Obama and Chicago

In politics, framing is everything. For years the Republicans framed the issues so that they were always the good guys and the Democrats were the bad guys. Now it is going to be the other way around.

Barak Obama is in the process of framing his campaign and he's doing it in the context of his values and the organizational skills of Chicago politics. We see reflected in Obama's campaign the efficiency of a well-oiled political machine that serves its constituents. We also see the grass roots democracy that makes Chicago an idea that works.

In 1990, my brother, for 35 years a Chicago Tribune writer, wrote a book "The Chicagoization of America.” In that book he claimed that, at the turn of the 20th century, Chicago was America's "biggest idea," that Chicago’s "freshness and its sense of democracy became the country's" and its vigorous ideas "smothered for a time the East Coast's penchant for a more imitative and elitist culture."

With Barak Obama, Chicago is once more, at the turn of another century, stepping front and center ready to put its imprint on American culture.

Over the past eight years, the Karl Rove team framed all the issues and boasted that they created the reality that others had to react to. In a sense, they were right. They were very good at framing the issues to serve their purpose.

After 9/11, the Republicans framed everything in terms of national security and the corporate-conservative agenda. But even before that, the war on poverty was framed in terms of welfare queens in Cadillacs. Affirmative action was framed as minority privilege. The privatization attack on Social Security was framed as the ownership society. The attempt to starve the public schools for funds was framed as school choice or chartered schools.

Liberals were and still are being framed as soft -- soft on crime, soft on welfare, soft on family values and, most loathsome of all, soft on national defense. So, along comes Barak Obama who the Clinton campaign accused of being the soft one; an inexperienced and naïve beginner. The McCain supporters make the same mistake, accusing him of being the most liberal member of the United States Senate.

The accusation by Clinton did not stick and it is not sticking for McCain. Chicago is anything but soft.

Barak Obama very carefully chose Chicago and its value system rather than the "imitative and elitist" culture of the East Coast. The Chicago persona with which Obama has clothed himself plants him solidly in the heartland. As in the TV ad that is now showing around the country, he carefully grounds his values in Kansas and the Midwest.

His campaign is being framed so that you have to be against Midwest values to be against Obama, even as his own life is rooted in Hawaii and Harvard/Columbia. The redeeming feature is that he chose that Chicago culture.

The mainstream media has now tried to shift gears and instead of being too soft they accuse him of being too hard-nosed. The Washington Post is trying to frame Obama as "ambitious" and "ruthless" and David Brooks of the New York Times framed him as “Machiavellian” and a “ruthless opportunist,” accusing him of throwing all of his principles under the truck.

The Obama team has, in turn, shown its own real talent at framing. Obama moves quickly when the political twists and turns that afflict any presidential campaign demand it. He hues closely to the instructions he has given his team concerning style: no shock Barak; Obama, no drama.

Change we can believe in is moving the campaign and the Democratic National Committee staff to Chicago and out side the Washington beltway and its stagnant politics.

It is actually a joy to watch framing when it is being done so well. Barak Obama has taken the title of "framer-in-chief" from Karl Rove. The Obama team does not, however, suffer from Rove’s hubris. They take the political reality thrust upon them and frame it to enhance the candidate. The McCain team can, like the Hillary team, only watch the poll numbers shift against them.

What we are seeing is that first-class political machine that is Chicago. It is constituent-centered Cook County politics and North Shore liberalism combined with Chicago’s freshness and its sense of democracy. This is the package that originally elected Obama to the U.S. Senate. It is the American spirit at its best.

Maybe it is just my Midwest origins, but it is going to be deeply satisfying to see my brother’s proposition finally come true so that Midwest values will be a running the country.

As a footnote, the book "The Chicagoization of America” by Kenan Heise is available at Amazon.com. I recommended it for those who want to know better the Windy City. The idea of Chicago is going to be a big deal in our politics.