The Incredibly Shrinking Democrats

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It is the transcendent irony of this campaign that Obama, who entered the race intent on getting past the "dorm fights of the '60s," has now become deeply entangled in them. Each of the ABC moderators' questions were about controversies that erupted in the '60s. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's black-nationalist sermons had their roots in the black-power movement that corrupted Martin Luther King Jr.'s "beloved community." The sprouting of flag pins on the lapels of politicians was a response to the flag-burning of antiwar protesters; the violence of Weather Underground members like William Ayers, with whom Obama was said to be "friendly," was a corruption of the peace movements as well. All of these occurred before Obama reached puberty — and they helped define the social atmosphere in academic communities like Chicago's Hyde Park, where Obama now lives. For 40 years, the Republican Party has feasted on the secular humanism, feminism, distrust of the military and permissiveness that caricature such communities. For 40 years, the Democratic Party has been burdened by its inability to break free of those stereotypes.

Obama's challenge to the primacy of that sort of politics is both worthy and essential. His point, and Bill Clinton's, is indisputable: there is a need for a big election this year. A decision has to be made about the war in Iraq. The mortgage-market and the health-insurance systems are falling apart. There is a drastic need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels for national-security, environmental and basic supply-and-demand reasons. The physical and educational infrastructures of the country are badly outdated. In order to have an election about those big challenges, we need to shove some serious social issues — like gun control and, yes, even abortion — and phony character issues to the periphery. But Obama is going about it the wrong way. "After 14 long months," he said in his concession speech, "it's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics, the bickering that none of us are immune to, and it trivializes the profound issues." What's wrong with that, you might ask? It's too abstract, too detached. Too often, Obama has seemed unwilling to get down in the muck and fight off the "distractions" that are crippling his campaign. Obviously, this is strategy — his appeal has been the promise of a politics of civility (and as a black man, he wants to send low-information signals that he is neither angry nor threatening). But what if, after ABC had enabled the smarmy American-flag-pin question from an "average citizen," Obama had taken on George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson directly, "Why aren't you guys wearing pins? Why isn't Hillary?" Indeed, this was Clinton's strategy in an earlier debate, upbraiding her questioners from MSNBC — and it may have turned the tide in her favor in Ohio and Texas.

In the last days of the Pennsylvania campaign, Obama made a halfhearted attempt to go negative. He ran ads distorting Clinton's health-care plan, claiming that it would force everyone to get health insurance (true), even if they couldn't afford it (false). He devoted more and more of his stump speech to slagging Clinton. "She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying — the buffet is coming at me," he said during a whistle-stop tour of southeastern Pennsylvania. His delivery of the kitchen-sink line was droll, but the rest of the tour was surprisingly soporific. He seemed fed up with campaigning — as any reasonably sane human being would be at this point — and embittered by the turn the race had taken.

I'm not sure that Bill and Hillary Clinton are reasonably sane human beings, at least not when they are running for office: they become robo-pols, tireless and seemingly indestructible. Senator Clinton was on fire in the days before the Pennsylvania primary, as energized as I've ever seen her. She barely mentioned Obama at all but fiercely plowed her latest field — the populist granddaughter of a Pennsylvania factory worker, the daughter of a Penn State football player. As she said in her victory speech, "You know, tonight, all across Pennsylvania and America, teachers are grading papers, and doctors and nurses are caring for the sick, and you deserve a leader who listens to you. Waitresses are pouring coffee, and police officers are standing guard, and small businesses are working to meet that payroll. And you deserve a champion who stands with you."

There was a warmth and a feistiness to Clinton in Pennsylvania — the very qualities that Obama was lacking. She had embraced the shameless rituals of politics, including some classic low-information signals, downing shots of Crown Royal and promising lower gas prices, attacking her opponent over trivia and threatening to "obliterate" Iran. It was enough to earn the ire of the New York Times editorial page, which harrumphed, "By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues ... she undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be President."

Well, tsk-tsk and ahem! But part of the problem with editorial writers — and, truth to tell, columnists like me — is a narrow definition of the qualifications necessary to be President. It helps to be a warrior, for one thing. It helps to be able to take a punch and deliver one — even, sometimes, a sucker punch. A certain familiarity with life as it is lived by normal Americans is useful; a distance from the élite precincts of academia, where unrepentant terrorists can sip wine in good company, is essential. Hillary Clinton has learned these lessons the hard way; Barack Obama thinks they are "the wrong lessons." The nomination is, obviously, his to lose. But the presidency will not be won if he doesn't learn that the only way to reach the high-minded conversation he wants, and the country badly needs, is to figure out how to maneuver his way through the gutter.

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