Obama in Columbus

So yeah it a crappy picture, but what can you do it was with my phone. I would have taken my actual camera, but I didn't think I was going to go to the event until minutes before it started.

So here's my thoughts about the speech. It was a good speech, an inspiring speech, but it was nearly the same speech we have been hear for the last 3 years.

"A politics of hope not fear" has been a mainstay in the Obama campaign and I can understand that. It is a great rhetorical tool. It is powerful, dichotomous, and plays off one of the main attributes of the Bush presidency, fear and national security. Another main part of the Obama campaign is his outsider status. This is another great rhetorical tool which separates him from Hillary, McCain, and a number of other major candidates.

But again I already knew these things. This style of rhetoric has been with Obama since he really enter the national scene. In his first major speech, his keynote at the 2004 DNC, he said hope no less than 13 times. In his announcement speech in Springfield, he used hope and change nine different times. This is his rhetorical style and it is a good strategy, but it is time he shows that he is a presidential candidate and not just a rhetorical strategy.

We need to hear specifics in the form of major policy initiatives in the couple months. We are 67 days from the tentatively scheduled Iowa caucuses and he needs to start proving that he is actually a different style of politician. He needs to start saying how he is going to accomplish what he says he is going to accomplish. He also needs to activate and empower the grassroots in a meaningful way.

Obama has a more powerful social network than Dean could have ever dreamed of. Here is some ideas:

-policy discussions on the website and by the way I mean actual discussions not just Obama listening, but Obama listening to his supporters and discussing the finer points of the policies...American politics is not simple and cannot be solved with a 12-second soundbyte, so you have these discussions...you get to focus group your ideas and they get a feeling of agency..."I helped shape Obama's policy on blah, blah"
-meet with more of the grassroots groups...stop doing the contest to have dinner with Obama...it shouldn't be a prize to meet you...it should be your goal to meet everyone of your volunteers and donors...
-systematically organize the grassroots groups more...seriously you have hundreds of thousands of supporters across the country you need to get them feeling like they are part of the campaign

Anyway, these are just ideas. Ideas the Obama camp is never going to read and are more than likely going to go unheeded by every major candidate in the 2008 election. But I think they are right for certain candidates and could be used to strengthen and empower the electorate.

Also I was quoted in the Dayton Daily News.