Koreanpower999’s Weblog

By Froma Harrop - RealClearPolitics – February 19, 2008
Despite the hard contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, party leaders keep telling Democratic-leaning voters that they have two good candidates. They are right, but one of them may well be a Republican.

Far from the pumped-up Obama rallies, centrists who voted for John Kerry last time now say they are considering John McCain — especially if the Democrat is the vaporous Obama. At least that’s what many are telling me — and I’m telling myself.

One friend said he’d vote for the New York senator, and if she’s not the candidate, then McCain. When I reminded him that he doesn’t like Hillary, he shrugged. Another acquaintance e-mailed, “Hillary is to me extremely unlikable, but I do not regard likability as a qualification.”

The notion that many Clinton voters cannot be easily transferred to Obama contradicts much “expert” opinion. But a Super Tuesday exit poll suggested there is something to it. While 52 percent of Obama’s supporters were amenable to a Clinton candidacy, only 49 percent of Clinton voters said they’d be happy with the Illinois senator, according to the survey by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

And at that time, the news media were still lavishing love on Obama. That situation is about to end. “He’s the fashion plate of the moment,” an editorial page editor remarked, “but fashion week is over.”

Sophisticated commentary now notes the growing creepiness of the Obama campaign: Its aversion to substantive policy discussions. The sermonizing — “In the face of despair, we believe there can be hope.” And the messianic bit — “At this moment in the election there is something happening in America.” (That would be he.)

Volunteer trainees at Camp Obama are told not to talk issues with voters, but to offer personal testimony about how they “came” to Obama. Makes the skin crawl.

Centrists generally do not find cults of personality entertaining. The mass hypnosis reminds them of the mortgage frenzy — all these people buying into a dream and not caring about the fine print.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, has given them a choice. This is despite the best efforts of its right wing to pick a candidate against whom any Democrat would be better. And the more the radicals beat up on the Arizona senator, the more he looks like a contender to moderate Democrats.

Why might this group like McCain? Count the ways. He had the fiscal discipline to vote against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and the decency to complain that they unfairly favored the rich. He’s OK on the environment, concerned over global warming and against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He supported tighter fuel-economy standards and opposes torture. John McCain is not an embarrassment.

Of course, much could happen before November. To try to make up with the right, McCain might hedge on the very positions that moderates admire. He’s already vowed to make permanent the tax cuts he once opposed.

And there’s the war in Iraq. McCain courageously slammed the Bush administration’s early handling of it, and the troop surge he supported has calmed things in Iraq, at least for now. But he has yet to adequately explain why going to Iraq was ever a good idea.

On the Democratic side, Clinton might prevail and thus offer a serious alternative to McCain. Or Obama might decide to get serious and apply critical thinking to real issues in a way that appeals to wonky centrists.

What Democrats must understand is that their moderates now have another candidate to consider. And this slice of the electorate is big enough and grumpy enough to swing a general election to John McCain.

Obama’s Appeal Depends on Your Definition of Change

by Stuart Rothenberg – Roll Call – February 25, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) continues to promise change and stress his ability to unite Americans. It’s a feel-good campaign built on soaring rhetoric and good intentions.

Pardon me if all of the fawning from the national media, and the endorsements from Caroline Kennedy and Garrison Keillor, leave me less than convinced that he can bridge the deep divide that separates Americans.

Withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq won’t bring Americans together. Nor will raising taxes on the affluent or enhancing the power of organized labor to recruit more members. Even a stem-cell research bill won’t bring Americans together, though a clear majority surely supports it.

In politics, the devil is always in the details, and except in rare cases, Obama has either avoided them or, more importantly, failed to note the obvious contradictions in his message and his record.

Yes, Obama is a wonderful speaker, and his calls for change obviously resonate with many Americans. With seven out of 10 Americans agreeing that the country is headed off on the wrong track, it isn’t surprising that every candidate has talked change. No one has promised a third Bush term.

The question, of course, is what kind of change? Does Obama want to find common ground between Democrats and Republicans? Will he push issues and alternatives only with a national consensus? Or is “change” simply a value-neutral word for liberalism?

