Is this the best election ever? John McCain and Barack Obama are interesting enough, but how about that Hillary Clinton? She makes Rocky, John Paul Jones and Freddy Krueger look like a bunch of quitters. If she has one more reincarnation, I’m converting to Hinduism.
There’s debate among Hillary’s advisers as to how she pulled it off and what to do next. Obama’s team is no doubt deep into the same discussion. Each side might be reaching the same, errant conclusion: It’s time to get tough.
Party insiders say it courts disaster for Democrats to fight on after McCain has consolidated his nomination. Rubbish. Thanks to their intense conflict aversion, these same insiders front-loaded the nominating process so badly they almost robbed the party of its rightful chance for constructive buyer’s remorse.
Obama and Clinton will engage in a contest for the ages. What will John McCain be up to? Raising money from special-interest groups and groveling to his party’s far right wing, two activities so distasteful to the public they must be conducted almost entirely in private.
Meanwhile, a rapt nation will be weighing whether Hillary or Barack would make a better president and which one is best able to dispose of McCain; not exactly McCain’s best story line. The one way Democrats can land themselves in trouble is by giving in to their baser instinct for combat. Sadly, if not surprising, it’s just what they seem bent on doing.
Even in victory there’s turmoil in Clinton’s campaign regarding her chief message consultant, Mark Penn. Penn has stressed Clinton’s strength and readiness to lead while hacking away at Obama with whatever sharp or dull blade he can find: Early childhood ambition, teenage drug use, adult Reagan worship.
Penn’s many detractors within the campaign want to stress Hillary’s human side and ease up on the negatives. I know Penn from Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign. He’s exceedingly bright but with the social skills of a mollusk and less self-awareness.
If Hillary lets Penn go on setting the campaign’s tone, she’ll regret it. That she made it this far is due not to attack ads or to any slur on her opponent but to the handful of moments when she allowed a little of herself to shine through. That and sheer willpower.
Obama has consultant and message problems of his own and, more important, policy problems that somehow have eluded detection by the Hillary campaign and the media.
Obama’s chief strategist is David Axelrod. A flattering profile of him that ran in April in the New York Times depicts him as a believer in a “politics of personality,” who thinks past Democratic campaigns were rooted too much in issues and not enough in biography.
The Democrats are too issue-oriented? And John “reporting for duty” Kerry — his problem was he didn’t peddle his life story enough? It was news to me. Put off by the analysis, I dismissed it.
My mistake. Obama has run a campaign of biography and inspiration — along with a second track of subtle negativity — nearly to a nomination. He might get there yet. His current plan, one gathers, is to amp up the second track. If he does that, he won’t.
In the days before Texas and Ohio, Obama’s cool, dismissive tone cost him votes. More negativity from the candidate of hope and change could sink him.
Obama must wade all the way into the mire of issues. Both candidates must. Each faces problems in doing so. Obama’s is that his actual opinions on domestic issues might be hard to translate to Democratic primary voters.
Obama policy adviser Austan Goolsbee, a centrist who draws praise from George Will, has ideas some Democrats might not applaud. Obama has run to Hillary’s left on foreign policy and to her right on domestic policy. Knowing Goolsbee’s views helps explain that, shedding light for instance on Obama’s opposition to health-care mandates.
Imagine if candidates and media resolved to explore those matters and dispense with “issues” such as Barack’s donors, Hillary’s tax returns and what the superdelegates will do if the convention turns into something more than just another networking Mardi Gras.
Barack bet it all on his story. How ironic that Hillary’s story of doggedness in the face of derision might prove more powerful, in part for being played out before our eyes.
No personal story is enough. Voters want a leader but also some sort of blueprint. These two are among the finest candidates Democrats have ever fielded. Let issues show them to their best advantage.
— Bill Curry, former counselor to President Clinton, was the Democratic nominee for Connecticut governor twice.
