Barack in a Box

[illinoisprogressive]

The effect on the Clinton-Obama dynamic has been appreciable. According to a recent CBS News poll, fully 82 percent of Democrats now say she has “the right kind of experience to be a good president”—compared to just 41 percent who say the same about him. And while Democrats on average still find Obama more likable than they do Clinton, she leads him by sixteen points on the question of electability.

“Look, I find it hard to get behind her. She’s the worst of both worlds: too conventional and too divisive at the same time,” says a former Clinton White House official uncommitted to any candidate. “But Obama has been a disappointment. Playing the same card over and over, that he was against the war from the beginning, just is not enough. And it’s not just on foreign policy. Across the board, his campaign has been way too cautious, way too safe. I find myself wanting to support him, but there’s not enough there.”

Obama’s strategists, naturally, hear this kind of stuff all the time. Their response, though they would never say so on the record, is that the campaign is pacing itself to avoid peaking too early à la Bradley and Howard Dean. That the first six months were all about fund-raising, about building an organization, about introducing a candidate—who, despite his cover-boy celebrity, is still a largely unknown commodity—to voters in the early primary and caucus states. That they’re merely keeping their powder dry until the contest heats up in earnest in the fall.

Spin? Maybe. Or maybe not, for the argument exhibits a certain straightforward logic. For all the hubbub that the campaign has generated, the truth is that most people (sane creatures that they are) have yet to start paying close attention, let alone to make up their minds. The history of primary contests is replete with dramatic swings right up through the final days; the collapse of Dean and the ascent of John Kerry in Iowa in 2004 is but one example. David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said earlier this year that Clinton, “the quasi-incumbent…will and should lead just about every national poll from now until the Iowa caucuses.” The trick for Obama, then, is to remain within striking distance in the early primary states—which, so far, he has done.

But that’s only half the challenge. More important is that Obama put some meat on the bones of his lofty rhetoric of change. The candidate has pointed to four areas of particular emphasis: health care, energy policy, education, and national security. In these areas, Obama has already offered more-specific plans than Clinton has. And he has shown a greater (though still not great enough) willingness to tackle entrenched interests. He has gone to Detroit and chastised the auto industry for its record on fuel economy. He has stuck a toe in the water of getting crosswise with the teachers’ unions with his call for merit pay. Even his so-called gaffes on foreign policy have demonstrated an instinct to reject the hoary shibboleths that stifle fresh thinking—and have been consistent with his theme of transfiguring the culture of the capital.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/36536/