The most remarkable point about Friday’s debate, about the whole week, has not been remarked upon enough.
That is the difference between strategy and tactics.
Barack Obama has gone after everything strategically. He has a long-range vision, of Democrats and Republicans getting along even when they disagree, of consensus that starts with agreement and moves outward, a vision driven by Internet values that has been as controversial among Democrats as among Republicans.
Obama won that argument narrowly in his own party and this week he hit John McCain over the head with it.
Obama deliberately treated McCain with respect, even some deference, beginning many responses by saying he agreed with McCain on some point. Then he hammered home a strategic vision which, whether or not you agreed with it, was at least coherent, different from the way we have been going, and fairly easy to understand.
The talking heads exploded. No knockout blows, they said. No sound bites, they complained.
Well, exactly right.
McCain, meanwhile, was all about tactics. Everything was tactical, obviously tactical, from picking Palin to "suspending" the campaign to coming back to Mississippi. And the way he debated was tactical. He treated each question like a separate event, rather than as part of some larger whole.
The key point came when discussion turned to "the surge." McCain kept hammering away that this "strategy" proved "we will win" in Iraq, that Obama was unfairly disparaging "our troops" and "General Petraeus." Obama refused to be drawn in, stating repeatedly that the surge was "a tactic," that the strategy of focusing entirely on Iraq was the mistake, and that McCain was confusing strategy and tactics.
This went right over the heads of the TeeVee Talking Heads, just as it went over McCain’s head. But it was clear that the American people got it. Just as it was clear they understood why he was being deferential, why he was starting his sentences with "I agree with John" or "Senator McCain is right" about something. He was using those phrases as a digression to discuss his disagreement, laying out common ground before moving to the basic choice. Most people understood that.
That the TeeVee Heads were surprised when polls showed Obama winning the debate handily, especially among independents and undecideds, may have been the biggest story of the night. For 40 years the TeeVee Heads have taken it upon themselves to tell us what the narrative is, to define the terms of the debate, to play referee when, as I was taught in journalism school, we are in fact just witnesses.
Obama took that power away from them.
The debate, in whole and in parts, is now all over the Internet. The discussion of that debate is now all over the Internet. It no longer belongs to the TeeVee Talking Heads. It belongs to us. We have the power.
And that is a triumph. Polls are already moving sharply in the direction of the Democrats, and they will continue to move in that direction, perhaps right through Election Day. Because someone finally treated us like adults capable of understanding strategy, rather than giving us the candy of tactics.
This is not a triumph of Left over Right. This is a triumph of strategy over tactics. Obama came in to this campaign with a strategy, just as Ronald Reagan came into his political campaigns with a strategy. When the going is tough, when we’re all fighting alligators, people like to know that someone is thinking about the swamp.
They call that person Mr. President.
