DR. JACK R. VAN ENS, AUTHOR

CREATIVE GROWTH INC.

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WHAT COLORS CLASHING CONVICTIONS BETWEEN McCAIN AND OBAMA?

Imagine speeches of presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama functioning like an artist's palette. Think of their words as a painter's brushes. What favorite pigments, creating images on listeners' minds, are the candidates' favorites?

Senator John McCain usually colors his speeches with black and white alternatives. Easy to understand sound bites are easily clipped from such stark language. Conservative talk show hosts exploit similar black/white rhetoric. Categories are tidy. Enemies are pinpointed. It's good vs. evil. Following 9/11, President George W. Bush bragged to many White House visitors, "I don't do nuance." He found a convert in John McCain.

This black and white way of speaking and thinking shapes much of McCain's foreign policy. When Russian troops invaded South Ossetia and then drove deep into pro-West Georgia, McCain swiftly condemned Russia for its heavy-handed bombing of a nation with limited firepower. He asserted the U.S. should treat Russia in the same way we deal with Iran. Isolate these tyrannies. Expel Russia from the G-8 that works on global fiscal strategies. Slam the door on the Soviet's desire to becoming a key player in the World Trade Organization.

McCain's tactics for dealing with this conflict were clear, concise and used stern black/ white rhetoric to cinch his argument. He left little room for debate.

In contrast, Senator Barack Obama verbally paints with a favorite color, a blending of black with white. It's gray but not in a bland sense. He invites listeners to use their "gray matter," weighing alternatives and raising discerning questions. Obama doesn't race to tidy conclusions. He avoids sound bites. His measured responses are more suited to round-table discussions and further research.

These colors McCain and Obama prefer differ in texture as widely as Rush Limbaugh's monologue clashes with the late Tim Russert's fairness on "Meet the Press."

Obama understood the conflict over South Ossetia involved two guilty combatants. When Georgia became free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, several enclaves like Abkhazia and South Ossetia wanted to secede from Georgia. Residents there championed Soviet nationalism. Russian military personnel, aided by civilian volunteers, handed out passports to South Ossetians.

When moving their troops into South Ossetia, Georgia gambled that the Russian Bear would roar but not charge. They erred. The Bear attacked, severely wounding Georgia.

Obama's response? He advocated talks with Russia, as he previous had with rogue nations such as North Korea, Venezuela and Iran. Obama sees a gray area that needs to be explored through eye-to-eye negotiation.

Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek Magazine's political analyst, in the July 28, 2008 issue (pp. 24-25), describes how Obama tempers his speech, seldom slipping into rigid black/white categories. "Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration," observes Zakaria. "He doesn't divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology.

"His interests in diplomacy seem motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas."

McCain, using black and white language, lumps together terrorists and sometimes confuses in his speech Shiites with Sunnis. Obama sees a huge difference in these entities. Rejecting stark categories, he digs deeper into these anti-U.S.hate groups, trying to find a mix of strategies to deal effectively with them. This leads him into areas where easy answers aren't available.

Jesus told a parable that rejects a white/black mentality because life operates in the gray. A farmer planted wheat. Enemies at night spread weeds among the seedlings. Wheat and weeds shot up from the soil together. Upset servants sounding like John McCain asked the farmer if they should rip out the weeds.

The farmer gave advice Barack Obama echoes. "No," he sternly replied, "lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them ( Matthew 13: 29).

This expert in sowing and reaping spoke as if gray was his favorite color, too.

John McCain sounds like John Adams who also griped about his second-place status. Adams had no guile but he spilt plenty of verbal bile on opponents. He's a man, said Franklin who "means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses."