Reply #62: Obama may be even more subtle than anyone's giving him credit for

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Think about it -- which image of Bush is more likely to turn people away from voting for him:

a) A sincere but misguided man who was naive enough to believe Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction and was so much the prisoner of his own ideology that he stumbled into invading Iraq rather than taking the measures against terrorism that would actually make America safer.

b) A crafty, Machiavellian schemer with a broad geopolitical vision which he recognized could be advanced only by leading through passion rather than through logic, even if that meant taking a few creative liberties with the truth.

Many people here are so outraged against their own bugaboo of Bush as (b) that they don't realize those same points could be taken as positives by Freepers and similar macho types who consider themselves hard-nosed and daring in their approach to world affairs.

But history shows that you don't win elections in this country by painting your opponents as strong -- only by painting them as wimps.

Creating a general image of Bush as weak, self-deluded, and incapable of recognizing the truth if it bites him on the ass is **far** more likely to destroy him than describing him as an unreconstructed villain. In fact, I think Obama's line is something we should pick up as a major meme and spread far and wide.

Even beyond that, if the dirt on Cheney finally manages to break the surface (Plame affair, Halliburton scandals), it could be very useful to be able to present Bush as the weak-willed, easily-led dupe of evil mastermind Cheney. That possibility's got a lot going for it.