“Change” – A New Way of Saying “I’m Not The Other Guy”

Barack Obama has based his entire political campaign on a mantra of “change we can believe in” and “hope for the future”. But a commercial for his campaign has tipped me off that this is a more positive way of saying “I’m not the other guy”. The ad directs people who are starting to question exactly what his plans are to find them at Obama’s website.

John Kerry had the same answer when America wanted to know what his plan was for the problems we faced in Iraq. Look at the website.

My brother is a history teacher. In 2004, when kids in his class were screaming that they wanted Kerry to win, he gave an optional homework assignment. He told them to go to John Kerry’s website and find out what his plan was for Iraq. Not one student completed the assignment.

That is what Obama is banking will be the reaction to this ad: that no one will actually check, but that people will assume that he has a plan. It is rooted in a bit of liberal arrogance, when you think about it: my policies are too detailed to talk about in a commercial; you aren’t smart enough to handle it. As was said about Kerry's plan to ask the French for permission for everything, we won't get the nuance.

For all of his blather about wanting to discuss issues—rather than his audience cheering at the idea that Sarah Palin is a pig—Obama, like Kerry, doesn’t seem to want to advertise what his policies will be. This fits with a voting record that includes over 130 “present” votes that Obama has recorded in the Senate. No one can argue with a position that doesn’t exist.

Obama’s policies include bigger government and higher taxes. They include cutting defense spending in the middle of a war. They include allowing a baby that survives an abortion attempt to die in the trash. I wouldn’t advertise that kind of ideology either.

One of his policy positions that he will advertise is a tax cut for the middle class. Does anyone seriously believe Democrats when they promise to cut taxes any more? I am 40 years old. I have never in my entire life seen a Democrat cut taxes. How in the world can people still believe that it will happen?

Barack Obama is running the same campaign that John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Mike Dukakis, and Walter Mondale ran before him: At least I’m not a Republican. He is just dressing it up differently: in an inspiring—and insidiously vapid—message of “change”. Hope for the future.

John Kerry had no policies, no plans, no vision. He offered absolutely nothing on policy that America was ready to support. He ran his entire campaign on “I served in Vietnam” and “I’m not George W. Bush”.

With George W. Bush not even on the ballot anymore, Barack Obama is doing the same thing. Except he doesn’t even have the service bit to offer. Compared to his opponent, he is woefully inferior on that front.

Negative campaigning does work. It was the first excuse out of Michael Dukakis’s mouth when he got creamed in 1988, after it was revealed—in one of those “negative attack ads”—that he let murderers out of jail on weekends in Massachusetts. You can win the left in this country with a negative campaign—conservatives are routinely called “Nazis” by people who would gladly vote for Adolf Hitler if he were running against a pro-life Republican. But at some point, a candidate should have to offer a reason to vote for him or her, and not against their opponent.

That Obama’s people have rallied around “hope” and “change” is a more positive way of saying it, but the Democrat candidate for the highest office in the world is still hiding his actual policy positions.

Let’s ask that dying infant that survived an abortion attempt how she likes Obama’s vision.