Obama, keep on ignoring the ‘experts’

To: Barack Obama

From: A political junkie

CYNTHIA TUCKER
MY OPINION

• E-mail Tucker

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Re: Unsolicited advice

Please continue to ignore the carping from panicky partisans, know-it-all pundits and Washington insiders. You clearly know more about running your unorthodox campaign than anyone else.

After all, one of your biggest selling points in this season is that you have better judgment than John McCain. Continue to rely on that judgment. If you make it as far as the Oval Office, you’ll get conflicting advice from experts every day. You’ll be the one who has to make the hard calls, and you seem completely comfortable doing that.

On Thursday night, you audaciously went counter to the notion that you should scale back on spectacle to try to blunt McCain’s sophomoric taunts about your being a “celebrity.” You accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency in front of a stomping, whistling and cheering audience of 84,000 in an outdoor stadium, after performances by genuine celebrities Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, John Legend and will.i.am.

Your backdrop resembled the West Wing of the White House. You even had the weather gods on your side: clear, cool and dry at Invesco Field. No rain.

You have proved yourself neither foolishly stubborn nor stupid. You made adjustments where you deemed them necessary, recalibrating your lofty rhetoric for those who believe you too cerebral and filling in details for those who may think your speeches have been inspiring but vague. But you still managed to inspire your listeners, defending activist government as few Democrats are capable of doing, reminding the audience that “America is better than the last eight years.”

“Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work,” you said.

And you deftly handled those who claimed you were a pansy, unable to throw a punch, and you did so in your own inimitable fashion. While conventional wisdom argues that you leave the attacks to your surrogates, you went after McCain yourself, giving one of the toughest speeches of the convention:

“Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know. Why else would he define middle class as someone making under $5 million a year? … It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care; it’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.”

You also challenged McCain’s acclaimed expertise on foreign policy, vowing, again, “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.”

You get extra points for ignoring the notion that you can’t stand toe-to-toe with your rival on national security issues. In the past, Democrats have been defensive on foreign policy. You, however, refuse to cower before the conventional wisdom.

And while you managed all that without ever dehumanizing McCain or casting aspersions on his motives, you nicely chided him for his own straying into the sewer of Rovian politics:

“The times are too serious, the stakes are too high, for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.”

One of your strengths is your refusal to sink to the politics of smear and insult. You are a long-shot candidate no matter what kind of campaign you run. You might as well keep your decency and integrity.

You were the one smart enough to figure out how to get this far. Nobody — no political operative or strategist or pundit — knows more than you do about how to win this campaign. You are writing the playbook as you go along.

So keep doing what you think is right, trusting your instincts, remaining true to your principles. That’s what you’re going to have to do if you are elected president.

Correction: In my Aug. 24 column on the black middle class, the number of black Americans in poverty was grossly incorrect. Approximately 9 million black Americans live below the poverty line.