Obama, The Rookie
Democrats have a habit of falling in love with candidates on the first date.
Barack Obama's comments last week - about how alienated working-class voters "cling to guns or religion" - are already famous. But the fact that his aides told the Washington Post that he is privately bewildered that anybody took offense is even more remarkable.
Democrats have been worrying about defending Mr. Obama's highly liberal voting record in a general election. Now they need to fret that he makes too many mistakes, from ignoring the Rev. Wright time bomb until the videotapes blew up in front of him, to his careless condescension towards salt-of-the-earth Democrats. Mr. Obama has a tendency to make such cultural miscues. Speaking to small-town voters in Iowa last year, he asked, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"
Mr. Obama is the closest thing to a rookie candidate on the national stage since Dwight Eisenhower, who was a beloved war leader. Candidates as green as Mr. Obama make first-timer mistakes under the searing scrutiny of a national campaign. Even seasoned pols don't understand how unforgiving that scrutiny can be. Ask John Kerry, who had won five statewide elections before running for president.
For all his winning ways and natural appeal to the camera, Mr. Obama hasn't really been tested in a major campaign. In 2000, then-state Sen. Obama challenged Congressman Bobby Rush, who was vulnerable after having been crushed in a bid to become mayor of Chicago. Mr. Rush, a former Black Panther, painted Mr. Obama as "inauthentic" and beat him 2-1.
In 2004, when Mr. Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, he had the good luck of watching both Blair Hull, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Jack Ryan, the GOP nominee, self-destruct in sex scandals. Mr. Obama's eventual Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was an unserious candidate who won the votes of only 56% of Republican voters.
Mr. Obama has prospered in Democratic primaries. But as John Harris and Jim VandeHei note in Politico.com, that's in part because these primaries have "been an exercise in self-censorship" about Mr. Obama's weaknesses. It is "indisputably true," they write, that "Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges."
There are many. His statements that he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, combined with his lack of foreign policy experience, could hurt him. And his aides are hard pressed to come up with any deviations in a voting record the nonpartisan National Journal calls the most liberal of any U.S. Senator.
As a state legislator he was even more off-center. In 1996, he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Senate approved 85-14 and President Clinton signed into law. He twice voted "present" on a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a law that prohibited early prison release for sex offenders.
Mr. Obama also backed a total ban on handguns, a move his campaign now says was the result of a rogue aide filling out a questionnaire. But Mr. Obama's own handwritten notes were found on the questionnaire, calling into question the campaign's version of what happened.
Everyone knows Mrs. Clinton's electoral vulnerabilities -- GOP consultant Mike Murphy jokes that "half of the country thinks she rides a broom." But Mr. Obama has shown weakness with key Democratic constituencies. He's had to fend off concerns about his Middle East policies with Jewish voters; he's also won only a third of Hispanic primary voters.
Then there is trade, where his insincerity is at least as clumsy as Mrs. Clinton's. During the San Francisco episode, Mr. Obama had a throwaway line about how working-class voters fixate on "anti-trade sentiment" in order to vent their frustrations. But isn't it Barack Obama who has been spending months stirring up "anti-trade sentiment?" He has threatened to yank the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Canada and Mexico renegotiate it. Last week, he denounced the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
According to Canadian diplomats, top Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee admitted to them that they could dismiss his man's anti-NAFTA rhetoric. All of this makes Democrats wonder if Mr. Obama is ready for prime time.
But they have themselves to blame for letting him get this far largely unexamined. While Republicans tend to nominate their best-known candidate from previous nomination battles (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and now John McCain), Democrats often fall in love during a first date. They are then surprised when all the relatives don't think he's splendid.
Michael Dukakis had a healthy lead in 1988 against the elder Bush at this time and right through the political conventions. Then came the GOP's dissection of his Massachusetts record and his tank ride. Bill Clinton was able to win with only 43% of the vote in 1992, thanks in part to Ross Perot's presence as a spoiler. John Kerry had a six-point lead in the May 2004 Gallup poll over President Bush, then the wind-surfer crashed. All of those candidates had never run for national office before. Democrats paid a price for running a rookie.
Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager and an undeclared super delegate, is worried. "With the Wright controversy still lingering and now Obama's unartful comments," she told CNN, "it will paint the picture of Obama as being 'out of sync.'"
With 81% of voters telling pollsters the country is on the "wrong track," no one disputes Democrats can win in November. Still, it should be a matter of concern to them that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama currently trail John McCain in general-election matchups. Democrats would be wise to have more debates and sharper exchanges in the remaining primaries. It may help minimize the surprises they are likely to encounter this fall.
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Does it say something that Ariana now has to go to the Republicans to get a column in support of Hillary?
