Have we been wrong all along about Barack Obama's strategy to win the White house?  I think in some respects we have, and we may have fallen for a few clever tricks he has played on the media as well as the rest of us.  First let me say, I do not think Obama is a Muslim, a Marxist or the Manchurian Candidate.  He's a liberal Democrat trying to get elected President on the thinnest resume of any candidate we've seen in ages.  He had the audacity to challenge HRC, the Queen of the Democratic Party, who initially ran for the nomination as if she were an incumbent.  Obama said early on in the campaign he wanted to "change the way politics is done" in this country and he has certainly tried - with some success- to change the rules of the game.  He wows the crowds like a rock star, raises lots of money on line and has run a great campaign.  HRC made a lot of mistakes and now can't win the nomination (legitimately, anyway).  He'll be the nominee and face McCain - someone who also wishes to change the rules of politics -  in the Fall.  So far so good.  What have we missed?  A few ruses, I think, and a very clever strategy to exploit them.

Obama's New Rules of political warfare have been thoroughly explained by Victor Davis Hanson in his articles.  Part of the rules- change strategy Obama employs is to call everything that makes you look bad a "distraction from the real issues".  Obama gets traction from this tactic by foisting on us distractions of his own making, and benefits from the backlash.  A few examples:

Ruse #1:  The Patriot Game.  In the last general election a decorated Viet Nam Vet was upstaged by a draft dodger who portrayed his opponent as unpatriotic.  The winner of that election went on to start an unpopular war that five years later makes Americans a little unhappy with the patriot they selected in '04.  The Republican nominee this time is someone virtually everyone accepts as a bona fide American War Hero.  In this context I cannot believe Obama is truly as cavalier as he pretends to be about wearing the flag pin or not (same for the hand over the heart during the National Anthem).  He offered an inane explanation as to why he stopped wearing the pin post 9/11 and now wears it intermittently.  The blogosphere (myself included) went nuts, and the MSM still write articles about the pin and patriotism.  Because of what happened to John Kerry, the backlash is strongly in Obama's favor, nullifying the patriotism issue.  Take home message:  Don't Swiftboat Obama over a flag pin that John McCain doesn't wear.  His nonchalance about the flag pin was always intentionally incendiary, and it's a ruse that worked.  Touche Obama.

Ruse #2:  The Red Herring.  Obama's a Marxist!  Right?  Well he's always talking about Marxist-lite writers and uses phrases that sound vaguely Marxist influenced.  His supporters are enamored with Che and his campaign hires a band named The Decemberists to play to a crowd of 75,000 in Portland (apparently the band occasionally opens with the National Anthem of the USSR).  While baiting the Republicans to begin red-baiting Obama hasn't worked as well (yet), charges of McCarthyism still abound.  This will be a bigger issue when the degree of Obama's true association with Bill Ayers becomes more generally known.  Ayers is of course the Bolshevik bomb thrower from the 60's who still wants to bring down the U.S. government.  So what's Obama to do about his friend Bill?  He throws the masses a little Marxist bone to chew on, while he tries to stuff the rest of the Ayers skeleton back into the closet.  Did you really believe his non-answer about Ayers during the ABC debate ("he's an English professor who lives in my neighborhood")?  Obama knew he's an education professor and the two are much closer than he implied.  That question became, of course, another "distraction from the issues" and ABC was roundly chastised for raising it.  Again, the backlash favored Obama who must know that the only difference between terrorists Bill Ayers and Timothy McVeigh is that McVeigh made a better bomb.  

To be cont'd