By DICK MORRIS

Published in the UK Times.

Most aspiring presidents and prime ministers face a myriad of
challenges as they embark on their journey.  Issue controversies,
questions about ethics or past conduct, wounds within the party all
raise their heads and confront the candidate.  But the doubts Barack
Obama faces are far more existential than the more superficial
questions raised about most candidates.  They go to his very core as a
person and call into question his values, his worldview, and even his
patriotism.

Hard racial divisions have softened in America but fear of the “other”
persists.  Their possible next president has a strange name.  He grew
up in Hawaii and Indonesia.  He had a Muslim Kenyan father who left
when he was a baby.  He made his political career in the cesspool of
American politics — the traditionally corrupt Chicago Democratic
machine.  His pastor of twenty years after whose sermons he entitled
his book seems to hate white people in general and America in
particular (despite getting $15 million in federal funding for his
church).  His wife says she is now proud of America for the first time
in her adult life – and she’s in her mid forties.  He is a bit of a
reach for the average American voter.

If he were white, with similar associations, he would be suspect.  But
he comes from a world few white voters know or understand and the fear
lingers that he is some kind of latter-day Manchurian candidate, a
sleeper agent, poised to take control of the United States government.

What makes all this particularly difficult to fathom is that Barack
Obama is a mild mannered intellectual, with a marvelous sense of poise
and decorum,  who handles himself eloquently and with dignity and
comes to politics with a style and grace we have not seen since JFK.
His pedigree includes Columbia University and Harvard Law where he was
editor of the Law Review.  He taught constitutional law.  In his
manner and his appearance he is as far from his controversial
background and associates as one could possibly imagine.

But this disjuncture between who he appears to be and who his
background and associations suggest he might be is so profound that it
leads to the most basic of doubts and worries among American voters.

Hillary Clinton always has been the bête-noir to blue collar,
downscale, American men.  But they lined up at the polls to vote for
her, so deep was their fear of who Obama might turn out to be.  Their
inveterate sexism was no match for their racial fears, ignited by the
questions surrounding Obama.

But none of these questions is of Obama’s own making.  In two years of
campaigning, in an environment in which waking moment is filmed and
recorded, he has never uttered a single word to lend credence to those
who imagine him to be an alien figure.  He has been consistently
classy and almost boringly straight as he has campaigned.  The worst
one could say about him is that he is a Hamlet-like intellectual who
is often subject to paralysis by analysis.

To win, Obama must reach down deep and dispel the doubts people hold
about him.  So far, he has avoided inflaming them and taken great care
not to lend them any credibility from his own statements or positions.
 Now, he must go further and reassure voters who want to believe him,
but are afraid.

Is America ready for a black president?  Hell yes it is.  Obama’s
triumphs in states where there are virtually no blacks attests to it.
Until Rev. Jeremiah Wright opened his mouth, the candidate was
sweeping white voters.  Even when the black community discovered Obama
and abandoned their historical affection for the Clintons, the white
electorate refused to polarize along racial lines and Obama
consistently won about half of the white vote.  But when Wright spoke,
he send a shiver of fear down the nation’s collective spine and
millions of voters who wanted to back Obama, needed to vote Democrat,
and hated George Bush, abandoned the black candidate out of fear.

To blow away this miasma of doubt will not be easy.  Obama, a private
person who dislikes emotional displays in public, will have to speak
from the heart about what America means to him.  He will have to
embrace our national sense of uniqueness and give voice to what Ronald
Reagan said of us: “You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I
have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this
great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were
possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of
courage.”  American exceptionalism is deeply rooted in our national
consciousness and it has been so offended by Rev. Wright’s
characterization of the United States as a terrorist nation, a force
of evil in the world, that Obama must assuage that hurt if he wishes
to appease our fears.

While the United States has always worked to keep church separate from
our government, there has always been a kind of civil religion in
America which speaks to our values and mission in the world.  The
president of the United States is the high priest of that religion and
it is up to him to give it voice and apply it to the challenges that
pop up in our path.  Obama must make it clear to his countrymen that
he subscribes to that faith and can pick up his duties as high priest.
He needs to articulate the national narrative

I doubt that this election will be close.  Either Obama or McCain will
probably win it in a landslide, depending on whether or not Obama can
fulfill his existential mission of explaining to the American people
who he really is.

– – –
Date:  Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:22:08 -0700
forwarded From Dick Morris Reports by:  “Mr.Cyprian Anyim”
Subject:  Fwd: HOW OBAMA CAN WIN