"The difference between a tactic and a strategy..."

James Fallows notes that while McCain claimed in Friday's debate that "Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy," it's Obama who's run the more strategically savvy campaign. Fallows might have added that Obama also take a more strategic approach to fashioning policy.

Hard as it is to fathom in our celebrity-death-match political arena, Obama has got as far as he has because alone of all the candidates in both parties, he has consistently explained how his proposed domestic and foreign policies advance clearly-articulated goals -- in other words, how they advance a strategy.

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Domestically, Obama's core goal is to reverse the last thirty years' rise in income inequality and risk transfer. The key tools: shift the tax burden, put a workable plan for universal healthcare in place, and jump start an alternative energy industry. Politically, the strategy is to cast this agenda as a return to core American values of shared prosperity and fairness -- to move the political center back to the left after a thirty years' rightward lurch.

In contrast, McCain's all-tactics-no-strategy orientation is extreme on the domestic front. What could be more absurd than to obsess about cutting out earmarks as a panacea for our economic ills? That's like coping with a ballooning jumbo mortgage by giving up your HBO subscription.

In foreign affairs, Obama's simplest and most-reiterated strategic point is that Iraq is not "the central front in the war on terror" -- Afghanistan/Pakistan is. More broadly, it's to a) return to realist diplomatic engagement and b) work on multiple fronts to boost the U.S. soft power arsenal.

That last is hard to deliver on. But Obama understands the magnitude and dimensions of the challenge. In March, he gave a remarkable speech, far too little noticed, that laid out, as he did in the debate Friday, the full range of strategic costs of our entanglement in Iraq -- but also articulated, as he didn't do on Friday, the interconnectedness of foreign and domestic policy:

In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world - threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.

Without American leadership, these threats will fester. With strong American leadership, we can shape them into opportunities to protect our common security and advance our common humanity – for it has always been the genius of American leadership to find opportunity embedded in adversity; to focus on a source of fear, and confront it with hope.

Here are just five ways in which a shift in strategy away from Iraq will help us address the critical challenges of the 21st century.

First, in addressing global terror and violent extremism, we need the kind of comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy I called for last August. We need to strengthen security partnerships to take out terrorist networks, while investing in education and opportunity. We need to give our national security agencies the tools they need, while restoring the adherence to rule of law that helps us win the battle for hearts and minds. This means closing Guantanamo, restoring habeas corpus, and respecting civil liberties. And we need to support the forces of moderation in the Islamic world, so that alliances of convenience mature into friendships of conviction.

Second, the threat of nuclear proliferation must serve as a call to action. I have worked across the aisle with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel in the Senate to secure dangerous weapons and loose nuclear materials. And as President, I will secure all loose nuclear materials around the world in my first term, seek deep cuts in global nuclear arsenals, strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and once more seek a world without nuclear weapons.

Third, the danger of weak and failed states risks spreading poverty and refugees; genocide and disease. Now is the time to meet the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half, in part by doubling our foreign assistance while demanding more from those who receive it. And now is the time to build the capacity of regional partners in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and the reconstruction of ravaged societies.

Fourth, the catastrophic consequences of the global climate crisis are matched by the promise of collective action. Now is the time for America to lead, because if we take action, others will act as well. Through our own cap and trade system and investments in new sources of energy, we can end our dependence on foreign oil and gas, and free ourselves from the tyranny of oil-rich states from Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela. We can create millions of new jobs here in America. And we can secure our planet for our children and grandchildren.

And fifth, America's sluggish economy risks ceding our economic prominence to a rising China. Competition has always been a catalyst for American innovation, and now should be no different. We must invest in the education of our children, renew our leadership in science, and advance trade that is not just free, but fair for our workers. We must ensure that America is the economic engine in the 21st century just as we were in the 20th.

And what about McCain? What's his foreign policy strategy? Obama caught it on Friday:

We have weakened our capacity to project power around the world becauuse we have viewed everything through this single lens....

The "single lens" in this context was Iraq. But the mindset that made McCain a cheerleader for the Iraq expedition is also a "single lens". For McCain, every conflict and stress point has the same cast of characters: Hitler (Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, Saddam, Milosevic), Chamberlain (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, even, in a muted allusion re North Korea, George W.), and Churchill (McCain). McCain is almost as Manichean as W. -- maybe, by this point, more so.

