My biggest disappointment with the Obama administration by far is that he has turned out to be a conventional (and somewhat effective) campaigner. What I expected from his presidency was the same rhetorical innovation he showed during his campaign. As a candidate, he was adroit as “breaking the third wall” of politics. He used his mix of revivalism and cerebralism to deconstruct the more absurd elements of politics. When an opponent would attack him, he’d say “this is what they’re trying to do….this is how politics is done in Washington.” It was wildly effective, it allowed him to be “in politics” but not “of politics.”

Now that is party is less than a month away from a pretty serious bloodletting in Congress, the president is back on the trail. But instead of returning to his deconstruction of politics theme, he’s decided to campaign as an insider. What’s worse is that he’s pretty much campaigning on the maddeningly erroneous Democratic belief that you can somehow reason with voters. The reason the Republicans were so effective in maintaining power for eight years was because they made no distinction between different types of Democrats…in their rhetoric, the Democrats were all godless liberals who hate America and want it destroyed.

I thought Obama was a candidate that understood the past rhetorical mistakes of the Democrats. I expected that after labor day, President Obama and the Democrats would take a page out of the Republican playbook and tie the Republicans to the Tea Party movement. He’d come out and connect the Republican party to their extremist elements. Perhaps a more sophisticated, less blatant version of Congressman Alan Grayson’s “Taliban Dan” ad against Republican Daniel Webster in a Florida House race.

The ad is incredibly unfair, taken out of context and really just unseemly politics. Perfect! Grayson might not survive, but at least he’s trying to weave a narrative about the other side. They are dangerously illiberal in their beliefs. I expected the Democratic party, under Obama’s leadership, to try to get the county to envision what it would be like to have people like Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell in the Senate. Instead, the president keeps trotting out this stupid analogy of a car in a ditch and the Republicans doing nothing to help the Democrats get the car out of the ditch. Towards the end of this speech to the DNC here:

This is a poor rhetoric on so many levels. First, it seems like whining. Second, the public already has a low opinion of Republicans. The problem is not that they think Republicans can’t do a good job, the problem (speaking as a Democrat) is that they don’t fear Republicans. The public thinks (and of course I’m generalizing) that Republicans will come in a at least keep their taxes low and won’t be too much of a burden on business. Since politics is screwed up anyway, why not put in place the party that at least won’t harm my bottom line?

As someone who worked in the Democratic party and is still sympathetic to it, it maddens me how god awful the Democrats are at hand-to-hand political combat. It’s not that difficult, Democrats. Stop painting the Republicans as ineffectual do-nothings and paint them as dangerous. Something to be feared. Give Karl Rove credit. In 2002, the Republicans squeezed the Democrats like an anaconda. If you were a Democrat, you couldn’t get out from under the label of “soft on terrorism.” If you’re a Republicans, you can define yourself however you want and you’ll get no real pushback from the Democrats. The president refers to Republicans as “sipping on a slurpee” while the Democrats take action. That doesn’t scare me. Instead, the Republicans have won the rhetorical war by paining the Democrats as scary… (e.g they are running up the national debt). Did you ever stop to think that maybe most of the public is OK with slurpee sippers in Washington? They certainly aren’t going to be afraid of slurpee sippers. They might be scared of gun-toting, fundamentalist, witchcraft practicing, evolution denying, gay bashers.