How Obama Rewrote the Book

• Share

(2 of 3)

Obama belonged to a party that was bent on retribution; he preached reconciliation, and when voters were asked a year ago who had the best chance of winning, Hillary Clinton crushed him, 71% to 26%. He had to build a new church and reach out to the seekers who had lost faith in government or never had any in the first place. He ran not so much on any creed as on the belief that everything was broken, that the very system that produces candidates and frames issues and decides who loses and who wins in public life does little more than make a loser out of the American people. We need to start over, he argued, speak gently, listen carefully, find solutions, keep our word. It was precisely because he was an outsider with a thin résumé and few cronies or scars or grudges that he could sell himself as the solution. (See 10 things that never happened in a campaign before.)

On the cold January night in Iowa that he calls the highlight of the whole campaign, he offered a glimpse of the possible. Caucus-night victory speeches are usually sweaty affairs in crowded rooms full of debts to pay off. But Obama got up in his tightened tie and with total focus, in front of a teleprompter so he'd be sure to get it exactly right, delivered what even skeptics called one of the great political sermons of our time. "They said this day would never come," he declared. "They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night — at this defining moment in history — you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do." He won women without the help of women's groups, blacks without the help of race pols, and that golden snitch of American politics, the youth vote, whose presence not only gave his campaign a feeling of hope and energy but made old people feel younger too. That was the first test of what was really on voters' minds: even in the face of two wars and a looming recession, only 1 in 5 cited experience as the highest priority. More than a third of them cared most about who could bring about change.

It was just one of many ironies that his historic ascent required blocking Clinton's. Experience can be a virtue, but it also means familiarity and wounds and scars, and it was hard to look at her onstage — her husband behind her, his gears visibly spinning — and see her as the future. Many who saw Clinton as the victim of virulent sexism could still be eager to move on to someone who did not fight in the last war.

Two Men, Two Visions
Given a President who was radioactive and an economy weak in the knees, you could say the outcome should never have been in doubt. Seventy percent more people voted in the Democratic primaries as in the Republican; 9 out of 10 people say the country is on the wrong track. In that light, McCain was his party's sacrificial lamb, a certified American hero granted one more chance to serve, with enough rebel credits on his résumé to stand a chance of winning over disgruntled voters if Obama somehow imploded.

While it may not have been much of a race in the end, it certainly was a choice: not just black and white or red and blue or young and old, though there was a full generation between them. Over time, it's become clear that these men view change very differently. McCain sees change as an ordeal, a test of his toughness; Obama sees it as an opportunity, a test of his versatility. McCain sees change as reforming the system; Obama talks about rebuilding it from the ground up. McCain does not e‑mail. He became famous by riding a bus. And he brandished at every opportunity the values that never change with circumstances: duty, honor, country first.(See pictures of John McCain on the campaign trail.)

Yet Obama, derided as so ethereal compared with the battle-tested McCain, was the clear-eyed realist in the room; he was a child of change — changed countries and cultures and careers, even his very name: Barry became Barack. You can't stop change from coming, he argued; you can only usher it in and work out the terms. If you're smart and a little lucky, you can make it your friend.

As if that choice hadn't been clear enough, McCain drew the lines a little brighter. The Veep choice always promised to be complicated for a solo pilot who resisted the idea of a partner at every turn, but now the Constitution required him to pick a wingman. He wasn't the type to look for someone to help him govern. But what about someone to help him win?

In case anyone imagined that we'd make it through an entire general election without an all-out culture war, Sarah Palin's arrival took care of it. She called herself a fresh face who couldn't wait to take on the good ole boys. But far from framing the future, Palin played deep chords from the past — the mother of five from a frontier town who invoked the values of a simpler, safer America than the globally competitive, fiscally challenged, multicultural marketplace of ideas where Obama lived. She seemed to delight in the contrast: she was arguing that "we don't really know Barack Obama" before she had even taken off her coat. She warned urgently that he wasn't qualified to be President even as leaders in her own party snorted at her lack of readiness; she rejoiced in visiting the "real America," the "pro-America areas of this great nation." Instead, it was an invitation for Obama to show how far the country had come. "There are no real or fake parts of this country," Obama fired back. "We are one nation, all of us proud, all of us patriots ..."

See the Top 10 Sarah Palin spoofs.

See pictures of presidential First Dogs.