BY TAYLOR MARSH
Like him or not, Obama and his team won the optics battle this week. Reaching out to the world, Obama also renewed hope that beyond the Bush administration, America will re-engage the world community and renew our best selves, instead of revealing the worst of our awesome might.
McCain’s biggest mistake was competing at all. Since they are making the case that Obama is inexperienced on foreign policy matters, why bother? A secure candidate would have left it alone; trusted his advantage, especially since there’s a long way to go. But their angst about losing a news cycle, which was bound to happen, made them look desperate and weak, even small. The serial gaffes didn’t help. McCain should have shrugged it off, taken the high road, then gone to a battleground state and talked economics all week, connecting every day with voters. Instead he tried to one up Obama on an issue McCain is supposed to own.
That said, all the optics in the world doesn’t change the fact that Obama still hasn’t given something for people beyond his die hard supporters (and hard core Democrats) to grasp. In fact, one might even question whether through all these successes, especially in such a grand setting as today, if Obama is getting further away from the American voter, instead of closer to them.
To seal the deal Obama will have to rectify this situation. He’s got plenty of time to do it, but settings like Berlin, though it wins the optics game, doesn’t connect Obama any more to people who don’t know who he is than before.
Americans vote for candidates who are like them and relate to their challenges, offering solutions to solve them. It’s why Hillary Clinton, at the close of the primary season, was beating Obama regularly. She’d connected, voters got her, and believed she understood them and could help them. She won their votes by relating personally to their lives. I suspect that very few Americans relate to Obama’s experience in Europe this week, even though most Americans look forward to our image rising around the world. But in the end it gets down to something very basic. I wonder if voters are asking one simple question: What does all this have to do with me?
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