Had enough? Then vote Democratic.
Barack Obama is leading his party into the 21st century with a toughness and directness that is new to him -- at least, to his public persona -- but in which one hears echoes of that most plain-speaking of Democratic presidents, Harry Truman. The most poetic speaker in modern politics has descended to prose -- and to great effect.
Obama's speech -- and much, though not all, of the convention -- was intended to normalize him in the eyes of swing voters to whom he seems alien, to draw a populist contrast between the two parties and their candidates, and to go after McCain's weak points -- and strong points.
Obama has long since motivated his base, and his speech and the convention were not for them. Instead, he was wooing both working-class white voters and fence-sitting Hillary supporters. For the latter, Obama and other speakers stressed such themes as equal pay for equal work. But his speech was chiefly directed at those swing voters of the Rust Belt who turned to Republicans on social issues but who may come back to the Democrats on economics. This was clear not only in the issues that Obama raised in his speech but in those he didn't.
The Supreme Court? Didn't bring it up. Darfur? Too far away. Guantanamo? Where's that?
Not for him such hoity-toity concerns (even though those concerns will surely be reflected in his administration's policies). Instead, on foreign and military policy, Obama is positioning himself to be every bit as tough as McCain and a whole lot smarter. McCain and Bush are the guys who invaded Iraq instead of going into Tora Bora. They're too benighted to know that we need Europe with us if we're going to draw lines that Russia cannot cross. The McCain whom Obama sketched is too wedded to the past to understand how to fight new challenges, combating a terrorist network in 80 countries, Obama noted bitingly, by sending troops to Iraq. McCain, Obama went on, is also too temperamental to exercise the sober judgment a president needs in deciding whether, where, and how to go to war. (McCain's temperament was raised earlier in the evening by Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who suggested that when it came to strategic sobriety, McCain was hardly in her grandpa's league.)
"We are the party of Roosevelt," Obama declared. "We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe."
Unlike John Kerry in 2004, who counted on the facts of his biography to reassure the nation that he'd be a tough president for the post- September 11 era, Obama spoke plainly not just of restoring our diplomatic strength and our moral clout but also of his willingness to fight when the situation demands it.
Add this rhetoric of toughness to his hard-times populism, and Obama comes off as the leader not just of Roosevelt's and Kennedy's party but of Truman's as well. The first half of his speech -- truly, its centerpiece -- was an evisceration of Republican economics and an exposition of the pro-working-class economics that Obama pledged to pursue. Obama identified himself not just with the foreign-policy muscularity and smarts of the Democrats of the mid-20th century but with their class-based economics as well. He unmasked McCain as the faux man of the people who doesn't understand the economic plight of the working and middle class. He promised to cut taxes on 95 percent of working families, to eliminate the tax break for companies that offshore jobs and create tax breaks for companies that create jobs here, to end our dependence on foreign oil and to create 5 million new green jobs "that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." He vowed to reform the bankruptcy laws to put rank-and-file employees ahead of CEOs when the company's assets are distributed.
Obama put the "Democratic" back in Democratic economics last night. Republican economics, he said, echoing the Economic Policy Institute's Jared Bernstein, are "you're on your own" economics. The Democratic economics he laid out explicitly favor working- and middle-class voters who stand to benefit from lower taxes, guaranteed health insurance and medical leave, and tuition subsidies for college students who go into community service or the armed forces. But even as he stressed government's responsibility for social well-being, for meeting common needs, he also emphasized the individual's responsibility to take initiative and care for his or her family. Without laying out specific trade-offs, Obama made clear, in telling his and his family's life story, and in outlining the responsibilities of parents, that government, as he sees it, is not a something-for-nothing enterprise. Like the Lord, it helps those who help themselves.
There's a fundamental reason for this reversion to the Democratic economics of the 1930s and 1940s. When Roosevelt and Truman were president, the postwar social contract that fostered the broadly shared prosperity of the three decades after World War II was in the process of creation. Policies had to be put into place that extended middle-class opportunities and security to millions of Americans who had not enjoyed them before. Today, the postwar social contract is clearly a thing of the past. Obama's Democrats have resurrected class-based advocacy because, as during Roosevelt's and Truman's time, government is again needed to restore mass prosperity.
All of this -- the foreign-policy toughness, the economics in the service of the middle class, the idea that government isn't in the business of subsidizing idleness, the toleration of differences on abortion and guns -- is exquisitely crafted for the swing voters whose support will determine the outcome of the election: the white working class.
Indeed, the supreme importance the campaign places on winning those workers is evident in Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate, in the substance of the speeches on the last two nights of the convention, in the parade of white workers (and one Latina) who preceded Obama to the stage on the convention's final night. It is evident in the tough, assertive persona that Obama exhibited during his speech, looking straight into the camera to tell McCain, "We all put our country first."
As the Republicans have gone after Obama this summer with all manner of spurious and ludicrous attacks, some Democratic activists, elected officials and commentators (myself very much included) have grown concerned that Obama's strategists believed that their man could win simply by turning out record numbers of African Americans, young people, and liberal professionals. Obama's speech last night definitively allayed those concerns. He clearly plans to turn out his base, but his message is directed precisely at winning working-class whites by championing their interests, reflecting their no-nonsense view of foreign and military affairs, and being as tough and direct in his manner as a fighter for working people and their nation must be. He will win by being the kind of Democrat they remember with fondness. By being Harry Truman.
