I Cogitate

Obama
10.09.07 -- 9:49AM
Josh Marshal
Talking Points Memol

For months I've been quietly hoping that Barack Obama would at least make a race of it with Hillary Clinton. So I was more than a little disappointed when all the metrics of conventional wisdom (in the wise and foolish senses) started showing Hillary leaving Obama in the dust and becoming the dominant frontrunner and presumptive nominee.

Folks who've been watching all this closer than I have, like Matt Yglesias, say part of the issue is that Obama just won't come out and say what his campaign is about. Says Matt, "Watching the primary campaign, it keeps seeming to me as if Barack Obama is making arguments that, while fairly clear to me, must go over the heads of at least half of political junkies, to say nothing of normal people going about their lives."

But the whole thing kind of crystallized for me this weekend when I was reading Maureen Dowd's review of Arthur Schlesinger's diaries in the Times. And, yes, it makes me wonder about myself too that I'm picking up political insights from Maureen Dowd. But here goes. It's her riff on Schlesinger's pained (or perhaps self-indulgent reflection) on his defection from Adlai Stevenson to Jack Kennedy ...

Kennedy has not been “consecrated by inner conviction,” he writes, adding, “I also believe him to be a devious, and if necessary, ruthless man.” But he suspects that his friend Lauren Bacall is right that Stevenson has “a political death wish...”

...But Stevenson is stuck on the same mental pedestal that Barack Obama is on — “split between his desire to win and his desire to live up to the noble image of himself.”

Why Obama Can't Attack
Ezra Klein
October 9, 2007

Ben Smith is correct to put aside the question of whether Obama possesses the ruthlessness required to run for president and instead focus on his strategy, "which hinges on a message of 'unity' that is as much in line with polling and message-testing as with his personality," and which has handcuffed him into an above-the-fray vagueness.

The most remarkable political triumph of this campaign was the Clinton campaign effectively defining Barack Obama's "new politics" as "not attacking Hillary Clinton by name." Obama, of course, could have defined the new politics however he wanted, from a focus on transformative policy to a willingness to call out the DC establishment. Instead, he let the Clinton camp define his message in a way advantageous to them. And given that his campaign has not been particularly bold on policy, he's been left with neither the rhetorical room nor the substantive beliefs with which to tackle the frontrunner. It was real incompetence on the part of Obama's handlers, and it's called into question his skills and, yes, ruthlessness, as a campaigner.

BREAKING: Obama Says He Will Vote for NAFTA Expansion
David Sirota
Working Assets
10/9/07

Hot off the presses from MSNBC:

"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter’s protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."

The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the Peruvian agreement, and the labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements).

Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project - a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.

Trade has been known to be a huge issue in Iowa (remember Dick Gephardt in 1988), so this announcement could very well ripple through the 2008 primary.

 RSS feed