Trapped
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
David Brooks on why Barack Obama will have a very hard time going negative:
The Obama people seem to have persuaded themselves they can go on the attack, but in the right way. They can be tough and keep their virginity, too. But there are more than five long months between now and the convention.
Unless they consciously reject conventional politics, the accusations will build on each other. The BlackBerries will buzz. The passions will rise. The Obama forces will see hints of Clinton corruption all around, and they'll accuse and accuse again. The war will begin to take control, and once you're halfway through you can't suddenly surrender because it's become too rough.
And the Clinton people will draw them every step of the way. Clinton can't compete on personality, but a knife fight is her only real hope of victory. She has nothing to lose because she never promised to purify America. Her campaign doesn't depend on the enthusiasm of upper-middle-class goo-goos. On Thursday, a Clinton aide likened Obama to Ken Starr just to badger them on.
As the trench warfare stretches on through the spring, the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage. People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself. And even if he goes on to win the nomination, he won't represent anything new. He'll just be a one-term senator running for president.
In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn't have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he's got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.
It's kind of hard to argue with that, isn't it?
« Dueling June Obama fundraising claims? — Comments (2) | McCain 5, Elisabeth Bumiller 0 — Comments (35) »
Trapped 2 Comments (0 topical, 2 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
requires supposition of superior powers inhered in the junior Illinois Senator than have thus far been displayed.
Perhaps he can run a transcendant campaign. That would be counter to the examples we have seen, such as stumbling over NAFTA (threatening NAFTA, rather than merely pointing at it and calling it names). It is as if Obama didn't realize people were actually, you know, listening to what he said, rather than merely marveling over how he said it.
I think the Rezko thing has him rattled. He failed to get out in front of it, before the story went national, and now he's running from it. He should have said, "I used the wrong real estate agent" or something, and distanced himself with lines about not commenting on ongoing investigations, Rezko having rights no matter what mistakes he may have made, and so on. In Illinois politics, as you know Pejmon, the only way to know if someone is dirty is if they hold office, but there's no way to know if they're clean.
Another tactic for Obama would be to point out that Hillary represents the old way of doing things, the negative campaigning and politics of personal destruction. This is not quite staying above the fray, but merely innoculating against attacks.
In the end, finding workable ways out of the trap is difficult. He just doesn't have enough experience on the national stage, and he's just too liberal to play the uniter on substance.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.