In the spring of 2005, 14 Senators tried to make Washington run more smoothly by signing an agreement for the 109th Congress that had the effect of killing Democratic plans to filibuster President Bush’s appointees to the appellate bench and eliminating a GOP strategy that would disallow filibusters of judicial appointments.

Barack Obama, who talks about changing the tone in Washington, didn’t join that “Gang of 14.”

Part of the problem with Obama’s message — and part of the reason it has so far been successful in his White House bid — is that different people read different things into his message of hope and change.

During an interview on a Washington, D.C., radio station the morning of the Potomac primary, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) talked about why he is drawn to Obama’s message of change. One didn’t need to read very hard between the lines to see that Kennedy thinks “change” means a dramatically more liberal agenda.

There is, of course, nothing surprising or wrong with this. You would expect Kennedy to support a candidate with whom he agrees.

But other voters, including some Republicans and many independents, seem to be attracted to Obama because they see him as someone who will improve the tone in Washington, bring Americans together and “get things done.”

Again, those are understandable goals. The only problem is that Kennedy’s view of Obama and the other one are all but impossible to reconcile.

If Obama satisfies Kennedy and the Democratic Party’s most liberal constituencies, it’s unlikely that he is going to bring the country together. And if Obama does truly take steps to find a middle ground between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, he certainly will disappoint his party’s base.

The reality is that half of the country leans Democratic and half leans Republican. Yes, there are some issues on which many Americans agree, but if Obama limits himself to those, he’ll have a thin agenda.

Instead, Obama is likely to strike out in a different direction from Bush. And if he thinks his communication skills alone will bring along the whole country (as he seems to), he is deluding himself. America is divided because Americans have very different views.

Obama was rated the most liberal Member of the U.S. Senate in 2007, up from the 10th most liberal Member in 2006 and the 16th most liberal in 2005. That suggests that he will follow a rather predictably liberal agenda if he is elected president later this year.

Even more telling, possibly, was a recent interview Obama gave to television anchor Leon Harris and journalist John Harris. In it, Obama tried to have things both ways.

When he was asked by Leon Harris how he reconciles his support for the D.C. gun ban, which was declared unconstitutional by a federal court last year and which bars all handguns not registered before 1976, with his statement that he has “no intention of taking away folks’ guns,” Obama launched into a confusing explanation of “conflicting traditions in this country.”

He ended his monologue by saying, “We can have a reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respects the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.” But the D.C. gun ban is based on the premise that the Second Amendment doesn’t give individuals the right to own a gun.

Maybe if Obama wraps up the Democratic nomination in the next few weeks, he’ll give all of us a better idea of what he’d really like to do as president. We can only hope so. Another eight months of soaring but empty rhetoric about bringing people together and bringing about change will leave most of America brain-dead.

This is a video clip of Hillary Clinton humorously stating that it takes hard work and not a magic wand to bring change to the White House.

This is a video clip of Hillary Clinton forcefully fighting back against Barack Obama’s distortions of her record in Ohio.

Telegraph – William Lowther in Washington – February 23, 2008  

For many it is simply a sign of his charisma. But for a growing number of Barack Obama sceptics, there is something disturbing about the adulation with which the senator and Democratic presidential frontrunner is greeted as he campaigns for the White House – unnervingly akin to the hysteria of a cult, or the fervour of a religious revival.

Thousands wait in line to see him wherever he stops. Members of the audience have taken to rushing the stage during campaign rallies, forcing the public-address announcer to plead with them to back off.

A brilliant speaker, Mr Obama often uses the rhetorical trick of rapidly repeating words and slogans and using catchy phrases that tend to attract young Americans, while having very little substance.

Favourites include the call: “We are the hope of the future. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Dr Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian and stern critic of the current administration of George W.Bush, said: “What’s troubling about the campaign is that it’s gone beyond hope and change to redemption.”

When Oprah Winfrey endorsed Mr Obama in Iowa last month she proclaimed: “I believe he is The One.”

At the campaign’s “Camp Obama” – a training programme run ahead of primaries in key states – volunteers are schooled to avoid talking to voters about policy, and instead tell of how they “came” to Obama, just as born-again Christians talk about “coming to Jesus.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: “Obama’s people are so taken with their messiah that soon they’ll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings.”

