It's all about Credibility to Execute. Clinton fails miserably. Obama excels!

berni_mccoy

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Tue Apr-08-08 12:49 PM
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It's all about Credibility to Execute. Clinton fails miserably. Obama excels!

Edited on Tue Apr-08-08 12:50 PM by berni_mccoy

When you have two candidates with similar outstanding policies, it all comes down to credibility to execute (as well as just credibility). The best test of that credibility is the campaign itself. The campaign serves as a precursor to the demands of the presidency: create a vision, share that vision with the masses and then obtain political validation of that vision from your colleagues. The campaign is a plan that must not only be executed, it must be executed like a well-oiled machine. Like any other competitive contest, the winners are the ones who make a compelling case for their performance and who make fewer mistakes, along with consideration for strength of opposition.

Obama could not have faced a tougher opponent than Hillary Clinton. She had every advantage going into the primary. She had a considerable war-chest, the political connections, the Super Delegates, and a very expensive PR machine behind her with some of the, at the time, best political strategists the Democratic party had to offer.

What happened? What went wrong? Well, just about everything. Her strategy from the outset was presumptuous and arrogant. It assumed a bow-out of all competitors by Super Tuesday, as her plan focused on the winner-take-all approach for that date. Her message was lacking and unconvincing of change in the early primaries and caucuses. And she had a tough time sharing her vision and answering questions according to her own message in the debates. She looked weak. And she paid the price in Iowa, coming in third, behind Obama and Edwards. This was simply enough of a mistake that allowed voters to give strong consideration to the other candidates, primarily Obama and Edwards.

Another gaping flaw in her campaign was the Big-Blue-State approach. This approach is exactly what has gone wrong with the Democratic party in the last 20 years and it has made the Democrats appear as elitists. It's old school for a failed policy. The Democratic culture has embraced Dean's 50-state-strategy, and this is the new progressive culture. It is Dean's keystone and he deserves credit for seeing the problem and addressing it. This strategy led to the sweeping Democratic wins of both Congress and local governments in 2006, and it is what upsets old-school strategists like Penn and Carville, who aggressively attacked Dean for this winning strategy. It also explains why Clinton's campaign focused on the alternative. Her campaign represents the old-school. Fortunately Obama adopted Dean's strategy and it lead to a sweeping victory on Super Tuesday and a winning streak of over 14 contests afterward.

Now here is where Clinton really loses points. What were they to do if their plan failed after Super Tuesday as it did? They had nothing. Nada. Zip. NO BACKUP PLAN. This is the tragic failure in her credibility to execute. It is the same lack of planning that has left us in a quagmire in Iraq. She has demonstrated a clear lack of vision for any other possibilities than assumed success. This is indeed, the same arrogance of the Bush administration. It is exactly what America needs to reject.

Since then, Clinton's campaign has floundered and focused on baseless character assassination techniques. That is the backup plan of the cornered and desperate. She has sought to sunder her party by pouring salt in the wound created by the local DLC-controlled parties of Michigan and Florida. She as taken the approach of the scorched earth strategy, the same exact approach of the failed Bush administration as it struggled to convince America that the Iraq War was good for them. They labeled liberals as traitors. They contained protests in "free speech zones". They spied on Americans and put their political enemies on no-fly lists. They focused on the failure and how to look good while disasters like Katrina, Abu Gharab, Gitmo, out-of-control Government spending, trade deficits, the mortgage crisis and the economy fell all around them. I have no doubt that Clinton would fall into a similar failure to execute under the same circumstances given her performance of her failed campaign. She even exhibits the same cronyism that Bush does by holding on to her overpaid, failure of a strategist, Mark Penn, who actually works against her stated policies with the government of Colombia and who partners his PR Firm with the campaign manager for McCain. At well over 1 million dollars a month, you think Clinton would have fired this miserable failure after Super Tuesday and no backup plan. But maybe she feels he's doing a "hecuva job" after all and that is why she keeps paying him more than 375 times the money that Obama pays his chief strategist David Plouffe (David Plouffe makes just under $8000 per filing period based on the latest FEC filings).

You want to talk serious promise of an executive, look at Obama. He was trailing national polls by about 20 points at the outset and had fewer than 1/5th of Clinton's number of Super Delegates. His strategy was simple: talk direct, talk plain and talk issues; to everyone in all places. It's no wonder he gains 20 points in the polls in PA by simply going on a 6-day bus tour. It's because when people actually see him, actually hear him, they know what they are getting. They aren't getting someone who listens to polls that tell them what is best to say: he speaks the truth and speaks it clearly. When forced by the Clinton campaign to confront the racial issues in this country, he did not falter. He faced it head on. And the people approved. After he dealt with his own crisis, he started a rise in the national polls from a then nearly 10-point deficit to now nearly a 10-point lead. While Clinton has faced a net loss of Super Delegates since Super Tuesday, Obama has closed the gap to fewer than 20 SDs.

Both Obama and Clinton have faced their own trial-by-fire in this campaign. Both have had their 3 am calls. But only Obama has had the good judgment and used that good judgment when his call came. Clinton failed her test and continues to exhibit that failure on a daily basis. She has failed, miserably, to provide credibility to execute. Obama has proven his credibility to lead and execute and for that reason, the voters are choosing him to be the nominee.