Obama's remarks raise larger issue of rural needs, obscured by coverage of, and commentary on, flap

The controversy over Sen. Barack Obama's analysis of small-town voters has obscured the more important issue of how to revive rural economies, and some of the coverage and commentary about the flap have failed to make an important distinction. All this highlights the need for another presidential candidate forum on rural issues, which the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and other organizations have proposed.

Dee Davis of the Center for Rural Strategies, right, writes on the center's rural news portal, the Daily Yonder, "As this political tempest runs its course, the challenge is to see if the country can get beyond a debate about whether small town voters are bitter. The real challenge is to follow up on Senator Obama’s earlier candid moment. Rural life is threatened by economic policy that perpetually fails rural communities."

In rural America, Davis writes, "Poverty rates are substantially higher, as are rates of unemployment, substance abuse, diagnosed clinical depression, and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The way we have come to address these specific issues is that every four years presidential candidates come to Iowa and take a stand on ethanol subsidies. As if it mattered. That so many small-town voters are not embittered by a national political process that ignores them may be a more unflattering testament than the annotated list of Senator Obama’s stereotypes."

As for Obama's characterization, Davis writes, "There may be a measure of truth in all stereotypes. That is why they are so dangerous to use. Who wants to be on the receiving end? Who wants to be labeled? Even in the context of sharing polling data that correlates professed values with recurring disappointments, who wants to be summed up and explained away for the benefit of Marin County donors? My bet is that the voters across the Bay in inner-city Oakland would enjoy the experience no more than those in small-town Pennsylvania."

The Center for Rural Strategies is among the organizations that have joined our call for a rural-issues forum, and Davis suggests that it's become all the more timely. "In a time when the world is struggling to re-imagine how it will feed, fuel, and heal a damaged planet," he writes, "a full-throated oratory on where rural fits in may find surprisingly attentive audiences both back home and in parlors beyond." (Read more)

Another supporter of a rural issues forum is Barbara Leach of My Rural America, who writes on her blog, "Everything isn't coming up roses in rural America and from our view point, it's a good thing when political leaders start recognizing it." (Read more) Other supporters include Farm Foundation, the Indiana Farm Bureau the League of Rural Voters and RuralVotes.com, publisher of The Field, a presidential-election blog.

Rural newspaper commentary on Obama's remarks is starting, and is not all predictable. Dan Jackson, left, is a Paris, Tenn., businessman who writes a weekly column for The Paris Post-Intelligencer, a 7,800-circulation daily northwest of Nashville. Jackson writes in his column to be published Wednesday that he is for John McCain but is now open to supporting Obama, "for at least attempting to understand the situation of the rural U.S." He quotes Obama's remarks and writes:

For the life of me I can't figure out where something in that paragraph is untrue. Over the last 25 years how many manufacturing jobs have we lost in rural Tennessee never to see them return? How many have we lost in the last year? How are the cities of Nashville, Memphis and even Chattanooga doing? Not a lot of job loss there! . . . And what of the Clinton and Bush administrations? Did either of them implement any policy alleviating the burden on rural America? Did either of them structure any type of economic policy that might at least begin to ease the long term job losses in our small towns? I don't think so. So why haven't they? Why is small-town America ignored? Why have we continued to struggle while those in bigger population areas continue to succeed? Why? Because our voices are small and spread too thin. Why? Because Democrats listen to the cities and Republicans listen to corporations. Why? Because it's too complicated to understand and too difficult to fix. So when Obama says it's not surprising we've become bitter and clung to issues we understand how is that demeaning? After all, isn't this exactly what the Republicans and Democrats of our fine land have done as well? . . . For the first time in what seems like the never ending campaign for President 2008, one of the candidates has mentioned small-town America. So when Obama says we are bitter isn't he correct?

Jackson notes manufacturing jobs lost in the Paris area and writes, "Tell me those same workers, displaced and distraught have not turned in time of crisis to issues they understand? For if the candidates, hell if the Presidents of these United States have not been able to understand the issue of job loss in small-town America, how can Uncle Jimmy or Auntie Jo? Can you blame these people for voting for President based on gun control? Can you blame these people for clinging to religion? Can you blame these people for a fear of Muslims? Meanwhile, we've got Hillary doing shots of whiskey in an Indiana bar. It was Crown Royal; that's a Canadian whiskey! So I guess this shows she's in touch with us?"

Rural journalists writing their own commentaries on this should be sure to note the context in which Obama was speaking: how he gets votes in rural areas and small towns. He was talking about voting behavior, not general behavior, but that important distinction has not been made in much of today's commentary. The best coverage gets it right; as Perry Bacon and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post, Obama "explained his struggles appealing to working-class voters" and quoted him speaking in Muncie, Ind.:

"So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on,' " he continued. "So people they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about, you know, how things are changing. That's a natural response."

The Post reports that aides "described Obama as frustrated with himself for word choices such as 'cling' and references to hot-button issues including religion and guns, but also stunned at the uproar over what to him seemed a fundamental fact of American life." (Read more)