Spin Until Your Wheels Are Smokin', Part II

Publius has a lengthy analysis of the reaction to Obama's comments about bitterness, but I want to address one aspect of this that I'm not sure I've hit directly:

Admittedly, Obama’s wording about working class Pennsylvanians was less than ideal. What’s interested me though is not so much his words, but the intensity of the reaction to them. What explains it? It’s not enough to cite “Kinsley Gaffe.” Even assuming he imprudently said what he really thinks (i.e., a Category II Kinsley), the follow-up question is why this particular belief would trigger such an intense backlash. One obvious reason is that it’s an obnoxious way to word his point. The less obvious one, though, is rooted in so-called "liberal self-hatred."

What is this thing about the wording? What is it? Look, I spend a lot of time making words do tricks, and spent a major portion of my professional life to date among the rich and famous of Chicago's art community (and man, you talk about prickly!), and I just don't see it. Obama made a forceful and accurate assessment of the mindset of a lot of Americans -- the lower-middle and working class whites who are getting major shafting from this administration (and, if the truth be known, from the government as a whole, on both sides of the aisle). And yet publius, who's about as progressive as it gets, begins a post about the reaction to those words by saying that the phrasing wasn't ideal.*

It was perfect.

My best guess is that the audience to which those words were directed, and the people those words were about, heard exactly what Obama meant them to hear. The overwhelming majority of the commentators missed it (there are a few exceptions that I've run across, most noted in yesterday's post on this, although I just ran across this post from Skippy, one of the more clear-eyed observers around).

Publius repeats his cavil about the bad wording, but I have to look at it from a bedrock, show-me point of view: Barack Obama is one of the most cogent and articulate politicians in the country with a reputation for spellbinding oratory, and publius and Andrew Sullivan are asking me to believe he didn't know exactly what he was saying? Why am I supposed to believe this -- because Hillary Clinton and John McCain, as well as the Washington press establishment jumped all over it? Let me tell you a secret: these people have agendas that do not include Barack Obama as president. You're looking for positive comments from them?

Sheesh.

These people -- or their handlers -- don't look at something like this and think "Obama put his foot in it." They think "We can twist this around so it looks like Obama put his foot in it."

To be honest, I think publius' comments are largely correct, except for harping on Obama's phrasing, and I agree whole-heartedly with his conclusion.

That’s why the correct tactic is precisely what Obama is doing — running with his words and even counter-attacking with them. The substance of the words isn’t really the point. What he said was inartfully worded, but it was hardly a dismissal of religion. He was, to me, explaining why economically distressed communities tend to emphasize these particular issues.

Anyway, the larger point is to avoid looking weak — to avoid putting blood in the water. The press, I’m sure, expected to follow Obama around this week getting him to apologize fifty times. Instead, he just reemphasized those very words in a somewhat different way without running from them.

The initial reaction to Obama’s words was that the gaffe shows his weakness as a candidate. His counter-attack, however, shows just the opposite.

I just wish people would stop harping on the "poor phrasing" -- that's just making excuses for someone who obviously doesn't need them. (Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice provides a capsule view of everything that's wrong with the left-of-the-aisle response, although he does provide a handy link to Memeorandum's round-up of people who are just as far off-base. Some of them more. Michelle Malkin's good for a laugh -- but then, she always is.)

* A sad echo of Andrew Sullivan's "not the most felicitously phrased," but without the elitist accent. But then, Sullivan seems to have an imperfect grasp of American idiom.