scarcely matters, only that it can be highlighted in a way that fits cultural myths, e.g. 'raised by a single mother.' The popular culture belief that successful African Americans have had to overcome the temptations of urban ghetto life, gangs and drugs, is the comfortable way that white Americans acknowledge the realities of race in American life.
 

How race plays against Obama is historically obvious, but currently uncertain. In the 1980s, prominent African-American candidates were victims of the Bradley or Wilder effect – named for two of them – falling several points short on election day of what the last round of polling had shown. The presumption was that some respondents lied to pollsters about their willingness to vote for a black candidate. More recent elections, however, have shown no sign of a Bradley/Wilder effect. This does not mean that race-based resistance to voting for African Americans has vanished, but perhaps shows a reduction in racial hypocrisy. In practical terms it suggests that Obama's strong polling numbers can be taken at face value.
 

Obama's greatest potential weakness, indeed, may not be his color but his base coalition of support, specifically his white support. Throughout the primary season this vote skewed younger, more educated, and higher income. Along with African Americans it was sufficient to win the nomination. Obama's efforts to broaden his base met only limited success during the primaries, however, hence the extraordinarily close and protracted primary campaign. When some polls during the primaries showed more than a quarter of Hillary primary support defecting to McCain in the fall, this loomed as a serious concern. Indeed, worry that Obama lacked appeal to working class base Democrats was an implicit theme of Hillary's campaign.
  

The McCain camp quickly moved to exploit this potential weakness, though polling since the end of the primaries suggests that divisions among Democrats are not as severe as they looked at the height of the primaries. It is well to remember that the Democratic primary division was more on style than policy substance, and evoked rather than replicated earlier 'battles for the soul of the party.' The Democratic Party endured a major ideological fissure in the 1968 and 1972 primary elections, the end result of which was defection of large numbers of 'Reagan Democrats' in the 1980s. That revolution already happened, a generation ago. The 2008 contrast between Obama and Hillary only superficially resembles McCarthy versus Humphrey in 1968 or McGovern versus Muskie in 1972. Obama will have his work cut out for him with working class whites, but this has been true throughout the modern political era.
 

The subtler risk for Obama is not that working class Democrats will defect, but that the McCain campaign can limit their enthusiasm and intensity, and move swing voters their way, by portraying Obama's core supporters – and by implication their candidate – as out-of-touch elitists. This is an expression that in modern American politics also arises out of the 1960s, but as noted here in May, the stereotype is older than that. It can be traced back at least to the 1930s, when George Orwell wondered why left-leaning politics appealed so much to – and thus came to be typecast by – every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England [1] .

 
A concise contemporary formulation would be 'latté sipping,' but the stereotype is all too recognizable – upper middle class faux bohemians – and thus alive and well. Republicans effectively deployed variations of it against both Al Gore and John Kerry, and the theme has worked so well for them in so many races over the years that they are nearly certain to deploy it against Obama, either directly or through his support base.

 
The other theme that has historically worked for Republicans in the modern era is portraying Democrats as weak on national security. It is not unrelated, as the presence of pacifists on Orwell's list attests. This privileged class, in popular myth, is unworldly, unwilling to admit the existence of conflict and enemies. Republicans have used the theme of Democratic naïveté effectively, even when public sentiment on key foreign policy favored Democratic positions. Specifically, since the Vietnam era, an unspoken question has hung over Democratic nominees: Will they go to war, if vital national interests call for it? Over the years, enough swing voters have had enough misgivings about Democrats' steadfastness to provide a critical edge to Republicans. This perhaps accounts for McCain's counterintuitive decision to play up his hawkish position on Iraq in the face of strong public opposition to the war. The McCain camp may be gambling that swing voters will trust him on the war even though they disagree with him.

 
Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo has also argued for what he indelicately calls the 'bitch-slap theory' of politics – that hard-knuckles Republican campaign tactics are designed largely to underline the perception of Democratic weakness. If an Al Gore or John Kerry can't stand up to tough campaign rhetoric, goes the implicit argument, how can they be expected to stand up to al-Qaeda or other foreign foes? The Democrat becomes the kid on the playground who won't hit back. One need only watch US film or television to know that this is not a virtue.

 
The Clinton brand, both Bill and Hillary, has been toughness – Hillary's core 'electability' argument was that she'd been under GOP attack for sixteen years and was still on her feet. Out-front toughness of this sort is not Obama's trademark. Indeed, his cool and cerebral style might seem made for the GOP narrative of a brainy candidate detached from the real world. However, this is where racial stereotypes in their modern form may play out in surprising ways. African-American males labor under many stereotypes, but unworldly and 'wimp' are not among them. In Hollywood film, black characters know what goes down on the streets, and don't let themselves get pushed around.
 

The Hollywood myth of blackness may also explain why the public airing of controversial statements by Obama's longtime minister, Rev. Wright, caused no significant damage. Black film heroes are allowed, indeed expected, to retain some personal ties to the 'hood'. Thus Obama gets something of a pass for a relationship that would be more controversial if it were between a white politician and minister. Likewise McCain gets a pass on social issues, and even on his claim to be a reformer – fighter pilots are not expected to be saints. Both campaigns will find their opponent much less vulnerable on some issues than their own most fervent partisans imagine (though Republicans, facing an enthusiasm gap, may raise some issues more to excite their own base than to dissuade voters from Obama).
 

The image that candidates bring with them into a campaign may not be the one they end up with, as the losers of most recent presidential elections can attest. For US political aficionados, however, it is the early strength of both candidates that is most striking, and in Obama's case his potential for converting the historic disability of race into a campaign advantage.

Rick Robinson

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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

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