One of the more obnoxious media narratives of this campaign season is the one that suggests that Obama substitutes "soaring rhetoric" in place of substance. I have heard variations of that narrative bouncing around ever since I first saw it in this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Karl Rove.
It has survived despite Obama's groundbreaking speech on race relations and despite such substantive comments from his opponents as "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran." So, today when I saw MSNBC's web page leading with the below headline, I felt compelled to write them a letter.
To the Editor:
I thought your headline today "Can 'substance' trump star power?" was offensive. It parrots the Republican talking point that Barack Obama is a good speaker, but that there is no substance to his words.
Meanwhile, John McCain's record includes the following:
- He repeatedly asserted at a press conference that Iran was training al Qaeda operatives, evidently unaware that Iran is a Shiite country and that al Qaeda is a Sunni organization. Joe Lieberman eventually had to lean over and correct him.
- He keeps accusing Obama of wanting to talk with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even though the President of Iran has no power in the foreign policy arena. Any diplomatic discussion with Iran would be with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His name, of course, is less radioactive politically than Ahmadinejad.
"Substance" requires a command of the facts, and McCain who presents himself as a foreign policy guru, has some serious cracks in his armor. Continuing:
- He intentionally avoids "substance" when he resorts to fear and smear tactics such as pointing out that Hamas had endorsed Obama and comparing Obama's proposal of diplomacy with Iran to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in the lead-up to World War II.
- He sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys "Barbara Ann" at a campaign rally -- a highly "substantive" look into his philosophy on American foreign policy.
To be certain, all presidential candidates deliver countless speeches that lack substance in large part. Leading a frenetic crowd in a chant of "Yes we can!" is hardly an intelligent discussion of the issues. But those are stump speeches whose purpose is to rally the crowd. And John McCain gives just as many as Obama does. But Obama has also given an historic and seriously thought provoking speech on American race relations and actually does have a comprehensive policy platform that epitomizes "substance."
For example, my area of expertise is in computers. I am the IT Director for my company. I watched Obama's speech at the Google campus on Net Neutrality and found him to be incredibly well informed on some fairly technical issues. I feel, from watching him speak extemporaneously in that video, that Obama not only has a platform that will truly bring our government into the information age, but that he understands how to achieve that goal on a fundamental level.
That is what substance is. It doesn't come from wrinkles in the face and it doesn't even come from being a war hero. It comes from a combination of intelligence, a command of the facts, and good judgment. Early in the campaign, Karl Rove wrote an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal accusing Obama of lacking substance. Why, in the absence of corroborating evidence, are the claims of such an obvious partisan hack allowed to reverberate on the top headline on your web page?
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