Story Development

One thing we want to see over the course of a long and successful campaign is the nominee to grow, in supporters as well as in character.

Obama hasn't gone negative against Hillary even with her old school attacks on his integrity yesterday, or her continued misdescription of Obama as somehow policy-less. But what everyone seems to forget is that you can't beat him on policy. He's too smart, has too much thought out, and actually seems to know who he is as a person.

Paul Waldman just wrote the defining (so far) piece of this campaign, "The Triumph of Narrative":

As Obama tells it, the country is held hostage by a political class that sows partisan and cultural division, making solving problems ever more difficult, while the country yearns for a new day of unity. As the youngest candidate, the only post-boomer candidate, the only bi-racial candidate, and the one candidate with a preternatural ability to obtain the good will of those who disagree with him, he can bring all Americans together and lead us to a future built on hope.

He goes on to point out how Obama's climb resonates with our sense of the epic hero, the man of destiny, all the way to: "When Luke gazes out across the barren desert of Tatooine, the wind rustling in his hair as the twin suns set and the music swells, we know just what it means, even if he doesn't know it yet." But it's even more interesting how he compares it with the story John McCain is offering:

McCain told an interesting story when he ran for president in 2000: the system was corrupt, and with his unmatched courage, independence, and integrity, he would rid Washington of its blood-sucking influence peddlers. But in this campaign he has told no story at all. What is the problem McCain's presidency is supposed to solve? Why is he the only one who can solve it? These are the questions to which winning campaigns know and communicate the answers. McCain doesn't even seem to have thought about them.

He'll fit perfectly into the Obama generational theme, the time for adults my age to step up and take the reins. But where they really differ is in that very revolutionary aspect Obama has brought to Presidential electoral politics: the Citizen Organizer as President:

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, McCain offers no indication of where we as citizens fit into his story, what a vote for him is supposed to say about us. And this is precisely where Hillary Clinton has had trouble countering Obama, despite her prodigious policy knowledge and disciplined campaigning. The Clinton campaign has made few mistakes, but it hasn't had nearly as much success as Obama’s in defining what a vote for her means on the symbolic level...Instead, she has offered multiple variations on a theme, most of which have been reactions to Obama. He was the candidate of change, so she became the candidate whose experience would enable her to achieve change. He gives great speeches, so she now says, "My opponent makes speeches. I offer solutions." There may be merit in that argument. But it is an argument, not a story.

And here's where story becomes crucial -- and why we've needed a new one for a very long time:

When you read a really good story, you sometimes reach the point where you almost forget that you're reading at all. When that happens, you experience the story in a fundamentally different way, as though you have entered it, and instead of taking place outside you, it proceeds around you, and you feel everything the story evokes more deeply and profoundly. Scholars who study narrative call this transportation.

Dig it, the deepest form of semiotics, the complex narrative. Lots of characters, novelistic, The Wire.

Hillary's story is developing into one of absence of planning and squandered opportunities. Not a Commander in Chief. Surely there will be a female President in my lifetime (after seeing her on Bill Maher last Friday, I could see voting for Sen. Claire McCaskill post Obama), and just as I've said that 24's President David Palmer is the model/gateway character for Barack Obama, so might Battlestar Galactica's President Laura Roslin be the model of a smart, fair, tough-minded female Chief Executive.

(Like Britain's first female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Roslin's only previous federal experience is as Secretary of Education.)

So tonight Obama won his ninth contest in a row, which will almost surely be ten after Hawaii counts theirs up, which will mean 23 wins in just two weeks.

That wasn't supposed to be the challenger's record. We were just supposed to be accepting them without bothering to pay attention. She was supposed to have it all sewn up. And he crushed her - by 17%. For 41% more delegates. An achievement.

I don't know if Obama can make up the difference in Ohio, especially if the Clintons make it her last stand, but I do think he can win Texas, having lived and traveled around there, knowing how much they like a maverick gunslinger who hits his targets. What I'm wondering about is her level of denial, if she really thinks she can come back because she has a plan (surprise us) or if she knows.

Her attacks on him haven't worked -- today's voting was his vindication, no matter how much they try to keep sticking him with it. "Not him" is not a story.

Does she know it? Does she get the sense, when she calls him after the speeches to congratulate him, does she realize she's talking to the next President of the United States?

If so, then the only question is either how far she'll go to tear him down with the barest chance of beating John McCain in the fall, or how will she bow out gracefully, should he win Texas or, and now it's possible, take Ohio as well.

Transporting.