Obama fever has also broken out on the internet – and a rash of new sites has opened, poking gentle fun at the senator’s over-the-top campaign.

One shows him dressed as a pharaoh, another as a sumo wrestler and a third as a Navajo Indian, complete with blue-and-white feathered headdress.

A site called “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?” has a doctored photo of Obama standing on a flight of stairs, Christlike, above an adoring crowd while a ray of light beams from above.

Millions of people have watched a “Yes We Can” video on the internet’s YouTube website, in which celebrities including Scarlett Johansson and the Black Eyed Peas sing the words to an Obama speech in what Mr Brooks describes as “escalating states of righteousness and ecstacy.”

He added: “If that video doesn’t creep out normal working-class voters, then nothing will.”

In Mr Obama’s defence, Robert Caro, historian and biographer of President Lyndon Johnson, said: “Today, attacks on the cult of personality seem really to mean attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire.

“But you only have to look at crucial moments in the history of our time to see how crucial it was to have a leader who could inspire, who could rally a nation to a standard, who could infuse a country with confidence, to remind people of the justice of a cause.”

Others suggest that the Mr Obama’s opponents are behind the charge that he is encouraging a cult of personality, being otherwise unable to explain how a first-term senator has managed to dazzle his way to the top.

Some blame Hillary Clinton’s campaign – desperate to slow Mr Obama’s momentum – for trying to skewer her opponent with the cult label.

And in a tart dig at Mr Obama, the near-certain Republican presidential candidate John McCain said last week: “I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need.”

Mr Obama later told a crowd that he would “take it down a notch.”

But for now the fervour his campaign has generated has been working. He has won the last 10 state caucus and primary elections and as a result has a growing lead in the delegates who will choose the Democratic candidate at the party’s convention in August.

On the most recent count by the authoritative website, Real Clear Politics, Mr Obama has won 1,185 delegates to Mrs Clinton’s 1,024, with each needing 2,025 needed to win the nomination.

The next major test will come on March 4 with the Texas and Ohio primaries, in which a total of 334 delegates are at stake.

Mrs Clinton’s closest advisers have readily admitted that in order to remain a viable candidate she must win both of these elections.

A month ago she was leading in each state by about 20 points, but this weekend Mr Obama drew almost even with her in Texas and had more than halved her lead in in Ohio.

And when Mr Obama eventually takes the platform to rhythmic chants of his mantra-like slogan, “Yes we can, yes we can!” fans swoon with euphoria.

Now critics are quietly voicing the fear that Mr Obama and his campaign have deliberately adopted the tone and tactics of an evangelical preacher, whipping up “Obamamania” at the expense of more serious discussion of policy and government.

There is “something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism” deployed by the black senator and his supporters, observed Joe Klein, the veteran political commentator the first to latch on to the political potency of Bill Clinton, then an obscure Arkansas governor, early in the 1992 White House campaign.

“The message is becoming dangerously self-referential,” he wrote in Time magazine. “The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.”

At no fewer than six of Mr Obama’s recent rallies, young enthusiasts have been so overcome with excitement that they have fainted in front of the stage.

Indeed, fainting has become so common that a team of medical volunteers is ordered to be on hand to treat the victims, and Mr Obama has interrupted his own speeches to give his followers a blow by blow commentary of their recovery.

A senior Obama official, who would talk only on condition of anonymity, told The Sunday Telegraph that the campaign was worried that the cult charges would stick and harm their candidate.

He acknowledged that Mr Obama generated wild enthusiasm and devotion among young fans – most of them voting for the first time – but insisted this was due to the senator’s “charisma and the political inspiration that informs his speeches.”

CAN OBAMA BECOME TOO HIP FOR HIS OWN GOOD?

February 15, 2008 – Slate.com – by John Dickerson

Barack Obama just seems to get cooler and cooler. He’s the most popular topic on the New York Times topics page, ahead of even the Westminster dog show. Internet widgets allow you to see what great thing Barack Obama has done for you (he mowed your lawn). At Slate we also had fun with the cult of Obama. And on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors, Ellen Tarlin, heard one woman joke to another: “Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?” To which the other replied: “Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?” (The two went on to discuss the merits of J. Crew vs. Banana Republic. Seriously.) The parlor games go on. My commute is shorter since I started traveling with Barack Obama. This burrito has a real Obama to it. In this cold? Not without your Barack Obama.

