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Hope v Fear? To Win Go with Both

By Jonathan Simor

Yes, he's inspiring (Obama), and yes, he's funny and upbeat (Huckabee), but it would be foolish for either candidate to think that they will win the White House with a campaign based solely on hope. As a new ad for Giuliani pointedly reminds us: ?A nuclear power in chaos,? the announcer says. ?Madmen bent on creating it. Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked. And Osama bin Laden still making threats. In a world where the next crisis is a moment away, America needs a leader who?s ready.? (Read Michael Cooper's analysis of the ad in the NYT.) Whether Giuliani can regain momentum after a bad month, he is correct to believe that fears will almost inevitably play a major role in this election.To go the long run, these aspirational candidates (who share a deeply religious kind of tone in their speeches, even if disguised in Obama's case) need to take a leaf from FDR and combine hope with real efforts to rally the country around very real threats from climate change, to terrorism, to rotting infrastructure...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on January 04, 2008 (boomark / email).