"Yes We Can" vs. "No We Can't"

[babylonsister]

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/05/06/quot-yes-we-can-quot-vs-quot-no-we-can-t-quot.aspx

"Yes We Can" vs. "No We Can't"


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But this fight may not play out the same way with McCain, for one simple reason: If Obama's slogan is "yes we can," McCain's is "no we can't."

Obama wants to invest heavily in better schools and public infrastructure? McCain says it will cost too much money. Obama wants to make sure every American has health insurance? McCain says it's socialized medicine. Obama wants to make free trade more humane? McCain's says no, no, no--that's messing with the free market.

Even Obama's calls to change political discourse for the better--the most familiar and, at times, most empty part of his pitch--play into this dynamic. When Obama says he wants to end the politics of division, McCain dismisses it as just a slogan.

Whether you think Obama is right or wrong about these ideas--and, yes, I mostly think he's right--he's setting up the fall as a debate between ambition and timidty, between hope and cynicism, between optimism and pessimism.

The last two presidential elections that framed the choice this starkly were in 1992, when Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush, and in 1980, when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. For all of their ideological divisions, the two shared a fundamentally positive vision: Clinton believed in a "place called hope"; Reagan believed it was "morning in America."

Those phrases sound a lot more like Obama's rhetoric than McCain's. And while it's just one factor in the general election, it helps explain why, for the first time in a while, I too am becoming more optimistic--about Democratic prospects for November.

--Jonathan Cohn