In America’s heartland, anything that paints Barack Obama as (place your fear mongering adjective here) passes as “God’s honest truth” even when proven a lie. MSNBC reported yesterday, “Gerri Kish, (is) 66-year-old (and) born in Hawaii, read both of Obama’s autobiographies. She has close friends, she said, who still refuse to believe her when she swears Obama is Christian. Then she hands them the books, and they refuse to read them. “They just want believe what they believe,” she said. “Nothing gets through to them.””

My right wingnut “friend” who worked 20-years for a prominent Ohio Republican Congressman sends a daily stream of invective packaged as “fact” e-mails to hundreds who forward it blindly (always with a liberal smattering of “this is true” statements, the only liberal thing in the diatribe) in libellous, slanderous attacks that if run in the mainstream media would make Senator Obama a millionaire several times over for deliberate, malicious falsehoods.

Living abroad for ten years, I’ve worried about my country from afar. The divisive nature of politics from the last throes of the Clinton Administration (his impeachment and the right’s obsession with blue dress stains and blow jobs) to 9-11 and our misguided adventure in Iraq, make me certain too many Americans cannot read and are instead brainwashed by the ravings of FOX and CNN.

The USA has an attention problem. While we think everyone is busy with 70-hour a week jobs, helicopter parenting their kids, pack every minute of every day, live on Red Bull, stress and too little sleep, are slaves to their Blackberry’s (where replying to e-mail at 2 am shows dedication vs. a sick compulsion) and obsessed and stressed to the breaking point. Then there is the other half, the Main Street USA folks who join a growing number of retiring Boomers who just aren’t sure what to believe… Those who fall for these antics of fear and smear means the US will continue to get the failed policies of George W. Bush.

It was inconceivable to most in the EU that Bush could win a second term. One only need look at what his strategists did in ’04 to see how they won the election and that they are on their way to playing the same set of game cards in ’08.

The Karl Rove inspired smear machine whittled away at decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry (and triple war amputee Georgia Senator Max Cleland) with the Operation Swift Boat team spending obscene amounts of money to bring his patriotism and war record into disrepute. The Internet helped with whispers that he was gay and “French looking.” While it didn’t help that many were casting votes against Bush rather than for Kerry, it drove people away from him and to Bush who was the seeming “safe” choice to lead the war effort. S the lies unfolded we saw the craziness of that line of thinking.

As long as everyone understands that the real battle is for the 30% of the electorate that describes themselves as Independent/undecided, you can see that the warfare will be hand-to-hand and dirty… with many pundits saying the Internet and blogging fights are where the key battles will be fought this year.

Republicans know that if you whisper something enough times it becomes truth through confusion and that you respect ‘Ed’ or ‘Kay’s’ opinion more than any commercial. The MSNBC article had this, “”I’ll admit that I probably don’t follow all of the election news like maybe I should… but it’s hard to ignore what you hear when everybody you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?”

Yes, they can be and they are. And the point is they create a false perception having nothing to do with fact. Any advertiser knows that changing a perception is the hardest thing to do in any advertising campaign yet that is what Barack Obama must do to win.

Obama handled attacks from Hillary Clinton in the Primaries by staying the course and on message. His drift to centre for the general election has upset some members of his base. They are upset he is not going after Teleco’s on the FISA bill. To do so would allow the opposition to paint him as soft on terrorism and that is never good. When McCain campaign advisor Charlie Black last week said a terrorist attack would be “good for John McCain” he broke new ground for unseemly comments aimed at the heart of fear in America. Elect Obama and we will be attacked vs. going after Bush/McCain for putting us at risk in the first place?

So those two themes, plus a covert racism series of subliminal code words, Rove suggesting Obama is the guy with the beautiful woman sneering at the country club crowd brought up the fear of black men and white women together.

If America is dumb enough to accept it, then we get the government we deserve vs. the government we need to bring the country back to prominence. Thankfully people in the EU do read and maybe 100,000+ in London’s Trafalgar Square, standing by Brandenburg Gate in Berlin or in front of Paris’ Eiffel Tower will show how much of a change in world opinion his election will bring?

After 18-months on the campaign trail, Barack Obama needs to once again figure out who he is and stay on that message no matter what, until the end of the campaign. I have often said to others “what you are is more important than what you say.” If people see you as an opportunistic Pol, that is what you will become rather than the inspiring young man from Chicago who mesmerized a nation, brought youth back to government, energized a black community long disenfranchised and built a grass roots campaign machine like no other.

That is who you need to be again. Accept the comparisons to JFK and Dr. King, you’ve earned them. Be comfortable in your own skin and accept the crowd’s applause and adulation… you’ve earned them.

Yes, the tent is bigger and this is the big show. You were not handled though during the Primaries, it’s time to listen to the inner voice that got you this far, throw out the pollsters and handlers or else we deal with the familiar disappointment and get to face it all over again in 2010.

It’s game on Senator, grind it out sir.