Cezary Salad

By now, the idea that 2008 is a “change” year has become commonplace conventional wisdom for the media and Beltway insiders alike.

But, as countless turnovers of conventional wisdom throughout this election cycle have shown - from Sen. Clinton’s invincibility to Sen. Obama’s supposed inability to win over white voters and Sen. McCain’s campaign being toast last summer - heavy lies the crown of conventional wisdom.

Which is why it is time to rethink the 2008-is-all-about-change paradigm.

It’s not that the change paradigm is unequivocally wrong. After all, it’s for a reason that 82% of Americans said the country is seriously off on the wrong track and 66% disapproved of President Bush’s job performance in May’s ABC News/Washington Post poll. They don’t want more of the same, and any politician with an ounce of tactical skill can see this as an opening for an anti-establishment message that is sure to catch fire.

As the change paradigm has it, first among the Presidential hopefuls to realize this - long before Mr. Romney put out the “Washington is Broken” banner after losing the Iowa caucuses and Sen. Clinton advised the country that she was “running on 35 years of change” - was Sen. Obama.

Now, critics may ponder how big a force for change Sen. Obama has been in his political career or how consistently he has expressed this message to the public. But the fact remains that Sen. Obama embraced an anti-establishment message of change from the outset of his campaign (he mentioned it no fewer than nine times when he announced his candidacy in February 2007) and thus managed to brand himself as an agent of change much more powerfully than his opponents. This helped him achieve his upset victory over de-facto incumbent Sen. Clinton in the Democratic primary and - the change paradigm dictates - if he plays his cards right, can help land him in the White House.

Perhaps. But if it was Sen. Obama’s prescient ability to sense the mood of the country that helped him ride a wave of discontent and desire for change to victory in the primaries, then his trimph in the last leg of the journey may well rest on his ability to navigate the next wave sweeping the country: that of sheer, utter confusion.

Somewhere between January, when the Presidential contests began, and June, when they slowly screeched to a halt, the mood of the country went from being discontent and wanting change to being, well, even more discontent but also much more confused about the source of the discontent and how to fix it.

Witness the current debates on everything from rising food, gas, oil and commodity prices and the state of the economy to whether American power and infulence are declining and who is Sen. Obama, anyway? On a typical day, an average American turning on his or her TV might find him or herself bombarded with thousands of tough questions with no simple answers and plenty of experts and talking heads on both sides debating:

• Why are food prices rising so drastically? Is it because of ethanol production? Rising foreign demand? Speculators?
• Why are we paying more for gas? Would we pay less if we didn’t have ethanol? How much less? Is ethanol good or bad for us, on balance?
• Why is the price of oil skyrocketing so fast and furiously? I thought $100/barrel was something, but now it’s approaching $150; when will it stop? And what could stop it? Who do we blame? Speculators? Environmentalists? Our weak currency? Fundamental supply and demand? Would it cost less if oil weren’t denominated in dollars? How much less?
• What should Congress do, and how soon could it have an impact? Is more regulation of commodity markets necessary? If so, how much? What about further regulation of the mortgage markets and investment banks? What role did they play in the housing bubble?
• How much lower will house prices go? Or have we already seen the bottom? What about the economy as a whole - are we in a recession already, have we emerged from one, or has it not even begun yet? Is the worst yet to come?
• Is America in a permanent crisis? Are we doomed to see our power, wealth and prestige inevitably decline as the rest of the world thrives? Could it have been - can it still be - prevented? If so, how?
• What can Sen. Obama do to change any of this? Who is he, anyway?

But it’s not just the American public that’s feeling the pinch of confusion from being bombarded with so many difficult questions all at once; more importantly, lawmakers feel it just as well. So much so, in fact, that at a recent Congressional hearing on the future of oil, a feisty Rep. John Larson (D-CT, 1st District) repeatedly asked - sometimes to eerie silence - whether the laws of supply and demand have been suspended and whether “the dark markets have taken over in terms of speculation” so that “we [lawmakers] can’t from a policy perspective get our arms around this?” (see clip below).

From a policy perspective, though, Americans demand action - and quickly. But as an equally-confused Congress stalls and the public grows weary of hearing conflicting policy proposals on topics as esoteric and arcane as CFTC regulation and closing the “Enron” loophole, all eyes inevitably turn to the presidential candidates to ask “what will you do about it?”

Hence, the national mood of confusion will have a huge impact on the Presidential race. For it means that there is no longer just one “c” in play - change - but rather three: a state of confusion, a need for clarity and the opportunity to leverage both for change. And both Sens. McCain and Obama will need a new strategy for successfuly navigating all three if they hope to claim the White House in November.

The first “c” - confusion - presents an opportunity for the candidates to broaden their support by demonstating to the public a multi-faceted understanding of the litany of interrelated problems and potential solutions facing this country. This means going beyond policy proposals targeted at their political bases - something that both Sens. Obama and McCain need to do a better job of doing. Thus far, while Sen. Obama seems to have bet most of his chips on overdue speculation and greater regulation of the commodity markets as the biggest potential cause and solution to rising oil prices, Sen. McCain, at the risk of flip-flopping, has so far has taken the opposite bet: rising demand coupled with shrinking supply, to be eased by lifting the moratorium on offshore oil exploration in America’s water (but not the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). To be sure, we should applaud the clear policy differences evident here, but at the same time, each is a direct appeal to a specific group: for Sen. Obama, an appeal for Democratic populists and for Sen. McCain, to pro-business Republicans. To better capitalize on the public’s confusion regarding this and other mutlifaceted, interconnected issues, Sens. Obama and McCain will need to broaden their support by better demonstrating that they are not just trying to pander to the arguments of any one special interest or populist agenda but are instead truly advocating for comprehensive solutions that are genuinely in the public’s best interest. Doing so may mean the difference between winning or losing the independent vote, and in an election where both candidates have strong appeal to independents, this may prove crucial.

This leads directly to the second “c:” clarity. Out of confusion arises a need for clarity, and this means giving the American people a clearer idea of what Sen. Obama’s “change we can believe in” and Sen. McCain’s “change that you deserve” really mean. This, again, is an area in which both candidates need to beef-up their strategy so that the hazy notion of “change” that each espouses doesn’t remain an empty vessel to be filled by pundits and campaign surrogates. Sen. McCain, despite enjoying a three-month lead over Sen. Obama in securing his party’s nomination, has yet to build a consistent message and campaign theme, as well as a strong-enough campaign organization to enfore either in the public’s perception. Meanwhile, Sen. Obama, under constant fire from conservatives over everything from his patriotism to his supposed elitism and Muslim “Manchurian candidate” status, is still in serious danger of losing votes in November because many voters simply do not know enough about him to avoid falling prey to misinformation and swift-boating. Clarity in policy, in order to be meaningful and to stick in the voters’ minds, must be preceded and reinforced by clarity of campaign message, theme and candidate identity. But as evidenced by Mr. McCain’s lack of message and Mr. Obama’s as-yet uncertain identity, neither candidate has yet achieved all three.

The third “c” - change - comes about as a result of successfully leveraging the first two for public support. Faced with widespread confusion and a lack of clarity about the candidates and their messages, voters are unlikely to let Sen. Obama coast through the general election by simply turning public discontent with the status quo into support for an anti-establisment message. In any case, doing so is not so much a way to change the ways of Washington as it is a shallow plan for getting elected. Instead, real change in 2008 means building a broad base of support for a multi-faceted policy platform that doesn’t simply alter the status quo or differ from the other candidate but also clarifies the candidate, the message, and his campaign theme. It is change in this sense that is not only likely to lead to victory but to also allow the victor to have a strong enough public consensus behind him to actually enact any meaningful changes once in office. And it is this kind of change that the voters are likely to demand and reward at the ballot box come November.

November, of course, is still a long way off (four months can be an eternity in politics). And so far, as the 320-218 electoral college count in favor of Sen. Obama (as of July 6) suggests, Sen. Obama may still be riding the prevailing change paradigm to his political advantage. If he wishes to keep this lead, though, he will have to figure out how to turn the widespread confusion of 2008 to his political advantage; otherwise, Sen. McCain may well have the perfect opening from which to launch his promised comeback.

A turnover of this sort would be neither surprising nor unexpected, given that we’ve witnessed just about everything this election season. But it would certainly confuse anyone who has adhered to the conventional wisdom throughout this election - all the more reason why 2008 may be, above all else, the year of confusion.