Obama should show how he would govern
We have completed the "Survivor" phase of the presidential campaign, in which pundits and pollsters waited for one of the candidates to make a gaffe in the debates so they could vote him off the island. Now, with just over two weeks left, maybe we can focus on the issue of leadership.
Despite Barack Obama's big lead in the polls, he hasn't yet made a decisive case for how he would govern in this time of crisis.
Over the next two weeks, Obama should help the country visualize what his administration would look like. He should show how he would step up to the economic crisis. Who would Obama appoint to his Cabinet? How would he deal with two wars as commander in chief rather than as campaigner?
The country is looking for two conflicting qualities in the next president - change and stability. Obama certainly embodies the former. He launched his campaign by styling himself as the change agent who could reach across racial and party divisions. But what kind of change? Obama should express more of the big ideas that would animate his presidency.
The stability theme is a harder one for Obama. People want reassurance that Obama, for all his talk about change, isn't going to overturn the apple cart. A dream television spot in the final week would be a fireside chat between Obama and his sometime economic adviser, Warren Buffett.
Balancing change and stability in foreign policy is Obama's biggest challenge - and John McCain's greatest opportunity. An "October Surprise" that dramatized the need for experienced leadership would obviously help McCain.
The best way for Obama to signal continuity would be to do publicly what I'm told he has already begun privately - which is to express confidence in the two key leaders at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.
Members of Obama's inner circle have discussed the possibility of asking Gates to stay on for a transitional year or so. As for Petraeus, Obama is said to have signaled he would listen to military advice about Iraq and Afghanistan rather than make radical changes.
Obama could embrace both continuity and change abroad by endorsing some of Petraeus' new ideas about the way forward in Afghanistan. Far from the "surge to victory" image conveyed by McCain's rhetoric, Petraeus is looking for ways to negotiate with and co-opt the insurgents. He wants to explore truces and alliances with the tribal warlords who make up the insurgent "syndicate" - so that they are taken off the battlefield without a new war. That's what Petraeus did in Iraq, and it's a strategy Obama could support for Afghanistan.
The temptation for Obama will be to sit on his lead, and avoid taking the risk of defining his leadership in sharper terms. For a man of lesser ambition, that play-it-safe strategy might make sense. But Obama is something different. At his best, he seems to think beyond the political calculus of how to get elected to the deeper problem of how to lead and govern. Over these next two weeks, Obama should step on the accelerator, not the brake.
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group