Which brings us back full cycle to campaign strategy. McCain belittles and insults Obama as he belittled and insulted Romney (who deserved it), and Bill Clinton, and doubtless the various rivals he's defeated in his own political career. The narrative is hero vs. venal mortals, Country First vs. Me First. The irony, of course, is that Mr. Country First is at the center of every narrative.

Danny Evans of Dormont, PA nails the debate

A contributor to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's reader forum on the Disgraceful Debate captures my own sentiments perfectly:

That was no debate--it was a rerun of Access Hollywood. If we Pennsylvanians should be bitter about anything, it's that our state debate was turned into a sort of media carnival, rather than dealing with the real issues facing our region, and the American people.

Still, if I had to find a silver lining? I admired the restraint Obama showed in NOT diving headlong into the fray. Though it did seem to frustrate him that over half the debate had nothing to do with substance, he held his tongue in check, defended his opponent on one occasion, and even said "she could win" without so much as batting an eye.

Hillary seemed to enjoy wallowing in ABC's mud just a little too much for my tastes. Especially since she still hasn't given a straight answer on her Bosnia lie, or how she can reconcile taking 800 thousand dollars from the Columbian government while campaigning AGAINST the Columbian Free Trade Agreement. All in all, I saw in Barack Obama a frustrated (yet honest) commitment to trying to stay away from the political pie-slicing that has paralyzed our country and silenced OUR voices for far too long, now.

As bad as it was to watch, what we did see (pay attention PA) is that we, as voters, need to seek out as much information as we can, not just what the networks and cable shows think we want to hear. Barack Obama didn't have his best night, yet carried himself with grace and dignity in the face of farce. That's my kind of President. Because NOT wallowing, NOT changing, means he really does stand for HOPE in ways we've not seen in a long, long time.

Danny Evans, Dormont

Danny Evans, across the Internet I shake your hand. This morning, I read with amazement various accounts claiming that in the choreographed mud-wrestle of the first 40 minutes, Obama was "on the defensive" and "tentative." I thought that while Hillary took her cues for attack like one of Pavlov's dogs, Obama, as he has again and again in this campaign, exuded magnanimity and...what Danny said. When the debate moved on to policy matters after a mere 40 minutes of pseudoscandal, Obama was not sharp. But who would be after scraping off all that shit?

Obama Praises Bill Clinton, and Buries Him

Barack Obama may have hit the gamer in the nomination battle in last night's ABC debate. Hillary was working all night to make the case that she was the real "change" agent because she has gotten change done in the past. By contrast, she suggested that Obama's promise of change is mainly talk. When she cited Bill Clinton's balancing the budget as a major accomplishment of 'change', Obama delivered this multi-tiered response:

Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes.

I actually give Bill Clinton enormous credit for having balanced those budgets during those years. It did take political courage for him to do that. But we never built the majority and coalesced the American people around being able to get the other stuff done.

And, you know, so the truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

As with many of Obama's best formulations, this seemed simultaneously to rise to the moment and be the fruit of long reflection. He exactly captured the strength and the weakness of the Clinton presidency in an assessment that is generous, fair, but dead-on accurate as a critique. Bill Clinton outmaneuvered the Republicans year after year on budget essentials but he never built the coalition (generous of Obama to say "we never built...) to reform health care, or revamp energy policy, or build any other major policy bridge to the 21st century. Hillary would say that's because the vast right-wing conspiracy sabotaged them at every turn. But Bill kept handing them swords to gore him, so he never built the trust that underlies a mandate. So Obama manages to bury Clinton and to praise him. "I give him enormous credit" but....

On top of this, Obama has here the perfect response to the "he's just talk" line of attack. Politics is almost literally all talk. You've got to be good in the cloak room, at the negotiating table, on the debate floor. What gives a politician the ultimate strength to push through change, though, is to convince the mass of voters to support his or her effort for something major like health care reform. "Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens." That says it all. That's a real political philosophy at its deepest.

Also, note the organic riff on "the fierce urgency of now": But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. Obama's slogans are the fruit of long reflection. They don't become fixed like a smile for the camera; they weave themselves into his language and ripen over time. He manages to shake off that broken record effect that encrusts almost every campaign.