-By Dan Scott
The first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama covering mostly foreign policy came to its expected outcome. McCain made the obvious points accepted by most of the country and cut through Obama’s attempts at nuance. We expected Obama to be shown for the extreme leftist, dangerous, naïve person he is and we were not disappointed. McCain was slow to begin with the economic question and definitely not on his game giving the advantage to Obama.
To say the least, both liberals and conservatives said their respective candidate won the debate. In a sense, both sides are right and wrong at the same time. From their perspective each candidate delivered the talking points they wanted to hear and thus in their minds was a point scored. This result is what we call, confirmation bias. The problem here from a strategic view is neither side has the votes to win if things stand as they are. Both candidates have essentially half the decided voters. Therefore, the election will be decided by the actual turn out of the decided voters and by those who have yet to make their decision.
Fox News Network after the debate had assembled a focus group of people who were undecided as to their choice for president. The interesting conclusion drawn by the host of the focus group was an even split between those leaning toward McCain and Obama. McCain it was said needed to demonstrate he understood the concerns and feelings of the public (middle class) and Obama needed to reveal more specifics. While my fellow conservatives were disappointed at their response and even questioned the veracity of how undecided and the tilt of their politics I would submit the group as constituted was very helpful. Let’s say for the sake of argument the focus group was a liberally leaning group. What does that tell us? It was a very significant result with 50% of the group leaning to McCain. More importantly, the focus group revealed a devastating weakness Obama cannot fix whereas McCain’s issue was totally recoverable.
I would like to draw your attention to the very different tactics used by conservatives and liberals to convince people of the soundness of their view. Conservatives believe things are self- evident and with enough information and time a rational person will come to the proper conclusion because the truth can be fully known. Liberals believe the truth cannot be fully known therefore their agenda determines the truth, which means through assertion and selective facts people must be guided (sold) to their truth. With less than forty days to the election, the problem for each group becomes evident. Conservatives using their long term tried and true methods are at a disadvantage as there is not enough time for undecided voters to know the truth. Liberals while having the advantage in the short term via making assertions have the distinct disadvantage of losing credibility when exposed with the facts. Therein lies the strategy of McCain winning the election.
John McCain needs to take the constructive criticism of the focus group to connect with the middle class by demonstrating he understands their concerns. Every day for the next forty days John McCain needs to take an issue from the middle class perspective and present a solution that directly affects them. Example, John McCain needs to say he will make good on the promise the Democrats broke in 2006 to actively working to lower the price of gasoline by drilling. This demonstrates he understands their immediate financial need in regards to their standard of living, which by the way is also even more so felt by the poor. On the other hand, Barack Obama’s campaign depends on selling a concept not specifics. Obama cannot reveal more detail since if he does the public will grasp the very negative implications to them if he were to achieve power. Using the above example, Obama is against more drilling and then prattles on about the promise of alternative energy. McCain needs to expose the fundamental flaw in his argument that being alternative energy still hasn’t matured, it’s promise is still years in the future and therefore cannot be kept in a timely manner, it does not solve anyone’s problem in the right now where we currently exist and it is very expensive.
From this context, the debates were a resounding success; John McCain now has a road map to win the election. The McCain campaign needs to retool it’s message to connect with the middle class on their level and needs to expose the fatal flaws of the false empty promises made by Barack Obama, a Democrat. If the McCain campaign will take the sum total of the Democrat broken promises from the 2006 elections, they will break the liberals only real tool for convincing people, their assertions, which actually is nothing more than meaningless sales talk.
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.
Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.