As the Democratic primary campaign slogs onward to Indiana and North Carolina this week, Hillary Clinton – despite her still-overwhelming deficits in votes, delegates and cash – is reveling in the one success she can truly claim: The bloom has been plucked off Barack Obama’s rose. Making Obama appear unelectable has been her strategy ever since he reeled off 11 straight victories in February, and it became clear that her only hope is to convince the superdelegates to overturn his certain pledged-delegate advantage. Obama’s life story and recent statements certainly have provided grist for the opposition-research mill; still, being forced to traverse his recent controversies under withering assault from a fellow Democrat, rather than in the partisan context of the general-election campaign, has at least partially drained the reservoir of goodwill Obama had established at the beginning of the year.
With gracious assists from the national media and Obama himself, Hillary has raised two key questions about Obama that voters weren’t asking themselves as they fawned over his January speeches: Who is this guy? and Can we trust him? Implicit in these questions is the assumption that voters already know everything they need to know about Hillary, and have already decided whether they trust her or not. (In this she is, however unintentionally, parroting George Bush’s 2004 line, “You may not always agree with me, but at least you know where I stand.”) She has effectively re-positioned Obama as The Unknown Quantity – or, as the survivors of Oceanic 815 would put it, as The Other.
The extent to which race in general, or the complicated nature of Obama’s heritage in particular, plays a role in this positioning is up for debate. But it’s clear that Obama, who so recently emerged as a vessel for so many Americans’ hopes to change the country, is now viewed with rising suspicion by citizens who feel they don’t know him and can’t trust him – at least not yet.
(It’s also clear, by the way, that Obama’s oft-proclaimed efforts to “turn the page on the battles of the ’60s” are doomed to failure, at least until November. His attempts to remain forward-looking have been skillfully undercut by the brouhahas over Rev. Wright, who reminds boomers and seniors of the radicalism that took over the Civil Rights movement in the late ’60s, and William Ayers, who has the potential to drag Vietnam-era debates into this election just as the Swift Boaters did in 2004.)
My brother-in-law is one of those Democratic-leaning boomers who now thinks he’ll vote for John McCain if Hillary isn’t the nominee. He couldn’t identify an issue on which Obama differs so much from Hillary that he can be dismissed on policy grounds; his distaste was more ephemeral. “I don’t think [Obama] believes half of what he’s saying, and I don’t think he’s very smart. All he can do is talk,” he told me over the weekend.
I told him what I tell every Democrat who questions Obama’s goodwill or character: Go read the books. Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope are available at your local bookstore or library; they’re also available on CD or cassette. Through them, Obama serves up more insight into his personal history and his political philosophy than any presidential candidate in generations. Rev. Wright is mentioned prominently — as is Obama’s personal rejection of Black Nationalism. So set aside what you think you know, I told my brother-in-law, and go find out what he really thinks. And then decide for yourself how you feel about him. (more…)
