As attractive a leader as Barack Obama is, my biggest worry about him as the 2008 Democratic candidate is that he has never endured a statewide race with serious Republican opposition before this Presidential campaign. In his 2004 Senate race in Illinois, his already-weak Republican opponent dropped out after bad publicity over his sexual proclivities emeraged, and was replaced by the even weaker Alan Keyes.
When you're coasting to victory, it's an understandable and often appropriate to strike a more bipartisan pose. Although it's worth considering that Obama choose to do that rather than use the election to build a mandate to take aggressive liberal Democratic stands in the Senate. But the general election will not be coasting to victory. It will be a hard, nasty fight with the Republicans doing what Republicans always do. So I think Walsh has it right when she says:
I was on MSNBC this morning with Pat Buchanan, who suggested the latest Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama sparring will hurt Democrats. I disagreed. ... Especially if Obama winds up the nominee, it will get him in fighting shape for the fall battle against the GOP. If Obama supporters really think the Clintons are being too tough on their guy, wait until he has a Republican opponent (who isn't Alan Keyes).Walsh also quotes another, little-noticed passage from the now-notorious interview in which Obama praised St. Reagan:
[Obama said:] "I do think there's maybe a generational element to this, partly. In the sense that I didn't come of age in the battles of the sixties, I'm not as invested in them. So I think I talk differently about issues ... and values. And that's why I think we've been resonating with the American people ... What I'm saying is that I think the average Baby Boomer has moved beyond a lot of the arguments of the sixties, but our politicians haven't. It's all around culture wars ... or Vietnam."On the other hand, Paul Waldman criticizes the Clinton approach in The Republican Democrat The American Prospect Online 01/23/08. Here's Waldman's take:
Anyone who wants to understand why some Democrats have questions about Obama's politics should look closely at that quote. Let me state first: I'm only two and a half years older than Obama. I don't want to keep fighting the "battles of the sixties," either. But the fact is, to the extent that it seems sometimes like we have to -- over civil rights, women's rights, gay rights -- it's almost always because Republicans are fighting to block the gains of those groups, or to roll back already-won gains. If Obama wants Democrats to know he's not "as invested" in those battles as Hillary Clinton, that's worth knowing. I actually think Obama's gotten off easy, not having to explain what he meant by that. (my emphasis)
Three weeks ago, I wrote that Clinton was working to make voters uneasy, utilizing just enough fear to encourage them to stick with the known quantity in the race. But in the time since, her campaign has begun to appear more and more as though it's being run by Karl Rove or Lee Atwater. Pick your tired metaphor -- take-no-prisoners, brass knuckles, no-holds-barred, playing for keeps -- however you describe it, the Clinton campaign is not only not going easy on Obama, they're doing so in awfully familiar ways. So many of the ingredients of a typical GOP campaign are there, in addition to fear. We have the efforts to make it harder for the opponent’s voters to get to the polls (the Nevada lawsuit seeking to shut down at-large caucus sites in Las Vegas, to which the Clinton campaign gave its tacit support). We have, depending on how you interpret the events of the last couple of weeks, the exploitation of racial divisions and suspicions (including multiple Clinton surrogates criticizing Obama for his admitted teenage drug use). And most of all, we have an utterly shameless dishonesty.But Waldman overstates his case, in what's essentially a brief for the Obama campaign.
As Walsh explains in her piece, Obama's infamous comment on St. Reagan certainly did seem to echo Republican ritual praise of their favorite symbol. And Obama did broach the anti-Social Security meme that there's a crisis in Social Security funding, which there is not. Combined with his constant pitch about getting beyond partisanship, when every sentient observer of American politics can plainly see that the Republican spiral of more and more intense partisanship shows no foreseeable break, really raises a legitimate question whether Obama is ready to lead the Party in a Presidential campaign.
His echoing of false Republican claims about Social Security is especially disturbing. If the Democrats aren't ready to defend Social Security, like they managed to do admirably when Bush staged his push for phase-out, what good are they?
Don't get me wrong. I think the anti-Social Security comment was a dumb misstep by Obama and that he would defend the system as President. But I would be more reassured if we were hearing unambiguous statements from him to that effect.
Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton
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