Liberals and the Attack Game

Clarence Page, the Chicago Tribune's liberal columnist, chimed in yesterday on the officially slated Question of the Week -- "Why isn't [Barack Obama] further ahead in the polls?" -- with, it seemed to me, a singularly noteworthy observation.

Noteworthy, not so much for what Mr. Page did say, but what he didn't say, or, to be even more oblique in this introduction, just how he didn't say it.

Page tendered a passel of "big reasons" why Obama isn't blowing his antediluvian opponent of ancient wrongheadedness clean out of the waters. In toto, these reasons ranged from the utterly outré (such as the McCain camp's diversionary playing of the "skinniness" card) to the soundly familiar, the most familiar of which, of course, is the always troublesome issue of race.

But within this mix he also let fly a two-line observation that packed a powerful peek, I thought, into the too-genteel mind of the liberal opposition. Wrote Page:

I think a big reason is McCain's refusal to be scary or outrageous enough.... He has maintained enough of his maverick image to resist Democratic efforts to re-brand him as Bush's third term.

I read that line twice, then thrice, for something within it appeared to be disturbingly askew.

And then it dawned on me, soon enough: Page had put the Republican candidate in the driver's seat.

McCain himself, you see, has refused to be scary or outrageous enough. McCain himself has managed to maintain his maverick image. McCain himself has resisted Democratic efforts at rebranding him.

But stop the presses, Mr. Page, because this isn't all McCain's doing.

Which is to say, you, Mr. Page, could have, or more properly should have, deployed the passive voice instead: McCain has been permitted to refuse the "outrageousness" factor and he's been allowed to maintain his maverick image, and so on.

In short, McCain is still flying roughly even with Obama because he hasn't been shot down. And that, as the entire cosmos knows, has been The Liberal Problem within universal memory. Conservatism's enemy is just too bloody civil.

This week we have witnessed a more aggressive stance on Obama's part -- finally -- and as a result, assuming Obama sticks with it, we should see McCain's numbers go lower.

But just how unaggressive Obama had been up to this point was driven home to me yesterday upon watching the battle-scarred Pat Buchanan, on MSNBC, I think it was, discuss Obama's tactical shift.

Rarely had I seen the former Nixon-Reagan aide gush over a candidate quite this much. He was damn near orgasmic. Obama, you see, had finally removed the gloves and was finally spilling some of McCain's blood. Buchanan was thrilling to it, and his only worry seemed to be that Obama would stop the thumping too soon. Obviously Buchanan is no partisan of Obama's; he just enjoyed the professional action.

It is that attitude that wins Republicans elections. To them, campaigning isn't mostly a blood sport -- it is, rather, nothing but. And the more sophisticated among them, such as -- love him or hate him -- the veteran Pat Buchanan, also love nothing more than to witness a top-tier opponent in action, in his finest form, in his bloodiest of moods.

It's a little like, You guys just figured this out? Christ, it's how we've been thrashing the bejesus out of you for 40 years. And had we, the no-holds-barred GOP breed, been running Obama's general election campaign, we can guarantee you that we would have permanently defined McCain, for McCain, before June's first week had expired. That mentally wobbly, warmongering, plutocratic flip-flopper would have had no opportunity to "refuse," "resist," or "maintain" anything of his own choosing. We would have been the ones -- the only ones -- in the driver's seat.

Every liberal knows all of this, is aware of the problem, and debates it endlessly every election. And while liberals debate, conservatives act. Every election. But perhaps this time around, something different?