Building the Team

Is this inspirational and brilliant young Obama ready to lead our country?

That is the question the American people will soon be asking that will decide this election. And notwithstanding the millions of enthusiastic Obama supporters, it is that choice that the American people want explained, defined and presented.

How Barack Obama and his team answer that question will determine whether on Nov. 5 they are making plans to move into the White House or writing a postmortem on yet another Democratic presidential campaign that underperformed.

I consider the Obama operation the most brilliant political campaign in my lifetime. Yet in the weeks to come questions about how Obama will implement his platform of change will receive greater scrutiny from the press and the electorate. By announcing some smart additions to his team now, he could go a long way toward heading off the GOP's general election attacks.

In the 1976 campaign that I planned and managed for Jimmy Carter, we spent four years developing a strategy and tactics to win the nomination—and not five minutes planning for the general election. With a 30-point lead over then-President Ford in June 1976, we struggled through the summer trying to have it both ways—trying to remain an "insurgent" campaign and "the outsider" while at the same time trying to unite and lead a more liberal, fractious Democratic Party, whose favorites we had just defeated.

We limped across the finish line in the November election, barely defeating President Ford, and only because people ultimately wanted "a change."

While the brilliant Obama campaign is properly focused on wrapping up the Democratic nomination, it would do well to cast a cold eye toward the general election, and plan accordingly. John McCain has all but kicked off his general election campaign with a gift from the New York Times, a thinly sourced story that McCain has effectively used to rally some of the alienated right-wingers in his party.

How hard will he hit Obama? In recent speeches the 71-year-old war hero seemed almost giddy as he derided the idea of the young Illinois senator as the leader of the U.S. military and the Free World. At the same time, in a moment of candor McCain's media guru, Mark McKinnon, told National Public Radio that he would be "uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama" and having to orchestrate the negative media campaign against Obama that would be expected.

If Obama is put on the defensive on these "commander in chief" issues in the next month and simply tries to rebut specific charges, Obama and the context for the general election could be defined before the summer.

It is not difficult to imagine dignified ads showing McCain in flight training at age 25 and Obama at the same age going to Harvard; McCain flying sorties over Vietnam while at a comparable age Obama was named editor of the Harvard Law Review; McCain as a POW while Obama was a street organizer; McCain in the U.S. Senate and in Iraq with our troops in 2003 and Obama in the Illinois legislature.