Fund, as a Republican propagandist, is just doing his job. Like the others, he makes mountains out of Democratic gaffe or scandal molehills, and makes molehills out of Republican gaffe or scandal mountains. He is not a disinterested observer, but is trying to influence the outcome. It is difficult to take his analysis seriously. As some have nothed, G. W. Bush made a great many mountain-sized gaffes that were reduced to molehills by Fund and most of the corporate media, while Gore and Kerry made minor gaffes that were turned into mountains. It is business as usual.
Let's conduct a brief thought-experiment:
Supposing you WERE feeling bitter & alienated by politics. Who do you listen to, 1) Hillary Clinton telling you're not, or 2) Barack Obama talking about why you're feeling bitter, and what will change things?
For most people, the answer depends on how you feel about Obama. If you think he's an outsider, or that he's merely mandering, your pride gets stung and you say "I most certainly am NOT!" ~ that the crowd Hillary's playing for. Her problem is that everyone knows she's also pandering while she says it, so even if that's your reaction it doesn't make you any more likely to trust Hillary.
If, on the other hand, you think that Barack Obama comes from inside your tribe (however you define tribe) or that he's genuine, then you have a very different reaction: you think "Right on!"
What Obama has been proving over and over this primary season is that he's much better at being accepted as an insider than the bulk of the punditocracy will acknowlege. Yes, there are people for whom he'll never get the insider license to talk about painful subjects. That's clear. Are these enough to lose an election? Maybe not.
Obama's great strength is sincerity. He's genuine. When he says what he thinks, people can believe that he really thinks it and despite ideology, he's acting in good faith. So far, this is the ace that has enabled him to provoke more type 2) than 1) reactions.
Wrong again Fund but as I have watched you for years as one of the mealiest of the mouthy since the impeachment when you were a salivating dog but accused of harassment your self you are always wrong and always shilling.' You're a minor phony!
HELLO? HELLO?
Earth to author!
If Obama is a "rookie" WHAT is GWBush who was voted for TWICE??
BUSH THE CROOKIE?
It's time for Obama to TAKE THEM ON!
Weasel words
How I look at it is in this way. I'll take the rookie socialist over a fascist with or without experience any day. Obama has real compassion. You can tell from the tone of his voice. The fascists in charge of this country have none. They are scared because their days of cashing in on this war will soon be over. Beware the jackboots of the state-sanctioned mercenary security force Blackwater who are well trained to protect these fascists while they move their power from the government to the corporate sector. Notice now how much the fascists laugh and sneer and tap dance on the notion that they've done any wrong. "Why hell, let's just build a library to commerate how right we are!" Anyone notice why these people have so much money? It can't just be caused by tax cuts.
p.s. one debate without the teleprompter obama will lift mccain's veil and the contest is over . . . not to mention the 527 adds on hagee being prepared. ::smiling like the cheshire cat::
once those air pastor wright will become an american hero.
here -- let someone with common sense spell it out for you, you goofy, fascist, neo-con fuck: http://www
your bullshit only works when people aren't paying attention. fortunately for amercia people are finally fed up enough to become engaged.
you've been so successful at bull shitting the general public for so long that you actually believe your own BS at this point.
you're done! all of you.
One look at this guy's bio and list of blogs says just about everything that needs to be said about his "insights": WSJ editorial board, cub reporter for Evans and Novak, a book on VOTER fraud (a bogus and discredited argument GOP shills have made to justify voter suppression while ignoring election fraud by computer), and a string of blogs that lean so far right you have to tilt your head to read them.
hehe -- well said.
The author is editorial page editor of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL! No wonder he makes NO SENSE!!!!
Hey, you old timers out there;
JOHN GOT THE MEMO!!!!!
More debates you have got to be kidding!
RALPH NADER 2008
And his support in Congress is........
Fund, you need a dictionary. Do you even understand the language that you're using? Do you know what tendency means? You write: "Mr. Obama has a tendency to make such cultural miscues." Huh? What are you talking about? A tendency indicates a predisposition that results in a recurring pattern. There's no evidence of a predisposition or of a pattern here. This was a gaffe, an unfortunate one, but it doesn't indicate a tendency. You give two examples, one of which involves the language of his pastor, not his own words. Moreover, Obama was aware of the problem because he began distancing himself from his pastor at the beginning of his campaign so he didn't make a cultural 'miscue.'
Let's face it. You're just another pundit trying to say Obama is "out of touch" and inexperienced. You have nothing new to add to the discourse. Fund, you have TENDENCY to distort available evidence. Maybe you should understand the words that you are trying to use before you put them in an article and maybe you could actually come up with an original idea while you're at it.
Very insightful article. The primaries should be used to vet the candidates and harden them for the primaries. Taking it easy, just sets the candidate up for failure. Now is the time to bring up every imaginable issue on Obama and see how he stands up, before it is too late and he is left as fodder for McCain surrogates.
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