Among a crowd of hip and stylish Democrats, announcing one’s skepticism about the cool kid would totally dampen the party. Nor is the dynamic just true for young people. John Lewis, the venerable civil rights hero and congressman, put words to this feeling recently. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” he said, suggesting that he might switch his superdelegate vote from Hillary Clinton to Obama. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”

If you insist on being that party-killing skeptic, it either means you’re a Washington cynic, supporting the worst elements of Clinton’s campaign, or you’re cluelessly out of step with the sway of the culture. On Facebook, people write about dreams featuring Obama. There is only one correct reaction to the will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and that is to start chanting along. That’s why the Obama campaign sent it out to supporters. He is the sun, the moon, the Ambien and the Red Bull.

Big deal. People like him. That usually happens with the front-runners. They get more votes, and then they win. (Although with these maddening Democratic Party apportionment rules, I think winning also requires hopping on one foot.) But isn’t there a natural limit to our enthusiasm for to this kind of sweeping phenomenon? Isn’t the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled? More generally, shouldn’t Democrats who have complained that George Bush was elected on the strength of a popularity contest be nervous that this blossoming Obamadulation is getting out of hand?

So far, no one seems to much care. There have been a few pieces from columnists questioning the messianic impulse with Obama, and a mocking Web site, but that’s it for backlash. OK, so I’ll say it: Some of Obama’s supporters have gone around the bend. There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidatewith the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”

There is also plenty of self-hype to knock down. Obama is not as bold as he claims and doesn’t tell as many hard truths as he professes to. His Senate record of bipartisanship is fine as far as it goes, but that isn’t as big a deal as he makes it seem. Cooperating with Republicans on nuclear proliferation and lobbying reform is not nearly as hard, nor does it require the same skills, as forging agreement on taxes and spending, judicial nominations, or electronic surveillance. On the day Sen. Patrick Leahy endorsed Obama and I asked him what problem Obama could solve with his powers of bipartisanship, the Democrat from Vermont asserted Kennedy parallels rather than name one.

The good news for Obama is that even if he’s not as bold as he claims, he has been bolder on the stump than Clinton. Maybe he’s not the Senate’s bipartisan maestro, but it’s hard to find Republicans who leave her rallies in tears. And so far, the people who are making the case that he’s overhyped are generally aligned with Hillary Clinton, which makes the charge seem too political to have merit. On Tuesday, after Obama trounced her again in three primaries, Clinton referred to the Texas expression “all hat and no cattle.” She was referring to George Bush, but she was hoping to conjure the image of Obama without cows as well. In the mildly astringent ad Clinton is playing in Wisconsin, she taunts Obama by saying that instead of wanting to face hard questions in a debate, he only wants to speechify airy platitudes.

This is the central argument in the closing Clinton assault. Her new attack line is that Obama’s in the speaking business while she’s in the solutions business. (She’s also apparently in the slogans business; this is a repackaging of her previous claim from New Hampshire to be “a doer not a talker.”)

But the Clinton team has been pushing the overhyped charge for months without getting far. When Obama announced his health-care plan almost a year ago, it was to beat back the rap that he wasn’t substantive enough to offer detailed policy proposals. Now the candidate deflects Clinton by telegraphing that he’s about to be boring, as he did before a recent economic speech. “Today I want to take it down a notch,” he said, saying his speech would be, “a little more detailed, a little longer, with not as many applause lines.” It’s all about managing expectations. Obama also seeks to minimize his policy-related differences with Clinton, elevating his power to persuade as the reason to choose between them.

There’s another external reason Obama may not fall from the supercool perch he now occupies. It was Hillary Clinton who was supposed to be the beneficiary of unstoppable popularity, or at least support. She was the inevitable, untouchable candidate. And then Democrats said, hey wait a minute, and to second place she fell. Now Clinton has got to hope that she can get the voters to say that again, before it’s too late to stop the hype.

February 5, 2008 – talkingpointsmemo.com – by Kathleen Geier